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The word Kennedolatry
appears in no dictionary at
hand, but no other term seems to describe the general tenor
of the mass media in the past nine days.
Why is so?
John F. Kennedy, Jr., was a public figure -- an
attribute that was useful for contacts, financing and
publicity when he founded George,
a magazine that
promised Not just politics as usual.
The slogan might have been better expressed as More
mindless American celebrity worship -- as usual.
In
the hope that someone could publish out a witty,
intelligent and incisive magazine that covered the grand
spectacle of American politics, I was a charter
subscriber.
I can't remember ever being more disappointed with a product, and I've bought into some major turkeys like Windows 98, the Chevrolet Vega and Bill Clinton in 1992.
George
obviously wasn't aimed at me or anyone
else of modest means who did not live in New York, Los
Angeles or Washington. Its upscale ads were for things I
hardly ever purchase -- suits, cologne, autographed
celebrity photos -- which means that the magazine wasn't
aimed at people interested in politics: how roads and dams
get built.
Its typography was generally unreadable, the apparent
result of some modern whiz art director who sees type as a
design element,
rather than a means of
communication. Often the text was set in a sans-serif font
that made you lose your place frequently, and the content
was so unmemorable that you never knew whether you'd
regained your place or happened upon some other reference
to Madonna or John Travolta as a significant source of
political insight.
It was easy to decide to let my subscription lapse.
Linux Journal
is more informative, and its designers
don't seem to have anything against people actually reading
its articles.
When I read that George
hadn't quite found its
niche and was losing money by the carload, my faith in the
wisdom of the market was nearly restored.
So if George
wasn't a successful or influential
magazine, why all the media attention to its publisher last
week?
Well, his father was president of the United states nearly 40 years ago, and to certain people of my Baby Boom generation, the Kennedy name stand for idealism, public service, Camelot and similar noble notions.
But precious little of this stands up.
Consider the allegedly inspirational line from JFK's
1961 inaugural address: And so, my fellow Americans, ask
not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do
for your country.
Now consider America's founding document, the
Declaration of Independence, whose 223rd anniversary we
celebrated just three weeks ago. It teems with the thought
of English philosopher John Locke, who believed in a
social contract
theory of government.
In the view of Locke and his disciple Thomas Jefferson,
we are individuals first, and form governments to serve
certain clearly defined ends: That to secure these
Rights [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness],
Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
Powers from the Consent of the Governed ...
Thus, in the founding American philosophy, government is
there serve us; we are not here to serve the government.
We're supposed to be asking what our country can do for us,
especially in regard to protecting our unalienable
rights.
In the Locke-Jefferson theory of government, we're not
supposed to be asking what we can do for our country, and
when people did during the days of the American Camelot,
the answers generally led to trouble: an inept invasion of
Cuba, a Defense Department spokesman proclaiming a
governmental right to lie,
a troop build-up in
Vietnam, a big increase in military spending to counter a
non-existent missile gap.
For reasons that are incomprehensible to me, millions of Americans saw John F. Kennedy, Jr., as the great hope to someday inspire a restoration of the mythology of the early 1960s. They seem to forget that the Camelot known to scholars was a monarchy, not a republic, and that it fell apart on account of adultery.
Those who yearn for a hereditary monarchy are welcome to emigrate to Britain or Belgium, but as for the United States, didn't we fight the Revolutionary War more than two centuries ago?
Any time that three bright and promising people die in an accident, it's a tragedy. But a continuing spectacle dominating the front pages, news weeklies and television coverage for day after day? Are Americans really citizens of a republic, or are they subjects in search of a king?
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