John F. Kennedy: Difference between revisions

A youthful, glamorous and invigorating figure, along with his attractive wife Jackie and his young family Kennedy was seen as introducing a new and liberating era to American political and cultural life after the stifling and stuffy days of [[The Fifties]], and his time in office was dubbed "Camelot" soon after his death. Despite this, his short term was filled with crises and political upheaval, such as the C.I.A-directed 'Bay Of Pigs' invasion of communist Cuba, which went belly-up when Kennedy -- pissed at being left ignorant of some details of the invasion, which was a hold-over from the previous administration -- refused to support the invading Cuban exiles with air-support. Publicly, Kennedy took sole responsibility for the resulting failure, which dented his popularity, but privately he blamed the C.I.A and took measures to limit their power and influence -- something which, following the events of 1963, many conspiracy theorists would take note of.

 

 

Despite this international business, the [[Civil Rights Movement]] caught him off guard as activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders really starting to challenge racism throughout the South. Unfortunately, the South was the Democratic Party's power base so Kennedy was really leery of alienating the southern states until they started getting so brutish on TV, frantically trying to preserve White power that the White House had to respond.

* ''The Kennedys'', a 2011 miniseries looking at the Kennedy family's rise to public prominence and their [[Glory Days]] during the 1960s, focuses heavily on JFK. It received a certain amount of controversy because of allegations of historical inaccuracy and [[Accentuate the Negative|highlighting some of the negative aspects of the family]], which was helped by the fact that several of the producers (including [[24|Joel Surnow]]) are outspoken conservatives). Of course, [[Your Mileage May Vary]].

* Kennedy appears in ''The Two Georges'' (which also features his old enemy [[Richard Nixon]] in a [[Richard Nixon the Used Car Salesman|prominent role]]) as a newspaper publisher sympathetic to an extremist 'liberation' movement operating within a North America which, after a peaceful resolution to what would have become the American War of Independence, remains subject to a British hegemony. He tries his legendary charms on the main female character -- who, notably (and apparently rarely) is actually discomforted and repelled by his advances, considering them borderline sexual harassment.

* 2004's one-season-wonder ''[[Jack & Bobby]]'' -- about two teenaged brothers, one of whom would grow up to become President -- was clearly inspired by the Kennedys (though it was never intended to be a biography, even fictionalized).

 

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