Through the Legendary American class course have been repeatedly faced with the issue of whether or not legendary Americans should be endorsed and taught in schools. Arguments for the perpetuation of legends have been set forth by everyone from Furstenberg to The Simpsons, but I believe that their effect is more harmful than beneficial to our society. The legends, as we know them, distort the past and thereby prevent us from clearly viewing the future, as is evident in the sensationalized legend-making process that has partially obscured John F Kennedy.
The negative effects of legend-making are clear in the example of JFK. For most American children, he is presented angelically, as a visionary ripped away from the nation. As I child growing up in Texas I remember becoming physically angry over the injustice of assassinating someone so young and so wholesomely pure. Because Kennedy was a ‘legend,’ I assumed he deserved the adoration, and imagined him in my mind as a flawless martyr. This type of mindset, which Loewen insists is a common side effect of the ‘legends’ system, instills a black-and-white world view—those who are good enough and those who simple aren’t—that is extremely dangerous in the morally complex world of reality. Legend-making, like all elitist methods of viewing history, is also fallaciously exclusive, and presents students with an extremely narrow perspective of the past. Lies My Teacher Told Me references studies that reveal that history is the least favorite subject of most minority students, and who can blame them? When the supposed moral high point of a class is a wealthy white man with only a lukewarm tolerance of the Civil Rights movement, we know we have erred. Instead, history should be more based on the lives of the average person. We should take society as a whole, and view vast trends with a specific examples to illustrate various points along the spectrum of life experience.
More relevant to Kennedy than these issues, however, is the problem of why we insist on legend-making in spite of the consequences. I argue that legend-making is maintained because it has become, rather than a format for teaching history, an outlet for sensationalism. American culture is fascinated by the sensational, and constantly seeks entertainment from the seediest rock stars, most inaccessibly evangelical, and most absurd celebrities. The tendency was evident even hundreds of years ago, but has been made worse by the increasing speed and demand of modern media. It’s effect is clear in the children’s book I studied: only briefly does Sutcliffe acknowledge JFK’s weakness as a president, while the headline-grabbing tale of his saving a fellow soldier by swimming for miles with a lifejacket between his teeth gets multiple pages of coverage. The tone of the book suggests that the rhetoric might have been even more skewed if not for the emerging PC culture that would have condemned it. Sensationalism accounts for why Kennedy’s legend has survived—a tragically young death, a rise to the most powerful position in the nation, a picture-perfect family, numerous covert affairs, including a rumored one with Marilyn Monroe, one of the most sensational American figures of all time. In light of the headlines, the facts of Kennedy’s presidency are lost. We forget his failings as a negotiator in the Cuban Missile Crisis, his miscalculations in the Bay of Pigs, and his questionable morality within his personal relationships. With the current model, students cannot hope to learn political information, and instead are subjected to a class about a cardboard saint who provides no guidance as to how to run a country beyond the preschool mantras we’ve heard since infancy. When we base our history on the sensationalism of legends, textbooks become no better than sensationalist magazines, looking to over-emphasize episodes of interest to the point of misrepresentation.
The legend-making based on sensationalism has been such a difficult trend to dispel because sensation is so entertaining a values. It is also easier to moralize and inflate towards either the good or the bad side of the spectrum. Some separation needs to occur, however. History must cease to be the place we turn to for morality tales and must start to become a place where facts can be debated and challenged, but on a factual basis. Ture, having a legendary figure to spew out civic texts may “bring the community together,” as Lisa Simpson observed, but it should not. History should not be the place where we hear about Kennedy’s ‘pure’ love for his family—it should be where we address his mistakes—and many existed—and take a dynamic role in preventing them for future generations. Morality tales can be told from any fictionalized source or from simple utilitarian logic, but history should be un-airbrushed fact. Legends may conceivably have had their place in the early years of the United States, binding together the rebels that formed it and their disparate descendants, but now that the country has a foundation, would it not be better to fully transfer the commonality that creates consent to the morals of the nation? In such a conglomerate nation, I would be far happier inviting a russian immigrant to sample my culture with declarations of freedom of worship and speech than I would be holding up the face of a man he may never have hear of and who may have been responsible for the deaths of many in his country. An truthfully, the American public is in no need of more nationalism. I think most citizens are blinded by their national pride, which is greatly affected by legends. Perhaps my time living internationally has given me an altered, slightly socialist view, but if this nationalism could be redirected towards a more global appreciation for humanity we might be able to do something productive with our time on earth. Instead, we perpetuate an elitist, excluding system of history in an increasingly elitist, excluding country; the legends must go.
Works Cited
Furstenberg, François. In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: New, 1995. Print.
Sutcliffe, Jane. John F, Kennedy. Print.
Your position seems reasonable to me, Laura, though I found myself wanting to have some more specific information about Kennedy’s mistakes and errors, particularly with regard to the Civil Rights Movement. You refer to these, and they came up in passing in the group discussion in class, but more evidence of them, drawn from your research, would definitely bolster your argument. Your post features a children’s book that you think portrays Kennedy inaccurately; presenting evidence a corresponding book or article you examined that does a better job would make that point more persuasive.