At this point, for our presentation, I’m looking back on some of my older posts in order to narrow down some talking points.
~Dying young as a politician, could be an interesting topic, if the focus is held on the political aspects of his life that were cut short, though, as was mentioned in the meeting, dying young is very likely to be a hot topic amongst the other groups and we don’t want to repeat what they’ve said. We could talk about how the possibilities of the time he did not get to finish as President was much more effective than what he could have accomplished if he had survived.
~Comparing his assassination to that of others in history, like Lincoln’s, since I looked into that, or even to other historical leaders outside the United States, I could look into that. How different the reactions were, because of the timing of their deaths, but how we get to remember them as great men, as Peter said in his post this week, because they never had to deal with the aftermath of certain events. So I suppose this is very similar to the first topic I suggested.
~Is the conspiracy what makes JFK still a relevant legendary American? There are a lot of interesting possible “what if”s here. For example, if it had been straightforward assassination, all evidence pointing to one man with a gun and a mission, how long would the nation have mourned? Would his memory just be mourned in the moment, and then moved past, if there wasn’t all this mystery behind his death?
~If we use the essay I was looking into last week, we can discuss how crises can affect an entire nation, and bring it together, and if this is a reason JFK’s death still lingers in the nation’s memory. The pulling together, the national mourning, the services of all denominations– the whole nation was affected by JFK’s death. Is this the reason everyone remembers so clearly where they were on that day? And why exactly did everyone feel as though they’d lost one of their own?
I think the last two are the best to focus on, the first two could probably be combined if we wanted to use them, and the second to last one connects really well to what Peter was saying in his blog post this week and works well as a continuation off of the first two subjects.