Posted by
T. Thomas on Saturday, February 02, 2008 12:10:33 PM
Tens of millions of voters alive today have no idea who Jack Kennedy was. For them, JFK’s name just captions the portrait of a handsome vibrant man in an exclusive list of 43 names; distinctive primarily for being in the forlorn subset of those murdered in office. Vast segments of the population have no idea of what it felt like to live in America under his administration.
The Obama/Kennedy Show this week was targeted at those who can and do remember. The Camelot Gambit has one purpose only: to utilize the vast nostalgia for the Kennedy years to target and siphon off Hillary’s loyal core of support. Poll after poll shows the only genuine enthusiasm for her candidacy coming from the millions of women who were in their teens during or shortly after the Kennedy years. They mourned John, lost their virginity, mourned Bobby and Martin, turned on, tuned in and dropped out during the Summer of Love. Then the New Age dawned. They bought beaded curtains and herbal teas, took LSD, hiked braless in Big Sur, communed with the Maharishi, smoked a lot of reefer and got laid even more during the early 70s.
But as soon these women started hitting their 30s a sense of betrayal began seeping in alongside all the carefree fun. Suddenly, it dawned on them that the drugs, the rock and roll, the men pretending to be sensitive and counterculture and the whole damned Age of Aquarius was pretty much just a big goof to get their pants off. They realized that so much of that idealistic blather had been used to get sex and then to shut them up. They got angry and got feminist. Some became Lesbians, but mostly they just got royally ticked off. Now in the early 21st Century, most have reached that stage in life where they are jaded and sick to death of feeling manipulated by men.
Now comes Hillary Rodham Clinton, a woman wronged, a woman who seems to have no use for men or sex, who is a tad on the dikey side; a woman, like them, of a certain age – but powerful, hostile to male dominance, and within reach of the biggest prize on Earth. They cling to her like mildew to wet laundry. The only way forces favorable to Obama can peel away that loyalty is to appeal to the abiding nostalgia we all have for our youth and innocence. Politically, the nostalgia of older women is anchored to their loving and idealized memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Still, this ploy could never work except for the general distaste among Americans for the sleaze and nastiness of the Clintons. One suspects that even among her most ardent supporters there is the unspoken wish she were somebody else.
The Camelot Gambit, whether successful or not, will be over and done with soon enough. Media people, misunderstanding the short-term nature of the stratagem, foolishly blather on about torches being passed and the nouvelle New Generation. Pay no attention; that’s just the typical overcooked Malt-o-Meal that comes gushing out of the average cliché-ridden news person’s mouth today. They don’t get that this is just an interesting ploy by the Kennedys to try and take out the trash once and for all.
It could work.