I feel bad about ignoring him

Thanksgiving this year fell on November 22nd and I wrote an article that day called "Mixed Emotions."

I made a quick reference to JFK and Dallas but I had other things on my mind that day.....

and its been bothering me and I feel bad about ignoring him.

I also have a slight problem celebrating the day someone leaves this dimension but the largeness of that moment makes it hard not to take a pause and bow to his memory....and to remind people what type of world we might have today had hate not triumphed on that dark day in Dallas.

So many young people that I talk to just have no idea what type of charisma he brought to the highest office in the land. Of course they see pictures and read stories but it's always the womanizing that seems to dominate when talking to anyone under the age of 40 about the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy....and what he meant to a country that was moving towards modern day realities.

One of the things that has always bothered me is that Lyndon Johnson is regarded as the President who brought Civil Rights to the African American.

IF JOHN F. KENNEDY HAD NOT SAID THE FOLLOWING WORDS IN JUNE OF 1963, CIVIL RIGHTS WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN IN THE OVAL OFFICE AS AN AGENDA DURING JOHNSON'S SHORT TERM.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON was fulfilling and honoring something that JFK had started with these words. And although he had writers one of the basic truths about him was that he could write like a son of a bitch....and of course he might be one of the great orators of all time.

These words were said on a nationally televised address in JUNE OF 1963.

"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is a s clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities...One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all of its hopes and all of its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free...A great change is at hand, and out task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all."

He followed this speech by asking Congress to enact a bill that removed race from consideration "in American life or law." ( Robert Dalleck )

In 1964 Johnson signed the civil rights bill into law....but I promise you that JFK if had not said those words in 1963, Johnson would only be known for increasing the troop size in Southeast Asia.

But what I want to try to emphasis regarding the man can best be told with the pictures above and the speech's he made.

Because the guy was a hound dog should never enter into a discussion about the political atmosphere he created while being in the White House.

IT WAS AN ATMOSPHERE OF FRESHNESS AND DAMN GOOD LOOKING PEOPLE.

The fact that we only got two State of the Union addresses and one Inauguration speech from him is one of the really sad things in American political history.

For years I've wanted to sit down and write the missing speeches of JFK and RFK...

the missing speeches being the ones we were denied by HATE, INSANITY, JEALOUSY AND by people who just didn't like good looking people who could really think and talk....but I just don't have the talent or the positive outlook that allows for such a project.

Anyone who was over the age of 13 in 1963 knows what I'm talking about when I say the charisma factor was completely different than anything we might ever see in the White House.

We got a glimpse of something unique and it was taken away by elements that still piss me off.

Anyone born after 1960 has no idea what I'm talking about unless of course they have a bit of historian in them and have looked deeply into the 60's.

There is a certain age group that looks at the loss of John Jr. as being a real tragedy.

THEY HAVE NO IDEA.

I was 17 years old and a freshmen in college on November 1963 and was numbed by the experience in Dallas. Of course by the time 1968 was over I was just downright pissed off, along with about 50 million other people my age.

I'm still rather pissed off about that time period and the voices that were stilled.

But I remember the hope and I remember the elegance that graced the White House and I know I will never see anything like that again in my lifetime.

Thank you John for the short experience and thank you for letting me see what it meant to have real charisma in the highest office in the United States. And thank you for the speeches that to this day stand with some of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the political arena.

Michael Timothy McAlevey