Or HPtFTU, for short. That’s what Francis Spufford renames the Christian doctrine of original sin in his recent book, Unapologetic. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry praises the rhetorical move, writing that it presents “an old, and much-maligned, idea in a fresh new light”:
Casting original sin as HPtFTU shows how all our sins are somehow connected.
It allows, as Spufford masterfully writes, to realize how, on some level, my selfishly, dumbly cutting remark to my wife is, in its fundamental meanness and selfishness, the same thing as beating up a homeless vagrant, is the same thing as defrauding your employer, etc. It forbids us from casting the evils of others as “other” and therefore beneath us, and it reveals the important truth that all of the infinite panoply of human evil, despite the great diversity of its commission, ultimately has the same source.
Casting original sin as HPtFTU shows how original sin makes us all equal before the eyes of God, and shows that our HPtFTU means that none of us can ever think that we are better than any other, because all of us are fundamentally broken and equal in our brokenness. Therefore, casting original sin as HPtFTU shows that, contrary to the legend of sin as an instrument for enforcing guilt-ridden terror, the recognition of original sin is the first step on a path of love, because once I see in you the same brokenness that is in me, I am moved to love you. Casting original sin as HPtFTU, therefore, lets us enter into the properly Christian dynamic of, recognizing ourselves as broken, moving both towards God—since only He, and nothing of this world, can heal the HPtFTU—and towards our fellow man—equally fallen and, therefore, equally crying out for love.
Thinking through what it means to believe in a God beyond his sight, Matthew Becklo finds wisdom – and the possibility of common ground between the religious and atheists – in this passage from Michael Novak’s No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers:
Both the atheist and the believer stand in similar darkness. The atheist does not see God – but neither does the believer … we all stand in darkness concerning our deepest questionings … withal, a certain modesty should descend upon us. Believers in God well know, in the night, that what the atheist holds may be true. At least some atheists seem willing to concede that those who believe in God might be correct. Sheer modesty compels us to listen carefully, in the hopes that we might learn.
Becklo comments:
This is an especially good caveat for the faithful. Pope Francis wrote in his first encyclical Lumen Fidei (or “The Light of Faith”): “One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey…”
In other words, faith does not mean knowing God through and through and tapping a stockpile of straightforward answers.Instead, it’s an ontological light burning in the same existential darkness that scandalizes the atheist. “Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness,” Francis reminds us, “but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey.”
During the twentieth century, voyeurs were sent to psychiatrists for assessment and treatment, but most doctors seemed to consider them harmless (if excessive masturbators). As with exhibitionism, women were even blamed for men’s problems. One contemporary commentator of the 1960s exclaimed: ‘Some men provoke complaints from women; but some women invite such attentions by dressing and undressing with needless publicity.’ During the 1950s and ’60s, voyeurs were thought of as people who hung about parks, beaches and swimming pools hoping to catch a couple having sex or obtain a glimpse of genitalia. Others, known as Peeping Toms, peered through windows under cover of night, lurking in gardens. …
In the twenty-first century, voyeurism is no longer necessarily conducted outside the home but can be quietly indulged in while sitting at a computer.
In the comfort of an easy chair, it is possible to watch adults copulating, overhear schoolgirls chatting with each other about sex, watch women undress, see men urinate or all manner of acts which involve a state of undress – none of it illegal. Housewives have set up webcams to expose themselves and get paid for their services by the minute. Home videos now compete with the higher end of the porn market: teenage girls masturbating, single women having sex with their boyfriends, suburban married couples sharing partners with their neighbours – all are easily accessible to view online.
The concept of voyeurism has therefore been eroded to a large extent, although there are still those who seek their pleasures in a more 3d form. Striptease acts, pole dancing and naked bars all offer full frontal viewing for the price of a couple of pints. The acceptability of voyeurism now comes down to a matter of consent.
Jonathan Mahler notes that pro wrestling has had its problems with brain injuries:
Wrestling may be staged, but that doesn’t mean it’s an optical illusion. When a wrestler gets hit in the head with a chair — which became routine during the extreme era — he really is getting hit in the head with a chair. This is not exactly salutary for the brain. At the time, there may have been little scientific evidence that seemingly minor head trauma could lead to progressive brain degeneration, but was it really so difficult to surmise that all these body blows might end badly? …
For years, pro wrestling denied any connection between violence inside the ring and medical trauma outside it. Like NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, McMahon focused on protecting his product. He not only downplayed the role of CTE in Benoit’s death, he erased Benoit from wrestling’s history, editing his matches out of DVDs and redacting his name and numerous “championships” from the record books. (You can do this when your sport isn’t actually a sport.)
