am I too harsh?

[Fritz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/opinio...html?scp=2&sq=jfk&st=cse#comments

I sent the following this morning.

I really enjoyed ROSS DOUTHAT's recent treatise on JFK.
May I suggest next time he writes an opinion that he open the doors and windows so that he doesn't succumb to his own farts.

[jardster]

"honest"

[OWC Jamie]

it will go in the "another rogue reader" bin.

[Fritz]

billb wrote:
it will go in the "another rogue reader" bin.

at best.

[deckeda]

I don't think your response was too harsh, but nor does it explain what you mean, other than simple disagreement.

I don't agree with Douthat, mostly because the myths he wants to dispel can't be dispelled nor proven. So complaining that they are myths in the first place is kinda pointless, if you see what I mean.

I'm OK with an "incomplete" presidency as being the label given, because that's what it literally was.

More broadly, any "side" will cling understandably, if not justifiably cling to, myths whenever one of their own is taken down unfairly. That alone can indeed make a "myth" in fact reality, again if you see what I mean. It's not completely unrelated to the notion of the function of martyrdom.

[freeradical]

Maybe the accident that damaged King's lung, leg, and hip did more damage than that.

[Fritz]

I don't care what he has to say, it appeared in OpEd ......... after all.
I share some of his viewpoint.
I just think the Editors had 500 word space to fill and that took his.
It's a throw away piece of blather, less than I expect from them.
Maybe I should have said, "editorial should open their windows and doors...."

[$tevie]

That's the kind of letter that will, at best, be shown by Douthat to some friends to illustrate that the people who disagree with him are doofuses. More likely, however, it will go straight into the Trash.

[Ombligo]

Actually as a historian I concur with many of Doutharts statements. While Kennedy was no where near the disaster the writer paints, he also was not the political genious the public has made him out to be. He was barely elected over an opponent whose supporters even disliked. I give him a pass on the Bay of Pigs as it was dropped in his lap before he discovered that the military had it's own agenda (though he really should have known it already). The Cuban Missile crisis was his shining moment while the Berlin Wall was a stalemate - so in reality his box score was 1 win, 1 loss and 1 draw.

What is overlooked is the hope he brought to many even if he never delivered. That is important and will be his real legacy.

Kennedy was a politician, possibly one of the three greatest in the last century of American politics (FDR and Reagan being the other two). Does that make him a great leader? not neccesarily. But a great politician is only one action away from being judged a criminal. Nixon was perhaps the greatest poltician of the last two hundred years.. at least until he was caught. Now all his accomplishiments are forgotton and he is viewed as not only a failed president, but a failed man.

What is really important is we not fall victim to a grave mistake of judging historical figures by today's values. They must be judged by the standards of their time. Kennedy made decisions by what he knew then not by what we know now.

[mattkime]

Ombligo - where'd ya git all that fancy learnin??