WEIRDLAND: kennedy
Showing posts with label kennedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kennedy. Show all posts

Saturday, September 19, 2020

JFK, The Illusion of Democracy, JFK Jr., Daryl Hannah, Carolyn Bessette

“The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. There is a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman, and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot.” —John F. Kennedy, 1963 (seven days before his assassination)

Another major attack on democracy took place in July 1999, though most journalists attributed John F Kennedy Jr.’s plane crash to “the Kennedy curse.” People assumed that the news reports were honest and blamed Kennedy for flying as a reckless pilot, in poor weather, endangering his wife and sister-in-law. These statements could not be further from the truth. Despite the media’s attempts to characterize John Jr. as a jet-setting playboy, his mother Jackie actively kept him out of the realm of wealth and leisure and insured he grew up level-headed. John Jr. was the founder of a political magazine called George, which featured stories that the mainstream media would not cover. Two of the most notable stories were “Israel’s Crimes of Mossad Against Citizens,” and an article by Oliver Stone called “Our Counterfeit History”. Rumors were rampant that the upcoming issue of George was going to announce that John Jr. was running for New York Senate. The popularity of another Kennedy, especially in the northeast, could not be tolerated by The Globalist Enterprise. Knowing that the earliest reports tend to be the truest and most reliable, The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a statement saying that no mechanical problems were reported, the weather was clear, and the moon was visible at the end of the flight. Protocol dictates that when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Low Altitude Alarm goes off, or a plane fails to check-in for landing, a search is issued for that plane within five minutes. Despite a frantic early morning phone call from Senator Ted Kennedy pleading with President Clinton, a search did not begin for fifteen and one half hours. Protocol was also broken in regards to press briefings. After the initial reports of the missing plane, all future briefings were handled by the Pentagon. The FAA mysteriously would no longer comment on the flight and refused to issue further statements on John Jr.’s communications. The Air Force violated protocol and took over the search.  They utilized two planes and two helicopters to begin searching a 20,000 square mile area, despite ABC News broadcasting for hours the complete radar NTAP route of the flight; ending where the blips disappear nineteen miles out from landing. ABC News continued to broadcast the location where the Emergency Locator Beacon went off. All this was airing before most people were out of bed. Although Lieutenant Colonel Steve Roark claimed that he was not sure John Jr. had made contact with the tower to request landing, fortunately ABC News had interviewed Petty Officer Todd Bergun, the air traffic controller that supplied the radar NTAP proving the flight path. Petty Officer Bergun told ABC News that John Jr. had contacted the tower, and was assigned flight N529JK. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Stanley stated on air that the Coast Guard was “on scene” with helicopters and had found the wreckage despite the fact that the Pentagon had not yet begun the search. When the plane was recovered, they found in the wrecked plane that the Fuel Selector Valve was in the “off” position. A fourth seat was missing (even though those seats double as safety flotation devices). The NTSB has refused to release John Jr.’s cell phone records. This is relevant because the records show the phone calls he made prior to the flight while delayed. Nine Flight Instructors gave testimony on John Jr.’s flying practices. They explained John had been a pilot for over seventeen years. The Instructors detailed John’s methodical and meticulous flight planning, his cautious decision making, and they attested that he never flew without an Instructor. With regards to John’s aptitude as a pilot, he had an Instrument License. This means that he was licensed to fly blind relying on only the instruments on the plane. Prior to the crash John was so serious about flying that he applied for his own Instructor’s License so he could teach other pilots. Two witnesses said they saw Israeli Mossad agent Michael Harari at the Essex County, New Jersey airport standing next to JFK Jr.’s Cessna - just two days before the doomed plane took off with JFK Jr., his pregnant wife, and her sister." —The Illusion of Democracy: A More Accurate History of the Modern United States/Second Edition (2017) by Phil Mennitti

