Tag: John F. Kennedy

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Cohen Seeks Release of All JFK Assassination Documents

Credit: Rep. Steve Cohen via Twitter

Turns out, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) and former President Donald Trump agree on something: they both want all records related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy released to the public. 

It’s surprising the two could agree on anything at all. Cohen has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics.

On Friday, Cohen sent a letter to President Joe Biden, asking him to release the few, remaining documents related to the Kennedy assassination. He said Americans are distrustful of the federal government. Some of that, he said, can be traced back to the perceived cover-up of JFK’s murder in Dallas. 

“The governmental secrecy and recent delay in the release of the documents only perpetuates this type of thinking,” Cohen wrote. “If the papers demonstrate different circumstances or additional actors were involved, so be it. If the documents support the Warren Commission’s findings or further support the work of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, so be it. 

If they implicate or embarrass the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or any other governmental agency, the public has a right to know.

Rep. Steve Cohen

“If they implicate or embarrass the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or any other governmental agency, the public has a right to know. After 60 years, it is time to quash the conspiracy theories and demonstrate the federal government’s accountability to the people.”

Trump agrees. 

“When I return to the White House, I will declassify and unseal all JFK assassination related documents,” he wrote on Truth Social in July last year. “It’s been 60 years, time for the American people to know the truth!” 

It’s been 60 years, time for the American people to know the truth!

Former President Donald Trump

But Trump is partly to blame for the delay in the documents’ release. In 2017, he released some of the papers, but not all of them. He said at the time that agencies told him that the papers “should continue to be redacted because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns.” He had “no choice,” he said, as he didn’t want to “harm the nation’s security.”

In 1992, Congress mandated the documents to be released in 2021. But Biden delayed that release in October. He said the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) needed more time to examine the documents as the pandemic had slowed its work.

The 1992 law gives presidents power to delay the release, Biden said, if “postponement remains necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

The Mary Ferrell Foundation, a group devoted to “unredacting history,” sued NARA last year over the delay. That lawsuit questions, in part, whether Biden even had authority to postpone release of Congressional records. Parts of the suit got the green light from a federal judge in January.  

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At Large Opinion

Memphis Moonshot

John F. Kennedy (Photo: Cecil Stoughton, White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and proposed that the United States “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” It was an astonishing thing to propose, but Kennedy persevered and managed to achieve NASA funding for the unlikeliest of goals. Kennedy did not live to see the dream he set in motion fulfilled, but his ambition was achieved in July 1969, with the landing and return to Earth of Apollo 11.

My New Year’s wish for Memphis is that its leaders — civic and corporate — have the courage and vision to embark upon a moonshot: to set a goal to become the first American city to successfully address its poverty problem, to change Memphis from one of the country’s poorest cities to one of its most prosperous.

I know. That seems an impossible dream, like, well, walking on the moon in 1961. Besides, if you ask the average Memphian what the city’s biggest problem is, they’ll say it’s crime, not poverty. Yes, Memphis does have a crime problem. Too many cars are being stolen, too many homes are being broken into, too many citizens are being shot and killed, too many young people are living without hope or guidance and turning to crime.

But the crime problem has publicists, and they’re pushing a 24/7 narrative that crime is everywhere. Local television news and social media are the crime problem’s biggest boosters — getting clicks, views, and readership by scaring us, day after day.

In response, politicians get elected by promising to be “tough on crime,” usually meaning they’ll hire more police and demand stiffer sentencing. That’s like pledging to put band-aids on a cancerous tumor. If those policies worked, our crime problem would be fixed by now. Get-tough policies don’t stop crime; they just fill up jails and overload the court system — and lead to the kind of police brutality that killed Tyre Nichols.

Poverty gets little TV time, little social-media buzz. No politician gets elected by pledging to “get tough” on poverty. But almost all of the city’s problems, including crime, stream from the river of poverty. The way to reduce crime is to dam the river, not the stream.

Too expensive, you say? Listen, if this poor-ass city can come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to fund football stadiums, basketball arenas, fabulous art museums, and glorious new city parks, surely we can find ways to leverage private and public funds to pay for more and better teachers, to fund a public transit system that can reliably get people from one side of town to jobs on the other, to keep children fed, to get people healthcare, to pay them an equitable wage.

Impossible, you say? Let me return you to 1961, the year Kennedy proposed going to the moon. Do you know what was happening in Memphis that year? Thirteen “Negro” first-graders were integrating our public schools. They were separated into small groups, no more than four to a school, because, you know, Memphis didn’t want to rush into things. In fact, the city initially planned to integrate its schools one grade at a time over the next 12 years — longer than it would take to put a man on the moon.

