Is anybody else sick of hearing about JFK?

[nearwildheaven]

@Amateur_Barbarian

Good god, yes. Because absolutely nothing on earth is worse than missing your show.

I heard about TV stations getting irate phone calls on 9/11 from people who were missing their soap operas because of coverage of this event. :smack:

[Senegoid]

@Happy_Lendervedder

Not really. The fifty year anniversary only comes once, and this is probably one of the last big anniversaries of the assassination that a critical mass of people who experienced it are still alive to talk about it. It’ll be done tomorrow.

This.

There’s another similar thread going on over in MPSIMS. I just posted an essay saying substantially this, comparing it to the massive nostalgic hubbub for the 50th anniversary of D-Day and the end of World War II in 1994/1995. At the time, I predicted – correctly – that this would pretty much be the end of the annual WWII reminiscences, after which the whole “Post World War II” era would be pretty much put to bed once and for all.

Hang tight a moment, I’ll add a link . . .

ETA: Link to thread.
Link to my WWII essay.

[ralph124c]

Ya mean JFK (sans brain) isn’t living in a secret midwest rest home?

[DMark]

@Yllaria

You think this is bad? I was in fourth grade when it happened. We were given a day off of school, but it was a day off that our parents weren’t expecting and we weren’t allowed to go play with friends. There were four channels on the TV and it was all funeral all the time on all of them. All day long, or at least it seemed that way to an eight year old.

I remember trying to watch and at one point they all had cameras on the coffin lying in state with people filing slowly past. Oh, they probably also had news about Oswald and Johnson, and once the funeral had happened they could all play the iconic scenes over and over; but what I remember is the coffin cam and the frustration at not being able to find a cartoon anywhere.

So as sick as you are, be thankful that nothing is being pre-empted.

Oh yeah…so true.

I too was a kid when it happened, and with only three channels on TV, that was ALL there was for days and days on end. I mean ONLY about the assassination, not a single other topic on any channels for the entire time.

It was crappy weather, we were home from school, and it was like sitting in a funeral home for days on end.

I do remember watching Oswald getting shot and I was the only one in the living room watching TV (everyone else in the family was busy watching the canned goods, or watching paint dry, or doing anything else but watch TV) and I ran to tell everyone. They didn’t believe me and I had to drag them into the living room to let them hear it.

Mind you, this was long before “instant replay”, so the rest in my family were going solely off my description and what the newscasters were reporting.

Yes, it was a traumatic time, and it was quite interesting to have experienced, but as a kid, you sort of got really, really bored with the whole thing rather quickly.

[Miller]

I’ve been sick of hearing about JFK for about… <checks watch> 38 years now.

[Skypist]

@ThelmaLou

(My emphasis)

Um, yeah. That’s the main thing. The magnitude of the impact of that event on the country at that time is impossible to convey.

I imagine in 2051 young people will be saying, “I’m sick of hearing about the 50th anniversary of 9/11. Maybe it would be different if I was old enough to remember it…”

I don’t really consider myself “young” anymore. I’m 44 and am too young to remember JFK because I wasn’t going to be born for 6 more years when he was killed.

@Anaamika

I agree, too. There’s multiple ages of kids and young adults and even middle-aged adults (I’m only a couple of years away from 40!) that have no recollection or connection to the 60s whatsoever. There’s a lot more recent icons to focus on.

+1. When there are middle-aged adults who are too young to remember it, maybe it’s time to let it go.

I don’t mean it wasn’t horrible at the time and no one should ever mention it or try to learn whatever we can from it as an important historical moment, but really I don’t understand the extent of the continued coverage of it over the years. JMO, YMMV and all that. Especially the fascination with Jackie Kennedy and selling replicas of her jewelry and stuff like that.

@Fear_Itself

People of a certain age identify with it. If you are under the age of 55 or so, it probably doesn’t appeal to you. But the world still largely turns around those of us in the Baby Boom, and the media indulges us. I can see why it would be annoying. Buck up, it’s only another 20 or 30 years until you are shed of us altogether.

That’s weird to me though because in a lot of things the world doesn’t “largely turn around” Baby Boomers at all. Most everything in the media is YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH. Be under 25 or GTFO! Not saying I like that, but it’s kind of weird that for this one thing, the 60-plusers are catered to.

[Tim_R.Mortiss]

@ralph124c

Ya mean JFK (sans brain) isn’t living in a secret midwest rest home?

Yeah, with Elvis.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@bump

About all I have to say is… unless you live in the D/FW area, quit whining. We’ve been hearing about it on the local and national news, the newspapers and on the radio for weeks now, complete with interviews with Marina Oswald, Mrs. Tippit, etc…

And we had to hear about how the city demolished LHO’s apartment building that he lived in before the house he lived in when he shot Kennedy. Talk about something that nobody cares about!

I live in the D/FW area, and yeah, I’m gonna whine about it.

Yes, it was an extremely historic event. The path of the US, and probably the path of the whole world, changed because of this assassination. But there’s only so much new material that we can glean after 50 years, without going over the same territory over and over and over.

And I can completely do without the “where were you?” and “how did you feel when?” questions that are asked after any event, large or small.

[Sudden_Kestrel]

It would be really nice if we could keep all of the anniversary remembrance events, specials, and galas on the day of the anniversary instead of saturating the months and weeks beforehand with reminders that the anniversary is coming up. This memorial creep is almost identical to the holiday creep that has caused the Christmas season to now begin in September. Why can’t we have some (or even mostly) normal days with nothing to celebrate, memorialize, or mourn?

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@Ranger_Jeff

If it’s any comfort, in February it’ll be the 50th Anniversary of The Beatles performing on Ed Sullivan. Which meant the beginning of Beatlemania here and the 60’s, in a Pop Cultural sense, for that matter.

It’s not any comfort at all. I’m dreading that anniversary a lot more than I did JFK. I like the Beatles, and I’m sick of hearing about them. I have a feeling I’m going to be a lot more sick by the end of February.

[bump]

@Lynn_Bodoni

I live in the D/FW area, and yeah, I’m gonna whine about it.

Yes, it was an extremely historic event. The path of the US, and probably the path of the whole world, changed because of this assassination. But there’s only so much new material that we can glean after 50 years, without going over the same territory over and over and over.

And I can completely do without the “where were you?” and “how did you feel when?” questions that are asked after any event, large or small.

I will say that the most interesting things to have come to light are just how many of the people involved are both still alive and live in the area. Oswald’s wife, the cop escorting Oswald when Ruby was shot, Officer Tippit’s wife and night-shift partner, and so on. Many have been interviewed on the news recently.

[Skywatcher]

@Diceman

Is anybody else sick of hearing about JFK?

I don’t know about sick but Johnny L.A. started a thread 20 minutes after yours about how tired of it he is.

[Johanna]

I’m just old enough to remember the Kennedy administration while it was still happening, and what a huge deal it meant for Irish-American Catholics (like my mom). At the time I worshiped JFK, the assassination, when I was 4 years old, was a major trauma of my childhood, and no, I’m not sick of hearing about it, I’ve spent today wallowing in it via a ton of articles in the Washington Post, and tomorrow I’m going to leave it behind and move on and think about other things.

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

Absolutely sick of it. I was just 3 and don’t remember it at all. I understand intellectually that it was very big for many people who do remember it, but from an emotional point of view I’ve always believed that it got more attention than it deserved. Just my 2c, but since you asked…

[TBG]

@Happy_Lendervedder

Well, on the bright side, you’ll probably hear less about it on the 75th. And even less on the 100th. So you’ve all got that to look forward to.

Well, by then I’ll either be too old to care or dead.

[ralph124c]

I find the JFK-worship phenom weird-it’s as if people in 1963 were losing sleep over the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. JFK was a mediocre president at bets-let’s remember him , and forget the damn deification.

[panache45]

But that’s the way news is these days. Everything gets super-saturated coverage for a few days, then it shifts to something else. What’s happening in the post-monsoon Philippines? Remember that? What’s that mayor of Toronto doing now? It’s old news, and tomorrow the JFK stories will be over too, as something else takes its place.

Now . . . I was very much alive when Kennedy was shot, in fact I was a college freshman. I have very real memories of all the events as they were portrayed on TV. And I have very real memories of the stunning impact it had on the country for a long time. It really did change history in so many ways.

And then, only a couple of months later, The Beatles sang on Ed Sullivan. Everything was different after that.

[Kolga]

@nearwildheaven

I heard about TV stations getting irate phone calls on 9/11 from people who were missing their soap operas because of coverage of this event. :smack:

That’s weird. I did a Google search and couldn’t find stories about that. I’d be interested in reading them. Do you have any links? I could use these examples in one of my classes.

[Zago]

I’ve been following the coverage - I was in 1st grade at the time but have no real memories of the day, only after. I find the recounting and analysis fascinating. On the other hand, I do get a bit annoyed about 9/11 coverage every year, probably because I remember it so well and the coverage adds no real insight for me. The JFK coverage, since I don’t remember the day, is of interest.

[Aussie_Fish]

@ralph124c

I find the JFK-worship phenom weird-it’s as if people in 1963 were losing sleep over the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. JFK was a mediocre president at bets-let’s remember him , and forget the damn deification.

— to come across as a complete pri~k