John F. Kennedy

With attention drawn to government surveillance of citizens, some in the media are recalling that this has long been an issue.   Columnist Phil Kadner of the Southtown Star, a publication of the Chicago Sun-Times, did so in a recent column, "Do you want security or freedom?":

 When Communists were suspected of conspiring to undermine our country, innocent political activists were targeted in the 1930s, 1950s and 1960s. The FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr. because he was campaigning for civil rights.

That was not the reason for King’s wiretap, which was carried out by the FBI after Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized it on October 10, 1963.  Kennedy believed that two of King’s associates had ties to the Communist party.  

Given that his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, was one of the most notorious appeasers of the last century, you'd think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might refrain from maligning anyone else as a Nazi sympathizer.

Turns out it wasn't just Grampa Joe with a soft spot for Der Fuhrer -- so did his second eldest son and future president John F. Kennedy during trips to Germany as a young man, according to a new book, "John F. Kennedy -- Among the Germans: Travel Diaries and Letters, 1937-1945." (Audio after the jump)

Here’s  a story you probably haven’t heard, unless you read Drudge or Breitbart. The Independent (U.K.) has published a story (from which I pull freely), as have a couple of Jewish outlets. That’s all I can find. You tell me if it qualifies as “news” that the “news “ media should be covering.

It involves a young man who would someday become one of the best-known and most powerful men in the world.  A new book is out. It explores recently uncovered diaries kept by this young man. The journal entries document his fascination with Adolf Hitler and Nazism.

Gee, why would anyone get the impression -- GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, for example -- that Harvard Law School is fertile wetlands for left-wing politics?

In Cruz's case, his suspicions are well-founded -- the man graduated from the school in the mid-1990s. For those of us who aren't Harvard alum, its faculty members often supply evidence to bolster that perception. (audio clip after page break)

I always look forward to Mike Papantonio's appearances on radio, since he invariably says something that leaves me shaking my head in bemusement and pity.

Papantonio, an attorney and co-host of the "Ring of Fire" radio show, was guest hosting on Ed Schultz's radio program Friday and talking about the legal challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the Supreme Court. (audio clips after page break)

You know Obama supporters are getting desperate about their candidate’s electoral prospects when they start to play the anti-Mormon card.

In an October 23 opinion piece in the Washington Post, Barbara Reynolds launched a broadside against Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, arguing that he has become the “face of Mormonism” in America and complaining “I find it strange that the media are not opening up a dialogue concerning Romney and his faith.”

With the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis approaching and new documents surfacing about just how close to World War III the United States and the Soviet Union came in 1962, it’s interesting to look at how the incident is regarded in the media and, especially, how it’s taught as history.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is commonly portrayed as a firm display of President John F. Kennedy’s resolve in the face of Cold War Soviet aggression. President John F. Kennedy is popularly depicted as a courageous leader who forced the Soviet Union to withdraw nuclear missiles from Cuba pointed at the United States.

Despite having failed to stop let alone reverse the rising of the seas, Barack Obama has made Newsweek’s newest ten best presidents list, which gives readers a top ten of the chief executives since 1900. Newsweek, whose list unsurprisingly is dominated by liberal Democrats, gave this justification for selecting Obama in a caption in a photo slide:

Picking a sitting president in a tally of the best is tricky – history hasn’t had time to put things in a more sober context.  But the historic election of America’s first black president cannot be ignored.  That a man whose ancestors included a slave could become the leader of a nation founded to some extent in slavery is as much an achievement for the country as it is a marker for Obama himself.  Whether Obama stays or goes, his standing, as a fundamentally groundbreaking president will remain.

Appearing as a panel member on the weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Huffington Post editoral director Howard Fineman - formerly of Newsweek - praised former President Eisenhower's decision to advise then-President Johnson to "carry out Jack Kennedy's agenda" in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.

Fineman ended up referring to Eisenhower's advice as "amazing statesmanship and foresight." Fineman:

The media mythology of Kennedy's Camelot lives on in the news pages of Wednesday's New York Times, in a puzzling tribute by reporter Ralph Blumenthal to a French village museum devoted to Pierre Salinger, the Kennedy press secretary who later served for years as chief foreign correspondent for ABC News: "Medieval French Village Echoes With the Voice Of Kennedy’s Camelot."

If the French loved John F. Kennedy, there is a special spot in their hearts for Pierre Salinger, his rotund, cigar-smoking, francophone-ish press secretary whose maternal grandfather served in the Assemblée Nationale and fought to clear Capt. Alfred Dreyfus.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews doesn't just hate Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's money.

During an interview with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Hardball Thursday, the host disparaged George Washington as an elite "with a couple of hundred slaves" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During live coverage of Super Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews harkened back to a famous historical phone call from then-Senator John F. Kennedy to Coretta King, after her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested, as he suggested that President Barack Obama's recent phone call to Georgetown Law School student Sandra Fluke would be similarly remembered as important to this year's presidential campaign.

Matthews asserted:

John F. Kennedy may be a hallowed name within Democrat circles, but CNN's Soledad O'Brien seemed to argue Wednesday that he is revered among Catholics too, so much so that they won't vote for a candidate who attacks him.

After Tuesday night's Michigan GOP primary, O'Brien tried to get Rick Santorum's press secretary to admit that the candidate lost Catholic voters in the state because he attacked former President John F. Kennedy for saying the church had no role in the policy of the state.  [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In the wake of new sexual revelations concerning John F. Kennedy and a nineteen-year-old White House intern, you would think media members would shy away from putting the former president on a pedestal concerning his religious beliefs.

