Monday 20 June 2011

"The Kennedys" BBC2 saga

The current eight part TV drama "The Kennedys" now available on BBC2 TV is  available on its "IPlayer"  episode by episode.  

Joe Kennedy is brilliantly played and I like Katie Holmes' "Jackie" but, it does do a "hatchet job" on JFK's and his father's reputations, which is the reason why it is not allowed to be shown in the US.  The complaint is that it focuses totally on father and son's various sexual indiscretions, while overlooking the son's wider interests (reportedly he really wanted to teach history at Harvard) and his political life. 

The whole story in this TV drama is pretty astonshing to me, as someone who watched her father cry at his death.  I clearly recall the atmosphere during the three years Jack Kennedy was in power, as a very small child. He seemed the epitome of new hope, uprightness and charm, with a happy and elegant wife to support him.

According to this TV drama, a major part that his "support" was the warped and egocentric programme of his unfulfilled, billionaire father, Joe, who could afford to manipulate the media.  Was it all a charade? There are online suggestions that Jackie was even having an affair with Onassis while her husband was still alive due to his neglect of her. Are these rumours true, in this world of mirrors?

If so, Camelot was a huge illusion. If a lie that big can be perpetrated on the world for so long, one must wonder how if anything one reads, or sees in the media is true at all.

I am deeply relieved to find an astonishingly productive branch of the Kennedy family, the Shriver clan, children of Kennedy's sister Eunice, who have worked tirelessly for the disabled, and for those with Alzheimers (those at the margins). They, along with JFK's daughter, they seem to have carried the baton. See:
http://www.eunicekennedyshriver.org/storywall/gallery/12#1

The Kennedys were an outstanding family, with much to offer and the Kennedy women were reportedly undervalued by Joe Kennedy.  The eldest brother of JFK was a real war hero. People saw something of this "hope" in JFK too, but his faults, possibly his father and his "destiny" got in the way. I am yet to be convinced that this family is without real substance.

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