Everybody Shinny on His Own Side

I like John Fitzgerald Kennedy; I think his wife Jackie is a very pretty girl of the kind of pretty I don't much care about; I am as fond of Caroline as any middle-aged but middlingvigorous paterfamilias is of anybody else's small girl child, namely, not so's you could notice it; brother Bobby seems to me to earn his keep well if a trifle eagle-scoutishly, and brother Ted is a matter strictly between brother Jack and the electorate of Massachusetts, and absolutely none of my business.

J.F.K. reads, writes and speaks the American language with vigor (or vigah); if his action in Birmingham may have been something less than fearless, at least his prior conduct in the Meredith case was forthright (after what struck me as inexplicable temporizing); if his early handling of the Cuban situation was inept, his second go-round, as well as his more recent conduct on the Nuclear Test Ban were inescapable, bold, brave and brilliant and, thank God, correct.

On balance, he seems to me to be an excellent President to be having now, and I'm glad I voted for him.

But (my, wasn't that "but" a long time coming?), starting with his inauguration, I have been seeing a cloud considerably larger than a man's hand developing into a storm head which in my opinion should be seeded and dispersed instantly.

At the inauguration, a venerated poet whose work I admire was (concluded on page 219)everybody shinny(continued from page 123) run in onstage like a star and came off like a performing seal. It wasn't that he booted his act, it was that that honest man was playing in the wrong league. Poets are not adjuncts of political leaders; au, very au, contraire.

Jackie had been going about her business with what seemed to me exemplary decorum, being highly decorative, speaking the languages her husband did not speak, being, I feel sure, a perfect hostess, and whatever she was doing as a wife and mother is clearly between herself, her husband and her kids, although I could wish that she would explain in the near future that 21-gun salutes on the White House lawn are not some darling new kind of fireworks played to the balcony of the young.

She had been busy, I feel sure, with getting those horrible curtains the hell out and rearranging the furniture, and who's got a better right? She lives there.

Then, some time ago, she was trapped into being a conférencière-guide-shill for a television program, and all that needs to be said of that evening is what may be said of any amateur in the performing arts; she got an E for effort. The show also produced some lines of dialog that have got to go ringing down the corridors of time. Ringing, well, more tinkling, down the corridors of the White House was her line, "And this is the Green Room." "Oh," said Charles, the quickwitted Rover Boy, as they entered the room, "I can see why it's called the Green Room."

(Look, look, the wall is green. See, Charles, see, the drapes are green. The furniture is green. The carpet is green. The ceiling is green. The windows are green. The pre-dom-i-nant color is green. It is called the Green Room.)

But this is all interior decoration and of no more moment than showing up at the ballet opening.

What is of more moment is that at the opening of the National Cultural Center in Washington, Mr. Kennedy made a speech in which he said roughly that our particular hunk of American history would be remembered years from now, not for its political or economic accomplishments, but for its culture. One must suppose that by culture he meant what would go on in this culture factory — a sort of super Lincoln Center. (A young man of my acquaintance related to me what is wrong with Lincoln Center, apart from its debatable acoustics. "You don't make something called a cultural center," he said, "you build some buildings and hope that it will turn into a cultural center.")

Now look, Jack, you are President of the United States, and a damn good one. You can write the books you wish to, and read the ones you wish to, and make statements about them if you so choose. Your wife may hang whatever pictures she wants in the White House, and what she does about the furniture is OK with me. But it is no part of your or her function to be the cultural leader of the United States. It is, as yet, no function of any official of the United States to put his hooks, grubby or otherwise, on those of us who write, paint, sculpt, compose, sing, dance or take a chance. In fact, aside from allowing us a break on the income tax in the general neighborhood of a first-class citizen, the less these United States have officially to do with the artist, the better things will be for the artist and the republic.

The artist is the enemy of the Status quo, if he's an any-good artist, and from Plato to Khrushchev, any attempt to make him an appendage of government, no matter how kindly intentioned, produces damn bad art and worse artists.

I do not think it is the province of this or any other President of any state to fool around with judgments on the place of art, or the quality of culture, or its historic role. The next step, and it is not a very long one, is Khrushchev's shooting off his big bazoo about the evils of any paintings which do not show the noble Soviet worker building a new world, in a style which we now use only for doughnut stores.

Go, I say, Mr. President, open ballets and art exhibits, make dinners for Nobel Prize winners, and dress up for opening nights, say kind words to artists, spielers, troupers, and if you really like it, throw open one of those big playrooms in that big house to strolling players of quality. As a private citizen, do what you will about art.

But as President — I'll make you a deal, Jack. If you won't make statements about art. I won't buck for Commander in Chief.

You see, neither of us knows what part, if any, of our culture, if any, will be part of history. That comes under the Department of Posterity.