The Whiskey Incident

[Joseph McBride]

THE WHISKEY INCIDENT: I've sometimes wondered what John F. Kennedy would have said about his assassination. My father, Raymond McBride, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal, when he had time for one question at a reception before the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner at the Milwaukee Arena in May 1962, asked President Kennedy if he worried abut being assassinated, and he said he didn't, because if he thought about it, he couldn't do his job. (Maybe he should have thought about it more than he did, especially with all the warning signs in November 1963.) While researching my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE KILLERS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT, I found out about a long-forgotten incident in the 1960 campaign. A whiskey glass was thrown at Kennedy and others in an open car in a motorcade by a man in a crowd of Nixon supporters while Kennedy was being driven to the Milwaukee Auditorium and Arena on October 23 (the same location, coincidentally, where former president Theodore Roosevelt was headed when he was shot in an assassination attempt during the 1912 campaign). In the 1960 incident, a campaign aide, William Feldstein, was hit in the head by the glass, and JFK and others in the car were splattered with the whiskey. According to Feldstein, "Kennedy was very incensed. He turned and aske me, 'Are you all right?' Then he turned to his sister [Eunice Kennedy Shriver] and said: 'Can you imagine anything like that?'" I end INTO THE NIGHTMARE with this incident and how Kennedy, after wiping his face, reacted to the man who attacked him and the others in his car. I found a photo on microfilm of a Milwaukee newspaper (too big to be posted here). It shows JFK reaching across the car to hand the (unseen) man the glass. The caption says, "Jack Returns Glass With Verbal Punch. Sen. Kennedy, slightly doused Sunday when a glass of whisky was thrown into his open car while his parade was forming at N. Water St. and E. Wisconsin Ave., returns the glass to a man, calmly saying: 'Here's your glass, sir. You're not fit to be an American.' Story appears on Page 1, Part 1. UPI Telephoto."

Edited February 27, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[Jamey Flanagan]

Great stuff! Never heard this story before! Haven't read your book yet but I've watched as many of your long YouTube videos on the Tippit killing as I could find! Impeccable work!

[Joseph McBride]

Thank you very much, Jamey.

 

[W. Niederhut]

20 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

THE WHISKEY INCIDENT: I've sometimes wondered what John F. Kennedy would have said about his assassination. My father, Raymond McBride, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal, when he had time for one question at a reception before the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner at the Milwaukee Arena in May 1962, asked President Kennedy if he worried abut being assassinated, and he said he didn't, because if he thought about it, he couldn't do his job.

     I wonder if JFK's stoicism/resignation about being assassinated (or having a whiskey glass thrown at him) was an outgrowth of his lifelong struggles with spinal pain and serious health problems.  From what I have read, he seems to have developed a kind of stoical indifference (perhaps denial?) about illness and personal danger from an early age.  He was a true hero in WWII, but his indifference to personal danger may have also played an indirect role in his murder in Dallas.

      He, obviously, knew that he was in "nut country" on November 22, 1963.

      And JFK must, surely, have known about the 1963 assassination plot in Chicago--unless the details were not reported to him.  Yet, it didn't deter him from flying to Texas in November.

    His brother Joseph seems to have been similarly stoical about death-- even volunteering for a suicide bombing mission over Belgium in WWII.

Edited February 27, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Joseph McBride]

JFK's favorite poem:

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

BY ALAN SEEGER

 

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

 

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

 

God knows 'twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear ...

But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Source: A Treasury of War Poetry (1917)

[Joseph McBride]

Alan Seeger, born in New York, was killed in France on July 4, 1916, at the age of 28, while fighting with the French Foreign Legion

against the Germans in the Battle of the Somme. This poem was published posthumously. Pete Seeger was his nephew.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[Benjamin Cole]

JFK (and his brother) served in WWII, when actual citizens served in the military, and not a   mercenary class. 

There were advantages to the draft military, and one was citizens like JFK who were not cowed by brass and titles---JFK had been in the military, and nearly killed in various events.  

The Bush Jr.s , the Obamas, and Trumps, the Bidens are at a disadvantage. 

I have never been comfortable with a mercenary military, for various civil and moral reasons.  

Perma-wars are one result. The insulting misnomer of an "all-volunteer" military is ubiquitous. But not accurate. 

I do not begrudge anyone seeking economic security in the shredded US economy, nor do I malign any individual's patriotism. These guys in the US military could be me, with a turn of events here or there in my life. 

But a citizen-soldier draft military is the true US tradition (although the US Constitution goes even further, and suggests (unpaid) volunteer citizen militias are preferred). In fact, founding father George Mason refused to sign the US Constitution as it did not have an actual prohibition on a standing army. 

The modern professional military-intel-foreign policy-globalist blob is not a US tradition nor true to our heritage, nor good for average US citizens and taxpayers.

 Don't look for Biden to shake it up. 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

I've read many American's drank their supper on 11/22/63.

Notice Jake Hooker on the stand up bass.