The grade-a-year plan held until 1965, when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. In 1966, all Memphis school grades were integrated, although that could mean 20 Black students at a high school with 1,500 students. And vice versa.

Let me do the math for you: Black people were enslaved in this country from 1619 until 1865. They lived under Jim Crow and segregation in this city for another 100 years, until 1965, meaning Black folks in Memphis have had 58 years to overcome the oppression that kept them from equal opportunity in employment, education, housing, and political leadership for 346 years.

This is the root of our poverty problem, which is the root of our crime problem. Our city’s leadership is Black. Most of its citizens are Black. It’s time for all of us who live here to dare to dream big. Come on, Memphis. Let’s shoot for the moon.

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Film Features Film/TV

Jackie

When Jackie was being filmed in early 2016, few could have predicted how relevant it would be in 2017. The film, starring Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy and helmed by Chilean director Pablo Larraín, is meant to be a portrait of Mrs. Kennedy at the most trying time of her life, the days after her husband’s assassination and his funeral. But it’s also about the second-most traumatic transition of power in American history, and as the clock runs out on the Obama presidency, Jackie takes on another level of pathos.

The frame for the story is an interview Kennedy did with Theodore White, a famed foreign correspondent whose book, The Making of the President, 1960, cemented the narrative of John F. Kennedy’s insurgent win over Richard Nixon. The week after the asassination, White was summoned to the Kennedy’s Hyannis Port compound for an emotional interview with the suddenly widowed first lady. Over vodka and cigarettes — so many cigarettes — Kennedy poured her heart out to White. His story, which appeared in Life magazine, was the origin of the Camelot mythos that sprang up around the Kennedy presidency.

Jackie jumps around in time as the first lady’s recollections roll from one moment to the next. Director Larraín’s assignment is to recreate historical moments already familiar to many viewers, while presenting them in a fresh way for younger people unfamiliar with history. The recreation of the 1962 television tour of the White House, in which Portman is digitally inserted into some existing shots while others are recreated out of whole cloth, is an incredible example of using video texture to set mood. The phantom ride as the motorcade bearing the wounded president races to Parkland Hospital and the foggy sequence in which Jackie tours Arlington cemetery, looking for a place to stake out for John’s grave, feature some particularly inspired work by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine.

Probably due to the presence of Darren Aronofsky as producer, Jackie is as tight a production as you’ll see these days. But it’s all in service to Portman’s layered performance as a woman buffeted by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. As first lady, Mrs. Kennedy saw it as her job to project an image of perfection for the women of America. As a child of Manhattan wealth and a Vassar girl, Jackie was well suited for the role. As Portman reveals, when her world crumbled around her, that quest for perfection turned into yet another unbearable burden. And yet, somehow, Jackie perservered. One of Portman’s best touches is the little bit of surprise that leaks through her mask of grief and rage each time she makes a tough decision, as if Jackie herself doesn’t know the source of her inner strength.

Ably supporting Portman is a nearly unrecognizable Greta Gerwig as Kennedy’s secretary Nancy Tuckerman. Peter Sarsgaard doesn’t look very much like Bobby Kennedy, but his onscreen presence is always welcome. Caspar Phillipson, on the other hand, makes a scarily accurate John F. Kennedy.

The most poignant moments in the film are reverse tracking shots of a shell-shocked Jackie gliding like a living ghost through the empty White House residence. Through Portman’s eyes, we gaze at the sudden end of an era of class, elegance, and hope, and the prospect of an uncertain, but inevitably darker future. This is the moment we find ourselves in now, only instead of an assassin’s bullet, it was a flurry of espionage and skullduggery that have dealt a disorienting blow to our national psyche. Portman’s wounded, flinty Jackie, dispensing orders with an eerie calm in public while frantically pounding down valium and vodka in private, resonates deeply in 2017. Let’s hope we can all match the cold steel in her voice when Jackie refuses to take off her blood-stained Chanel suit — “Let them see what they have done.”

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Opinion The Last Word

My Choice for Memphis Mayor

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

Justin Fuente

Early voting has begun, and I’ve made my choice for the next mayor of Memphis.

My pick for mayor is an up-and-comer who loves a challenge. What some might call “the worst job in the country,” he calls an opportunity.
He balances a lot of responsibilities at his current high-pressure job. But he manages and delegates effectively. He and a few assistants oversee a team of about 90 people, most of whom are only high school-educated.

He hasn’t been in Memphis long, but his outsider perspective means he’s not cynical and defeatist.

