Monster Media 1994 #2/Monster Media No. 2 (Monster Media)(1994).ISO/magazine/rubyv33.zip/RUBY33-6

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Copyright 1994(c)

               JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY DIED TODAY
                          By B.J. Higgs

     For years, the insatiable media did stories about his
propensity to effect turtlenecks for the last 30 years of his life.
He freely admitted that sight of the scar brought back memories he
preferred to forget. Despite having escaped with his life, the
attempt seemed to have set off a series of similar attempts that
were successful. Martin Luther King. Jimmy Carter. George Bush. He
outlived them all.
     And America adored him -- perhaps more so for his courage in
the face of death. He never wavered from his service to his country
through the dreadful days when he and his young children buried the
wife and mother who typified his presidency as that Camelot era
which was far too brief. Instead of discouraging his political
aspirations, her death seemed to have intensified them. Sympathy
alone would have assured his second term, and had the Constitution
not prohibited it, he'd have won a third. Instead, Nixon got the
job and disgraced himself and the nation beyond anyone's wildest
expectations.
     Ultimately, he realized that the images of that awful day
would be replayed so long as he occupied any corner of the public
spotlight, and he retired with the accomplishments of his career,
to the bosom of his family. The assassination of Jimmy Carter
brought a public cry for his return, and he was torn between his
private life and serving the public, once again.
     He resisted. He didn't want to see those images replay again.
And again. Deified in death as she had been in life, Jackie's
memory precluded the rebuilding of his life, and he remained the
most handsome, eligible bachelor of his time.
     History would record that he achieved more than any President
throughout time. His detractors continued to denigrate his
legalization of drugs, but could not deny the effect of such
legislation. Obliteration of the national debt was no small feat,
and was frequently touted as the reason America was able to remain
strong and grow stronger as the governments of countries all about
her collapsed in the three decades after Jackie's death. In each
case, the United States was able to shore up failing economies and
install leadership of both a friendly and democratic nature.
     His detractors, too, continued to challenge his sweeping
health care reforms, which had guaranteed every U.S. citizen
affordable health care. His most difficult accomplishment had been
the inclusion of abortion in that package -- a move that caused his
excommunication from the faith which had sustained him. It caused
him to joke, once in control of the initial pain of rejection, that
he'd be buried, much like Elvis, in the sideyard of the Kennedy
Compound in Florida.
     On his deathbed, he watched the images replay again on
virtually every television channel. Once again he felt that gut-
wrenching fear... the searing pain of the bullet that grazed his
throat and shattered her skull. It was a sensation he had lived
with in all the intervening time -- one that had come to be a
familiar enemy -- the pain making him know he was alive. Reminding
him she was not.
     As he contemplated his life in its waning hours, not
regretting the finality of leaving the wheelchair to which his
early back problems confined him for the final decade of his life,
he wondered privately, as he often did, whether he had loved her.
Certainly, he had admired her.
     His family and children grouped around him at the end. He
listened to the ocean pound against the sands outside his bedroom
window, the same room where he'd first wept in his father's arms
over the death of his most valuable political assets. Had his
father known the true status of their troubled marriage? He'd often
wished they could discuss it following the stroke that rendered Joe
Kennedy mute. That and so many other things.
     The vultures had come to feed quickly, ignoring his grief and
speculating, always speculating. Had he not been shot as well, they
would certainly have found greater support for their innuendo. Joe
Kennedy's history certainly did not preclude him from suspicion of
involvement in the tragedy. Had Jackie truly been poised to abandon
her marriage at the time of her death, the media hounds asked each
other and America. The lone gunman theory continued to undermine
the concept that the attack had been aimed at him -- she an
innocent victim. His political opponents cautiously hinted that
her death was timely. Too timely.
     He'd never known the truth. Never asked while he could. Never
regretted that he had not done so. He didn't want to contemplate
the possibility that his father would have been instrumental in
endangering his own life, but he could never deny that the drive
to make him President had been his father's all-consuming passion.
He didn't know where the line had been drawn at what could be
sacrificed -- didn't know if there had been a line. He didn't want
to know.
     The decision not to remarry had been deliberate. Strategy
sessions resulted in a unanimous belief that one should only repeat
actions with a potential for greater success, and no such potential
existed in a consideration to replace Jackie. Jackie had been
unique and valuable in life; more so in death.
     The conspiracy theory never died, and occasionally some eager
journalist kicked it, much like an old dog in repose, and it
growled but never bit. He imagined it, like his accomplishments,
would go down in history as an eternal mystery. It would no longer
be his concern, he reflected as he closed his eyes.
     John Fitzgerald Kennedy died today, survived by his children,
his brothers and his mother. He went to learn the answer he didn't
want to know.
                             END