I find distasteful this move to add Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center. Trump is enough of a narcissist without the eager help of the sycophants he appoints and I oppose the naming of any thing for a living politician. However, the outpouring of pearl clutching on behalf of JFK fans has revealed how sanitized, and limited, their understanding of the man is.
O Johnny They Hardly Know Ye
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I nearly wretched when I heard they did this. Trump does not have much of a regard for appearances. Sometimes that’s beneficial. Sometimes.
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For all the deficiencies in preparation he carried, JFK and the Democratic Congress generally made satisfactory decisions during the 34 months he was in office. (Engineering the removal of the Ngo brothers in South VietNam – to which plotters added murdering them – proved to be disastrous). During the five years after his death, the Democrats hardly put one foot right.
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I remember my father rolling his eyes over the memorials to him (“If you’ve got enough money”) and my father voted for him. Kennedy’s profile on coins, Kennedy’s name on Idlewild Airport, “Cape Kennedy”, Florida, the Kennedy Center, the Kennedy School of Government, the ‘eternal flame’ mechanism. All de trop. (Added to this was the usual nonsense of constructing a ‘presidential library’).
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There was also the appalling effort of the media to stick the bill for his murder with the man in the street in Dallas (referred to as the nebulous ‘hate’). He was murdered by one peculiar and unpleasant man who was very unlike the modal Texan and who had spent 2/3 of his sorry-assed life living elsewhere.
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Mr. Shriver is a member of the Kennedy line which has produced little public embarrassment. He should know better than to trade in the hoo-ha about ‘our 1st Catholic President’.
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We should recall what Bob Dole had to say about his own life, “I wasn’t a hero, just a kid who got shot”). JFK’s service record did include some extraordinary acts which cost him, but he was not murdered consequent to any acts of bravery on his part.
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Some subsequent administration will take Trump’s name off the center, and that will be just. If our government was led by men of conscience and taste, the National Archives would build a modular records center in Kansas City and transfer all the archival material in ‘presidential libraries’ there, adding a new module each time a president leaves office. The remaining ‘presidential libraries’ and the gewgaws they contain would then be conveyed to the county governments which encompass them to do with what they prefer. The Eisenhower memorial will be demolished and replaced with something proper. The National Park Service will operate multi-state parks and trail systems, outdoor sites of consequence in the sweep of national history (e.g. Revolutionary War battlefields), building of similar consequence (e.g. Independence Hall), and convey the rest of its inventory to state park services, philanthropies, and bidders from the general public. First thing to be auctioned should be Sara Delano Roosevelt’s house. If Reid Hoffman wants to quit using his billions to make the world worse, he can buy it and make it his east coast residence. (The white trim on the outside should be replaced with cream color).
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The Ivy League is run by terrible people. Were it otherwise, the “Kennedy School” would be named after the man whose donations founded it.
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/ rant off.
Trump isn’t a model of chastity compared to anyone, and adding your name to a site is a jerk move no matter what. This isn’t a Catholic thing, it’s a jerk thing.
Trump isn’t a model of chastity compared to anyone,
Compared to JFK he is. JFK’s pursuit of women was pathological.
“…I oppose the naming of any thing for a living politician.”
One exception.
A turtle blood parasite. “Go Bomba!”
Joe Biden’s followers are finding it hard to raise the money needed for his presidential bookmobile. Poor guy.
This is a Jordan versus LeBron debate, mostly revolving around speculation and hometown bias.
Pinky, I can’t speak for others, but I’m no fan of Trump’s middle school spitballing approach to things. With that said, it’s hard to set this apart from what we’ve witnessed for the past decade and a half or more, as statue after building after memorial after sports team after park after monument was torn down, wrecked, renamed, erased, or otherwise eliminated with a ‘sucks to be you, racist’ being the only real response given when someone objected. I think that’s part of why he does this sort of thing. Just like the demolition of the East Wing. Suddenly our White House is practically sacred ground, despite what progressives (including progressive colleagues I had back in the day) said about the WH being just a building and nothing more, c. 1998. In some ways, like drawing poison from a wound, he shows the lack of clarity and consistency in standards that we’ve tolerated for too long.
Oh, c’mon Pinky! Jordan Peterson would destroy LeBron in a debate!
Besides, your hometown bias analogy is flawed. Neither one of these guys are even from Boston or New York! Maybe Bobby Orr vs. Mark Messier? … But I doubt either of those guys were huge debaters.
I nearly wretched. Sometimes, the man’s shamelessness is beneficial, sometimes not.
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As a society, we ought to stop putting people’s names on buildings unless (1) they’ve been dead for 50 years or more and accomplished something extraordinary or (2) they paid for the building. Extraordinary is Eisenhower or MacArthur (or Elon Musk).
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As for the Presidency, why not build a modular records center in Kansas City and move the archival material in the various presidential libraries there? A president leaves office, you build another module and extend the concourse to connect it to the others. As for the extant crop of ‘presidential libraries’, why not donate them and their collection of gewgaws to the county hosting them. The county can put the contents up on eBay and put the site up for auction.
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And in re the National Park Service, why not limit its inventory to multi-state parks and trail systems, sites of consequence in the sweep of national history (e.g. Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields and buildings like Independence Hall? You can convey the remainder to state park services, philanthropies, and members of the public bidding at auction. If Reid Hoffman wants to quit making our civic life worse, he can buy Sara Delano Roosevelt’s house and use it as his east coast residence. If he has any taste, he’ll replace the white paint on the exterior wood trim with cream color.
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And, to go along with Cape Canaveral, Idlewild Airport and the Littaur School of Government at Harvard. the Potomac Center for the Performing Arts, and the Jacqueline Bouvier Theatre therein. (Her achievement, was raising her children to behave like Auchinclosses rather than like Kennedys; regrettably failed to take with Jack Schlossberg).
With that said, it’s hard to set this apart from what we’ve witnessed for the past decade and a half or more, as statue after building after memorial after sports team after park after monument was torn down, wrecked, renamed, erased, or otherwise eliminated with a ‘sucks to be you, racist’ being the only real response given when someone objected.
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Good point. If the future is more just than the recent past, there won’t be one George Floyd memorial left in this country and about 90% of the MLK commemorations will be removed as well, starting with the turd statue in Boston.
I don’t think Trump should have the building include his name; too narcissistic. But I do truly enjoy seeing the liberal progressives enrage that now Trump’s name will be next to Kennedy’s. As for philandering and womanizing by either Trump or Kennedy, as a submarine sailor, I never met a prostitute whose services I wouldn’t procure. Nevertheless, my complaint is the assumption by Democrats that Kennedy was of sterling moral character and Trump never was, isn’t, and never will be. I just hate such godless hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance by people trying to lecture us on moral behavior when they are the ones who murder pre-born babies, sanctify the filth of sterile sexual perversion, and promote the sexual mutilation of children in the name of transgenderism. If anything, Kennedy’s pathological womanizing has morphed into all the sexual iniquity now embraced by his Democrat descendants (while they accuse Trump of what they themselves do with impunity).
CAG – While I was writing that, I was debating putting in a joke about how Larry Bird was better than either of them, but that led into a bad-taste joke about how Wilt Chamberlain could outscore all of them, and I wouldn’t want to write that in a comment.