High life
Lost for words
Taki
New York Athur Schlesinger is the short, bald historian who has been the keeper of the Kennedy flame for the last 35 years. Arthur became a jet-set icon of sorts in 1962, when he was thrown fully clothed into Bobby Kennedy's swimming-pool during a raucous party. It was instant stardom. The liberal media made sure of it. A bow-tied Harvard prof splashing next to the likes of Marilyn Monroe is a hell of a story.
Following the Kennedy assassination, Schlesinger wrote a zinger of a book, an opus that in its persistent form of imagina- tiveness managed to convince a majority of the great American public that the mar- tyred JFK was the greatest president ever. Little Arthur has been playing the same tune ever since. And why not? It is not every day that homely Harvard profs get to mix with bimbos and fool around in the White House bushes. The prof never had it so good.
Nor have the Kennedys. A couple of weeks ago a panel of 32 historians assem- bled by little Arthur for the Big Bagel Times ranked the charismatic JFK as a bet- ter president than Ronald Reagan. Oy veh! It does not take Holmes-like perspicacity to conclude that the fix was in like Flynn. Schlesinger as usual moved the goalposts. The tip-off to the bias of the panel were the two politicians little Arthur added to his list: Senator Paul Simon and former Noo Yawk governor Mario Cuomo. Both Simon and the dago fervently believe in that most powerful of dogmas: I have a right to help myself to someone else's money. With only two conservatives on board, it was not sur- prising the baddies came out on top. Lin- coln came out numero uno, but, emotions aside, Abe does not deserve the top spot. I never believed he was right to plunge the nation into war. FDR comes second. This Is an outrage. The New Deal was a fraud, and decades later we are reaping the bitter harvest of his misguided initiatives. FDR's legacy is pervasive government meddling which has slowed economic growth and reduced individual freedom. Roosevelt had a wildly naive view of the greatest mass murderer ever, Uncle Joe, and condemned millions to slavery at Yalta.
The odious Woodrow Wilson is ranked as a near great by Arthur and his pals, Choosing to forget that Wilson's adminis- tration was the most repressive in Ameri- can history, and that the Princeton proctologist even proposed outlawing criti- cism of government.
Nine members of the panel ranked Kennedy as near great, while Reagan only got seven votes. This made the list a joke. Kennedy stumbled into the Bay of Pigs, chickened out and left the invading Cubans to die on the beach by withholding air cover, started the Vietnam War, failed to pass any significant legislation, used the FBI and the CIA against his political adversaries — but managed to pull lotsa girls. Reagan pushed the Soviet Union to the brink of collapse, thus ending the Cold War, and was the first to say that govern- ment had grown too large and had to be contained.
Two of Arthur's buddies ranked the draft dodger as a near great, and the Kennedy groupie himself observed that the greatest liar ever to live in the White House 'has Potential for near greatness'. Now there's something wrong here. Words have obvi- ously lost their meaning, or perhaps these creeps take us for total idiots. Clinton is an unmoral opportunist, a man incapable of telling the truth or believing in anything. Kennedy was physically attractive as well as brave, but c'est tout. His family belongs behind bars. For Kennedy and Clinton to be mentioned in the same breath as Jeffer- son, Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson is a sacrilege.
My choice as the greatest after Washing- ton would be Teddy Roosevelt and James Polk. The latter is unpopular with those who would rather kiss arse than fight because he led a war of aggression against Mexico ending up with real estate called Texas, New Mexico and California. For good measure he also grabbed Oregon from the Brits. Now that's what I call a great man. Viva Jimmy Polk. Boo Arthur Schlesinger.
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