This is the third and last JFK book I got at the library, and I've been dredging through it for months. Finally made myself plow through the rest of it's 700+ pages today. It seemed like one of those Definitive Biographies so I should read it, but I gotta admit that I preferred this one better. This was kind of a slog. I find that my experience of reading Kennedy is he's a big ol' mixed bag, an interesting personality, but I cannot find his international political dealings to be interesting to read about and that was probably 60% of it. Maybe it's just me. You'd think the Bay of Pigs thing would be gripping, but...um, nope. This is also another book in which a president was assassinated and the author has no interest in talking about it at all, which I think is ridiculous. At the very least, one should have like, half a chapter on that sort of thing.
(I'm dreading starting LBJ, y'all. HUGE FUCKING TOMES OF LBJ, another "mixed bag" guy with a dose of large penis (literally) behavior. I think I need to go through the reviews on Best Presidential Bios first and see what looks like the most interesting before I pick at the library. That said, he reviewed this book at 4.5 stars but clearly has the same criticisms I do, so....I'll be skipping more Dallek, I think.)
Bookmarked bits of interest:
- JFK writing letters in college was categorized by his bestie Lem Billings as "dirty," "very dirty," or "not so dirty."
- While double dating with Lem, he'd insist that they trade identities and see how that goes. (Apparently very well for Jack.)
- 'He had so many women he could not remember their names." He was very wham, bam, thank you ma'am, 15 minutes and no foreplay. This does not sound so great for the ladies.
- One employee of his, Priscilla Johnson, asked why he kept acting like his father and getting into potential scandals. "He took a while trying to formulate an answer. Finally he shrugged and said, "I don't know really. I guess I just can't help it." He had this sad expression on his face. He looked like a little boy about to cry."
- On his time in the Senate: "It's the most corrupting job in the world" and "I've often thought that the country might be better off if we Senators and Pages traded jobs" and "I look at the senators and I pray for the country."
- Evelyn Lincoln was his secretary. "If I had said just now, 'Mrs. Lincoln, I have cut off Jackie's head, would you please send over a box?' she still would have replied, 'That's wonderful. I'll send it right away. Did you get your nap?'"
- JFK ducked out on voting on McCarthy, coming up with a bunch of health excuses and vague shit, but also sounds like he didn't really care. "I was in bad shape, and I had other things on my mind."
- Lem Billings categorized J&J's marriage as "they were both actors and I think they appreciated each other's performances."
- Chuck Spalding thought Jackie was attracted to womanizers like her dad and said it was surprising that she was so intelligent on other things, but "didn't seem to have a clue about this one." She didn't think any men were faithful to their wives.
- Jack realized if he didn't run for president in 1960, he might be too sick to do it later--legit.
- Quote from Jackie: "I have to confess, I was born a Republican, but you have to have been a Republican to realize how nice it is to be a Democrat."
- Bobby Kennedy drove everyone nuts by being an asshole, and there were a lot of fun nicknames about him, like "Little Brother Is Watching You," "Black Prince," and "that little shit" (Eisenhower did that one). Bobby didn't care.
- Truman on supporting Kennedy: "I never liked Kennedy. I hate his father. Kennedy wasn't so great as a Senator...However, that no-good-son-of-a-bitch Dick Nixon called me a Communist and I'll do anything to beat him." When asked how he could see Kennedy as ready for the presidency when he previously said he was too young and inexperienced, Truman said, "When the Democratic convention decided to nominate him, that's when I decided."
- Kennedy said being a Catholic wouldn't affect his presidency and he'd resign if there was a conflict between his conscience and national interest.
- Kennedy was Super Disturbed by the nuclear plan he inherited, which would just blow up a lot of the world. "And we call ourselves the human race," he grumbled after that.
- "Having criticized Eisenhower's refusal to act on housing by emphasizing that it required only a stroke of the pen, Kennedy began receiving pens in the mail as a reminder of his words during the campaign. In response, Kennedy "kept muttering and kidding about how in the world he had ever come to promise that one stroke of the pen."
- Kennedy tried to intervene about trying to get a black member of the National Civil War Commission hotel accommodations. He wrote to (ahem) General Ulysses S Grant II, head of the commission, asking for equal treatment. Grant III said the commission had no business interfering in racial matters. They also moved the commemoration dinner to a segregated US naval base. This "embarrassed Kennedy and reinforced his decision to shun 'racial politics.'"
- I'm confused on the whole Freedom Riders thing, because JFK wanted it called off, but Bobby was sending assistance (or trying to, anyway).
- Richard Reeves: "In a lifetime of medical torment, Kennedy was more promiscuous with physicians and drugs than he was with women." JEEBUS H MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST ON THAT ONE!!!111!!!!!
- There's a lot about how when Kennedy and Khrushchev didn't get on. Fun times. At one point a guy says Kennedy seemed pretty calm during it all and Kennedy was all, "What did you expect me to do? Take off one of my shoes and hit him over the head with it?" Legit.
- Jackie sounds like she shopped like Mary Todd Lincoln.
- During the Bay of Pigs incident, Kennedy was calling up former presidents because only they would get what he was going through. "No one ha a right to grade a President--not even poor James Buchanan--who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made decisions."
- Bobby met with some black activists and was continuing to be a pain in the ass, apparently. Lorraine Hansberry said, "Look, if you can't understand what this young man" (Jerome Smith) "is saying, then we are without hope at all because you and your brother are representatives of the beset that a white America can offer; and if you are insensitive to this, then there's no alternative to our going in the streets...and chaos."
I think I'm going to give this about 2.5 stars for interesting reading. I definitely had more bookmarked at the start of this than the middle/end of it.
Comments