Although John Jr obviously loved his father JFK's legacy, he'd thought of him as a "skirt-chaser" and obsessed with sex, a trait probably inherited from the patriarch Joe Kennedy, who got rich as a Wall Street insider trader and Hollywood studio RKO owner, then became notorious as the 1938-1940 US ambassador to the UK—and who believed Europe was doomed and not worth for US intervening. One of JFK's lovers, the former Miss Denmark Inga Arvad, described the 35th President as “the best listener between Haparanda and Yokohama”. The journalist John Hersey, who had married a former girlfriend of Jack Kennedy’s, made him famous with a big New Yorker piece about PT-109, which anointed him a war hero. Among Fredrik Logevall’s most important observations, he notes that during the decade before Dallas, Kennedy lived with a tension between his own intelligently nuanced view of the ideological forces at play in the world — especially in Indochina — and the crude anti-communism of an instinctively conservative US electorate: “Many voters liked simple explanations and quick fixes.” JFK's caution and bravery about telling the American people unwelcome truths persisted throughtout his short mandate. 

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss believed that JFK Jr. had a “sort of post-modern political sensibility—a grasp of the fact that politics is heavily entangled with risk taking, that we were living at a time where especially young people were skeptical about politicians. John was trying to fashion an approach to politics that allowed him to sort of get across the old Kennedy ethic of public service and idealism, but to do it in the new vernacular of Generation X. And had he run for President in the twenty-first century, I think he would have won on his own terms.” John’s uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, argued that John’s destiny was politics, encouraging his nephew to set his sights on the White House. By the summer of 1999, Teddy believed the time had come for John to think seriously about initiating the Kennedys Restoration. In Teddy’s view, Albany, the capital of New York, would be the strongest possible launching pad for an eventual run for the presidency. He urged John to begin raising money and political backing for the New York governor’s race in 2002.  

JFK Jr. used to live with his girlfriend Daryl Hannah in the Penthouse of The Harmony House at 61 West 62nd Street back in the late 1980s when it was still a rental building. The late editor and political heir John F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Daryl Hannah met, according to historian Steven Gillon, in the early ‘80s while on their respective family vacations. Daryl Hannah had been diagnosed as autistic at age 9. “John found it odd that Daryl seemed to carry a teddy bear with her wherever she went, but he also found her fascinating,” Gillon writes of their initial meeting. Until 1989, they didn't date officially. At the time, both were in relationships with other people — Hannah had spent the last 10 years with singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, while Kennedy had been dating actress Christina Haag since 1985. Hannah and Kennedy remained non-exclusive until 1992 when John flew to L.A. after Daryl had a reported domestic incident with Browne.

The Breakup: Steve Gillon, a friend to John as well as a historian, told InStyle magazine that he thought “John just found Daryl too self-absorbed.” In America’s Reluctant Prince he writes that while Jackie was in the hospital in New York, just days ahead of her death in 1994, John was in L.A. for the funeral of Hannah’s dog. Fueling the absurdity of this story, Hannah then got angry with John because he hadn’t chosen a more elaborate box for the dog’s ashes. “That just infuriated him,” Gillon explained. “And even after Jackie died, Daryl had another dog that was sick and John was up in Martha's Vineyard or Hyannis Port, and Daryl's on the phone talking about her dog all the time and John is there in the kitchen with his longtime friend Sasha Chermayeff, and he says, ‘Can you believe this. I just lost my mom and all she wants to talk about is her sick dog.’” No doubt adding to the mounting tensions between them through the years, Jackie had not been a fan of Daryl Hannah. According to Gillon, while the former First Lady never directly confronted Hannah about John, whenever the actress came over to her apartment for dinner she would manage to eat on a tray in another room. By August of 1994, about three months after Jackie’s death, John Kennedy Jr. and Daryl Hannah had split officially. Source: www.yahoo.com

