Were there negative comments when Kennedy died?

I suspect most of the negative comments about JFK came AFTER he died. During his tenure we never knew about Judith Campbell Exner, Marilyn Monroe and the veritable trove of beauties he slept with.

I think you mean Judith Campbell Exner - Judith Resnick was an astronaut who died in the Challenger explosion with Christa McAuliffe.

There were also completely different journalistic standards then. What Kennedy did regularly and with the knowledge of many is what got Clinton impeached.

I do think that the manner of his death makes a big difference, though -- it was so horrible and shocking, so wrong. Reagan's death came after a long and full life, and was expected for a while now.

You are correct Jespah. I have edited my piece and corrected the offense. Thanks you. And we won't mention anything about Eleanor Roosevelt's lesbian relationships...

Yeah - That was 1963. It bears no relevance to today.

People are so down on marriages of convenience these days...

kicky

You might dig around some newspaper archives to find coverage at the time of other presidents' deaths.

Thanks blatham,

I googled a little bit for news archives, but most of what I found was stuff about the actual assassination, and Oswald, factual accounts. I could not find any old op-ed stuff, which is what I'm looking for. Some of the links I went to were subscription sites, so maybe there's something there.

I doubt there was much negativity among the major media, just as there isn't now re Reagan. As others have noted, it would have been really crass to have sniped (pardon the expression) at a president who'd just been killed. The two deaths have very little in common...

There wasn't as much time for reflection at the time of JFK's death, either. We can look at Reagan's presidency in a historical framework now. And there are very different interpretations of what we see, and those interpretations are at the core of what little political debate there is in the US. Some see a massive accrual of wealth and the collapse of the USSR under Reagan, others a widening (though not as wide as it is now) gap between rich and poor, a cynical manipulation of and catering to social conservatives, and a complete disregard for the plight of the inner-city poor and the burgeoning AIDS epidemic.

I am one of the few of you who is old enough to remember when Kennedy was shot and who sat entranced through the days of his memorialization, the pomp and circumstance, the funeral, and the days of followup.

I remember when we got the news, it was just before we broke for lunch at the office, and, not realizing the seriousness of the shooting--it was not spelled out in the first breaking news--one of my coworkers who didn't like Kennedy said, "Good." She was darn near lynched on the spot by everybody else, most of whom had not voted for Kennedy. (I wasn't quite old enough to vote when he was elected, but would have voted for him.)

From that time on, through the entire ordeal, not one of my coworkers, many who had strongly opposed him, said one word against him. Nor did you see anything negative in any way in the print or TV media. The nation came together and respectfully mourned the death of their president.

Patiodog, I suggest you look up the numbers, all recommended and approved by Reagan, of the massive funding allocated for AIDS and that was increased each year of his term from 1984 on. (AIDS was not identified as a disease until 1982 and through most of that decade was feared and misunderstood. It was largely Reagan's programs that got a handle on it.)

I would suggest you read some of the writings of Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell who grew up as inner city poor and see what they think of Reagan's concern for the poor and how his policies addressed it.

The rhetoric against a man very often does not pan out in the light of what actually happened.

    If I remember correctly, and remember all memory is fiction, there was a great pause, lasting through the Christmas season and into January. It was combined with what was known then as a "honeymoon of a hundred days", a period of time when the press would reserve it's harshest criticisms of an incoming President. So, for all intents, Lyndon Johnson shared his honeymoon with the slain President as the nation mourned. It wasn't too long into January that I seem to remember the first "Look back at Camelot" pieces. Some were puff pieces placing the fallen American prince upon a pedestal, but others, focusing on the Bay of Pigs and JFK's lackluster progress in passing civil rights legislation, were more circumspect about what the Kennedy legacy might be.

    It's been over forty years now. The world and the USA were so different then. The Soviet Union was a real threat to Europe and this nation, we had just dodged nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Berlin tottered on the edge, and Germany was still occupied by combat ready troops. In Asia, we had just committed ourselves to helping a little country called South Vietnam (where?) defend itself from the Communist Viet Kong in their black pyjamas. Japan was emerging as a new competitor in manufacturing and exacerbating the labor problems we were having here in a sluggish economy. The rest of the world was still not fully recovered from the devastation of WWII or the end of colonialism as seen in Eastern Europe and South East Asia especially East Pakistan (There was no Bengaldesh yet.)

    And the news and commentary business didn't exist either, not as they exist today. In 1959, which is when I remember really starting to pay attention, Walter Cronkite had thirty minutes a day less commercials to bring us the world's news. There were no commentators, I was stunned the first time I saw Eric Severied on a tv screen grumbling his opinion about something, but that was well into the mid-60's. In 1961, CBS had two competitors, NBC and ABC and you got to see things once. There was no instant replay or DVR's to back up the live broadcast in case you went to the kitchen to check on the toast, which is how I missed Alan Shephard's blastoff. We had just gotten our new antenna that allowed us to see the UHF station Channel 18 bringing our total number of channels to five, but most of the time the snow on Channel 22(?) was such that you couldn't see or hear much of anything.

    We got three newspapers a day at our house, The Hartford Courant (mornings), the Hartford Times and the Manchester Herald. All three used the Associated Press and UPI (United Press International) for stories, so many times what you saw in the Times last night, was what you saw in the Courant in the morning. All three had editorials but I don't recall any negatives about Kennedy except that perhaps he could have boosted the need for Pratt & Whitney engines with a even fatter military budget.

     I'm saying all this to remind folks that our cup runneth over when it comes to analysis and commentary, something that perhaps Eric Severied might grumble about, we have too many folks telling us what they think we should think and not enough presentation of the news as fact instead of flash/bang.

     So this week I took a breather from the editorial pages of both the papers I read now, the NYT and the WSJ. I'm sure they were both very respectful and didn't call for putting Reagan on Mt. Rushmore, (Well, I'll have to check back on the WSJ.) because in a few weeks or months, --no, wait, this is today not 1961--, so I guess next week we'll see the re-hash of the re-hash of the Reagan Legacy on every channel except for ESPN II.

Joe

Only if by "few" you mean the overwhelming majority of the site's active participants.

I agree. Nowadays we have so much commentary and analysis, that we have to have commentary and analysis about the commentary and analysis!

Can you define "overwhelming majority"? 90%?

Nope, I don't collect demographic data here. Some polls did but they were for visitors (who on average are younger than the most active members).

But here is the memberlist sorted by posts. You can verify this if you really want to count it.

I suspect that there are quite a few a2kers who remember Kennedy's assassination. He was my Commander in Chief during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was, at the time of Kennedy's assassination, courting Bubbles LeFevre behind the backstop.