Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 19, 1993 TAG: 9311190008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Nearly every generation has some seminal event with which it identifies, something it feels subsequent generations will never fully understand: the Great Depression, World War II, whatever. For people of my generation, that event is the death of President Kennedy, a crippling blow to the youthful idealism he himself had awakened.
Television, which reached a new maturity and national impact with its coverage of the tragedy and the funeral, is honoring the 30th anniversary of Kennedy's death, but only if you stretch the term "honoring." There will be, and have been, lurid TV movies and new investigations into the assassination and the innumerable theories of how it came to happen.
Unspeakably brutal images from bystander Abraham Zapruder's film of the shooting, long unseen by the public, now are played casually over and over.
A few programs, like Wednesday's ambitious and absorbing two-hour documentary "Jack" on CBS, and a touching Disney Channel special called "With the President" (Monday), concentrate not on Kennedy's death but on his brief brilliant life.
So as not to seem glossy or sentimental (though that wouldn't bother me), "Jack" concedes that Kennedy was hardly a man without flaws. Several times during the program, which was produced by Peter and Nick Davis, an unseen woman called "Susannah M," talks about the affair she had with Kennedy while he was married to Jackie. JFK was a man "caught in privilege," she says, a man with "a sense of restlessness" who was "looking for a mirror" in his sexual companions.
She also refers offhandedly to "his radiant ways." Even the public could see those. In frame after frame of historical footage, whether as congressman or campaigner or president, John Kennedy looks great -handsome, dashing, vigorous. He was like Cary Grant: every man wanted to be him, every woman wanted to be with him.
No one who was not alive during the Kennedy era, no matter how many films and TV shows they watch, can ever know exactly how good it felt to have him as the living symbol of the nation. He was a president one always looked forward to seeing. Only Ronald Reagan, of all the presidents since, has approached his telegenic charisma and infectious charm.
On the eve of the anniversary - Sunday night - cable's TNT is offering a Kennedy-themed special with the eloquently succinct title "Where Were You?". Dan Rather, Ben Bradlee, Harry Belafonte and others will join Larry King to answer the question millions have asked one another in the intervening years: Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated?
Like you, if you're old enough, I recall it vividly. It was a Friday, and in the Midwestern town where I grew up, it was rainy and appropriately dismal. I was still a student but had a part-time job at the local radio station. In one corner of the tiny newsroom, a teletype machine would clang five bells to signal that a bulletin was coming over the wire. We heard those bells that day.
At first, as often happened during a crisis, the message was garbled; perhaps the teletype operator was too traumatized to type it out straight. But it became clear soon enough - first that Kennedy had been shot, then that he had died.
What I remember next is driving home in the pouring rain. No one was home but Liz, our feisty fox terrier. She wanted to go outside, so I opened the back door. But first I picked her up and hugged her for what seemed like a long time. I still remember how it felt weeping into the soft fur around her neck.
After that, I did what everybody else did. I went to the TV set and stayed there.
No matter how much has been written and said since, no matter how much Kennedy has been debunked or defamed, no matter how many sleazy films or TV-movies have been made about the man and the myths, nothing really interferes with the cruel memory of that moment. If you were there, too, then you know what I mean.
- Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB