Noonan: JFK too hip for the room

Peggy Noonan

JFK was very much a man of his time. He was of the Sinatra generation; they got through the Depression, fought the war, and came home too hip for the room.

People think the boomers discovered sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but it was their parents, really--second-generation Americans home from Anzio and the South Pacific, beginning to leave the safety and social embarrassment of their immigrant parents' religion, informed by what they'd been taught as children about World War I and what happened at Versailles, influenced by Scott and Ernest and the lost generation.

Add some Marx and the man in the gray flannel suit, throw in some Vat 69, and some pills. Put that all together, shake it, add a pinch of Freud and pour it out; what you get is party. The greatest generation on Saturday night.

They were a great generation and they were more than that, and less. They created the boomers, the welfare state, the world we live in. They were one rocking group, and JFK was very much of them.