John, Gone: From Man To Myth in Forty-Eight Hours
July 19, 1999, 10 am
by Shelton Hull
Please, no Icarus jokes.
The first sentence for this does not come easily to my mind. I don’t think there’s anything about the Kennedy family that hasn’t been spoken, printed, or etched into marble by now, and the accumulated word volume has gone in the direction of Dow Jones over the past few days. The reader surely knows what I’m talking about. The height of ignominy is ignorance of what happened on the 16th of July. Because it’s inescapable. Only a total recluse wouldn’t have heard, and many recluses are better connected to the world than most regular people.
For those who aren’t, a recap: John F. Kennedy, Jr. piloted his Piper Saratoga out of New Jersey at 8:38 pm, and was never heard from again. Also in the plane were Carolyn and Lauren Bessette, sisters, the former being Mrs. Kennedy. They were going to the wedding of John’s cousin Rory, set for six pm Saturday at the family compound at Hyannis Port. It was cancelled, and catering trucks, florists (carrying what were suddenly the wrong arrangements) and a few guests that had not been watching television were turned away as the cameras rolled, as the network correspondents yipped and yapped away like the sick, intrusive bastards they can be, like sharks when blood’s in the water. Extra phone lines were installed in the compound, and the amassed royalty of the American scene gathered, and this country gathered vicariously through the miracle of satellite feed, waiting for what will probably be the worst possible news. The plane parts recovered thus far point to a horrific ending, and part of me hopes they never find the fuselage.
I feel obliged to point out that I don’t really have any regard for the Kennedy family. I don’t hate them, I’m simply ambivalent. Mere mystique and glamor do not appeal to me, and their political legacy is that of stillborn potential. Any discussion of the Kennedys leads inexorably into a labyrinth of hypotheticals that constitutes an alternate universe in which bullets don’t fly and planes don’t crash.
The finality of mortality is an iron lock on the doors of perception, a barbed-wire fence between what is and what should have been. One may start anywhere. If John F. Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated, he would have won in ‘64, and Lyndon Johnson might never have held the top job. A run in ‘68 would have been possible, but an aging Johnson has no hope against Robert Kennedy, who would have treated Johnson at the polls like he treated McCarthy. Why even bother to speculate on who the outgoing 51-year-old JFK would have endorsed? And what if Sirhan Sirhan had missed or been neutralized before he could get a shot off? Imagine: Kennedy-Nixon II. Need I say more?
The Republicans had nothing in those years that could have defeated the Kennedy political machine at that point. They were too handsome, too charismatic on the stump, and they knew all the right people. Only Nixon knew how ruthless they could be. They exploited his swarthy appearance without ever mentioning it: it was implied that truth and beauty could not exist apart from each other. Even Pat Nixon would’ve crawled on her hands and knees to Hyannis Port if JFK gave her the right look. And so Nixon was vanquished thanks to television, which has not ceased to be a factor in Presidential campaigns since. Nixon’s banishment from national politics — which he’d had coming ever since his vulgar crack about Helen Douglas’s “pink panties” — would have lasted forever had Robert left California alive, but he didn’t, so the tragedy is twofold.
The political scenarios conjured above are based on how the
Kennedy men are regarded today, in glossy revisionist hindsight.
Scandal and bad legislation could have wrecked their legacy far more than the assassins did. John and Robert died before they could do (or be caught doing) anything, so we assume that it would have been smooth sailing. The two most significant domestic events of the ’60s were civil rights legislation and the moon landing, both ideas of JFK, both of which could have happened in Kennedy administrations. Kennedy-style liberalism is better exemplified in speeches than on paper, though LBJ clearly tied some of the loose ends of JFK’s policy together to forge his own legacy. Nobody knows what concessions JFK might have made later in his term for expediency’s sake, concessions that LBJ did not have to make, due to the nature of his promotion. The Kennedys’ politics are inconsistent with their wealth, and that is the most intriguing thing about them. They are famed for their populist rhetoric, but unlike most populists, their actions have
never directly contradicted their words.
As for John, Jr., what is there really to say? He was 38, married three years, the publisher of George for four. As a young man, he fucked Madonna, back when that meant something. (Terrible remark, yes, but irresistible!) Definitely Kennedy stock. He could have been the total package, the standard-bearer for the American male at the intersection of today and tomorrow. Three of the beautiful people, combined age of 106 (35, on average), the flames of passionate youth snuffed out with no warning and no logic at all. I haven’t actually shed any tears, but I almost think I could if I tried hard enough. It’s not about fame. To exit this planet as they did, when they did, sucks regardless of who it was. Whether it’s Glenn Miller, Amelia Earhart, Roberto Clemente, nobody, whomever.
When I hear that they found part of a seat, one landing gear, a prescription bottle, a suitcase that washed up on the beach, I can’t escape the thought that, you know, they saw it coming. The very idea that there were at least a few seconds of total clarity in that tiny little plane, in which the fact of what was about to happen became more clear than such things should ever have to be, such an idea makes me cold all over, and I have to blink a little faster to keep my eyes clear. I think if that happened to me, I’d prefer to go alone, or with strangers, but certainly not with my wife or sister. If nothing else is possible, one should be able to face the end of his life with total self-concern. For all the wealth and privilege JFK, Jr. had, he wasn’t even allowed that luxury.
This weekend’s Extreme Championship Wrestling pay-per-view was probably the only piece of live television that did not mention the plane crash. I was planning to watch it anyway — Yoshihiro Tajiri was challenging Taz for the heavyweight title — but a weekend of Kennedy consumption left me all the more eager to embrace any kind of wanton escapism. At one point in the show, the guy I was watching it with said: “You know, how the fuck do three people in the same family die in three unrelated plane crashes? What are the odds of that?” A very good question that I do not know the answer to.
I suppose the most appropriate way to end this column is with Ted Kennedy. The youngest of the Kennedy children has been the oldest male member (no pun intended) since 1968. He’ll never be President, he’ll never contend (though I’m sure he’s fine with that), so he is doomed to third or fourth place among the most famous Kennedys, even though he has spent more years in the Senate than his entire family combined. He’s the butt of comedians’ jokes, people say he’s a drunk, that he’s a dirty old man, that he’s to blame for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, and so on and so on. Yet some say he might be the luckiest Kennedy of all, because he gets to be an old man, because he gets to see his children and grandchildren. I say this: if you were Ted Kennedy, you’d be so much worse than whatever he is.
You wouldn’t be able to deal with it at all. I say to Ted: drink, smoke, fuck, whatever the hell you do to keep going, keep doing it. His brother Joesph, Jr., killed in a 1944 plane crash. His sister, Kathleen, plane crash, 1948. John, shot, 1963. Robert, shot, 1968. (A weird effect of the Kennedy mystique, if you’re Ted, is that you never know when you might see videotape of your brothers being murdered on television.) Three nephews: David, drug overdose, 1984. Michael, skiing accident, 1997. And now JFK, Jr., the guy who was supposed to carry the family name back to glory, something Ted wasn’t able to do… plane crash, 1999. Ted himself broke his back in a plane crash in 1964. I don’t know if there’s a “Kennedy Curse” or not, but whatever it is, it’s some ill shit. ◼
