Wow. New organs all over the country have been breaking a hot new story over the last 24 hours: President Kennedy had a some medical ailments, was prescribed some strong painkillers to help him function, and was given a few extra drugs to help prevent the painkillers from making him too groggy or moody.
This is very moderately interesting stuff for history geeks. But many books on Kennedy have already noted that he had Addison's disease, and back trouble. He nearly died from the Addison's disease a couple of times, in fact. The man had the catholic church's last rites delivered to him three different times, for goodness sakes.
With two painful medical afflictions, we should also not be surprised he was on drugs to treat the symptoms and the pain. No big shock there.
So what's new? Well, now apparently we know he also had colitis, which is a bowel issue. And, we have a list of the pills he was prescribed.
Oooh! Look out! JFK's legacy in trouble now! His doctors had him eight different drugs to help with three different medical problems.
Eight! Eight different drugs, do you hear? For no less than three, count 'em, three medical conditions! He wasn't given seven prescriptions like a normal man, but eight! Surely no one could live at that speed! How could he have been President?
Perhaps I'm a little more knowledgeable about pharmacology than most people, but the only thing I find myself wondering is, "Why is this making news all over the country?" It's the sort of thing that should be a minor story carried in a few news magazines. But it's been in newspapers all over the country, on the nightly news broadcasts (ABC carried the story, for example), and on the cable networks. Jeez, why does such a minor story get so much coverage?
That last question was rhetorical. I'm mostly just expressing irritation with the press. FLASH! President who died 40 years ago was prescribed painkillers!
Some may be sanguine about this, but today, anyone who is on uppers, downers, and tranks, all on the same day, is considered a "dope fiend," a term of art meaning someone with a very significant substance abuse problem. Barbiturates and methadone, in particular, have come under federal regulations over the last few decades that would put anyone who is being prescribed such a pharmacological regimen under Drug Enforcement Administration scrutiny. A single doctor prescribing these three substances to a single patient today would very likely lose his license.
Now, personally, I think that these government regulatiuons over cognitive freedom obscenely intrusive and unconstitutional, but I wouldn't hire such a person to manage my mail room. Now I can understand why JFK played russian roulette with all of our lives. Uppers in the morning, tranks in the evening, seconal at night, and methadone all day really explains a lot. To me at least.
David Frum has a very interesting take on this at
http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/diary112002.asp#001036
Basically, he says that the entire Kennedy presidential campaign was a fraud based on how healthy JFK was compared to the Republicans.
I must admit, I might be overly flippant about this. Ritalin is pretty powerful stuff. Methadone, on the other hand, is well-known for the fact that you can take it and NOT get high from it, or not very.
Still, this may be another indicator of the frighteningly self-destructive behavior of many members of the Kennedy clan. One remembers Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s heroin habit, and how everyone in the family both knew about the problem and still thought it perfectly natural that he should be running for Congress. And then young David Kennedy, who died from his own heroin problem.
At least one pair of Kennedy biographers (Collier & Horowitz) long ago identified what they called a "group psychosis" that pervaded that family: A Kennedy could get away with anything. They didn't mean that in a mean-spirited or politically spiteful way, either.
This serves to illustrate that Kennedy-alia is a tried and true cottage industry in America. This stuff about drugs is nothing compared to what we heard emanating from the chief executive during the last eight years of the twentieth century.
The liberal press just hangs on for anything about the Kennedy administration with baited breath, even if it is very unimportant. I just wish they could adequately cover anything from his administration relating to his actual accomplishments. They are so few I guess they have little to say.
I know Ara and others will opine about the importance of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the civil rights movement. These are not so much accomplishments as misplaced credit for one, a missed opportunity regarding the second and a nearly missed opportunity on the last issue. The media sometimes disserves viewers as much as it actually informs them.
Kevin--
???
Actually I think Peggy Noonan hit the nail on the head when she she said:
The revelations also underscore that JFK was very much a man of his time.
He was of the Sinatra generation; they got through the Depression, fought the war, and came home too hip for the room.
People think the boomers discovered sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but it was their parents, really--second-generation Americans home from Anzio and the South Pacific, beginning to leave the safety and social embarrassment of their immigrant parents' religion, informed by what they'd been taught as children about World War I and what happened at Versailles, influenced by Scott and Ernest and the lost generation.
Add some Marx and the man in the gray flannel suit, throw in some Vat 69, and some pills.
Put that all together, shake it, add a pinch of Freud and pour it out; what you get is party.
The greatest generation on Saturday night.
They were a great generation and they were more than that, and less.
They created the boomers, the welfare state, the world we live in. They were one rocking group, and JFK was very much of them.
Peggy always has so much class. Even when she gushes in a way that other people might gag at, you believe her because you know she means it.
No sarcasm in my comment. I think she's got a point. I also point out that, well, this was the early 1960s, long before "addiction" was even considered a disease, and doctors probably had an attitude that, "well, yes, this may be habit-forming, but you've got a lifelong condition, so what the hell."
Is it possible JFK was sufficiently drugged during his first meeting with Khrushchev in 1961 that Khrushchev believed Kennedy was enough of a pushover to attempt putting nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962?