Lileks is great today. He reports that someone brought a beachball to the Wellstone memorial. Apparently, a lot of the "mourners" thought it was a rock concert. The photos I saw of the section with Mondale, Clinton, Kennedy, etc. reminded me of the end of Animal Farm where the animals couldn't tell which were the men and which were pigs. They all looked like the Thomas Nast version of rich Republicans.



He also mentions that JFK, had he not been assassinated, would be in his eighties.

After reading the piece by Robert Dallek about his health, I doubt JFK would have lived that long. The more revelations we get about Kennedy, the more accurate Bill Clinton's emulation of him seems to be. At least Bill wasn't hiding his medical hist. . . Wait, strike that.

Kennedy had an iron will which enabled him to perform the job, but having taken a cortizone-like drug (methylprednisolone) for 15 years, I doubt that he could have held out much longer. He was also getting testosterone injections, which may account for his prodigious sexual appetite. Reading the article, I kept wondering how he was able to have sex, as bad as his back was, but it never came up in the article. (pun intended)



Next year, we'll probably learn that Bobby was a cross dresser, but it was all hushed up with his daddy's money. Wellstone would probably never be allowed to run for president if only because his personal life was too unblemished.



Update: Dallek addresses the sex issue in the interview linked above.

Q: The litany of all the different symptoms he had�fatigue, diarrhea, ulcers, and back pain�make it sound as if he should have been curled up in fetal position, whimpering. But he played tennis and football, and everyone's heard the stories about his sexual exploits.


Well, you see, they were fostering an image of vigor. And they did a brilliant job of covering his problems up.


One question that people constantly ask me is how he was able to perform these supposed Herculean feats as a sex machine, given the fact that he had serious back problems and so many illnesses. The answer may be that he carried on quite a bit in the White House swimming pool and (it's alleged) in the bathtub, and that he would practice sex in a supine position�taking the bottom position. This may explain somewhat how he was able to acquire such a reputation as a sexual athlete.


But the bottom line, I think, to so much of what I discuss in the article, is that he was really quite heroic�that he had extraordinary determination. He made a bet with himself that he could be President. Of course, one of the problems I see with this is that he did not share the gamble with the public. It could well have turned out that if the public knew about how ill he was, he never would have been elected. This is what the Kennedys themselves feared, so they made a systematic effort to hide the fact that he had so many illnesses. It was a kind of cover up.

So, was he really heroic for suffering so much without anyone knowing? I don't know. After all, his "heroism" also reveals dishonesty. Then there were his promiscuity, adultery and drug dependence. Was Elvis a hero for keeping his problems private? I think that maybe his "golden age" exists more in the minds of the people he scammed than in reality. But then, I've always thought that.