In November 1993, Daryl Hannah had posed -in extremely poor taste- for Spy magazine in the Jackie's pink Chanel outfit for the 30th Anniversary of JFK's death, which was ill received by both Jackie and John Jr. Although Hannah was always reticent to talk about her relationship with John Jr., in 2003 she wanted to put to rest the widespread belief that Jackie Kennedy Onassis put the kibosh on the star's romance with John F. Kennedy Jr. because she didn't want her son marrying an actress. "It bothers me when it's assumed that John's mother didn't approve of me," Hannah told the March issue of Glamour magazine. "I had a great relationship with her and treasure my memories of her kindness, humor and grace," the "Splash" star claimed. John had confided his friend Billy Noonan Jackie tolerated Daryl but she didn't appreciated her lack of social decorum. Instead, Jackie had sensed Carolyn, his mysterious new girlfriend, was sincere in her love for her son. John took Jackie's approval nod towards Carolyn as the greenlight he needed to go definitely serious with the middle class beauty from Connecticut. “I just completely dig Carolyn, in every possible way,” John confided to Noonan. "His voice cracked with emotion when he explained me how different he felt with Carolyn. I flashed back to Daryl Hannah—and how much she'd hurt him. Carolyn was more romantic, more vulnerable, more real. I realized Carolyn was defining and illuminating John. I was so happy for him. John thought with all his great heart that he had found his dream girl. He was going to marry her, and I was excited! Marriage is the most important decision, I believe, anyone is going to make in his life."

According to Carolyn Bessette's roommate at Boston University, Colleen Curtis: "Carolyn was a magnet. She was a party girl then, with a close circle of friends and came across as “cold” to people outside her group, but she was really just shy - and people were always after her to be friends because she was so beautiful. She didn’t photograph well, but in person she was luminescent. She tried modeling but because she photographed so poorly, it went nowhere. Carolyn was complex, unpredictable, spontaneous and sometimes exasperating. But she was never dull. She was a great listener, though she would often get the same intense look when she was lost in thought, and she could drift so far away that she would forget it was her turn to talk. This is a polite way of saying she was a bit absent-minded. She started two kitchen fires in one week, making toasts and popcorn. Fortunately, only the popcorn incident required the Boston Fire Department. I can't think of anything more boring than the months we worked as cocktail waitresses at a restaurant in Harvard Square, but the money was good, and we were such good friends, it made the nights pass more quickly. In truth, most of that money went to clothes. Carolyn loved to hit Filene's Basement and the sales racks at upscale boutiques, hunting wonderful bargains. Although she was a professional at her job at Calvin Klein, Carolyn was never a slave to the fashion world and she never talked about it away from work. She liked nice clothes, she appreciated creative new ideas, but she recognized that the fashion industry could be one-dimensional. I think John Kennedy fell in love with Carolyn when he saw how much she truly cared for others. John insisted she quit her job, because the long hours were strenuous. Before she left her job, she talked about translating the skills she'd learned in fashion PR into something more meaningful such as fund-raising for nonprofit organizations." —The Kennedy Heirs: A Legacy of Tragedy and Triumph (2019) by J. Randy Taraborrelli 

Monday, May 22, 2017

Frozen in Time: Oliver Stone's JFK (100th Anniversary) & The Doors

President John F. Kennedy would be 100 years old on May 29, 2017, but he is forever frozen in time at age 46, following his assassination in 1963. To be exact, JFK served two years, 10 months and two days as president, the fifth-shortest time in office among the nation’s 45 presidents, but his legend has no end. Candidates of all political persuasions have imitated his charisma and style, but there was only one JFK. His centenary brings new books, the most notable probably “The Road to Camelot”, a provocative reconstruction of his “five-year campaign” for the White House. Kennedy’s quotations still apply to life in America today and offer plenty of material the current president might want to study. “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer,” Kennedy said. Tourists visiting Mount Rushmore in South Dakota in the mid-1990s were asked to pick their favorite president, and a majority selected John F. Kennedy—“the president of the world” had passed, a common thought from a wintry November day 54 years in our past. 

