JFK and the "lady of some note in Europe."

Chris — my son, the reader of presidential biographies — texts me another passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned):

"Reading Count of Monte Cristo in One Sitting."

Its a TikTok thing. I'm seeing 12 videos in this group. Check it out. Reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a thing these days, but why? It's super-long, so people have been avoiding it, but word has got out that it's a very exciting, gripping read. If you like — or think you might like — video of people reading, click through. It really is people reading — reading "The Count of Monte Cristo."

By the way, I have not read "The Count of Monte Cristo." It was my father's favorite book, or so he often said, often conjoined with the opinion that he hated "The Return of the Native." I have read "The Return of the Native" and 4 other Thomas Hardy novels. My son Chris recently read "The Count of Monte Cristo," though his main reading project is biographies of U.S. Presidents.

This post was inspired by a comment from Jaq on my previous post, which is about the decline of childhood reading. Jaq wrote: "Just bought The Count of Monte Christo [sic] through your link, and there it sits, like a cinder block on my coffee table, will I finish it? Now I guess I’ll have to, but it will hardly fit in my hip pocket the way I always sported one as a teenager. You can’t blame kids though, we are the ones who invented the crack, I mean smartphones."

And here's the latest photograph from a presidential biography sent to me by Chris. The scene is JFK's reception for black leaders on the 100-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation:

"This is the night I should go to the theater."

Chris — my son, the reader of presidential biographies — texts me another passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned).

"[T]his relationship is pathological, and a source of great irritation among other courtiers. It is Trump distilled to his essence..."

"... cult leader and his most rabid follower, narcissist and his most flattering mirror. The daughter of a devoutly Christian real estate broker who died by suicide during the pandemic, [Natalie] Harp idolizes Trump with a rare fervor.... ... Trump told his staff that Harp was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids did. 'She’ll never leave me,' he would tell other staffers.... It’s a perfect (taxpayer-funded) relationship. She thinks he’s amazing. And he agrees."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Natalie’s Magnificent Obsession" (NYT gift link).

"Obsession" is the title of a current movie that is, as Dowd tells us, "about a man who wishes for more adoration from a young woman, who falls under his spell and maniacally provides it." 

I haven't seen it. And I haven't seen "Magnificent Obsession," but I know it's a 1954 movie starring Ronald Reagan's first wife:

ADDED: After reading Dowd's column, I scribbled this at Grok, writing quickly, without the intention of sharing it, but I'm sharing it:

I'm interested in they way many women in the workplace are competitive with other women in a way that's actually sexist — judging that other women are getting more than they deserve because of their looks and/or imagining that sexual things are going on. They're actually impeding the progress of women... or are they trying to help some subset of women by pulling particular women down? (I'm thinking about the reaction to Natalie Harp.)

And then I connected the Natalie Harp foofaraw to this passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned) that my son Chris — reader of presidential biographies — had just texted to me last night. We join the Cuban Missile Crisis in progress.

Jackie's head in a hatbox.

My son Chris, who's nearing the end of his project of reading biographies of all of the American Presidents, sends me very well-chosen snippets of things now and then.

He's reading "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" by Richard Reeves (commission earned), and he sends this:

Should the widow stand back and know that her place is to quietly mourn and to express no opinions?

I'm reading The Washington Post: "Erika Kirk emerges as vocal public figure, redefining role of political widow/Vocal and stridently determined to advance her husband’s work, she has embraced her public role" (gift link).

In modern times, the number of women who have found themselves in this unenviable and tragic situation in the United States is small. The group is largely limited to the widows of the men slain in the tempestuous mid-1960s. Some biographers who chronicled the lives of those men — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and John F. and Robert F. Kennedy — are wary of drawing historical comparisons that might by extension elevate Charlie Kirk, who made numerous disparaging remarks about Black people...

Inflammatory characterization casually inserted. 

... to the stature of an iconic civil rights leader or a president. But they see important distinctions between the ways the widows of the ’60s acted in their unwanted roles and the ways Erika Kirk is defining it.

“It’s such a different era and the partisanship is so much more extreme now,” said David Margolick, who wrote a book on the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and whose journalism is being turned into a documentary about Coretta Scott King and the Kennedy widows flying RFK’s body home after he was killed. “And people are all in their respective political communities and have very little interaction with people on the other side. In [the era of the earlier widows], as partisan as it was — and some people really hated the Kennedys — there was respect for the presidency that crossed party lines. The mourning wasn’t red and blue.”

"The search for parallels between then and now often includes the juxtaposition of Mr. Trump and Mr. Nixon, the president often relegated in popular memory..."

"... unfairly, I believe — to a symbol of what the ’60s rose up against.... Scandal followed Mr. Nixon throughout his career, as it has Mr. Trump. Both scrambled back to the forefront of politics — Mr. Nixon until he was felled by Watergate. ('He left. I don’t leave. A big difference,' is Mr. Trump’s take.) Both positioned themselves as victims of liberal elites and champions of a silent majority; both maintained an enemies list of people and institutions they wanted to punish.... But... Mr. Nixon entered the fray only at the tail end of the ’60s.... His predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, were far more responsible for the upheavals of that time.... Mr. Trump, by contrast, defines what is happening today. The troubles of the country and world, whether the Gaza protests, the war in Ukraine or unchecked immigration, may predate his second term, but the way he has incorporated them into his broad assault on American institutions and values stamps this era with his brand. Mr. Nixon never came close to anything of the sort...."

Writes Serge Schmemann, in "It May Feel Like the 1960s. But It’s Worse" (NYT).

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson are held responsible but Obama and Biden are not. Why not?! The obvious difference between Nixon and Trump is that Trump is currently in power and the opposition to him is happening now. There's no political cost to holding Kennedy and Johnson accountable now. But when Nixon was in power, he was hated and demonized, quite effectively. The big difference between Trump and Nixon is the one Trump is quoted as saying: "He left. I don’t leave. A big difference."

"[John F.] Kennedy concluded that, if outright confrontation failed, then circumvention of the process must be relied on..."

"... executive orders instead of legislation, extensions of authority for the team players, isolation of the less responsive parts of government. Let the uncooperative agencies atrophy, while a few vigorous men took on more and more general tasks…. More important is the extent to which he viewed his own administration as a raid of mobile 'outsiders' on the settled government of America. He had assembled a hit-and-run team to cut through enemy resistance, go outside channels, forgo meetings, subvert committees, dismantle structures. Democracies need such strong (and often secret) leadership by an enlightened few pitted against the many dullards of the bureaucracy."

So wrote the historian Garry Wills, in his 1982 book "The Kennedy Imprisonment," quoted at The Nation by Jeet Heer in "Donald Trump Is Stealing the Kennedy Brand." 

Heer says Wills "rightly emphasizes that JFK’s brand of politics was deeply personal, based not on ideology but on charisma, with policies executed by a band of loyalists (including family members).... [T]he commonality with Trump is inescapable."

"My first time in this Oval Office was in... 1962... I came here... and I had a meeting with my uncle who was President... He was involved deeply, as we all know..."

"... in restoring physical fitness in this country.... At one point during his administration, he challenged Americans to do a 50-mile walk, which I ultimately did. But I remember the day that my father completed his walk. We were staying at Camp David, and my father came in after 18 hours walking on this towpath with his feet bleeding and blisters on them...."

Said RFK Jr. at the beginning of the short speech he made after his swearing in yesterday. I wrote quite a bit about that speech, here, but I did not include that part, and this morning I'm seeing an important reason why I should have. 

RFK Jr. began his remarks with JFK's physical fitness program, and then he extends beyond his uncle to his father, who took the uncle's challenge very seriously, and we hear of his father's wounds — his wounded feet. I think of Christ's wounds, so often detailed in art, and here, we are given grisly details — "bleeding and blisters." RFK Jr. began with a family story — father, son, and holy President — and a grand mission — physical health. 

