Tough guys take on the tough jobs and no one is tougher than America's Montaigne - Joe Epstein. A good writer can dazzle, but a great writer turns off the dazzle in favor of the light of truth. Some of us just can't handle the truth, that is why mortgage debt relief commercials, male chemical Lazarusian priapism pills and cable news networks are all the rage.
It is tough to face the truth of laying on one's back & arse with a flat-screen remote in one chubby mitt and a Walt Mart sized bag of Gluten Free Cheetoes in t'other is no way to avoid Dunlap's Disease.* It is the same with the old noggin. There is such a thing as cerebral cellulite. Ah, the appetites: Gustatory and Sexual! Eat some and get some, fellas! Blubbery boys can also bloat and devolve into flaccid impotent meat bags, only restored by blue pill popping.
We are what we eat and we most certainly become what we read, or accept from news readers. As far as acute minds go theses days, the old kitchen drawer is chock-full of kinch-like flatware, but nothing that could slice a boiled peach. People will read only the point of view with which they are most comfortable - why prepare a good wholesome meal, when you can Micky D?
Minds and souls require vigorous exercise and stimulation and not of the solitary unwholesome form taken by devotees of porn sites. Dining is not gluttony and eros must be guided by agape.
Joseph Epstein writes for rigorous minds and last week's surfeit of empty Camelot Calories clogged American intellectual arteries and packed on the discernment lard. I cried when JFK was killed by LHO. Hey, he was one of my tribe. So was Roger Touhy. So was Senator Joe McCarthy. Kennedy was the President. Since 1963, Camelot and the madcap Kennedy clan have ballooned into cosmic fog sin shriving shenanigans. Last week was the 50th Anniversary of the Dallas Assassination of JFK. I avoided the memorial festive board of Camelot treats, like a fat man facing a wedding in a fortnight.
Instead, I sampled some wholesome JFK fare from Joe Epstein and my pallet remains cleansed and my intellectual breath is just minty fresh. I am also as randy as badger! I could, by God, date the females of Finland! Read this, and you too will get taller thinner, witness dramatic hair growth (sans ears and nostrils), understand that 'This is Age of Getting Things Done Even With a Naturally Flaccid Johnson Bar, Son!' -
The specialty of the Kennedy administration was public relations, image-making—and an image, it is well to remember, is the thing that is not really there. The Kennedy years, or so we were endlessly told, were American Camelot, years in which culture had come to Washington, elegance to the White House, good looks and intellectual brilliance to the Oval Office. Intellectuals swooned, the higher media drooled. Think Charles Collingwood following Jacqueline Kennedy around the White House, enraptured as the first lady, in her best Miss Porter School whispering lisp, modestly explained how in her redecorations she had elevated the joint above the low standard of those pathetic philistines, the Eisenhowers.The murder of JFK created mythopoeic mandates in which our neo-centennial America marinates. At the end of the last century the post-mortal JFK was forgiven every sin of commission and ommission, which set the table for President Obama washed blameless in womb and at the Presidential podium. BOH is JFK without the bother of shedding the mortal husk.
Of course it was all baloney. None of it could withstand close scrutiny. When the scrutiny came it revealed that Jack Kennedy didn’t quite write the book, Profiles in Courage, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. The reality behind those touching photographs of his picture-perfect children cavorting round the Oval Office was their father bonking movie stars, mafia molls, and adolescent interns in the upstairs bedrooms.
The rest of the Kennedy family was scarcely better. The father, the founding father as he was called in the title of a book about him by Richard Whalen, had a dodgy financial past, was a major-league philanderer, and on balance didn’t find Adolf Hitler all that bad a sort. His brother Bobby was a bully who had worked for Senator Joseph McCarthy and, once he had power on his side, was able to make even Jimmy Hoffa seem sympathetic. The youngest brother, Teddy, later to become a great liberal hero, failed badly at Chappaquiddick, letting a young woman drown before endangering his own political career. As for the widow Kennedy, after a decent interval, she did what the cynical Gore Vidal said she was always about anyway, and went for the money in marrying the monstrous Aristotle Onassis. Such was the reality behind Camelot.
Pondering that might put one off his feed and perhaps, render that soul impotent. The only remedy is stock up on some Joseph Epstein and devour great prose wrapping even greater wisdom.
I did! Viagra for the brain-pan. Yeah! That's what I'm talking about! Go Cat, go! Hey Chickee! How about some PT 109! Four hours??? Shoot I can go Six!!!!!!! This is the Age!!!!!
* Dunlaps disease - When your belly done laps over your belt.
