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Eἰκονοκλάστης

By Michael J. Smith on Saturday February 20, 2010 03:51 PM

Joel Surnow is no John Milton, but the producer of "24", America's favorite torture show, seems to be taking a good whack at a favorite liberal icon, or rather iconostasis, the Kennedys. Here's Alternet, waxing wroth:

Outraged Citizens Campaign Forces History Channel to Rethink Miniseries About the Kennedys
Robert Greenwald launches growing campaign that calls historically revisionist series backed by a producer with ties to Roger Ailes, "right-wing character assassination."

Media observers are abuzz with talk of a History Channel mini-series called "The Kennedys." While the scripts for the eight-part show, slated to air in 2011, are still unfinished, that hasn't stopped 40,000 people from signing a petition calling the series "right-wing character assassination" and "politically motivated fiction."

One would kinda like to know who the 40,000 "outraged citizens" are, and how they got mobilized. Greenwald, a documentary filmmaker and stalwart committed Democrat, seems to have started the ball rolling.

Apparently Greenwald got hold of the scripts somehow; they include a scene of Mattress Jack boinking somebody -- not Jackie, apparently; someone named Judy -- in a swimming pool:

.... when a Secret Service agent comes to deliver time-sensitive information from McGeorge Bundy, his security advisor, the president doesn't stop what he's doing as the agent delivers the news.
I don't know anything at all about Judy, but I remember McGeorge Bundy. I have to think that Jacko made the right choice.

Apparently there's also a scene in which Jack mulls the possibility of walling off East Berlin, before those nasty old Soviets had the idea. This is certainly not something I ever heard before, and could easily be made up out of whole cloth. But then on the other hand, if it turned out that Jack & Co. gave the idea some thought, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Anybody know where this might have come from?

Just goes to show: liberals are the real conservatives(*). All these plaster deities to venerate!

Even so, it's hard to imagine a less suitable object of veneration than the Kennedys, and Green Beret Jack in particular -- an unscrupulous mendacious chauvinist demagogue who ran in 1960 on the basis of a mythical "missile gap"; a dedicated warmonger who immediately cranked up military spending after a long period of diminution under his predecessor; a grandiose parvenu who puffed up the imperial iconography of the US presidency to unheard-of levels; the father of the Vietnam war, and the architect of the still-enduring Cuban embargo.

You would think a "progressive" like Greenwald might have something better to do than burnish and defend this grotesque and bloodstained legacy.

But you would be wrong.

----------------------

(*) And so-called conservatives are anything but. That's another post, however.

Comments (8)

Sean:

As an aside, would you mind including a translation for those of us who can't read or speak Greek, Hebrew or Latin?

ありがとうございました

RedPhillip:

Bravo, Father Smiff.

op:

we are to believe
jfk was positively crazed
over the berlin "hot spot "
i doubt it
and yet he used the artificial crisis in 61
that led to the wall
as a fine trigger event
for the planned expansion
and re arming of the great yankee global armadas father s notices in the post


to my understanding a wall around
"free" berlin
had been kicked about by both sides
since the 53 "crisis"
and repeated every time there after
when the vageries of current events
launched another cross border migration surge

--recall jfk was privately grateful even if he didn't have blue prints on his desk for a western wall when the eastern wall suddenly sprung up over night

early on nikita must have sensed
maybe jack had a squeal point on berlin
hence the june ultimatum

these things always served the needs
of our empire well

nk had hoped to use a crisis in berlin
as one more of his kabuki show downs
to maybe con out of washington
-- god forbid--
a mutual conventional arms reduction
and more importantly
a pre emptive freeze to the pending nuke arms spiral
--next years cuba baby nukes of course
was yet another such kabuki move ---

but regardless of anything else
even the pretense of nicks bluff was called inadvertantly
by brass balled american general clay
in
the infamously hyped
check point charlie confrontation
that arched over my birthday like wish fulfilled
my fondest dream
a thermo nuclear exchange

indeed mattress jfk may have put judith exner aside for once
but it was prolly to clap our boys on
while pulling nicks chain

as these things go
of course clay was ultimately sacked
for his brazenly forward tactics

in fact
despite jacks fabricated panic button moves
the west knew
the berlin airlift long since had settled
the hard side outer limits
of soviet berlin policy

my guess the polit boys realized
correctly around day 10 of the air lift
even if a starve out and take over could be pulled off
prolly far better
west berlin play live hostage
anyway
what good is a crushed martyr

if there was room for new limits
to soviet policy over germany and berlin
it was only on the soft side
ie a unified disarmed and neutral germany

which was part of the soviet peace initiative
in 53
in fact the only part so far as i know
that dulles-ike
basically kicked in the nuts
unlike other post stalin peace actions
in korea austria and indochina

---
brings back old interests this...
though
i must confess the whole europe gig loses interest for me after 49
what with china standing up
and the brillantly cynical
stalin stroke of unleashing kim
after that
it all becomes east asia
and dean acheson's massive escalation

but before then...what a dreamscape
old eurpoe was
at least till the reds took those electoral beatings in 47 48 in france and italy
and
the prague scam got over played
and the greek civil war sold out
by uncle joe
and tito took his tit twist to heart
and became washington's "objective" ally

fun times for pinks as well as reds

but it all had about a 2 year half life
after VE day

a red europe was not to be ...

there will be a next time .....

I wonder if these liberals will remember how outraged they were when CBS dropped the showing of The Reagans in the face of far-right complaints based on leaked early drafts of the screenplay, long before the final product was cut and shown.

Aw, who am I kidding? I don't wonder about that at all. I know they won't. Or if they will, they'll justify it with a "b-b-b-but we're in the right this time!"

Boy, N. K.:

Anfwer? More hetrdx spilling?

Boy, N. K.:

"Anybody know where this might have come from?"

Chomsky, possibly. Certainly Chomsky mentions the western discussion of walling off W. Berlin to keep out communist influence, possibly in "Towards a New Cold War", but my vague memory is that the discussions were time-stamped earlier than 1961. But I'm not sure of the timing and don't have the complete Chomsky to scan.

Also I have I vague memory that this item of info appears more than once in Chomsky and that it is not original with Chomsky, like much in Chomsky, i.e. not claimed as some historical scoop.

Al Schumann:
Just goes to show: liberals are the real conservatives(*). All these plaster deities to venerate!

True. Much of the Bush-Reagan era liberal rhetoric has consisted of borrowed paleo-conservative critical themes. Stolen might be better than borrowed, given the use to which they've been put. They're accurate as far as they go, e.g. the New Right's notional reforms really are radical looting and spiteful vandalism. The New Right's activist base really does consist of sanctimonious morons who take their marching orders from grasping, corrupt Chautauqua hucksters.

And the liberals found the same dead end as the paleocons who aligned with the Republican Party. The veneration of ideals, however flawed and halfhearted, was abandoned in favor of the same shopworn, fatuous idolatry the New Right uses. Unsurprisingly, notional liberal reforms really are radical looting and spiteful vandalism and the liberal activist base really does consist of sanctimonious morons who take their marching orders from grasping, corrupt Chautauqua hucksters.

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