# Why Is JFK So Deified?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [December 28, 2015, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541 "2015-12-28T06:44:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 7

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**Author:** ![JBGUSA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JBGUSA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBGUSA)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/121 "2016-01-17T06:24:14Z")

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> [@Peremensoe](#):
>
> > [@JBGUSA](#):
> >
> > To septimus’ point, JFK likely would have executed the same craven surrender/appeasement as did Obama in the recent capture of 10 U.S. Navy sailors.
> 
> What?

As I posted above JFK secretly agreed to remove missiles from Turkey as part of the solution to the Cuban missile crises. So JFK did not triumph there. The Soviets retained a client state in violation of the Monroe Doctrine and we got a fig leaf.

Thus, I posit that JFK would have similarly caved to Iran.

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**Author:** ![botsgotme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@botsgotme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/botsgotme)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/122 "2016-01-17T13:27:29Z")

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Who were "fiddle " and “Faddle”? they seemed to be prostitutes, employed at the White House. According to Seymour Hersh (“The Dark Side of Camelot”), they serviced JFK in the White House swimming pool. Does anybody know what their job titles were? And were they Federal employees, or just free lancers?

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/123 "2016-01-17T13:53:46Z")

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> [@botsgotme](#):
>
> Who were "fiddle " and “Faddle”? they seemed to be prostitutes, employed at the White House. According to Seymour Hersh (“The Dark Side of Camelot”), they serviced JFK in the White House swimming pool. Does anybody know what their job titles were? And were they Federal employees, or just free lancers?

[You can read about it here.](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2497991/Letters-White-House-interns-JFK-allegedly-affairs-with.html) In addition to Fiddle and Faddle, Mimi is a 3rd White House intern to allege she gave special assistance to POTUS:

> [@](#):
>
> Mimi Alford said that Mr Kennedy took her virginity in his wife’s bed in the summer of 1962.  
> Extracts from her memoir have detailed how she was shocked when on her fifth day as a White House press aide he led her away from co-workers who were having cocktails down the hall to his wife’s bedroom where they had sex for the first time  
> Aged 19 at the time, she writes that ‘short of screaming’ there was nothing she could do to get Mr Kennedy off her.  
> … The 45-year-old Kennedy frolicked with his teenage mistress on an Air Force jetliner, in a presidential limousine, on foreign trips, in the White House swimming pool and even in the mansion’s upstairs bathtub.  
> Mimi was friendly with two 20-something White House secretaries whose Secret Service code names were ‘Fiddle’ and ‘Faddle’. They would have threesomes with Kennedy.
> 
> [Later, after another party, Mimi wrote] to Peter Lawford, ‘I hope I left your wife’s clothes in wearable condition.’ (His wife was President Kennedy’s sister Pat Kennedy Lawford).

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**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2016, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/124 "2016-01-18T01:12:17Z")

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They were interns. And 40 years later the public was still surprised by Lewinski.

What are people surprised about, powerful men and young women, like it hasn’t been a fact for thousands of years?

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**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2016, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/125 "2016-01-18T21:10:20Z")

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> [@JBGUSA](#):
>
> The Soviets retained a client state in violation of the Monroe Doctrine . . .

N.B.: The Monroe Doctrine was never international law or U.S. law, it was only a stated foreign policy of one administration, and binding on no later administration.

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**Author:** ![Lorne\_Armstrong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@Lorne\_Armstrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lorne_Armstrong)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2016, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/126 "2016-01-19T06:15:56Z")

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Wait… if Kennedy knew that Khrushchev wasn’t going to launch, and Khrushchev knew that Kennedy wasn’t going to launch, then what exactly was the crisis?

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**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2016, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/127 "2016-01-19T06:35:27Z")

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I think the crisis was mainly to force negotiations and agreements over some contentious issues(missiles in Turkey, Soviet support for Cuba, possible US invasion of Cuba) that wouldn’t have been settled any other way.

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**Author:** ![botsgotme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@botsgotme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/botsgotme)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2016, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/128 "2016-01-19T14:12:23Z")

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This is what gets me-Eisenhower knew that the USSR was bankrupt and could not afford a space race or and arms race (food riots actually broke out in Russia, in the early 1960s). Russian agriculture was such a mess , that they had to use their gold reserves to buy food from Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium! yet JFK and his propaganda masters portrayed the USSR as some kind of super strong evil menacing power…this allowed the defense business to get massive appropriations…and the “Moon Race”. Really, so much of the JFK image was built on smoke and mirrors.

