From: Halstead Harrison <[email protected]
To: Chris Mathews <[email protected]>
Subject: Kennedy AnecdoteFriend Chris ..
A review by Jacob Heilbrunn of your “Elusive Hero” in the NYTimes Book
Review, Nov. 6th 2011, quotes you as saying “.. someone who was there
with JFK in real time .. I crave hearing his or her first-person
memories”. Here’s mine:
In June ’63 my wife and son and I were in Bonn, where I was a post-doc
at the Physikalisches Institut. Shortly before Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein
Berliner” speech he came thru Bonn, and hopped on an open car with
Konrad Adenauer .. he young and exciting and perched high on the back
seat, his rump roughly at the level of Adenauer’s scowling head.
German cartoonists made much of the contrast. For the fun of it we
stood by the road and waved.
What was remarkable was Kennedy’s starkly orange face.
Later I learned of his Addison’s disease, which must then have
been seriously advanced. Then and later no newspaper reported it,
despite the glaringly obvious: every reporter near to him, and every
intelligence agency in the world must have had reams in their files
discussing it. But no one squeeked. Remarkable. Wouldn’t happen
now.
Cheers,
Halstead Harrison
Prof Emeritus
University of Washington
> o__
> _,>/’_ o__,
> (*) \(*) /\/\
Ted, you are way wrong.
The media covers up health issues all the time. How long was it before Reagan’s Alzheimer’s was revealed?
Have you read any honest discussion of Bachmann and Perry’s obvious intellectual limitations?
For that matter, with all the hoopla about Steve Jobs, how much attention did the media give to the lain fact that he effectively stole the liver he received?
What our media excel at and revel in is SEX and SHAME.