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Cynthia Gorney and Stephen Harrigan

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from: Stephen Harrigan

The Hold of the Kennedy Myth

Posted Monday, July 19, 1999, at 11:11 AM ET

Dear Cynthia,

I'm sure you've spent most of your weekend, along with the rest of the country, watching aerial footage of the Martha's Vineyard shoreline and listening to every pundit on the planet grappling with the "Kennedy curse"--or, as Jack Valenti described it to Larry King, "a dark satanic star." I don't know about you, but I found myself both annoyed by this rampant mythification and somehow soothed by it. There's no Kennedy curse. With the exception of two world-shaking assassinations, which would recalibrate any scale of suffering, there are the same diseases, hazards of war, accidents, and episodes of fatal bad judgment that might attend three generations of any other highly populated and high-spirited family. But there is a Kennedy allure, of course, and I for one can't quite purge myself of it. Musing about John F. Kennedy Jr.'s all-but-certain death today led me to memories of 1960, when I was a 12-year-old Catholic boy in Corpus Christi, Texas, giddily pressing JFK bumper stickers into the hands of strangers. My "campaigning" had no substance behind it. I had no notion of, nor really the slightest interest in, Kennedy's politics. It was the fact that he was a Catholic that was so galvanizing for me and everyone I knew. It's almost impossible now to remember how bizarre and unsettling the idea of a Catholic president once was--"What?" said an old woman I tried to hand a bumper sticker to, "Vote for Kennedy? And have the pope in the White House? No thank you." What was most significant about Kennedy to me, however, was not that he would be the first Catholic president, but that he had already achieved something that no other Catholic in the history of the world had--he was suave.

Any thoughts on the Kennedy myth and how strongly we should resist it? Or shall we move from the grim headlines to your editorial today in the New York Times, in which you call for--as I understand it--some sort of de-escalation of girls' sports so that the whole system is not set up for super-competitors but for the average soccer klutz? Fine in theory, but whenever people start talking about putting the brakes on sports competition, I get a creepy flashback to the '70s. Remember the "New Games"? As I recall, we were all supposed to go out into the park and pass a giant inflated ball from one pair of hands to the next in a spirit of loving cooperation and common purpose. But anything that runs so counter to human nature can't last for long, and you can bet that the hippies who used to play the New Games are now engaged in cutthroat rounds of Frisbee golf.

Steve

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Stephen Harrigan

The Hold of the Kennedy Myth

Posted Monday, July 19, 1999, at 11:11 AM ET
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Cynthia Gorney, a reporter for the Washington Post from 1975 to 1991, will join the faculty at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism this fall. She is the author of Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (click here to buy the book). Stephen Harrigan is an occasional columnist for Slate, as well as a screenwriter and novelist. His recent books include Water and Light: A Diver's Journey to a Coral Reef (click here to buy the book).
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