From that beginning RFK Jr. spoke of how his father came to run for President in 1968.

"I've told you before I genuinely believe that you are a pivotal historical figure, and you are going to transform this country.... We need a man on a white horse now."

"We need somebody who... has the spine and the guts and the strength to challenge orthodoxies, to stand in the way of vested interests, and to break institutions that have turned against our democracy. President Trump has shown again and again that he is that hero.... My uncle started USAID in 1961 for humanitarian purposes... It has become a sinister propagator of totalitarianism and war.... And President Trump saw that and he stood up to it... and we want to do the same thing with the institutions that are stealing the health of our children. We need a revolutionary figure, and you are that figure."

Said RFK Jr., in the Oval Office, after his swearing in as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Longer version of the quote:

"His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available..."

"... and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.... Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.... Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his own father...."

Wrote Caroline Kennedy, about RFK Jr., quoted in "Caroline Kennedy Urges Senators to Reject Her Cousin’s Nomination/In a harsh letter to lawmakers considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health secretary, Ms. Kennedy called her cousin unfit for the job and a 'predator' who led family members to addiction" (NYT).

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue.

I'm reading "We Tire Very Quickly of Being Told That Everything Is on Fire," by Jeneen Interlandi in the NYT:

The obesity crisis has... brought its share of unintended consequences. Alarm bells have almost certainly nudged more people to eat healthier foods. They also helped spur the development of effective anti-obesity medications. But they have not touched off any meaningful effort to repair our food system, which most experts agree is the root cause of expanding waistlines. 

"Obesity did not reach epidemic proportions because of changes in human nature or human willpower," says Tom Frieden, who served as C.D.C. director under the Obama administration and is now president of the public health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. "What changed is that our environment became far more conducive to weight gain." 

What crisis vibes have managed to accomplish is to normalize fat-shaming, especially among doctors. Shame is a deeply ineffective way to resolve any health crisis, but it has proved especially counterproductive and cruel when it comes to weight loss.....

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue. He blames the food industry, and Trump's elevation of him to Secretary of Health and Human Services surely  represents a "meaningful effort to repair our food system." But why look at him when we have an Obama era former C.D.C. director to quote? And, more importantly, why give him any credit for getting something right when we are deeply into the agenda of portraying him as a dangerous crackpot.

Yes, I'm journalism-shaming, and I think it needs to be cruel to be productive.

"This is a tribute in honor of Bobby. I will establish a new independent presidential commission on assassination attempts, and..."

"... they will be tasked with releasing all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

Said Donald Trump, at his Friday rally with RFK Jr., quoted in "Trump vowed to release all remaining JFK files. What could they contain? Despite their differences about what they suspect happened on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, two prominent researchers agree the remaining files should be released" (WaPo).

"Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to endorse former president Donald Trump..."

"... according to a new court filing in Pennsylvania. The filing surfaced ahead of a planned speech in which Kennedy said he would make an announce about the direction of his campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in a speech Thursday in Chicago. Trump is campaigning Friday in Nevada and Arizona. He is scheduled to be joined by a 'special guest' in Arizona."

From "RFK Jr. to endorse Trump, court filing says" (WaPo).

I'm very interested in hearing RFK Jr. explain — with precision — how one goes from where he's been to supporting Trump. 

ADDED: Here's his full speech, which I thought was excellent:

 

From the transcript:

The DNC dragged us into court state after state.... It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw president Trump in jail. It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden, then, when a predictably bungled debate  performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor also without an election. They installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate. 

My uncle and my father both relished debate. They prided themselves on their capacity to go toe-to-toe with any opponent in the battle over ideas. They would be astonished to learn of a Democratic party presidential nominee who, like Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose when they don't know who they are choosing? And how can this look to the rest of the world? 

