Introducing
Life is unfair: the truth and lies about John F Kennedy
By Eddy Joseph Neyts
If John F. Kennedy had lived to read the millions of words that have been written about him – the myth-making, the debunking of his presidency and the revelations about his personal life – he would almost certainly have been dismayed by some of it. But as an avid student of history himself, he would have accepted that not all historians would approve of his policies and actions.
The many books that have been written about the JFK Presidency until now generally fall into three categories. There are those written by the “Camelot” historians, who saw Kennedy as a man who inspired hope for the future, a man with a mission, an idealistic, passionate human being, a man who wanted peace and to put an end to the Cold War, and who intended to withdraw from Vietnam. Then there are those penned by the ‘’revisionists”, who claim that Kennedy’s presidency was more style than substance, who found him to be a compulsive womanizer, an amphetamine addict, a liar, reckless, ruthless, corrupt, a self-indulgent hypocrite intent on self-aggrandizement. At last there are the political realists, where JFK comes out rather well because they saw him growing in the office learning from his mistakes – an above-average-rated president and certainly one of the few transitional presidents who remain popular after their death.
So where does the truth lie? Which is the real Kennedy? The answer to those questions can be found in this book, which chronicles the life and actions of JFK in much greater detail than has ever been done before, drawing on extensive research, multiple sources and original documents to provide an in-depth, fact-based and unbiased analysis of his thoughts, words and deeds.
My own conclusion? After thoroughly studying John F. Kennedy’s presidency, I think he left America better than he found it; he made Americans feel better about themselves and optimistic for the future. Almost sixty years after he entered the Oval Office for the first time, there is no sign that his hold on the imagination of the American people is waning: the cult of personality that surrounded him then still surrounds him today, and his influence remains strong. He was no saint, but nor should he simply be dismissed as a sinner. The truth lies somewhere in between.
He was an imperfect figure, as a man and as a president. Yet for me, he was still an extraordinary human being- extremely intelligent, charismatic, graceful; a man who, despite health problems throughout his life, never ever complained. He inspired, and will continue to inspire, future generations of Americans to believe in the power of government, and to share the conviction that politics can truly be a noble profession.
But readers of this book can judge for themselves. Drawing as it does on so many different sources, books, papers and articles by both renowned and lesser-known authors, original texts, speeches and first-hand accounts of what happened, the result is the most detailed account yet of JFK’s life and actions.
It will serve as a reference book for anyone – future historians, students of politics and those who are simply as fascinated by this amazing man as I am – who wants to understand the man and a remarkable period in American history.
In my book, I paint a picture of President Kennedy not as a myth, but as a man. For, as he himself said at Yale University on June 11th 1962: “The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”
Why am I the person to write this book?
Like so many people of my generation, the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated is indelibly etched in my memory. When my mother came upstairs to my room to deliver the terrible news, like so many people all over the world, I wept.
His death ignited a deep passion in me. I began collecting newspapers, articles, magazines and books
about him, reading everything I could find on this amazing man. As time passed, hundreds of books were written on his life, family and his administration, and I bought every one of them I could lay my hands on. Today, my private library is certainly the richest private collection on the subject.
Why do we need this book?
My goal in this, my own account of his life, is to be as accurate and detailed as possible about historical facts, dates and developments (something which cannot be said of many of the books published on this subject in the past 60 years), to provide as neutral and complete a picture as possible of his words and deeds, and to uncover some new truths about his political accomplishments and failures.
I believe that I have certainly come closer to the truth about JFK than others. Never before has this subject been tackled so thoroughly, in order to help a new generation of readers gain a better and more accurate understanding of the man, based on the historical facts alone.
This strictly factual approach based on extensive research avoids the sensationalism that has marred so many other books on JFK, the emphasis on the salacious, the manipulation of the evidence to suit the author’s own interpretation of events, that has created such a distorted picture of this remarkable president in many people’s eyes.
I am aware that writing another Kennedy book is a very difficult undertaking. It is a daunting task, trying to find an original approach, and not being a scholar, nor a history professor. Instead I have been driven by a deep love of this history. Trying to establish the truth about JFK is like a drug to me.
I have the utmost respect for historians, but I want to confront various authors, historians, and scholars and challenge what they have written about many events surrounding the Kennedy administration, including those related to Cuba, Vietnam, African-Americans, the race to the moon, and personal issues such as his health and his womanizing, all of which are explored and chronicled in detail in this book. In each chapter, my extensive research has served to uncover fabrications, contradictions, inaccuracies and inconsistencies, and thus to set the record straight.
Finally, each chapter of the books will contain some photographs which will help to explain what the chapter is about. These photos illustrate moments that altered their subject’s lives. The photograph on the first cover is one such illustration, as well as an explanation of the title I have chosen for my book: “Life is Unfair.”
Depicted is a two-year-old John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. climbing around the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, with young John-John looking through the small door. John Kennedy Jr. said this was one of the memories of his father: “He had this desk in the Oval Office, and I just remember the inside: you could climb around in it. He used to give us chewing gum because my mother didn’t like us to chew gum. So we used to go over the Oval Office at night, and he’d feed us gum under the desk.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. died on July 16 1999, when the airplane he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the Coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His wife Carolyn Bessette and her sister Lauren were also killed. He was on his way to attend the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy, the daughter of his father’s brother Robert Kennedy. He was 38 years old; in the prime of his life. How can life be more unfair?
The cover of book two (Jack & Jackie with the young Caroline) shows an illustration of President Kennedy’s love for the sea, as his brother Edward described it : “President Kennedy loved the sea with a mariner’s love. He was close to it throughout his life. As a boy he would swim and sail in the waters of Nantucket Sound, off our home on Cape Cod. In college, he successfully competed in these sports. He chose the Navy for his military service, and in World War II, at Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, he saw the sea in all its fury, nearly losing his life to it.”
In Newport, Rhode Island, September 14th, 1962, on the occasion of the American Cup Races, President John F. Kennedy spoke these beautiful words on his love of the sea : “I really don’t know
why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea – whether it is to sail or to watch it – we are going back from where we came.”