42 Years Later: Another November 22

The American media thrives on anniversaries, remembrance of the same things passing again and again.

And yet today, November 22, 2005, 42 years after November 22, 1963, barely anybody has a comment. A Google news search on "November 22, 1963" turns up only 31 hits, hardly any from major media outlets. The silence is odd, unsettling in its deviation from the ritualized mourning common in our society.

With all the recent misfortunes and blind alleys, Americans are too tired or distracted to memorialize the past. For once, we are leaving the dead to rest.

John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. I am now three years older than he was on that day.