Capturing the Man Who Captivated

"They lived the greatest adventure of our time...and the greatest love story." So reads a three-page ad in TV Guide for Kennedy. This seven-hour, three-part mini-series addresses only John F. Kennedy's White House years but grandiously promises to deliver a look at "the whole man. The whole family. The whole story."

The NBC series, which debuted Sunday, shortly follows the publication of Kennedy: The Book of the Major TV Series, by Reg Gadney, who wrote the original screenplay for the television movie. This book purports to show what really happened behind closed doors.

These weak attempts at legitimate historical analysis serve as examples of the commercialization of the Kennedy family this month on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Without doubt, television and the media played an integral role in the Kennedy presidency, beginning with his impressive displays in the television debates with Richard Nixon during the 1960 campaign. As President, he held live, televised news conferences and invited Life and Look magazine photographers to Hyannis Port. Jacqueline Kennedy conducted a televised tour of the White House. As Theodore White has written, Kennedy was "responsible for much of the myth himself and his particular style was such as to captivate the myth-makers, the men of words and phrases."

Even the media's coverage of the assassination's aftermath and Kennedy's funeral remains unprecedented: day after day, cameras followed his widow and children, and live television recorded Jack Ruby's assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. Images from those days have become as familiar to Americans as lines from Kennedy's inaugural address.

But while Kennedy and his family seemed to captivate when the President was alive and shortly after his death, the media now seems to have turned the tables. Reporters seem to be relentlessly bounding the Kennedy mystique with wreckless disregard for fact.

The 20th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination certainly affords one the opportunity to reexamine his presidency and those images. Yet the media's coverage of the anniversary merits its own attention. Recent magazine articles, publications and planned television coverage suggest an average American's desire to recapture Kennedy's youth and promise. Lance Morrow writes in a recent Time magazine cover story:

"The myth of John Kennedy will undoubtedly outlive the substance of what he achieved...In the end, the American appreciation of Kennedy may come to be not political but aesthetic, and vaguely religious."

Morrow describes the effect of the media's treatment of Kennedy's memory: today's crop of White's "men of words and phrases" don't necessarily create a Kennedy myth, but rather deal with one already formed in the popular psyche. In fact, the media itself examines Kennedy's aesthetics--his image--as much as it does his record. And the media's treatment of Kennedy's image seems at once both nostalgic and religious.

This is made evident by the special television programming planned for this anniversary. In Boston, Channel 7 will devote eight hours to a program entitled, "Since JFK: The Last Twenty Years." During one of its four segments, entertainment critic Rex Reed and others will for some reason review the arts over the past 20 years. During another, former congresswoman Bella Abzug and NAACP leader Benjamin Hooks will participate in a "talk about social issues." And in the final segment, Betty Friedan, Jimmy Breslin and Michael Debakey will "explore feminism and the sexual revolution." Channel 7 sees the Kennedy assassination not only as a tragic event, but also as an unprecedented watershed in the 20th century, apparently a point of reference for nearly every national debate.

Why not examine feminism after the Equal Rights Amendment fails? Why not social and racial issues near the first Martin Luther King Day? And why "family issues" now? Channel 7 suggests that the Kennedy legacy somehow represents a definite philosophy on all these themes. It would seem that Kennedy's tacit fondness for culture in the White House (Pablo Casals played there, remember) justifies a complete review of "the arts, entertainment and the media." Or perhaps Channel 7 just recognizes that the Kennedys make good television--they're young, glamorous, attractive, and rich. It seems safe to assume that brothers playing touch football will receive recounting as will the kids sailing--pleasant images to be sure, but probably not the most informative or worthy of such extensive television time.

Other programs provide similarly elusive Kennedy retrospectives as well. ABC presented a lengthy review two weeks ago, and will televise a memorial service for JFK today. PBS will telecast "Thank You, Mr. President: The Press Conferences of JFK"; local programs in Boston--like "Good Day!" and "Chronicle"--will provide similar examinations.

Bookstores offer similar fare. In addition to Gadney's book, there's Kennedy: The New Generation, which comes complete with a detailed family tree, a preface by Edward M. Kennedy, and hundreds of family photographs. Then there's William Manchester's Remembering Kennedy: One Brief Shining Moment, a self-styled "celebration of [Kennedy's] triumph." Manchester's conversational tone occasionally borders on the banal: "The White House is very white...You can scarcely believe that the place is inhabited. It is, because the White House is also a house." Although Manchester's book contains far more prose than the others, it relies as heavily on photographs--almost 200, with sixteen pages in color. As a result, each book seems an extension of television: the narration frames the images.

These books at times go beyond a recapitulation of familiar information. Several articles even provide insightful treatments of the Kennedy years; and a chance exists that some of the scheduled television programs will offer more than fond, sentimental recollections. As much as anything else, though, the coverage of this 20th anniversary reminds one that America has yet to find a leader that captivates its imagination as much as Kennedy did, and still does. That's depressing, as are the attempts of certain books and television shows to glorify the Kennedy family and perpetuate that undefined Kennedy "dream," as if America can't get by without its own myth.