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**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2016, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/129 "2016-01-19T15:12:00Z")

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> [@septimus](#):
>
> [You can read about it here.](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2497991/Letters-White-House-interns-JFK-allegedly-affairs-with.html) In addition to Fiddle and Faddle, Mimi is a 3rd White House intern to allege she gave special assistance to POTUS:

And **that’s** why JFK is so deified! 😃

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**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2016, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/130 "2016-01-19T17:14:14Z")

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> [@adaher](#):
>
> I think the crisis was mainly to force negotiations and agreements over some contentious issues(missiles in Turkey, Soviet support for Cuba, possible US invasion of Cuba) that wouldn’t have been settled any other way.

Indeed. Part of the deal, where the US would remove the missiles from Turkey, was that he would get to play ‘tough guy’.

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**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2016, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/131 "2016-01-20T05:18:57Z")

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_The Atlantic_ on JFK’s continuing hold on the American political imagination: [The Legacy of John F. Kennedy\<!-- --\> - The Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/the-legacy-of-john-f-kennedy/309499/)

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**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/132 "2016-01-22T11:38:55Z")

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> [@tomndebb](#):
>
> Diem was a mistake of Ike’s presidency who should not have been put into power. When Diem’s brother, (with his acceptance), began looting the country and he began to persecute Buddhists, his overthrow was inevitable. And LBJ could have refrained from sending in large numbers of troops, regardless who held the presidency of South Vietnam.
> 
> I think his charisma overshadows many of his errors, but these two claims are part of the non-factual anti-myth that those who did not like him promote.

Ummm…kind of passed over the assassination part, didn’t we???

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**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/133 "2016-01-22T11:47:34Z")

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> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#):
>
> “The Italians… not so much.”

“And as for help from the surrender monkeys…well, we don’t need to mention them at all!”

-FDR, Yalta Conference

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**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/134 "2016-01-22T12:55:26Z")

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> [@JBGUSA](#):
>
> He ended the Cold War successfully for the West and the U.S.

Reagan didn’t have shit to do with it. If Putin had been in charge rather than Gorbachev, the USSR and Berlin Wall would still be around.

We’ll never know how JFK would be remembered if he hadn’t been murdered. I think it might be as the last intellectual president until Obama came along. I think his greatest achievement was not listening to the military advice during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They wanted him to go ahead and launch a preemptive strike on the USSR. If he had done so, none of us would be around today to talk about it. One shudders to think what would have happened if it happened during the Bush-Cheney years. We don’t know if he could have gotten the Civil Rights Act passed. Certainly LBJ would have been enlisted to twist arms and maybe they could have done so. I suspect it would have been more difficult if not impossible.

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**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/135 "2016-01-22T13:01:50Z")

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Why do you think Gorby was chosen in 1985? Because the Soviets had their backs to the wall and needed to change to compete with the West.

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**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/136 "2016-01-22T13:38:49Z")

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Who said they had to compete with the West? Putin sure as hell wouldn’t have cared.

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**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/137 "2016-01-22T13:48:24Z")

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He cares now. It’s true that the Cold War wouldn’t have ended when it did if Putin was in power, although it’s probably better to speculate Andropov remaining alive through the 90s since he was also a KGB head.

So what would have happened is economic collapse, and violent breakup instead of peaceful breakup. We still win the Cold War, but there’s a greater chance of a catastrophe as a nuclear armed Russia fights to maintain control over an empire they can’t afford to feed and can’t afford enough bullets to crush revolts.

Given the Soviets’ situation in 1985, it’s hard to see them going with anyone BUT Gorby. His rise to power wasn’t the product of luck, it was the Soviets’ last attempt to survive. It was a weak attempt to emulate what China had done. But there was no other viable course open to them by 1985. They had to change, or die. They died, thankfully peacefully.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/138 "2016-01-22T14:01:06Z")

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Don’t want to hijack the thread any further, so assuming the USSR was heading toward economic collapse and violent breakup, it still had squat to do with Reagan.

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**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/139 "2016-01-22T15:00:00Z")

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> [@adaher](#):
>
> Why do you think Gorby was chosen in 1985? Because the Soviets had their backs to the wall and needed to change to compete with the West.

What does that have to do with Reagan? Soviet military spending was already on a relentless upward trajectory before he took office. In fact, during Reagan’s presidency [it plateaued for the first time](http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/2012/09/let-end-this-nonsense-reagan-military.html) since the 1960s.

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**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\
**Post date:** [January 22, 2016, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-jfk-so-deified/741541/140 "2016-01-22T15:17:07Z")

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> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> Reagan didn’t have shit to do with it. If Putin had been in charge rather than Gorbachev, the USSR and Berlin Wall would still be around.
> 
> We’ll never know how JFK would be remembered if he hadn’t been murdered. I think it might be as the last intellectual president until Obama came along.

I am rather puzzled by the description of Kennedy as an “intellectual president.” He was not a person of unusually noteworthy intellectual powers as compared to other Presidents.

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