Yet there was ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer Monday telling George Stephanopoulos of his previous day's interview with Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, "Couldn’t believe that he was going on the offensive on church and state and the separation of them against John Kennedy" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Charlie Rose seemingly can't handle a Republican attacking President Obama, as he interrupted Haley Barbour on Monday's CBS This Morning. Rose took Rick Santorum's criticism of JFK out of context in a question to Barbour. When the former RNC head accused Obama of "forcing...abortion pills" on the Catholic Church, the anchor replied, "Wait...he [Santorum] was talking about...Kennedy, not...Obama" [audio available here; video below the jump].

Just over a month earlier, Rose took issue with Senator Marco Rubio accusing the chief executive of being "divisive." Rubio tried to use the President's State of the Union as an example, but the journalist also interrupted the Florida Republican, and touted that "I saw him honoring the military of America and a lot other things where we should be coming together. That doesn't seem to be divisive."

The double standard by which the media view presidential sex scandals is nothing less than stunning.

On this weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the entire panel - which included two women, one being the supposedly conservative syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker - said the new revelations regarding former President John F. Kennedy having sex with a 19-year-old White House intern will have absolutely no impact on his legacy (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Almost four years ago, ABC’s Barbara Walters came out with her memoir Audition, using as its selling point a tale of her tawdry 1970s affair with married black Sen. Edward Brooke (R-Mass.). Seldom has a TV personality been a more shameless public hypocrite than Walters was on Friday with former Kennedy mistress Mimi Alford during an interview on “The View.”

Walters battered Alford four times with the notion she was greedy, with four different outbursts like “She’ll make a lot of money!” (That one came in the introduction.) Walters asked Alford why she would hurt Caroline Kennedy and her family, and then assaulted her with the reverse idea, that she could have “saved” Monica Lewinsky from ridicule if she’d talked earlier. But mostly, she insisted the book "did not have to be written" and "You could have let it go!" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Yesterday, NewsBuster Kyle Drennen detailed how NBC Today co-host Ann Curry fretted about the latest Kennedy scandal's impact on Caroline Kennedy.  "What about Caroline, who is still alive? " she asked John F. Kennedy mistress Mimi Alford.

Last night on Fox Chicago News, anchor Bob Sirott picked up on the same theme in his "One More Thing" opinion segment:

I wonder if she (Alford) feels guilty now about how President Kennedy's only living child Caroline might feel about her story?

Just a guess, but I imagine the daughter, now older than her father was when he died, didn't go into a state of shock.  Yet the mainstream media worry about her as though she were a teenager, like Alford was when the 45-year-old Kennedy took her virginity. 

Following a revealing interview with former JFK mistress Mimi Alford on Wednesday's NBC Rock Center, left-wing MSNBC host Chris Matthews, along with liberal historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Richard Reeves, were invited on the broadcast to give a sycophantic defense of the womanizing president. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Touting his new book, "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero," Matthews proclaimed: "The greatest heroes are often the most flawed." The Hardball host went on to gush over how Kennedy "colorized American politics....made it a technicolor movie, he made it exciting." In his characteristic fashion, Matthews concluded: "And so with it all, the total picture still arouses the country."

The ridiculous media hypocrisy concerning all the fuss over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wealth and income tax rate was perfectly demonstrated on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday.

After claiming that Romney's "tax issue is not remotely" past him, John Heilemann, the National Affairs editor for New York magazine, admitted that he never reported John Kerry's income tax rate during the 2004 campaign (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There was a truly delicious moment on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday as the gang discussed the Republican presidential race from Florida.

When host Joe Scarborough recollected John F. Kennedy buying the West Virginia primary in 1960, Hardball host Chris Matthews, one of JFK's biggest fans, was seen visibly uncomfortable shifting position in his chair (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Thanks for sharing, Rachel, and confirming what we already knew.

The oh-so bright light in MSNBC's nightly firmament could barely contain her revulsion after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels cited a familiar metaphor for America, that of the shining city on a hill, while delivering the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address. (video after page break)

Chris Matthews loathes Mitt Romney and reveres John F. Kennedy. Oddly enough, when Matthews vilifies Romney, you'd swear he was talking about Kennedy.

Matthews, author of the JFK hagiography "Elusive Hero," had this to say about Romney last night during MSNBC's coverage of the New Hampshire primary while jousting with former Granite State governor John Sununu  (video after page break) --

Liberal columnist Frank Rich claimed on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight that the "radical right" which began during the Kennedy administration is now the base of the Republican Party. Both he and CNN's Piers Morgan also drew parallels between the environment which led to Kennedy's assassination and the politically-charged atmosphere now.

Rich's most recent column – which NewsBusters has dissected – asserts that the same "hate" which fueled the assassination of President Kennedy is now alive and well in the Obama era. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Nearly a half century after John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, many liberals now grudgingly accept that it was a left winger who killed him. But it was the harsh right-wing rhetoric of early '60s Texas that compelled the assassin to pull the trigger,  liberals also insist.

The latest iteration of this transparent exercise in ideological face-saving comes from Frank Rich in a New York magazine piece dishonestly titled, "What Killed JFK -- The Hate That Ended His Presidency is Eerily Familiar."

On Monday, Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters noted how former New York Times op-ed writer (and before that, theater critic) Frank Rich, who now plies whatever his trade is at New York Magazine, criticized MSNBC's Chris Matthews for writing a "man-crush of a biography" about John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated 48 years ago today.

Monday evening, Allahpundit at Hot Air identified a particularly egregious contention in that same very poor Rich piece, namely that "the hate that ended his (JFK's) presidency" which inspired avowed communist and Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to commit his heinous crimes (Oswald also shot Texas Governor John Connally in JFK's motorcade and killed Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit later that day) came from the right. Really. What follows are selections from Rich's risible self-righteousness: