I recently saw a picture of first ladies Jackie Kennedy and Mamie Eisenhower together, and was thinking what a massive generational change JFK was and what a comparative lightweight. Think of his predecessors going back almost 30 years:
* FDR was of course a giant, leading the nation through the Great Depression and most of WWII, and through 4 terms.
* Truman finished WWII, ordered the atomic bombing, led the transition to peace, established the great post-war institutions both nationally (CIA, etc.), and internationally (UN, etc.), laid the foundations of the Cold War, including the containtment strategy, and started the Korean War.
* Eisenhower was supreme uniformed commander of European (and Pacific?) allied forces in WWII, leading them to victory and defeat of the Nazis in the largest war in history.
JFK commanded a patrol boat (about 15 sailors), was 28 years old when WWII ended, and was a 1.5 term Senator. What was Mamie thinking, seeing these comparative children take over the nation and the world? What did the Soviet leadership think?
(I don't say that to denigrate JFK; thankfully there were no such calmaties after WWII for him and the world to experience, and eventually the next generation had to take over.)
Stewart Lee has a good line about wishing he - like 'dead' Bill Hicks - could be judged on two hour of material, instead of needing to create new material each year, 'gradually decreasing the quality of your own obituary'.
I watched that show (and Lee's commentary on it) quite recently. There's so much depth to everything in that performance (Carpet Remnant World). He said he wrote the show that he wanted to write, which was a show about him not being able to write what he wanted to write.
There's so much self-referential depth in his shows, which he then talks about in the performance and mocks the audience for not understanding. It's brilliant, and unlike anything I've ever seen before.
* FDR was of course a giant, leading the nation through the Great Depression and most of WWII, and through 4 terms.
* Truman finished WWII, ordered the atomic bombing, led the transition to peace, established the great post-war institutions both nationally (CIA, etc.), and internationally (UN, etc.), laid the foundations of the Cold War, including the containtment strategy, and started the Korean War.
* Eisenhower was supreme uniformed commander of European (and Pacific?) allied forces in WWII, leading them to victory and defeat of the Nazis in the largest war in history.
JFK commanded a patrol boat (about 15 sailors), was 28 years old when WWII ended, and was a 1.5 term Senator. What was Mamie thinking, seeing these comparative children take over the nation and the world? What did the Soviet leadership think?
(I don't say that to denigrate JFK; thankfully there were no such calmaties after WWII for him and the world to experience, and eventually the next generation had to take over.)