Eccentric Flower:199907/Bile removal and more Kennedys

I have got to cover up that previous entry with something more cheerful, right away. But I'm not sure what I have available to cover it with.

Every time I have written something here in the past few days, I have offended someone. I don't apologize for that, not exactly - if I can't be cranky here, where can I be? But it isn't personal, and it isn't because I'm a heartless b**ch. In fact, usually when I'm lashing out at whatever happens to be near me, it's because I'm dreadfully unhappy with myself - as was noted in that previous entry.

But ... I'm also feeling better now and when I'm feeling better the last thing I want to do is analyze my down-times. So, although I appreciate the emails ... if you don't get more than a bare-bones "thanks," it doesn't mean I don't love you ... it means I don't want to dwell on my sorrows anymore. That's not really in my nature. I tend to gripe, feel better, and move on.

You know. It's a little like throwing up.

If you think I was bad when I wrote the previous entry, you should have seen me later that day. I hit low ebb when I left work (under a cloud), tried to do some relaxing reading on the subway going home, and realized I was going to have to completely discard my new Mike Resnick book (A Hunger in the Soul). Really, I don't think I'll be able to stand reading it. Actually - to be completely frank - what I want to do is burn it. Resnick upset me very badly, and if I explain why I'll just sound hugely cranky again and I'm tired of having everyone assume that cranky is my normal state of mind just because you see it more often than not on these pages.

I need to make it clear once again: I look crankier than normal here. This is where I put all my crankiness so that it won't show up in my daily personality. This is my Crankiness Disposal Mechanism.

Maybe later, when everyone's calmer, I'll talk about why and how Resnick has upset me so. Meanwhile, I still have to deal with this JFK Jr. thing.

I got a number of emails suggesting, with various degrees of hostility, that perhaps I was being Evil Incarnate. Rob was far from the nastiest in his entry (and he didn't need to recant any of it the next day, although of course I'm happy he still wants to read my stuff). I sent Rob an apology/clarification a few minutes ago; it was similar to six other messages I've sent out over the past two days (maybe a little more detailed).

The original JFK Jr. entry was mean-spirited, and I don't deny it. As you can now see, I have been at low ebb lately ... and my annoyance at the level of coverage of the crash got tangled with a lot of other things it really had very little to do with.

I hope that, in all my venom, it wasn't lost that I do have sincere sympathy for the Kennedy and Bessette families. I mean, this is undeniably a tragedy, and whether the pilot made a stupid error or not doesn't make it any less of a tragedy.

My problems are entirely with the level of coverage. This story has now been on the front page of the Globe for Six. Consecutive. Days. That is just plain ridiculous. I don't believe they gave six days of headlines to the Oklahoma City bombing. How many people died there? Clearly the formula isn't "the more tragedy, the more coverage" - so why has this story been kept in the public eye so much?

I'm not biased against Kennedys per se - I just don't understand the hold they apparently have on some people in this country.

I'd like to ponder this issue here a bit further, but if I say anything critical about the Kennedy family at a time like this, I'm being unreasonable - or I'm kicking them when they're down - when what I really want to do is get to the bottom of an American cultural mystery. So bear with me, please, and try to take these comments in a spirit of exploration.

The Kennedy family patriarch made a lot of money from hard work. His children inherited it. They weren't necessarily hard workers themselves. Several of them were brilliant politicians in the schmoozing category; that is, they had charisma, they knew how to press the flesh. At least one of them was a brilliant politician in the back-room category; that is, he knew who to lean on to get things accomplished.

The Kennedy clan collectively had a lot of bad habits - primarily arrogance, libido, and booze. But they were no worse than a lot of others, and had many graces to compensate for their faults.

In short, I like the Kennedys. I have a fair amount of respect for their history. But they are, viewed from another angle, only a rich, politically connected family. So what's the deal?

To put this in perspective: I know another family where there's a fair amount of money accumulated, where several members have gone into politics with varying degrees of success, and where at least one member seems to have a lot of personal charisma. But if George W. Bush were lost at sea, even on the eve of his Big Campaign, would there have been six days of headlines about the search for the plane?

I guess I don't see where the magnetic attraction is. I have heard, as have you, the cliché that the Kennedy family is the closest thing we have to American royalty. Well, let's go there for a second: Many Americans are tremendously (some secretly) infatuated with British royalty, and that doesn't make a lot of sense either. Didn't we come here to get away from royalty?

I'm not being bitter; I'm sincerely confused about this. Again: I like Kennedys well enough. But if I must venerate someone, they are not my first choice.