Song Lyric of the Day (Billy Joel, on JFK)

“J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say?”—Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” from his Storm Front CD (1989)

(Billy Joel’s reference to the assassination in Dallas is as short, brutal, concussive and propulsive as that event in November 22, 1963. The rest of his song races through the following 26 years far more breathlessly than the pre-JFK portion, in much the same way that we baby boomers felt the life of this nation and world spinning out of control during this period.

“What else do I have to say?” Many have said plenty, as the literature inspired by the assassination, fiction and nonfiction, shows no end of drying up. A good guide to the conspiracy theories—as well as the better books on the subject—can be found in this Web page by John McAdams.

Why has the JFK assassination continued to haunt Americans, in a fashion similar to Lincoln’s but far different from Garfield’s or McKinley’s? Several reasons, I think:

* The list of people who wanted JFK dead, for one reason or another, was lengthy;
* Like Lincoln, JFK was a practical politician who nevertheless appealed to the best, most idealistic instincts of Americans, and as such he held the best hope for somehow bridging the ideological, cultural, and racial-ethnic divides that were already opening up in the Sixties;

* People found it impossible to believe that a man gifted far beyond the norm—with riches, the best education, political power, glamour, a seemingly happy family life—could lose all of it in an instant to one lone maniac. In other words, there just had to be a larger, more seemingly rational, albeit malignant, reason for him to be struck down.

“It is going to be for the next generation of American patriots to solve the case of JFK’s murder,” writes journalist William Hughes in an op-ed piece for this week’s Irish Echo. After a cloud of witnesses, the obfuscation of government agencies such as the CIA and FBI, and the passage of two generations, that hope, to say the least, is highly unlikely.

I read somewhere once that the Kennedy family would prefer that JFK’s birthday be commemorated rather than his death. I don’t believe in hagiography, but I think that’s a perfectly reasonable request. This Web site from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs—extensive, scholarly, and most of all, objective—is, I believe, an excellent place to start.)