But even a fantasy world can deny reality for only so long. In recent years, pro wrestling has taken steps to protect its employees. When one of the WWE’s emerging talents, Dolph Ziggler, suffered a concussion earlier this year, he was prevented from wrestling, or even traveling, for six weeks. Chair shots to the head have been banned. Wrestlers themselves are now much more willing to tell opponents before a match what moves are off-limits.
The long-running Dish thread on brain injuries in pro football is here.
As a recovered alcoholic with almost four years of sobriety (I’m 31 and luckily caught my disease early), this post truly hit home with me. When I initially sought treatment for my drinking at the behest of my then fiancee (now wife – thankfully!), I was one of those individuals who had never done anything other than drink a lot and occasionally smoke pot. I knew I had an addictive personality and wouldn’t be able to just dabble in cocaine, as some of my friends did in college. When I received details of the Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) that I would be going through for three months for my drinking, I learned that I would be in the program with people suffering from all substance based addictions, including heroin, cocaine, meth, alcohol, etc. and in many cases a combination of two or more.
I was initially very distraught about this, as I did not put alcoholism on the same level as cocaine addiction and definitely nowhere close to heroin. It was unthinkable to me that I’d have anything in common with individuals who suffered from those maladies. Admittedly, I was passing judgement on them when I myself had absolutely no foundation to do so. But society as a whole conditions us that way and the war on drugs only reinforces this stigma. Upon entering the program and successfully graduating, I found out just how wrong I was. Addiction is addiction – period.
Regardless of what substance my peers were addicted to, we could all speak candidly about our experiences, struggles, mistakes and breakthroughs, and we all completely understood each other. I grew closer to many cocaine and meth addicts in that program than I did to even many of the other alcoholics. Even in recovery circles such as Alcoholics Anonymous, there exist “closed” meetings where only those suffering from alcoholism are welcome. I’ve heard men boast of kicking out cocaine addicts who mistakenly came to a closed AA meeting. I never understood that.
I am hopeful that as society begins to normalize around the recreational use of marijuana, and as more and more stories pour into the public domain about otherwise respectable people (Rob Ford may be excluded from this group) struggling with all types of addiction, we can start realizing that there is absolutely no difference between these substances, just the degree to which each individual become enmeshed by them and how deep or shallow their respective “bottom” is. I genuinely wish Congressman Radel the best in his recovery … regardless which substance he is in the process of recovering from.
Another responds to a related post:
I have to weigh in on “Worrying Over a Wonder Drug.” Alec MacGillis writes, “The fact is, there is no silver bullet for the country’s growing opiate addiction problem.” But there is. You’ve posted about it before – it’s called ibogaine. It’s an instant cure for a variety of addictions, including opiate addiction. Obviously it doesn’t guarantee that users won’t return to addiction afterward, but it does remove the need for constant doses of opiates and opiate substitutes to be administered.
Another reader on that post:
I have two people very close to me who were addicted to opiates, and Suboxone (buprenorphine) worked very, very well in helping them get off the stuff. Financially it just about killed us, because the drug is expensive, and you have to take it for 3-6 months, although they do taper the doses as time goes on. My insurance didn’t cover it.
Watching addicted people using Suboxone get through the terrible opiate withdrawal symptoms made me a true believer. The benefits vastly outweigh the risks. I think the Times is looking for a big problem where only a small one exists. It would help if Suboxone was cheaper and more widely available. It truly is a wonder drug for many.
Update from another:
I’d just like to push back against the claim that ibogaine is an instant cure for addiction. From my experience, it is not. My heroin addiction muscled past its ibogaine encounter. I wanted it to work and payed more than my daily fix, which at the time was a several hundred dollar a day, to take the drug. In all honestly, ibogaine just made me feel really really sick to my stomach. After a long and mildly hallucinogenic trip I found myself perhaps more in thrall to opioids than before. I can guarantee you that was not the expected outcome.
