Truth and “Honor” on the Potomac

John F. (“Jack”) Kennedy was made president by his father, Joseph P. Kennedy (“Old Joe”), a successful Boston businessman who almost certainly was a major bootlegger, an associate of crime families, and a ruthless political manipulator.

This week (Dec 27), I watched the “Kennedy Center Honors” special on television. The Center is the apex of glory for American performing artists, the political and cultural elite’s nationalist celebration of their conception of America’s “best.”

The evening’s celebration of legend James Taylor, who over decades of his life overcame all odds to manifest his genius, had a special meaning to me, in a small way, because as a cub reporter for the “Worcester Telegram,” about 1969, I was assigned late one afternoon to cover a live James Taylor concert that evening in nearby Framingham. It seems our entertainment star reporter, Jack Tubert, was otherwise engaged.

The significant federal government capital support for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (though it is required to raised private funds for programming and earns much of its keep), which is billed as the “national center for the performing arts”—a “nationalist” concept—merits another article.

Before each of the three famous presidential debates, Kennedy staff paid prostitutes to service Kennedy. On inauguration day, it is reported, Kennedy put his wife, Jackie, to bed in the White House, and then had a liaison with a prostitute.

Watching the “Honors,” I saw President Barrack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in the audience. At first, Mr. Obama was bobbing his head in time with the music, dignified as always, then, singing along with Michelle, and, at last, up and dancing. Washington, the media, our “opinion makers” and supposed standard setters were united in the brilliance of the occasion.

The man who on January 20, 2017, will be inaugurated President of the United States was attacked during the election campaign, to an extent without precedent in U.S. electoral history, for a private comment made a decade earlier that seemed to speak of women as mere objects of sexual lust. And, for a comment, now proved misleading if not outright false, that “fat shamed” a “Miss Universe” contest winner. And these attacks went on throughout the campaign, focusing on these incidents dug up by the Clinton campaign well in advance, headlined by the press, and deplored thousands of times in TV talk shows. This coverage came to dominate the election almost to the exclusion of discussion of substantive issues. The issue of “character,” we were told, trumps all. Mr. Trump’s attitude toward women simply wasn’t presidential. If he was elected, women of character might be driven by sheer distaste to expatriate.

Well, the “sexual predator”—a term applied to Mr. Trump—whose words supposedly alarmed our young daughters (a “New York Times” story)—although the “frightening material” was made ubiquitous by the “Times” itself—will be inaugurated President of the United States in January. President and Mrs. Obama will hold their noses, the actors and singers honored by the Kennedy Center will boycott the celebration, and the media will promote, analyze, and then express a national shame.

For the posture of upholding standards of decency and sexual propriety, it is a shame that the presidency of John F. Kennedy, now over half a century in the past, has been so thoroughly explored and documented by historians. One of the best is the dean of British historians, Paul Johnson, whose “A History of the American People” (New York City: HarperCollins, 1997), brings together what is known about Kennedy with balance and extensive documentation. Following is a sketch, with a few links to books on particular topics. For those interested in delving deeper, I recommend Johnson’s peerless narration of U.S. history.

John F. (“Jack”) Kennedy was made president by his father, Joseph P. Kennedy (“Old Joe”), a successful Boston businessman who almost certainly was a major bootlegger, an associate of crime families, and a ruthless political manipulator. He paid a team of writers to write or rewrite the Kennedy ‘bestsellers’: “While England Slept,” and later, “Profiles in Courage,” and, in both cases, had his henchman buy hundreds of thousands of copies to score a “bestseller.” This is one small detail, of course, a fine stroke, but it illustrates how he operated throughout in using fraud and manipulation to advance Jack Kennedy’s career. During Jack Kennedy’s successive elections to the House, Senate, and the presidency, he purchased opposing Boston newspapers and bribed hundreds of church pastors to deal with the Kennedy “Catholic” problem. Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, later commented that Kennedy was the most do-nothing senator he had ever encountered in his decades in Congress.

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960 against then vice-president Richard M. Nixon, Old Joe Kennedy stole the election for his son. At the time, this was a widespread allegation, though disputed, but now is history. In Chicago and Texas, the historically unprecedented close election went by a few thousand votes for Kennedy. We now know that the infamous Chicago Mayor Daley’s machine, delegated crime family boss Sam Giancana, among many others, to fix the election. (Later, Kennedy shared a mistress with Giancana.) In Texas, Kennedy vice presidential candidate, Lyndon Baines Johnson, stole the vote in several corrupt Texas districts. The two crimes changed the outcome of an American presidential election. Today, this is a matter of record.

Ayn Rand later excoriated candidate Nixon for not challenging the stolen election and commented that his moral cowardice in not doing so cost America its tragic involvement in Vietnam.

The philosopher and political commentator, Ayn Rand, later excoriated candidate Nixon for not challenging the stolen election and commented that his moral cowardice in not doing so cost America its tragic involvement in Vietnam because Nixon, like the president under whom he served, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was on record and committed in principle to opposing a ground war in Southeast Asia—maintaining that the war against communism was on the European front.

Kennedy is known, today, to have been addicted to promiscuous sex, grabbing any woman at hand, a pattern well-known to his staff and the press, but loyalty concealed—until Kennedy was gone. The press adored Kennedy, but despised Nixon for his record of anti-communism.

It was Old Joe who selected Jacqueline Kennedy to marry Jack for “class”; required Jack to marry her; and made a huge financial settlement to induce her to agree. Later, when she threatened to storm out of the marriage over Jack’s infidelities, Old Joe greatly supplemented the financial package.

Kennedy insisted, we now know, that he needed some new sexual experience every day. Before each of the three famous presidential debates, Kennedy staff paid prostitutes to service Kennedy. On inauguration day, it is reported, Kennedy put his wife, Jackie, to bed in the White House, and then had a liaison with a prostitute. He secured sexual trophies from Hollywood, including Marilyn Monroe, later turned over to his brother Bobby, and covered up the traces of their involvement when she committed suicide.

This was the 1960’s “sexual revolution” in full flower and I wonder how many in the audience at the Kennedy Center would reject that cultural watershed. Its philosophy was that sexual relations had no significance beyond pleasure, preferably drug-enhanced, much like a new guitar tune, or dope hit, or a rich dessert. President Kennedy was a product of the Sixties, including the sexual revolution, and accepted and celebrated as such—although the story naturally was kept from the unenlightened public. President William Clinton, also of the Sixties generation, used the most powerful political office in the world to seduce a White House intern into oral sex.

Do you bloody understand? It meant NOTHING! Stimulation, discharge, dismissal. A bodily function.

Kennedy often had his daily sex fix in the White House marriage bed when Jackie was absent. At other times, in New York City, he used secret tunnels under the Carlyle Hotel to keep secret his liaisons with prostitutes procured by the Secret Service.

Candidate Trump insisted that his campaign for President include his wife, his grown children and their spouses—all with serious responsibilities in the Trump businesses. But this was viewed by the media and cultural “elite” as hypocrisy. As Melania Trump was battered by the media, it seemed her sin was to be not only glamorous, but admiring of her husband and committed to her children. So un-Sixties …

Kennedy often had his daily sex fix in the White House marriage bed when Jackie was absent. At other times, in New York City, he used secret tunnels under the Carlyle Hotel to keep secret his liaisons with prostitutes procured by the Secret Service.

As I now watch the “Kennedy Center Honors” come to its climax, I see the Center’s director thanking the audience and donors of the Center and recalling Kennedy’s “commitment to idealism and a just America,” following “our vision wherever it leads.”

And now, a “Camelot” song is rising … The voice soaring, the handsome young Kennedy on the screen behind.

“The dream … the dream …”

Did you hear? Michelle Obama has “lost hope” at what is to come. How to endure that we will have a President who joked, in private, about groping …?

President Obama’s face is caught by the camera with what seems an almost unbearable sense of history’s burden of idealism.

But, over it all, especially the intensity of this last “Kennedy Honors” of the Obama administration, there is a sadness (Did you hear? Michelle Obama has “lost hope”) at what is to come. How to endure that we will have a President who joked, in private, on the stage set of a day-time TV romance, about “groping …?” Where will be honor? Uplift? Idealism?

The doubts are too grim to contemplate during this dazzling tribute to the American “Camelot” of John and Jacqueline Kennedy that are the Kennedy Center Honors.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway has written and edited for Savvy Street since its inception in 2014. His essays and interpretative commentaries on breakthrough books have dealt with philosophy, politics, literature, science, history, psychology, and personalities. His new novel, "Retaking College Hill,” became Amazon’s #1 bestseller in political fiction. This year, the Atlas Society published his Pocket Guide to The Fountainhead and Romanticism Reborn--essays on the Romantic movement in literature and its 20th Century revival in Ayn Rand's novels. His collections of essays and short stories and his "Collected Poems" are available on Amazon. He lives in East Hampton with his wife, Robin.