Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're NOT out to . . .

[NotHardUp1]

A program on PBS' American Experience this week caught the corner of my eye. It is Taken Hostage: An American Experience Special.

Usually, I am a student of the Iran Crisis studies, and was very much affected by it in the early 80's as it unfolded. As a Freshmen in college, we hosted a lecture by an Iranian diplomat who caused a riot at my campus when Iranians from several states away came to protest his lecture, and prevented it by interrupting.

That's prologue. The PBS documentary seemed conspicous to me. The hostage crisis is old news, really old news, has been explored ad nauseum in the past four decades, and this seemed like bouncing the rubble. This particular program includes a lot of CGI, dramatizing the military's disastrous rescue mission that ended in the desert with death and disappointment.

It's not the first time political programming's timing looked, er, political, like old score settling, or airing criticisms at strategic times to mar a leader's legacy. In this case, the target would be the already dishonored President Carter, who is obviously on his last legs in his late 90's. If petty vendettas seem unlikely motives, look closer. It happens all the time, as factions lob attacks over the wall in parting. Winston Churchill was attacked in his dotage by as insulting portrait showing him disheveled and sloppy, and was so degrading, his widow had it burned in the garden after his death to prevent it from being preserved and viewed. Poliltics is nothing if not petty (See Donalt Trump's presidential races, term as president, post-presidential whining.)

In particular, the Kennedy family worked tirelessly to ensure the Carter Administration would fail, and opposed him the entire time he served. By no means did that exempt him from the consequences of his own policies, but it occurred nonetheless, namely because his "outsider" election cost Ted Kennedy the White House. The irony of both of them being the most liberal Democrats of their era is not lost on observers.

So, I went looking for the source of this new documentary, to see if it had ties to Kennedy influence. Whereas we do see what we want to see, find what we expect to find, it was a bit easy in this case. Robert Stone produced this. He is a scion of a Princeton University professor, grew up there, a famously pro-Kennedy stronghold. Unsurprisingly, he was commissioned to create a 24-part installation on the JFK presidency at Boston. His ties are pretty overt.

If the malice presumed by the timing of the documentary seems paranoid or delusional, I accept that assessment, but that doesn't change the reality that the most likely suspects are in fact all over this.

The Iran Crisis was an unmitigated disaster. It justly punished America for decades of manipulation and meddling in the MidEast, and culminated in the Carter years. All that being true, it doesn't mean the Kennedy pride and money does not have a quiet hand in reminding the nation of it vividly on the cusp of Carter's soon to be state funeral. He is likely to pass within the year, or two from the looks of him. This truly looks lik a parting jab.

 

[backagain]

I think you are putting things together that are not there. I am from Massachusetts and the Kennedy's have become irrelevant in politics here. Joe Kennedy II got out in 1999, Joe Kennedy III lost to Ed Markey in 2020 for state Senator, Patrick Kennedy left the political arena in 2011 (Rhode Island Rep). The family political dynasty ended a while ago.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

I think you are putting things together that are not there.

And BINGO was his name-o.

 

[Araucaria]

Much has been made of Jimmy Carter's mishandling of the Iranian hostage crisis. But there is one question I always come back to. The United States did not go to war with Iran over it. I keep thinking that If anyone else was president at that time, there would most likely have been an invasion and long-term occupation, with tragic consequences for both Iran and the U. S. Not to mention the destabilizing effects on the Middle East and beyond. Indeed, analysts suggested that the Soviet Union figured on an imminent U. S. invasion of Iran, on their southern doorstep, in their decision to invade Afghanistan at that time.

I cannot speak to the possibility of a Kennedy vendetta against Jimmy Carter, but Ted Kennedy did challenge Carter for the presidency in the 1980 Democratic Primaries. There is no question that the hostage crisis hurt Carter politically. And then there is the economy, the other thing analysts and pundits look to. The Iranians imposed an oil embargo, and got some of their friends to go along, which caused fuel prices to skyrocket in the U. S., which resulted in high inflation in general. But all this opened the door, not for Kennedy, but for Ronald Reagan. More generally, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was the beginning of a power shift politically from the North to the Sunbelt states, which was probably working against the Kennedy dynasty.

 

[opinterph]

Taken Hostage | American Experience | PBS

Revisit the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Unfolding like a political thriller, the story is told through the eyewitness accounts of those who took part in the events.

www.pbs.org

 

[NotHardUp1]

Even the blurb PBS put out suggests it's not a documentary. Since when do documentaries tout being "thrillers"?

Recreating a helicopter crash into a C-130 and the copter crew burning to death in full view of the soldiers isn't informative -- it's sensationalist, which isn't directly related to the possible angle from Kennedy influence, but helps illustrate how it had to be pitched to justify even being aired. It's simply not news or really new information. And, I've never met a younger generation person who had any interest at all in the hostage crisis. It's not a sensational bit of history like a war or the crash of the Hindenburg.

Carter had a real trifecta against him. The oil embargo begged for us to conserve energy, and proud Americans chafed at the suggestion we needed to carpool, turn the thermostat down, or put solar panels on our roofs (much less the White House.) They took the president's leading by example to be embarrassing, and not projecting the power of the imperial country everyone imagined we should be. The second strike was his advocacy of human rights, which really sealed the conversion of the Bible Belt to the GOP. His use of Rosalyn to counsel him on equal rights and his view of the separation of church and state rankled the self-appointed Moral Majority. The third blow was the inflation which began before he took office and was well on its way due to the policies of Nixon and the economic realities of the 70's.

Then, as now, the president was blamed for inflation, much worse double-digit inflation that made today's growth look mild by comparison. Reagan rode in on a wave of pseudo-patriotic militarism, giveaways for the rich (trickle-down economics) and supposed mom/apple pie/God-and-country populism that wasn't bothered by his actual astrology practices. Carter actually led instead of pandering to America's worse tendencies of selfishness, traits which today are rightly blamed for the global warming we are most certainly causing with every housewife driving a small tank SUV, and consumerism run rampant across the board.

But I digress.