Friday, January 18, 2013

A little light culture: "People still put out flowers for him"

It was a whole year since he died and yet people still put out flowers for him. The writer was surprised they still cared that much. And you can't blame him.

And you have to sympathize. I mean, "It was a year ago people, get over it! I mean, it's sad and all but let's not make too big a thing of it."

You're curious to know who it was that died that some people still cared that much a year later aren't you?



So who cares? Why does this matter?

Well, in an odd way that should be the response. Kennedy wasn't a terribly important president. He didn't accomplish much as a politician and what he did accomplish makes for a very mixed record. His personal morals were reprehensible. How did he get to be the Kevin Barry of the new progressivism?

Rock music fans like to joke that dying was the best career move some stars made, that is the John F Kennedy story in a nutshell. It's not really about him but about what people could project on to him. Through a series of colossal flukes he became the perfect symbol for the narcissism that dominates the modern left.

The person who wrote that note on the back of the card is almost a perfect symbol of the problem. He was apparently writing a book on Kennedy. Was it ever published? Probably not. Too much competition. And yet, obsessed as he was with this incident, he still found it remarkable that people still put flowers out for Kennedy.

I don't imagine that explaining it would help. The obsession with Kennedy is just irrational. The ground had been well prepared by Holden Caulfield and others like him but it was Kennedy that the narcissism that dominates our age gelled around. It's the real test of whether or not you are of this corrupt generation or not. Your birth date relative to the baby boom is irrelevant. There are people born way too early and others born way to late to be boomers who are boomers in spirit. I know people in their twenties now who are perfect examples of the boomer type. What drives them is a sense of loss, a feeling that there was a blissful dawn when to be young was very heaven! And it was all nipped in the bud.

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