He’s not above working on weekends – in fact, he lives for a Saturday at the office.

Sorry A C, Jim, Mike, and Harold. Maybe next time, Mongo. There’s one man who has shown he has the guts, vision, and leadership to tackle seemingly insurmountable odds and effect real, positive change.

His name is Justin Fuente. He coaches the University of Memphis football team.

I know what you’re probably thinking, and, at first, I didn’t believe in him either. I even called him “another ‘who’ hire instead of a ‘wow'” the day it was announced he’d been selected to coach my alma mater’s embarrassment of a football team. I don’t remember whom I preferred at the time, or why I even thought anyone else would be crazy enough to take the job, but I will happily admit I was wrong. With the success Fuente has had here, I’m more inclined to call him a genius or a wizard than a coach. If he can fix Memphis football, let’s see what else he can do.

If Coach Fuente can transform the Memphis football program from trolley fire to conference champion in just three seasons, I’d like to see what he can do for Memphis Animal Services. Did you see that reverse flea-flicker Paxton Lynch threw Saturday at Bowling Green? That demonstrates that Fuente’s not scared to get creative and make bold decisions, a strength I would like to see him apply in addressing the city’s issues with blight.

We talk about attracting and retaining talent to the city, and so far he seems to have done a pretty good job with that. Just imagine the positive attention the city will get if Memphis beats Ole Miss this season. If that happens, we should bypass the mayor thing and crown him King of Memphis for life eternal so he never moves on to a “bigger” job. What better gig is there than king?

I’m sure he’d decline, deflecting the praise onto his players and assistant coaches. But it would backfire, because that kind of humility is another leadership quality that would make him a perfect mayor and/or king of the city. Shoot, bring the staff along too. City Council, start packing your things. I’d offer the players something too, but I’d hate for some NCAA violations to interfere with these good-time feelings in Tiger Nation.  

Former U of M athletic director R.C. Johnson used to say “It’s a great day to be a Tiger,” and it made me cringe every time. But we can finally say without irony that these are halcyon days indeed for Your Memphis Tigers, who have started the season 3-0 for the first time since 2004. That means they’re already halfway to bowl eligibility for the second year in a row, with a  fairly friendly schedule ahead. They’ve won 10 straight games for the first time since Kennedy was president. That’s good for one of the longest winning streaks in the country. In football! Can you believe it? It still feels a little like Bizarro World to me.

For others, it feels too good to be true. Every postgame show, at least one caller asks: “How long before somebody snatches him up?” “What happens when he’s gone?” “What do we have to do to keep him here?” How typically and hilariously Memphis is that? “Things are going great, so we should probably start preparing ourselves for when it all inevitably goes to hell.”

I understand. Sports fans in this town have been burned before. But I promise it’s OK. If I had a dollar for every time a fellow alum told me “I love Tiger basketball, but I root for (insert SEC school here) in football ’cause … you know …” I could upgrade my season tickets. Now? They’re complaining about having to work in the morning after attending Thursday night’s Cincinnati game. The train’s on the tracks (literally, it’s on Southern just south of the stadium), and it’s moving in the right direction. Enjoy it.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and a digital marketing strategist.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Sex, Lies, Videotapes, and Hackers

When I was in high school, I worked as a stockboy in a drugstore in my small Missouri hometown. My job was to replenish the shelves and do general grunt work. One of the store’s services was developing photos. The task fell to an older fellow (we’ll call him Joe), who spent hours in the store’s basement darkroom, turning rolls of film into family snapshots.

One day, as I was loading my two-wheeler with boxes to take upstairs, Joe called me over. “Look at this, kid,” he said, holding up a picture. I looked. And looked again. It was a photograph of female breasts. My 16-year-old eyes must have widened. Joe laughed and said, “Happens all the time. People take dirty pictures of themselves and hope I’ll develop them and not say anything.”

Then Joe opened a file drawer and pointed: “Look in there.” The drawer was filled with “dirty” pictures. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I see,” he said.

The impulse to create nude or sexually titillating pictures has been with the human race forever — from cave drawings to ancient Hindu temples to Manet’s “Olympia” to Playboy. Small-town Missourians were not exempt from the urge.

Nor are celebrities. The news is filled this week with stories about the release of private nude and sexually explicit photos and videos of Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and others. The source of the photos obtained them by hacking into “the cloud.” Which is a lot like Joe’s file drawer, only bigger. Now, what the celebrities thought was private is public.

