JFK: Made Men, Politics & Media
Election day is a suitable one to disclose that I’ve been obsessed with The Dark Side of Camelot by Sy Hersh for several months. It’s the tale of the rise of JFK, the dark dealings of his father, and how the mob clinched the presidential election for the Kennedy family. More importantly, it’s a book that made me feel naive.
Naiveté is something I experience sometimes, but in the case of this book, it was in seeing the way that all of the pieces fit together: personal charisma, womanizing, great wealth, corruption, a complicit media. Yes, most of us are aware, in the back of our minds about JFK’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra’s connections to the mob—but it’s a different ball game to have all those things exquisitely mapped out for you. It’s sort of like watching The Wire except that all of this stuff actually happened and the players are all American icons (except the ones that history has been rewritten to forget).
Following up on this, I’m interested in any leads on the following:
- The press was aware of many of JFK’s underhanded dealings, but they never turned on him. At some point, Hersh makes an offhand comment that the press respected privacy up until Watergate. Has there been anything great written about the relationship of the press to people in power with a kind of historical awareness?
- The Mob: I can create a likely story of the rise of mafia power (immigrants spreading, etc) to a peak in the early 60s when they were able to control the outcome of a Presidential election. But then what happened? They build Las Vegas. I’m interested in a really good history of the American Mafia’s rise and apparent fall from power.
(Source: christmasgorilla.com)
