Re: [Paddlewise] JFK, Jr.

Hi Ralph,
I think you're definitely taking the high road on this one. Whenever there's 
a death or scandal involving a famous person, the media conduct an unseemly 
"race to the bottom" trying to find a new angle on the story. In their 
desperation they give fifteen minutes of fame to any moron with the most 
tenuous connection to the event:
"Yup, I'm Harry Hayseed, the janitor at the airport where JFK left from on 
his last flight. I replaced the toliet paper in the cubicle that might have 
been the one where JFK took his last dump..."
I remember about a year before his death, we had a disscussion about JKF's 
not wearing a lifevest and I made a crack at the time about "natural 
selection" in action, for which I was scolded off-line by one Paddlewiser. 
What an awful way to be semi-vindicated.


Philip Torrens
N49°16' W123°06'

>From: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com
>To: nyckayaker_at_envirolink.org, paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net
>Subject: [Paddlewise] JFK, Jr.
>Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 09:01:30 -0700
>
>I got an interesting call on Friday from the TV show Inside Edition.
>One of their research or other staff members called me to see if I would
>like to appear on camera to discuss a quote by me that appeared in a
>People Magazine's book(I didn't know they had them).
big snip

>I turned down the request for a on-camera interview for several reasons:
>
>1.  The article said that I was an acquaintance of JFK Jr, which I
>certainly was not.  I had seen him a few times, said hello while giving
>him his private space as we all did at the Downtown Boathouse where he
>kept his kayaks.  I had only really talked with him once, at length, a
>month or two before his death, and only because _he_ had approached me
>since I had been pointed out as knowing something about folding kayaks
>and he wanted info on some models.  So I could never with a straight
>face say I was an acquaintance.
>
>2.  I really don't want to speak ill of the dead and I am afraid it
>would come across as that in such a forum.  When we discussed the
>Kennedy paddling approach here on our paddling forums, I felt that this
>was a sophisticated enough audience with a discerning mindset to be able
>to speak frankly and constructively about the subject and keep it in
>context.  I think in a wider audience for a TV program that has a
>somewhat sensationalist slant (I think all the TV news magazines have
>this flaw to one degree or another) anything I said would come over
>differently, even tacky.  In my comments to my friend's voice mailbox, I
>had chosen my words with deliberation saying Kennedy's approach was
>"casual."  In retrospect, I guess I would also have been comfortable
>saying it was an "imprudent" approach to kayaking.  And it still rankles
>me that photos of him in articles and TV specials that show him kayaking
>depict him not wearing a PFD; they really give the wrong message about
>this life pursuit we all cherish.
>
>If I thought any good would come of such an TV appearance, I would have
>gone ahead but I just didn't feel that way.  Any comments?
>
>ralph diaz

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