John F. Kennedy.
Shirley MacLaine.
Celebrated author and Facebook pal Alanna Nash FB-posted a link to an online New York Times story describing, in her words, a "truly fascinating", behind the scenes look/listen at the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
A look/listen that describes the following episode.
BOSTON — President John F. Kennedy opened the newspaper one day in 1963 and learned to his horror that military aides had built a hospital bedroom for his pregnant wife at an air base on Cape Cod in case she went into labor. He thought the $5,000 spent on the furniture was wasteful and would be a public-relations disaster that would prompt Congress to cut his military budget. The angry president picked up the phone.
First, he a took a press underling to task. He demanded that the furniture be sent back and that those responsible — including “that silly fellow who had his picture taken next to the bed” — be transferred to Alaska.
He then called Gen. Godfrey McHugh, his Air Force aide. “What the hell did they let the reporters in there for?” the president thundered. “You just sank the Air Force budget!”
And he was not finished venting his rage about the aide who appeared in the newspaper picture. “He’s a silly bastard!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have him running around a cathouse!” Before hanging up, he characterized the entire episode with an expletive.
The story came straight from Kennedy himself.
Though even some of his closest aides did not know at the time, Kennedy recorded more than 260 hours of Oval Office conversations, telephone calls and dictation into his Dictaphone. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation has culled the highlights into a new book of annotated transcripts and two audio CDs. Some of the audio portions will be available online.
The book, “Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy,” with a foreword by his daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and an introduction by Ted Widmer, a presidential historian at Brown University, offers “the raw material of history,” said Thomas Putnam, the director of the Kennedy Library.
“This is the memoir that President Kennedy never got to write,” Mr. Putnam said.
Being the same age, Ms. Nash and I share, clearly, an affinity for the times and, apparently, the paradox that was the life of the 35th President.
I've actually heard the first recording mentioned, the temper flare that JFK exhibited when informed of the expenditure at the Air Force base. It's pretty obvious from the tone and presentation that Kennedy was sincerely pissed about it, if only because of what he instinctively realized would be the political ramifications.
Through the years, the hype and hoorah of the "Kennedy mystique" has often blurred or obscured what was, in its time, a very astute, world class talent for political strategy. The Kennedys, JFK in particular, were without peer at their understanding of the written in stone maxim that "politics is perception...and perception is reality."
What occurred to me, though, as I read this NYT promotional piece and was reminded of my earlier hearing of said recording, was the aforementioned presidential paradox.
Time, and the revelations that the passage of it often unearth, has painted an historic portrait of John Kennedy that clearly shows both wisdom and weakness, a character both deeply formed and deeply flawed, an ability to see the massively big picture when it came to understanding what "beating the Russians" meant to the national psyche and/or morale at the time, yet either blind, or indifferent, to the possible collateral damage that could result from sexual indiscretions should they become public.
Pondering that paradox brought to mind the second of my two thought trains.
The wit and wisdom of Shirley MacLaine.
In the day, MacLaine was an outspoken, ardent fan of the Kennedy White House, a obvious, if not official member of the infamous celebrity "Rat Pack" that included Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and other pro JFK fans, not the least of which, of course, being Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford and, of course, the leader of the pack and, for a time, most passionate presidential pal, Frank Sinatra.
Years after the assassination in Dallas, when the first aforementiond unearthings of Kennedy's many mattress dances began, MacLaine found a microphone stuck in front of her face by an ancestor of today's TMZ type tabloid terrorist and asked, with a zesty combination of sarcasm and snake venom, "well, Ms. MacLaine, now that it turns out JFK was a top notch tomcat, what do you think of your hero now?"
With the style and grace that only a keen mind can conjur up when confronted with a much less evolved life form, the noted star of stage and screen responded both succinctly and sharply.
"Well, to tell you the truth, I'd rather have a President doing it to women instead of doing it to the country."
Personally, I'm not so sure that particular patriotic expression doesn't deserve placement somewhere up there on the shelf alongside the whole "ask not" thing.
Because, much as we'd like to convince ourselves to the contrary, we still, when it gets right down to it, are choosing our leaders from a list of mere mortals.
The kind of mere mortals who get pissed off at lackeys who don't seem to grasp the political ramifications of frivously spending five grand on bedroom furniture.
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