Assessing the media version of the Kennedy "legacy."
By Christopher Hitchens SLATE EXCERPT:
Posted Monday, Aug. 31, 2009, at 11:17 AM ET By the time I came across the full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times, I had become so numb and habituated that the thing barely managed to register as grotesque. On an otherwise almost uncluttered expanse of paper appeared the words, "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." There followed the name of the politician who once read those words aloud. As I say, this seemed perfectly in keeping with the determination of the American mass media not to give up until every child in the country, if not the world, could lisp the deathless words of Bob Shrum by heart. At the bottom of the page in smaller letters appeared the injunction, "Let us continue his legacy of faith in the people and faith in the work that has yet to be done." That, too, could have come from almost any tribute uttered since Aug. 26. Last of all came the Levi'slogo and the blunt exhortation: "Go Forth." (To do what? Multiply? Now that the Kennedys could all do.)
When mindlessly and endlessly reiterated, ordinary words begin to lose their anchorage in original meaning. Dream is now so vague as to be strictly without content, and, with strong assistance from Barack Obama, hope is rapidly going the same way. (Twice on Saturday I heard the closing words of the Roman Catholic funeral liturgy, which sonorously intone "the sure and certain hope of the resurrection." If this means anything, it means not that there is anything certain about the prospect of the resurrection but that people sure think that there is something certain about hoping for it.)
One of the many dreadful aspects of the Kennedy "legacy" is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and "torch passing" rhetoric in general. One of the film-archive obits showed an early moment when this began to happen. In 1962, despite having been all but fixed up by his family for the Massachusetts Senate seat, Edward Kennedy (as I feel I must call him since I didn't know the man) ran into a tough and articulate primary opponent named Edward J. McCormack, the state's attorney general. The old footage shows McCormack getting some mileage with his charge of family coat-tailing and carpet-baggingand then a sort of light coming on in Kennedy's eyes as he bluffs away and says that the election is nothing to do with his ability to peddle influence in Washington but instead concerns "the destiny" of the people of Massachusetts. As the cheap applause starts to rise and it hits McCormack that times have changed, you can almost see the hereditary senator-to-be thinking aloud: This is too easy.
END EXCERPT
Heh
By Christopher Hitchens SLATE EXCERPT:
Posted Monday, Aug. 31, 2009, at 11:17 AM ET By the time I came across the full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times, I had become so numb and habituated that the thing barely managed to register as grotesque. On an otherwise almost uncluttered expanse of paper appeared the words, "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." There followed the name of the politician who once read those words aloud. As I say, this seemed perfectly in keeping with the determination of the American mass media not to give up until every child in the country, if not the world, could lisp the deathless words of Bob Shrum by heart. At the bottom of the page in smaller letters appeared the injunction, "Let us continue his legacy of faith in the people and faith in the work that has yet to be done." That, too, could have come from almost any tribute uttered since Aug. 26. Last of all came the Levi'slogo and the blunt exhortation: "Go Forth." (To do what? Multiply? Now that the Kennedys could all do.)
When mindlessly and endlessly reiterated, ordinary words begin to lose their anchorage in original meaning. Dream is now so vague as to be strictly without content, and, with strong assistance from Barack Obama, hope is rapidly going the same way. (Twice on Saturday I heard the closing words of the Roman Catholic funeral liturgy, which sonorously intone "the sure and certain hope of the resurrection." If this means anything, it means not that there is anything certain about the prospect of the resurrection but that people sure think that there is something certain about hoping for it.)
One of the many dreadful aspects of the Kennedy "legacy" is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and "torch passing" rhetoric in general. One of the film-archive obits showed an early moment when this began to happen. In 1962, despite having been all but fixed up by his family for the Massachusetts Senate seat, Edward Kennedy (as I feel I must call him since I didn't know the man) ran into a tough and articulate primary opponent named Edward J. McCormack, the state's attorney general. The old footage shows McCormack getting some mileage with his charge of family coat-tailing and carpet-baggingand then a sort of light coming on in Kennedy's eyes as he bluffs away and says that the election is nothing to do with his ability to peddle influence in Washington but instead concerns "the destiny" of the people of Massachusetts. As the cheap applause starts to rise and it hits McCormack that times have changed, you can almost see the hereditary senator-to-be thinking aloud: This is too easy.
END EXCERPT
Heh
