JFK Conspiracy Theories

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I think you provided a very good analysis of why he was so popular. In spite of not passing anything in the way of "sweeping" domestic reforms, he is still always remembered as an "idea," of what could have been. A very young, charismatic man who will likely be best remembered for his policies toward Cuba than anything else; Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis.

 

Well...there was that one other thing.

 

That he could do Marilyn with Jackie waiting not far away (and probably doing both in one night) puts Kennedy into the rank of "Supremely Awesome" on the macho chauvinistic scale.

 

DR - Yeah, but being assassinated isn't enough to deify someone if he wasn't popular to begin with. We don't hold similar feelings of esteem for Garfield and McKinley afterall. Lincoln, owing to the civil war, would have gone down as a historically great president even if he had not been assassinated.

 

Certainly. I just find it odd to think JFK would be best remembered for his policies toward Cuba. Call me ghoulish, but whenever he's mentioned the first thing that comes to my mind is...well, the whole exploding head thing.

That and EECH BEAN EIN BERLEENER.

 

The assassination footage is certainly very vivid, but the Cuban Missile Crisis audio is genuinely pulse-pounding, considering what was at stake. I tend to think JFK/Cuban Missile Crisis now because of it.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/audio.htm

 

Ah yes, the famous "I am a jelly donut" quote.

As Ragusa will tell you, the grammatically correct way to say that quote would be: "Ich bin Berliner." If you instead say "Ich bin ein Berliner", it completely changes the meaning. By sticking the "ein" in there, you are no longer comparing yourself to a person(s), but instead to an inanimate object. "Ich bin ein Berliner" literally translates word for word as "I am a Berliner". But the "ein" changes it to comparing yourself to a thing. It just so happens that a "Berliner" is also a jelly-filled pastry.

Certainly an understandable, but still quite humorous, mistake. You'd think they would have found someone who was bilingual in German and English - they couldn't have been that hard to find - and run it past them first, instead of simply consulting an Engligh-German dictionary. It is rare for languages to translate word for word.

 

Tal,

How humiliiating for me. I actually studied German for many years, and while I never heard of the debunking of this myth, I was in complete agreement with the grammar aspects. In German if you are saying you are from somewhere, or are something (as a profession) use of ein is not only unnecessary, but grammatically incorrect.

But with the explanation that he was saying he was symbollically a Berliner, as he obviously wasn't an actual resident of Berlin, it makes perfect sense.

 

IMHO, Kennedy was an example of Charisma trumping Wisdom. I believe his political opponents had him killed. I have zero actual evidence for this belief, but I think it plausible. The killing of Oswald by Ruby just smells of coverup.