why I will never read Chris Mathews’ new book Jack Kennedy: “Elusive Hero”
by nikki meredith
I’m tempted to say I won’t read Chris Mathews’ new book, Jack Kennedy: The Elusive Hero because Mathews fawns and fawning is not a quality I desire in a biographer. If you don’t watch his show Hardball on MSNBC regularly, it might surprise you to learn that the in-your-face, swashbuckling, braggart is a world class fawner. Since Kennedy is a hero of his, I can’t help believing the book is chalk full of fawning.
I’m also tempted to say that I won’t read it because I question whether the book is totally truthful. One example: Mathews is taking credit for a scoop that isn’t a scoop. On Jay Leno the other night he said he had discovered that the origin of the famous quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” was not JFK himself nor Teddy White, Kennedy’s speechwriter who everyone had heretofore believed wrote it. The originator of the quote was the headmaster at Choate, the boarding school Kennedy attended. (He had implored young Jack and his cohorts to: “Ask not what Choate can do for you, ask what you can do for Choate.”)
But it wasn’t a scoop. Read the rest of this entry »