Supermarket mania pbs kids11/12/2022 ![]() ![]() If Abramson is frustrated by Kennedy’s chroniclers, so, too is Vanity Fair cultural critic James Wolcott. Rotter thinks it odd that Abramson “scolds” historians and others for failing to produce “a perfect biography” of someone as complex as Kennedy. While few could question the empathy and detail with which Manchester drew that vignette of the assassination’s aftermath, Abramson offers no reason for it to “deserve to stand out from everything else.” It just does, apparently. How so? He poignantly describes in two paragraphs the storage of the blood-soaked pink garb worn in Dallas by First Lady Jackie Kennedy. It is Manchester, according to Abramson, who has the most moving description of the assassination in the conclusion of his book. One did not have the feeling of a man present in the room with all his weight and all his mind.” For Mailer, as for many others who observed JFK, this “elusiveness” could either express “the fortitude of a superior sensitivity or the detachment of a man who was not quite real to himself.”Ībramson pairs Mailer’s period essay with William Manchester’s The Death of a President (1967), which began as the Kennedys’ official account but which ended with the family’s fierce struggle to suppress publication. In lieu of that, she proposes as the best analysis of Kennedy an essay penned during the presidential election of 1960 by the inimitable writer Norman Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket.” Though awed by JFK’s skills and zeitgeisty fit with the American electorate, Mailer had concluded that “there was an elusive detachment to everything he did. Johnson has been lavished with attention in Caro’s massive, heavily researched multi-volume opus, JFK “still seeks his true biographer.” “Readers,” according to Abramson, “can choose from many books but surprisingly few good ones, and not one really outstanding one.” Citing the historian Robert Dallek, whom she concedes wrote “probably the best single-volume Kennedy biography” ( An Unfinished Life, 2003), Abramson suggests historians have been hobbled by “the cultish atmosphere surrounding, and perhaps smothering, the actual man.” What she wants, evidently, is Kennedy’s Robert Caro. Her lengthy review, “Kennedy, the Elusive President,” laments the weakness of most accounts of JFK and the absence, despite “40,000 books about him,” of a definitive biography. ![]() Perhaps the most important or influential retrospective is that of the executive editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson. Despite some push back from naysayers appalled by Baby Boomers’ surging JFK nostalgia, the feeding frenzy continues. Tellingly, however, the new work is so narrowly focused on the brief Camelot era in the White House that it offers no new biography (aside from PBS’s solid if utterly conventional American Experience: JFK). Of course, there are some serious and thoughtful contributions: a new book about JFK’s advisers by the esteemed presidential biographer Robert Dallek demands that Washington declassify all remaining documents pertaining to the assassination and worthwhile museum exhibitions on Kennedy and retrospectives on Andy Warhol’s assassination art, which has been compared to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. It is, alas, a not-so-golden anniversary. Much of the outpouring is opportunistic, mediocre, derivative, and – particularly the assassination conspiracies – nutty. The commemorative books, articles, shows, movies, exhibits and live events pique public interest in the life, work, death and legacy of JFK, but at a cost. Gorging on this JFK cornucopia, however, will not leave Americans satisfied. Online a vast sandstorm of blogs, articles, reviews, and commentaries makes our eyes bleed. Kerry’s “ serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.” Regardless of one’s views on the assassination, millions of us are this month enchanted by all things JFK. How can Americans addled with conspiracy theories about the president’s death in Dallas, Texas on Novemget any sleep, let alone sex, while their televisions vibrate amidst a broadcast blitzkrieg of anniversary specials – documentaries, made-for-TV movies, “investigations” and nostalgic commemorations? Of course, not everyone shares Secretary of State John F. Kennedy will witness mounting sexual frustration. ![]() If a comic line from Woody Allen’s classic 1977 film is any indication, the waning days of the 50 th anniversary of the assassination of John F. “You’re using this conspiracy theory as an excuse to avoid having sex with me.” ![]()
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