Kennedy? There was a Kennedy, also named John, who had coached The Hawks to their first ever premiership two years earlier whose players were called The Commandoes and brutalised their opponents mercilessly—everyone except Hawk supporters would have liked to have seen him shot. There was a Graham Kennedy who had been for some years the most popular television personality in the nation—his unwatched competitors would have certainly desired to have shot him. I was sure I didn’t know any others.
 “Which Kennedy?” I asked.
 “The Yank one,” the butcher scoffed.
Indeed, the voices emitted from the radio were distinctly American.
    Oh, that Kennedy. The one they made the movie about, and, if I had a right one in mind, a rather handsome and pleasant fellow. The bloke who represented our side in the Cuban Crisis. So what? It was in another country and on the other side of the world.
    So a great deal, as it turned out.

“Perhaps it was the effect he had on the others that impressed me. They were clever people, worldly people, yet they listened to him like children.”
“What does he do? Does he preach? Work?”
“I don’t know that either. I met him the night before I left California and I haven’t seen anyone who was there that evening since.”
“But now you think you want to go back and find out?”
“Yes. I’ve thought about him a great deal these last few weeks. You’d think one would forget such a thing, but I haven’t.”
“What was his name?”
“Cave, I think. John Cave.”
“A pair of initials calculated to amaze the innocent.”
   The hoary old yarn of a modern Messiah who creates a new religion in the USA, thus causing history to repeat itself, was the only work by Gore Vidal I’ve ever bothered to read. And even that was far too American for my taste. I just don't like being told how much I love putting my hand on my heart when I see the flag; or that I walk on sidewalks; or that my footy team has cheerleaders. Nor do I like  being assured of how much I idolise political leaders, and trust in God. Vidal makes about one such assumption every paragraph, and it sickens me.