Ask a twenty or thirty-something youth today who John F. Kennedy was, and they’re clueless. You get that same glazed-over stare when obvious questions go unanswered. Like, what’s the capital of the USA? Dunno. By the same token, who remembers Howdy Doody, Charlie McCarthy, or any other carved wooden puppet head? It could be argued that most presidents and, for that matter, all politicians are compared to puppets or marionettes with an unknown sadistic puppet master overlord pulling all the strings. JFK was no exception. Same thing with the pundits who disseminate bad news on any given day.
JFK was well-groomed, quick and finely-tuned for politics by his father, Joe Kennedy. Joe was rumored to be a low-level, mobbed-up bootlegger, although it was never proven. Joe Kennedy was a saloon owner who made a fortune after prohibition, importing high-end Dewar's scotch whiskey and Gilbey's gin from Canada and the UK to distribute around the country. Maybe he had mob connections, but that’s all bunk, depending on which side of the political fence you’re on. There’s plenty of rumor and innuendo. Joe K., at 25, was also the youngest bank president for Columbia Trust Bank, Boston’s only Irish-owned bank. He made millions more by investing in Hollywood and cranking out swanky B movies.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was in a prime position to become the country’s youngest president and the first Irish Catholic to hold the highest office in the land. A real stretch for those times, instead of the usual cop, priest, bartender, garbage collector, or dogcatcher. The Kennedys were American royalty. The musical Camelot was a big hit during the Kennedy administration. He was fond of listening to it on the record player while rocking in his rocker. It was hokey, and found insufferable and arrogant by many Americans. But the gullible ones ate it up, romanticizing a family flaunting their wealth and power. Especially including the wannabe contenders to the presidency and Kennedy's adversary (and onetime friend), Richard Nixon, along with Kennedy's vice president, Lyndon Johnson. LBJ saw John Kennedy as a snotty-nosed rich kid and showed his public disdain for the Kennedys. Bobby Kennedy saw LBJ as a cornpone hick from white-trash Texarkana. They were both right.
As profound as it seems, this is more about factual reality than fiction and the multitude of conspiracies hidden in the theories. Far beyond the standard spiels of accepted events as they occurred. The day JFK was assassinated was a normal school day. I was seven at the time and didn’t think much of what was happening. They sent everyone home after the news broke. Most kids were happy about that, but we kids were confused about why mothers were crying and men were wringing their hands and shaking their heads.
I remember most houses back then had framed photos of JFK hanging on their walls, and Catholics had his portrait hung next to the Pope. Five years later, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated by a white racist while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, and two months later, RFK was gunned down in a hotel kitchen. Coincidence? Doubtful. I’m not even going to touch Malcolm X. Some who were there speculate that it was Robert Kennedy's bodyguard who shot him at close range. The bodyguard was a known white supremacist. Dr. King and Robert Kennedy joined the other portraits of Jesus, JFK, and the Pope hanging on walls across the country. Maybe this was the beginning of the end for any semblance of normalcy as we saw it then, which is why what’s happening these days may be extremely relevant. Nobody knows, and by now nobody even cares that much about it anymore. Nothing has changed. The party line remains mute. Deaf, dumb, and blind.
I know less every day. Memories of writing cursive by hand on lined paper with an eraser-tipped pencil, then hammering away at a heavy metal antique Royal typewriter and later an electronic one. Now pecking away at this illuminated tablet, writing random thoughts and observations. It’s a gradual process equivalent to the backward march of history that transpires in asymmetrical time with thoughts and words that transcribe personal experiences, significant events, and transcendent moments of mutual dilemmas.
In the mid-1970s, a performance art group called The Ant Farm filmed a grainy footage reenactment of the Zapruder Super 8 film taken from the infamous grassy knoll. As the presidential motorcade rolled down Dealey Plaza in Dallas, that fatal afternoon sealed President Kennedy's doom. It made the event numb and reduced it to a blip, like watching Ronald Reagan get shot over and over again on that news clip. So, the Kennedy “curse” is now firmly cemented as a cornerstone of the insider job conspiracy scenarios.
A history of lobotomies, insanity, assassinations, drunken murders, and racketeering, and that’s only the tip of the cover-up iceberg. Marilyn Monroe, Sam Giancana, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, and a sordid cast of characters who knew the scoop. The FBI, the CIA, Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Sirhan Sirhan—it’s a movie that repeats itself in historical proportions. No one will ever know what really happened. The happy Halloween photo above of John Kennedy with his children, including John John who’s reportedly returning from the dead by QAnon conspiracist nut jobs to regain his rightful place. It’s unclear. But they’re certain of it. John John, dressed as a skeleton, and his sister Caroline, in a witch costume, foretold the evil omens yet to occur in a cauldron of lies, deception, and more deaths to come.