We may, in fact, be in the process of redefining the very term “private.” In a world of cellphone cameras, sexting, home-made sex videos, and internet servers that have access to it all, “private” only means you hope nobody ever opens the drawer where your stuff is. All your “secret” text and Facebook messages, all your “funny” racist emails, your “silly” naked phone pictures, your potentially libelous personal Tweets, your ice bucket challenge gone wrong — all are potentially available to the public, if someone wants to make it happen badly enough.

This too, is nothing new. Only the methodology has changed. The FBI and the CIA — and lately, the NSA — have been invading Americans’ privacy for decades. Even presidents have not been immune. John F. Kennedy’s sexual adventures were closely tracked by the FBI, for example. In those days, they used phone-taps, stealthy photographers, and informants. Now, it’s easier. We do the leg-work for them.

Being outed as gay or having smoked pot used to be enough to keep someone from public office. It was potential blackmail material. Now there are many openly gay public officials, and people shrug it off when they learn a politician once smoked pot. If the walls of privacy continue to crumble, revelations about a public figure’s sexy private pictures may soon engender the same response.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The JFK Generations

As a young boy, I did not want to grow up to be president of the United States. On a beach vacation when I was 6 or 7, my parents gave me a children’s biography of John F. Kennedy. Along with a similar volume about Abraham Lincoln. Each story had its inspiring moments, of course, but neither ended well. Especially in the mind of a child.

I’ve since become an amateur presidential historian, and, now enjoying middle age, I still don’t want to grow up to be president of the United States. That said, few people outside my family have had an impact on me the way our 35th president has. Considering I was born six years after JFK’s dreadful, history-changing ride through downtown Dallas, that impact speaks volumes on the importance Jack Kennedy continues to hold in the way Americans shape their values and the way we steer our lives. The calendar never hits November 22nd without making me pause.

Frankly, President Kennedy belongs as much to mythology as he does to history. And this is a component of his legacy that must be accepted every bit as much as his policy decisions, the Peace Corps, or “Ich bin ein Berliner.” He had — still has — a charisma that, before him, could hardly be categorized as presidential. Just picture the men who directly preceded and followed JFK in the White House. Dwight Eisenhower was an American legend before he even considered a presidential campaign. Lyndon Johnson made the Senate his personal playground (and made a more direct impact on the way Americans live than did Kennedy). But neither looked especially dashing in a tux. Neither made women swoon. And neither married Jackie.

Kennedy was polarizing before and during his presidency, and he remains so today. Millions remain inspired by the hope (and yes, glamour) JFK personified, while just as many are repulsed by his womanizing, his manipulative father, and the proverbial silver spoon he had in his pocket on inauguration day in 1961. He may have been a war hero for his efforts in saving members of his PT-109 crew, but Kennedy had blood on his hands for the Bay of Pigs atrocity. Which Kennedy do we choose to remember?

It’s only since I began learning of JFK’s flaws that I’ve felt his influence closer to my own life, more in human terms. Who among us would have handled the life presented to Jack Kennedy better than he did himself? An older brother idolized, only to be taken in a fiery plane crash, a loss that thrust a young man onto a stage he may or may not have welcomed without that legendary fatherly shove. Factoring in his own experience in battle, his debilitating back pain (which forced him to wear a brace that factored into the tragedy of November 22, 1963), and a struggle with Addison’s disease, Kennedy had a sense of mortality most of us keep safely in another compartment of our minds. In succumbing to the lure of women outside his marriage, Kennedy displayed an immaturity in the only form he was ever allowed. No excuse, but a sad truth.

Was Kennedy a great president? Having not completed a term, he belongs in a different category of evaluation. For me, his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 was the stuff of greatness. Diplomacy begins in a room with your friends, your supporters. Kennedy helped avoid World War III by negotiating a policy, first with a divided cabinet and only then with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Did Kennedy save the world? That might be a stretch, but it’s in the conversation.

I’ve been to Dealey Plaza twice. For anyone who’s seen footage of JFK’s last moments, such a visit swallows your thoughts, freezes your tongue, and squeezes your heart. What was once the Texas School Book Depository — now the Dallas County Administration Building, with a museum on the sixth floor — is just brick and mortar. With windows. Such was the platform for a murder that changed the world? I’ve never been able to process this reality, not since first reading that children’s book almost 40 years ago.

I’ve also been to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Just as Dealey Plaza haunts, the library inspires, a reminder of how very alive its namesake remains. I never knew John F. Kennedy, but I feel like he knew men like me. Indeed, I breathe the same air. I cherish my children’s future. And I, too, am mortal.

Frank Murtaugh is a Flyer sports columnist and managing editor of Memphis magazine.