JFK Museum

Sunday morning I went to the Kennedy museum in Boston. I let the rest of the family drop me off and do whatever. It was my gift to them by not making them go through it with me. If people wanted seriously to tour the museum, I would have welcomed them. But when you hear a recording of Kennedy and the first thought you have is that its Mayor Quimby for the Simpsons, I just don't feel you have the right background for this kind of thing.

I'm not a big Kennedy fan. I've decided to put those issues behind me so I could have an enjoyable time at the museum. Although, since you ask, my top 10 issues are: 1.) His family probably stole the 1960 election 2.) The things he and Johnson said about Vietnam were a bit off, although he gets off lightly and Johnson and Nixon got hammered for it. 3.) His womanizing makes Clinton look like a choir boy. 4.) One of his aides wrote most or all of Profiles in Courage. 5.) His Dad used his influence to get him the Pulitzer Prize and a whole bunch of other perks. 6.) The family made a huge effort to immortalize him after his death, getting tons of things named after him - a bit unseemly. 7) His people wrote way too flattering biographies of him. 8.) Until he became President, he didn't really accomplish much - the House Speaker called him the laziest person he'd ever seen. 9.) He does get credit for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but if he hadn't invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, they probably wouldn't have tried to put missiles there to begin with. 10.) etc.

Probably time to let that go. A lot of the above stuff wasn't his fault anyway. I heard somebody say once that we keep lists of wrongs committed against us and that the way to be happy is to throw away the lists. So, John, I'm throwing away my list. (Although I guess technically its going on the internet to be floating around pretty much forever.)

With that, I enjoyed the museum greatly. Its a nice building and had a lot of cool displays - Alan Shepherd's Gemini capsule, JFK's golf clubs and golf cart, his rocking chair, some of Jacquie's dresses, RFK's desk, part of the Berlin Wall, and a lot more. The main hallway was made to look like the White House's main hall. Very cool. If you can hear his voice without instantly thinking of Mayor Quimby, I think you would really like it. You should go.