Thurston Clarke, in his book “J.F.K.’s Last Hundred Days” argues passionately that J.F.K. was moving ever more decisively left, flapping his wings like a dove, just before he was killed. The evidence is that Kennedy began to argue, more loudly than he had before, that American politicians should do everything possible to avoid provoking a nuclear holocaust that would destroy civilization. Kennedy was planning to get out of Vietnam by the end of 1965, or at least had made up his mind not to get drawn any farther in.  Paranoid as the period was, it was in ways more open. Oswald’s captors decided that he would have to be shown to the press, and arranged a midnight press conference for him, something that would not happen today. Source: www.hutchnews.com

More than 25 years after its premiere, JFK (1991) is the way most Americans now learn about one of the most traumatic events in their recent history. According to Robert Brent Toplin, a historian who admires Oliver Stone, JFK has probably “had a greater impact on public opinion than any other work of art in American history.” Indeed, the movie remains a great source of pride for Stone, if not his masterpiece. Allegedly, the film exposed a fascist-led coup that “hit the central nerve core of the establishment,” and has “held up very well over time,” the director contended recently at the Lucca Film Festival in April, 2017. Source: www.thedailybeast.com

The Doors (1991) was not considered a box-office success. But in some ways, The Doors was like Scarface—it may not have fared that well at the box office, but it was a film that people would remember. Yet as far as the movie industry was concerned, a lot of people were looking for Stone to fail and now they felt justified. Many wondered if he would become a more cautious filmmaker and stay a little closer to the safety of the Hollywood system. Stone's answer was his most outrageous, biggest, and riskiest project ever: JFK. "Yeah, I missed out on the sixties," Stone admits. "I'm not angry about it, but I am saddened that I missed it—especially the healthy male/female relationships. I never had a coeducational existence. The sixties had this enormous sense of sexual liberation. Women started to come out of the closet and fucking was 'in'. It was stylish, fashionable. I missed all that, and the honest, open man/woman communication that came with it." 

In the original screenplay Jim Morrison was talking about death in a dramatic scene and he begged Pam: 'Tell me your cunt is mine.' And in that scene Pam bends over and says, 'Fuck me, Jim.' Some of the actors were uncomfortable auditioning, not just the actresses. Even Christian Slater was uncomfortable doing that scene during the casting process. About sixty actresses auditioned for Pam's role, one of them was Patricia Arquette. Former Doors' manager Bill Siddons felt the script focused "virtually, exclusively on the more sensational side of Jim's personality and not the man I knew: a bright, warm human being who actually gave a shit about people." Though Kilmer did look amazingly like Morrison in many ways, his eyes were not nearly as piercing and deepset. People generally wouldn't notice this, but those who were most drawn to Morrison's eyes would probably never be convinced. As Val Kilmer found with Jim Morrison, Meg Ryan's biggest obstacle was the conflicting accounts she received about Pamela Courson. "It was hell researching her," Ryan said. "One person would say she was a heroin addict, another person would say, no, she was afraid of needles. Some people said she was a monster, mean and awful, and others said, no, she was the sweetest thing that ever came down the pike. The only thing that everyone agreed on was that she was a redhead." 

Oliver Stone saw Jim and Pam's relationship as a great love story: "She may be basically a figure of innocence, but I see the movie character of Pam as a monster, too. She's very much a sixties child, not too thoughtful. She decides to ride the snake with Jim, and once having ridden that snake, proves she can hold on and stay with him all the way out—till the point where she's willing to die with him. What I like in their story is that Jim had this loyalty, too. He stuck with her to the end. That's at the center of the movie. He really loved her." Stone adds: "Morrison was even darker than we showed in a lot of ways—what struck me was his sadness and depression. I assumed from the records that he had a lot more fun, but it seemed like he had become this Dionysian figure whom was denied fun. The beautiful women I thought would be all around him were not, on closer inspection, so beautiful after all." Stone did seem to miss Morrison's humor in the film: "I believe Morrison had a terrific sense of humor and I'm not so sure we caught it [onscreen]. We tried to show the holy and the fool at the same time. People might say I didn't get enough holy. I couldn't find the exact Jim. He's an enigma. Nobody could play Jim Morrison but Jim Morrison," concedes Stone. —"Stone: The Controversies, Excesses, And Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker" (1995) by James Riordan