The assassination of John F. Kennedy

 The Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Sixty years ago today a sobbing, heartbroken Walter Cronkite, America's most distinguished of all news readers and broadcasters, informed the entire population of the United States of America that their adored President John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated by a callous sniper with a gun that killed instantly. The shots were fired from a distant office building in Dallas and the perpetrator of the unforgivable crime was later revealed to be Lee Harvey Oswald, an evil ex Marine who thought he'd seek his fifteen minutes of notoriety and fame, achieving his objective with deadly efficiency.

A couple of days former American president Jimmy Carter lost his wife of 75 years Rosalind in a marriage made in heaven. But today marks a significant landmark in the history of American politics. In 1963 America fell deeply in love with Kennedy, a handsome looking man with immaculate hair, eyes, suits, shirts and ties with influential connections, a vast network of friends and, so we were led to believe, dubious acquaintances. The names of Carter and Kennedy may belong to an entirely different generation but the occupants of America's top job at the White House have certainly held our attention.

Even now 60 years later the memories of that tragic day still resonate with today's Americans, a day so heavy with loss and such unspeakable devastation that you'd be hard pressed to find any American who wasn't touched by one single event that would shape the country's future. It would lead to a whole sequence of explosive incidents that would revolutionise and antagonise the whole country. Kennedy though was seen to be the definitive answer to the problems that were rapidly tearing the American dream apart.

During the 1960s violent racism and divisive prejudice on quite the most disruptive scale, would make life for the poorest American citizens almost intolerable. When Rosa Parks chose to sat in a bus in all innocence, it almost felt as if the blue touch paper had been lit. Parks was black, bold and defiant, an ordinary member of the public who was simply minding her business and hoping to get anywhere without being bothered and troubled. But then she was approached by people who simply detested the colour of her skin and ordered to leave the bus immediately.  It was a seismic moment in American politics. Parks became an active and heroic figure who would now be portrayed as a freedom fighter, a radical voice.

The dark days of segregation and intolerance would continue to haunt the corridors of most American establishments. There were combustible street riots, aggressive fighting, gang warfare, bloodthirsty murders and frightening clashes of personality. By the time the late Martin Luther King made that famous, rousing speech to a transfixed audience of law abiding black people, the social and cultural shifts of power had become readily apparent. The dramatic assassination of Luther King bore dreadful echoes of Kennedy's horrific downfall.

But when a handsome young President came around the bend of a road in Dallas happily pondering on what he hoped would be a golden future for the United States, none could have foreseen what would happen next. Of course Kennedy fraternised with the Mafia and of course he mixed in the wrong company but who could have predicted what happened on that late November afternoon in Dallas? Kennedy, stylish car and motorcade in full flow, swept his hair for the last time, smiled warmly to his hordes of male and female admirers and then the crack of a shotgun's bullet from the top floor of an office window, rang out and hit Kennedy's back fatally? A nation wept uncontrollably.

We all know about Kennedy's very public relationship with Marilyn Monroe. Kennedy did like his women to be sexy and voluptuous and Monroe of course was no different. In a famous birthday celebration for Kennedy, Monroe sung the most flirtatious version of Happy Birthday ever heard. It was hard to know how besotted Kennedy was with Monroe but there did seem to be a chemistry between the two. Kennedy's wife Jackie was a massively supportive influence on her husband. However, you suspect that she wouldn't have been deliriously happy had somebody told her that her husband was sharing any time with Marilyn Monroe.

But it is fair to point out that very few Presidents have possessed anything like the infectious charisma and charm of John F. Kennedy. Today America is faced with the most limited choice when it goes to the election polls in exactly a year. For a number of years one Donald Trump, a failed then successful businessman with fingers in all kinds of unsavoury pies, dominated conversations in New York bars, cafes and restaurants. By the end of what some of us regarded as the most traumatic ordeal the country had ever known, Trump had amused and entertained us with some of the most hilariously worded Press conferences any of us would ever hear. 

Nobody had really noticed Trump's age at the time but here was an elderly veteran who should have been regretting and lamenting his busted businesses. But then the delusions of grandeur grew with every day. Then there were the diplomatic grenades that just blew up in our faces and left the charred remnants on the White House carpet. Trump then became the alleged, bumbling buffoon, Jerry Lewis's dotty professor and general oddball in a vast majority of our eyes.

For well over two years Trump trod on so many political feet that most of us thought we'd never witness such gross stupidity and banality again. Trump polarised and then lost favour with everybody who didn't agree with him. The American media thought Trump was some classical Dickensian character, a frustrated comedian and a loose cannon determined to cause havoc and consternation. The orange haired one seemed to spend most of his time compiling his one man comedy material for a nation who was convinced he was completely bonkers.

Finally Trump lost the election a couple of years ago to one Joe Biden, another man of very advanced years who now seems to struggling to laugh let alone be the leader of the free world. It is at times like this that you can only sympathise with a country that used to pride itself on its energy and dynamism, the face of youth that Kennedy had come to represent. There is an aching void here that may never be filled.

Perhaps America will one day wake up to a President who doesn't make tactless comments, deceive his country with reluctant admissions of sexual indiscretions and infidelities and then one who implores his country to pour bleach onto your hair in the face of a global virus. But sixty years after the most abhorrent of all political assassinations, we now turn to the quietly spoken Joe Biden as the current incumbent at the Oval Office and wonder if they'll ever have another Kennedy only without the assassination of course. America we salute you.