Time to Let Go

It’s occurred to me over the last week of news stories, network specials, newspaper editorials and pedantic conspiracy theorists that it is finally, at long last, time to let JFK go.  Baby Boomers have a difficult time doing this, simply because that single sunny Dallas afternoon half a century ago defined our entire generation.  It fueled the cynicism of the Sixties; it spawned the excesses of the Seventies.  Throw in the materialism of the Eighties and the greed of the Nineties and you’ve pretty much summed up My Generation.

And it all goes back to three rifle shots on the Friday before Thanksgiving in 1963.

Now I recognize that this hypothesis sounds simplistic, and it is.  Life is much more complex.  There were certainly other factors that had an effect -- like the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the Moon Landing, Kent State, Richard Nixon, Watergate, the Oil Embargo, “stagflation,” the Iran Hostage Crisis, Reaganomics, the first Gulf War, Monica Lewinsky, the Balkans, 9/11, the second Gulf War, Afghanistan, etc., etc., etc.

(Somebody please cue up Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire…”)

But that’s all history now, folks.  And this particular fiftieth anniversary only serves to remind us all that this is the Baby Boomers’ Last Hurrah.  I suspect that most Gen X’ers, Gen Y’ers and Millenials are sick to death of us gnashing our teeth and wrapping ourselves in sackcloth and ashes at these November remembrances.  Despite all of the conspiracy theories surrounding this American Tragedy, what all of the coverage this week has pointed out in stark detail is that there is NO NEW INFORMATION about that day in Dallas.  None.  And to get to the point, Baby Boomers are the only ones that have a dog in this hunt.  The generations behind us only know Jack Kennedy as a wealthy, good-looking womanizer who had a remarkable family.  The harsh lens of history points out that his performance in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 was as much dumb luck and happenstance as it was intent.  His stand on civil rights, in spite of his rhetoric, was tepid at best.  He still needed the then-still-segregated South to win in 1964; he wasn’t about to do anything to upset the voters there.

However.  Nonetheless.  But… 

There IS something that Baby Boomers know that the succeeding generations will never know.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy, warts and all, was arguably the most inspirational national figure of our time.  As the world emerged from the Fifties, with Cold War saber-rattling being the norm, with paranoia about Communism infusing every public pronouncement (yes, we did actually have atomic bomb drills in school; Civil Defense bomb shelter signs were prominently displayed on most public buildings), Jack and Jackie were a breath of fresh air.  They showed us not what we had to lose, but what we could gain.  They showed us the upside – economically, creatively, morally, hopefully – of what Life in America during the 1960s could be.  It was an exciting time of tailfins and plastic and television and the promise of technology delivering us from the drudgery of the postwar era.  It was Walt Disney’s TomorrowLand coming right to your town, RIGHT TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.  It was a future bright and breezy and bountiful and safe.

All that vaporized in an instant at 1:28 pm EST on November 22, 1963.

It’s been fifty years.  Half a century.  And yes, as I watched that young President deliver his message of hope and peace and achievement on those grainy, black and white videotapes this week, I wept.  For him, for his family, but mostly, for us.

His world is no longer our world.  We Boomers need to affirm that, acknowledge that, say goodbye to it and move on.  There’s still plenty for us to do…and we need to get busy.  Even though we’re tired, creaky, underfunded for retirement, at the mercy of a broken political/banking/market system…we need to roll up our sleeves and do what we can to Fix It.

After all, it’s no longer about what Could Have Been.  It’s about What Is.

And it’s what the spirit of JFK would expect of us.