I’m certain it works for some -I have friends who had other more positive experiences with ibogaine – but for me it didn’t do a thing. And of those friends who had better outcomes, I don’t think any of them would claim ibogaine was a wonder drug. Not that it matters, but I quit getting high when it became like a full time job working for a super shitty boss. In the end, it was just easier to quit than to keep showing up. I can say that in my case being a lazy man probably saved my life. I quit cold turkey, which felt like getting beat up while you had the flu, and it sucked.
I tried bupe later, after a narcotic relapse, and realized that for me the only way to quit getting high was to just quit getting high. That’s just me though, and I’m not gonna judge anyone who manages to stay sober regardless of the means.
Molly Fischer describes Kelsey Osgood’s new book, How to Disappear Completely, as “an anorexia memoir that’s largely a critique of anorexia memoirs”:
In her telling, anorexia’s competitive mentality makes hearing anyone else’s story an invigorating opportunity for comparison. … And, alleges Osgood, the storytellers themselves tend to be complicit in this competitive fervor: They’re “getting something out of it,” she writes. Even for recovering anorexics, “the narrative toward rock bottom is more often than not a ‘war story’ told to impress the listener.” So [memoirist Marya] Hornbacher writes, “Line up four apples and think about how you’d feel after a few days of eating that and nothing else” with what sounds a lot like pride. “I can function fine on an apple a day,” writes Emma Woolf — whose 2012 memoir is, in fact, called An Apple a Day. You wouldn’t be mistaken to detect something like bragging in their confessions.
“Anorexia is often the sufferer’s loud declaration that he or she is different from other people,” Osgood explains. “It’s what makes me special is a sentence that can be found in almost any firsthand testimonial about an eating disorder.” Her astute move is to read that sense of specialness as a defining characteristic of the anorexic mind-set. One early therapist calls Osgood a “mild case,” and her response is a defiant determination to become severe. “To label an anorexic ‘not that bad’ is to call him or her ‘normal,’ which is to say not sick at all, which is to say fat,” she explains.
In an essay, Osgood considers ways to combat eating disorders:
I believe that so many young women want to be anorexic because our society has communicated not the horrible consequences of eating disorders, but what might seem to be the benefits of them, namely, that they make you skinny and special.
We need to change the vocabulary we use and the tone we invoke when we discuss anorexia, refusing to employ it as shorthand for “fragile and interesting.” We also need to staunchly refuse to include what could be interpreted as prescriptive materials in narrative accounts, namely daily calorie intake, exercise routines and lowest weights of active anorexics. Finally, we need to give more attention to studying the efficacy of home-based treatment programs like the Maudsley method, which trains parents and family members to oversee the care of anorexics, so that sufferers don’t wind up in an endless cycle of hospitalizations. It’s important that we begin to examine all these factors of suggestion and reinforcement and intervene with girls who are experimenting with disordered eating. If we don’t, they can easily end up like I once was: sick, miserable and desperate to recover from an illness that I once wanted so badly.
Osgood’s essay raises for me the larger problem with the assumption that scolding young people is an effective way to discourage negative behavior. We may think we’re saying, “If you make these choices, scary things will happen to you,” but what younger audiences often hear is, “These choices are daring and rebellious—even romantic.” Need proof? Kids brought up in sex-negative religions have sex on average at younger ages than kids who get more sex-positive messages. One possible reason is that teaching that sex is the forbidden fruit tempts teenagers to get swept up in the moment, whereas sex-positive kids have a more nuanced understanding that allows them to plan their sexual debut carefully. Anti-drug education programs often end up leading kids to believe that all the cool kids use drugs. Research shows that anti-bullying programs, because they detail bullying behavior, often end up teaching kids how to be better bullies. Fat-shaming causes people to eat more, possibly because of stress, and gain weight.
Following up on your question, “Are you excited as I am about the 50th Anniversary episode of Doctor Who?” I just felt like writing in and saying that I’d match your excitement with mine any day. It is what Joe Biden would call a BFD. I’ve been devouring every spoilerific release and every fan theory like it’s a newly-discovered passage from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It helps that, unlike the last time there was an anniversary, the show is unquestionably fantastic television. It portrays a Britain at ease with its modern cultural identity and talks up to its audience. Its twists and turns receive media coverage almost on a par with major political developments. Its uncloseted fanbase is loud and proud, and for a whole country the cultural icons it has created are universally recognisable. For me, the core of the show is regeneration: the idea that one man can have thirteen selves who, despite their vast differences in personality and appearance, retain the same soul over time. And of course, as Craig Ferguson said, it’s about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.
By the way, I hope you have been able to catch An Adventure in Space and Time, Mark Gatiss’ drama about the creation of the show in 1963. I watched it last night and I’m afraid my eyes were quite soggy towards the end. It’s not only a wonderful show; it’s an institution and an old friend.
A scene from An Adventure in Space and Time is below, along with several other reader reflections on the anniversary:
Another superfan writes:
I’m baking Dalek cookies and trying to decide what juice goes in a Sonic Screwdriver. And the past year I’ve been catching up with classic Who episodes. When I was in high school, the Baker episodes were on endless repeat on PDS here in Chicago, but I almost never saw anything else.
But even after reviewing them, I’m not surprised you featured a Tom Baker clip. The three men who came before him all did some terrific work (one of Troughton’s good episodes having just been rediscovered), but they were basically playing the Doctor as a clever human Trickster character – the smartest guy on the block who’s always a couple of moves ahead of you. They all told you they were alien (and Pertwee had the costume), but Baker was the first to really ACT alien – to react in ways that confounded his human foils (as in the scene you posted), as they looked on with this confused look on their face (“What is wrong with hims? That’s not how a human being behaves!”) unsure how to respond to waht they’re seeing. Sadly, Peter Davison couldn’t pull that trick off, and it all unwound after that.
Another dissents:
I am trying to keep my temper here, but your Doctor Who? post is so off base it’s making me furious. If I didn’t know you had grown up with the old series – and I am not questioning your honesty on this point – I would think you’d never watched it.
First off, your statement that the 4th Doctor is “querulous, curious, funny, and yet also all-powerful.” None of the first six Doctors were all-powerful or even close to it, Tom Baker being no exception. Just about every 4th Doctor episode ends with him in some sort of life-endangering peril, and the whole dramatic impact of these scenes is their ability to get the audience to suspend its disbelief and really worry that the Doctor might die. You seem to have a special affection for the Sarah Jane Smith character, and yet you’ve forgotten the many occasions on which she had to save the Doctor’s life. Here’s a very incomplete list of the numerous times she bailed his sorry Time Lord ass out of trouble:
Robot – Prevents the title robot from crushing the Doctor’s head with its foot after it’s knocked him unconscious.
The Android Invasion – Frees the Doctor when he’s tied to a bomb and rescues him from the Kraals’ duplication machine.
The Seeds of Doom – Saves the Doctor from being ripped to shreds in Harrison Chase’s fertilizer machine.
The Doctor didn’t become “all-powerful” until a knucklehead script-editor named Andrew Cartmel decided to turn the character into a left-wing superhero in an attempt to use the original series as a propaganda machine against Margaret Thatcher in its final years. (Seriously, Mr. Cartmel has proudly gone on record about this.) This was taken several steps further after the show was ressurrected – by fans of the original series, many of whom considered the Cartmel years the very apex of classic Who due to its political content – and now the Doctor is basically a god. As a result, the new series lacks tension. We know the Doctor and his companions are going to be fine, because he knows absolutely everything and is basically Superman on steroids.
Second, your statement “The Dr. never kills, unless by accident.” Another far from complete list of the 4th Doctor deliberately killing his opponents – or worse:
Terror of the Zygons – Locks the Zygons in their space ship and then blows it up.
Pyramids of Mars – Locks the character Sutekh in a trap he’ll be stuck in for the rest of his life and mocks him by asking him how long he thinks he’ll live.
The Brain of Morbius – Kills a mad scientist named Solon by pumping poison gas into his laboratory.
The Invasion of Time – Shoots a Sontaran with a demat gun.
The Doctor, while essentially a moral character, was never meant to be perfect or a role model; the first Doctor could be a downright anti-hero for crying out loud, willing to sell out everyone except his grand daughter to save his skin. The Doctor started out as a mysterious and eccentric, but vulnerable and dignified, scientist and explorer and has become an all-powerful superhero with as much dignity as Pee-Wee Herman. If you prefer an “all-powerful” and never violent Doctor fine, but don’t justify this squishy and bland version of the series and its title character by retroactively applying its flaws to its predecessor.
Another:
I thought of sending this last week when I took the picture, but there is no window pane in the photo. Today’s post on the Doctor changed my mind. Last week, I’m in a meeting at work when the TARDIS flew by:
One more:
I started watching Doctor Who while in college in the mid-’80s. It aired on Friday nights on Iowa public television. At that time they mostly re-aired Tom Baker episodes. As you know, back then the show was a serial, with the story broken up into 4-6 half hour episodes; missing an episode would be like skipping half an hour in the middle of a movie. One Friday afternoon I drank way too many pints in my favorite bar before getting in the car to drive to a friend’s house for dinner and Who. I never made it because I was (very appropriately) pulled over for DWI and ended up spending the night in the county jail. Fortunately, booking was done before the 7:00 airing, and I somehow convinced the other five women in the cellblock to watch Doctor Who on our shared T.V.
I stopped watching after college. When the series re-started in 2005, I had no interest, but my geeky husband and kids loved it. One day in 2010, my daughter was watching “The Time of Angels” in the same room as me. I immediately became ridiculously hooked, and have since watched and re-watched all of the new Who episodes. I love them all, but Matt Smith’s Doctor is my favorite, and it will be a sad Christmas seeing him regenerate.
But before that, we have the big 50th anniversary episode tomorrow! No doubt it will be fantastic. We’re watching it at home on Saturday, and then will see it in 3-D at the theatre on Monday. Allons-y!
Jenny Diski’s thoughts on knitting is missing my favorite aspect of knitting: socialization. Never before have I had a hobby that was so easily shared with others. I just moved to a new city (San Francisco) and was worried about making friends. But after just a cursory search, I found a lunchtime knitting group at work, and a group that meets in the evenings three blocks from my apartment. In both cases, I expected the group to be welcoming and friendly, and I was not disappointed.
I’m surprised more men don’t take up the hobby; it is a great way to meet women!
Actually, several more men than women have written in responding to our post:
Being a stocky and bearded 6’1″, I don’t necessarily fit the knitting stereotype, but I very much identified with the tranquility that Diski finds in the craft.
Whether waiting at the barber shop or riding Philadelphia’s El train, knitting brings me a curious mix of calm and focus. I started knitting at the example of my younger sister. She gifted me with a beautiful knit blanket, and I later learned from others something that amazed and humbled me. Before my sister starts a project for someone, she spends time in intention prayer for them. When she finishes the work, she does the same. In my case, I’m sure part of her prayer for me was that I would come to realize that I had a serious problem with alcohol and that I would seek help and recovery.
As a Roman Catholic priest, I was floored that my little sister could teach me something so profound and beautiful about prayer, the work of human hands, and the creativity of a compassionate spirit. So I dropped my pride, and I replaced a bottle or shot glass with a set of knitting needles. And so I knit away in AA meetings, where in a little bit of yarn I find the patience and attentiveness to drop my guard and draw from the experience, strength, and hope of others.
Another burly knitter:
Great piece on knitting. I’m a bear-ish guy and I knit. But I’m mostly in the knitting closet, mainly because of the annoying questions people ask if they see a guy knitting. Especially when I’m knitting a complicated fair isle sweater. But it’s a great hobby and people really appreciate a handmade gift. In fact, I rarely make something intending to give it away; I just give it to someone who notices it and really likes it. A spontaneous gift is the best kind.
You may have linked to this before, but have you seen the amazing site ravelry.com? It’s the most functional social network on the Internet because it brings together knitters and crocheters who are a naturally helpful and friendly bunch. Slatedid a piece on it a few years ago.
Another:
You might also be interested to know that men who knit are a small (and growing) but enthusiastic group of knitters. We contribute to books, do online courses, and there are even celebrity male knitters.
In 2008, we held a gathering of male knitters at Easton Mountain retreat centre near Albany, NY. The organizers (I’m one) figured we might get 10 guys, and as it turned out we had, I think, 45 guys attend from all over the USA and Canada. That retreat – identified as the “East Coast Retreat” or the “Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat” – has been held annually since then. Retreats have also been held in Seattle (originally San Francisco), in Michigan, Colorado, and South Carolina; also in New Zealand, Wales and Australia. The events are run with volunteer labour; programming at each event is largely generated and delivered by the attendees. A couple of the retreat locations raise funds to provide “scholarships” to allow a less financially-fortunate guy to attend. At the 2013 East Coast Retreat, one scholarship was ear-marked for a guy who wanted to learn to knit; he was also paired with an experienced knitter to learn the basics of the craft.
In 2011, three retreat organizers were interviewed during the East Coast Retreat on a program from WRPI radio (Troy, NY). If you are at all interested in listening to that interview, you will find it here.
Update from another:
Check out this WSJ story about truckers who quilt and knit.
In one shot, the burned bodies of slaughtered American contractors hang from a bridge over the Euphrates. In an image that conveys how violence became integrated into the daily lives of Iraqi children, a boy hopscotches over corpses exhumed from a mass gravesite. Some of the book’s 160 photographs have been widely distributed already, their impact indelibly marked in the American mind. Others are being published for the first time. …
A harrowing work of anti-mythology, the images in Photojournalists on War look nothing like the understated, bloodless snapshots provided by daily newspapers.
A number of the Iraq photos you may remember, but not in the same way that you remember the iconic images from Vietnam, which we’ve seen over and over. Most of the Iraq images were just published once, and the news cycle marched on. If you missed the relevant issue of Newsweek or Time or the New York Times, that was that. Many of them weren’t even published in the United States—too grisly for the American palette. And others were published for the first time in this book. A number of photographers Kamber interviews say the conflict’s most indelible images were not shot by photojournalists, but by soldiers. The notorious Abu Ghraib collection includes some of the strongest, most shocking photos to come out of that war. …
If anything, the interviews help wear the shine off the perceived glamor of being a war photographer. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes less so, they press the point that you never come back the same person you once were.
There are, by now, thousands of books on the Kennedy presidency’s thousand days, and 2013 has brought dozens more to coincide with 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination. But in JFK, Conservative, Ira Stoll, former managing editor of the New York Sun and current editor of FutureofCapitalism.com, has managed something truly original—and truly odd. This may be the first book-length attempt at Kennedy hagiography from the Right.
Stoll lays it on pretty thick:
in his telling, JFK was a great president, a good man, and—no kidding—a good Catholic. Moreover, Kennedy’s policies—his “tax cuts, his domestic spending restraint, his pro-growth economic policy, his emphasis on free trade and a strong dollar, and his foreign policy driven by the idea that America had a God-given mission to defend freedom”—show that he was, “by the standards of both his time and our own, a conservative.”
It’s a cramped, reductionist account of conservatism, one that collapses the entire political tradition into its neoconservative variant. But an even less charitable person than I could make the case that it’s a fair approximation of “actually existing conservatism,” and Stoll’s thesis has already received a fairbitofpraise from commentators on the Right.
Treating his anticommunism as proof of conservatism is mistaken for obvious reasons that I’ve mentioned before, and that anticommunism led Kennedy to make a number of serious foreign policy errors that cost the U.S. and the other countries involved grievously over the decade that followed. In the end, it was what defined his record, and marked him as one of the worst postwar presidents. Kennedy wasn’t a conservative, but even if he had been conservatives should want to disown him.
David Greenberg lays out the case for JFK being an “unapologetic liberal.” Update from a reader:
I understand and appreciate the momentous nature of the Kennedy assassination, and I do not object to the extensive current coverage, given its 50th anniversary, and given its impact on US history. I do wish that, perhaps not right now but in general, some mention be made of Kennedy being an unremarkable president?
I have voted for more Democratic presidential candidates than Republican, so this isn’t an ideological slant. But when I think of Kennedy, I think of Vietnam and the Peace Corps, and the trading of missile withdrawal in Turkey for missile withdrawal in Cuba. OK, Apollo. By my reading, he was a follower rather than a leader regarding civil rights. That isn’t a great list. That should not get one on the half-dollar coin. I certainly appreciate that his life was tragically cut short and he was unable to become whatever he would have become, but he in actuality had not yet become that much. He has become a symbol without much substance, or perhaps an icon (of what?). As close to a computer avatar as a Hindu avatar. I simply object to so many pinning their hopes on what JFK could have become and then inferring he was a great president. Perhaps this email is better sent tomorrow, but here it is.
Another responds:
I think your correspondent who said Kennedy was undeserving of his spot on the half-dollar coin was right if one looks at Kennedy’s actual achievements, but that’s not why he’s on there. Kennedy made Americans dream. Apollo, Civil Rights, the Peace Corps … those were huge, arguably insane dreams at the time. If he’d lived, I’m not sure either Apollo or the Civil Rights Act would have succeeded when they did. In death, though, he somehow inspired the entire polity to see through what he probably couldn’t have. He reminds me a bit of Thomas Jefferson: a deeply flawed man whose redeeming grace was that he sold a nation on dreams far greater than himself.
The Dish 