Friday’s New York Times featured an obscure bit of history of interest to liberal Kennedy devotees, including perhaps Times reporter Matthew Haag, who used the hook to hang up some seriously starry-eyed hagiography in his news story, “Sounds of a Young Kennedy In a Harvard Classroom.”
The forceful voice of the 20-year-old Harvard student punches through the crackling audio, his thick Boston accent coming to life. He is only a sophomore, but his distinct speaking style is already clear, even before he finishes the first line: “My name is John F. Kennedy.”
The one-minute-28-second recording foreshadows much about Kennedy: his commanding rhetoric, his passion for politics and a seriousness unmatched by other classmates. The 1937 audio, released by Harvard this week, is thought to be the earliest recording of Kennedy, whose graceful cadence, soaring prose and unflagging optimism carried him to the White House and inspired generations.
But on that day, Kennedy was just another first-year Harvard student (he transferred there after one year at Princeton) finishing an assignment for English F, a required course. He discusses the recent decision by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to nominate Hugo L. Black as an associate justice to the United States Supreme Court. Justice Black had been confirmed to the bench, but rumors about his membership in the Ku Klux Klan continued to hound him.
....
The speech starts off strong. He speaks clearly and with vigor. But after about 25 seconds, Kennedy loses his momentum. He gets nervous or distracted. He trips over a word, utters an “uh” as he tries to recover. He stammers and hesitates through the rest of the recording.
In short, it will not be remembered as one of his finest speeches. But still, compared with other Harvard students, Kennedy stands apart. The students chose their own topics, and many explored less serious issues: book collecting, sourdough bread and how to find a wife.
After all that, we learn that Kennedy's performance in the class was strictly average.
“That is what struck us,” Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, the university archivist at Harvard, said in an interview. “At this point, he was probably thinking of government as a major.” Still, for all his oratory promise, Kennedy’s performance in the class was unremarkable. He received a C+, the course average.
Haag breathlessly shared the details.
Audio engineers were able to recover the Kennedy audio, convert it to a digital file and clean up some of the scratchiness. What is left is an early glimpse into the budding public speaking talent of the 35th president of the United States. (The earliest recording held by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston is from 1940.)
More Kennedy hagiography, coincidentally (or not) appeared on the site on Thursday, in a “lesson plan” aimed at students, explaining President Trump to the children. But the writers couldn’t get enough of Kennedy, who in the paper’s telling loved the press during his time as president (and who obviously still love him right back).
What does the Constitution say about the press? Why do you think the framers chose to shield journalism -- as President Kennedy once said, “the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution”?....Some presidents, like President Kennedy, seemed to appreciate speaking with the press. Others seemed to see the press as a necessary tool to communicate their agenda to the public. Still others, have viewed the press with contempt.
Trump got criticized, albeit in a roundabout, teacherly fashion:
And, no matter what you think are the motives for the president’s many invectives leveled at the news media, do you think the tone he has set with regard to the media in the first few months of his presidency somehow corrodes the value of a free press in our democracy? Why or why not?