My father and my uncle were always conscious of America's image abroad because of our nation's role as the template for democracy, the role model for Democratic processes, and the leader of the Free World. Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon... well, nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates. Only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus....

How did the Democratic party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answer. They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters. What most alarms me isn't how the Democratic party conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates. What alarms me is the resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization of the federal agencies when a US president colludes with or outright coerces media companies to censor political speech. It's an attack on our most sacred right of free expression and that's the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest....

"[Nixon's] men broke into the Democratic National Committee in 1972—so what?"

"Lyndon B. Johnson’s men almost certainly bugged Barry Goldwater’s campaign plane in 1964. The John F. Kennedy administration authorized the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. for its own political reasons. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration surveilled Charles Lindbergh when the famous aviator led the America First Committee and contemplated a presidential run in 1940. Did Nixon try—albeit unsuccessfully—to obtain the tax returns of political adversaries? Well, Roosevelt successfully ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate opponents such as William Randolph Hearst, Huey Long, and Charles Coughlin. Nixon operated a clandestine unit inside the White House—the so-called plumbers—to trace and stop officials who leaked to the media, you say? Under previous administrations, the FBI acted as a giant government-plumbing agency, surveilling troublesome journalists such as Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Indeed, a probably core reason for the exposure of the Watergate break-in was that the long alliance between Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover faltered after 1971, for complex reasons, obliging Nixon to use amateur investigators for the Watergate burglary and other black-bag jobs that, under past administrations, the FBI would have conducted for the president...."

Writes David Frum in "Richard Nixon Was Unlucky/The Watergate scandal forced his resignation 50 years ago. Today, he’d probably have gotten away with it" (The Atlantic).

Nixon gave his resignation speech 50 years ago last night.

ADDED: The Atlantic homepage has a link to Hunter S. Thompson, "He Was a Crook/A scathing obituary of Richard Nixon, originally published in Rolling Stone on June 16, 1994."

Garnering conspiracy theories... and views.

I'm reading "Misinformation spreads swiftly in hours after Trump rally shooting/Conspiracy theories swell around false flags, Deep State, Biden and the Secret Service, filling the information vacuum as consumers choose their own reality" (WaPo)

Minutes after shots were fired, right-wing social media influencers and elected Republicans began insinuating that powerful figures were responsible, directly or indirectly, for the attempt. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) posted to X that “Joe Biden sent the orders,” garnering over 4 million views, and later called for Biden to face charges for “inciting an assassination.” 

More broadly on social media, a TikTok user who posts under the handle @theoldermillenial.1 told his 1.2 million followers, “I guess because the court cases weren’t going so well, they decided to try a different avenue. Guys, don’t forget, this is what the left is capable of.”.... 

[M]isinformation experts urged the public not to share unconfirmed information online.... But far-right channels on encrypted platforms were abuzz with a mixture of shock, rage and conspiracy theories. Triumphant slogans (“You missed!”) and calls for civil war captioned the instantly totemic image of a bloodied but defiant Trump raising a fist with the flag in the background. Without any clear word from authorities on suspects or motives, MAGA extremists instantly embraced the idea of a politically motivated assassination attempt. Disinformation swirled as trolls looked for easy clicks by sharing uncorroborated footage and information about people they claimed to be the assailant.

This makes it sound as though people were just exploiting the opportunity to draw traffic to their accounts, but it is the completely natural and uncontrollable need to communicate about an unfolding event. We're supposed to wait for "clear word from authorities"? We're still waiting for clear word from authorities about the JFK assassination!

"What does Callahan hope to add to this vale of tears? Only her residual and, yes, partisan and ideological suspicion..."

"... that despite ample testimony (in many cases from the victims themselves), the Kennedy men have somehow gotten away with it all. So unfurls her multigenerational perp walk, which begins, as it must, with Big Joe.... Joe’s habit of treating women as, in Callahan’s words, 'accessories, broodmares, chattel' was inevitably passed down to his sons. John Kennedy’s White House notably featured what one aide called 'a conveyor belt of young women' running up and down the back stairs, 'leaving blond hairs and bobby pins,' Callahan writes, 'dripping water and passing their half-finished drinks to Secret Service agents as they scurried out the door, no doubt hearing that the first lady was on her way home.' In one particularly repellent act, she writes, the president commanded the 19-year-old intern he was having sex with to fellate one of his aides...."

Writes Louis Bayard, author of the novel "Jackie & Me," in "A Horror Story Starring the Monstrous Men of Camelot/Maureen Callahan’s lurid 'Ask Not' paints the Kennedys as mad, bad and dangerous for women to know" (NYT).

"Mr. Trump’s musings on his planned prosecutions serve an immediate political purpose, highlighting his argument that his conviction in New York..."

"... was the product of an effort by Democrats to keep him from being elected again and providing the red meat of prospective retribution to his base. But they also have the effect, partly incidental and partly calculated, of undermining faith in the integrity of the criminal justice system, a development that could have profound effects in a nation where the rule of law has been foundational. Mr. Trump and his supporters have argued that the system is already politicized, pointing to the four criminal prosecutions against him as irrefutable evidence — an assertion rejected by those who say that no one, including a former president or leading presidential candidate, is above the law.... The president can certainly instruct his attorney general to investigate given individuals. In his 1960 presidential campaign, for instance, John F. Kennedy pledged to target Jimmy Hoffa, the labor leader.... "

Writes Adam Liptak, in "Trump’s Vows to Prosecute Rivals Put Rule of Law on the Ballot/Donald Trump’s promise to seek retribution challenges long-established norms. The election could hinge in part on what kind of justice system the country believes it has now and wants in the future" (NYT).

I think Trump's campaign rhetoric is mostly designed to force his adversaries to proclaim principles that support his own arguments. Liptak acknowledges that as he contends that what Trump is threatening to do to his political opponents is different from what they are doing to him. Trump's political enemies will appreciate the asserted difference. His supporters won't. And what is it? The most obvious difference is that Trump's opponents are currently deeply engaged in prosecuting him, but Trump did not prosecute his enemies in his first administration and he's only referring to the potential to do so the next time around. He's issuing a credible threat in a game of tit-for-tat that he did not start. Won't we need to see what charges his next administration brings (if there is to be a next administration)? These might be solid charges that rest on the proposition that no one is above the law... as Trump's opponents like to say about the charges brought against him.

Liptak quotes something Justice Alito said in the oral arguments in the case about presidential immunity:

I've got a bit of a theme going now, so I'm going to have to talk about what Jerry Seinfeld said.

And I'm choosing the A.V. Club article, because it's got an excellent headline, "Jerry Seinfeld still talking, even though Pop-Tarts movie came out like a month ago/Seinfeld was waxing nostalgic for 'cultural hierarchy' and 'dominant masculinity' for some incomprehensible reason."

I like the generosity of crediting Jerry with reason, and I feel challenged to comprehend what the A.V. Club writer, William Hughes, purports not to comprehend. And it better not just be that Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian, was joking. That would be boring. Let's read. Jerry went on Bari Weiss's podcast and...

Seinfeld agreed, in the interview, with Weiss’ assertion that part of the guiding philosophy of the ’60s-set Unfrosted—which contains, among other things, a scene that is literally Mad Men fan fiction, complete with Jon Hamm and John Slattery reprising their parts—was a return to that age of “style.” “I miss a dominant masculinity,” Seinfeld said, being careful, admittedly, to note that he doesn’t consider himself part of the list of “real men” he admires. (Including JFK, Muhammad Ali, Sean Connery, and, apparently, Howard Cosell.) “Yeah, I get the toxic thing,” he said with deliberate dismissiveness. “But I still like a real man.”

"National Enquirer made up the story about Ted Cruz's father and Lee Harvey Oswald, former publisher says."

NBC News reports.

The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy....