12. \u00c2\u00a0Vaugn Meader. \u00c2\u00a0Everyone knows about how Lenny Bruce took to the stage that night, the audience holding their breath wondering how the ever irreverent and controversial comedian would address the day’s news, and how — after a long dramatic pause — Lenny Bruce opened by saying, “Man. \u00c2\u00a0Poor Vaugn Meader.” \u00c2\u00a0But has it ever occurred to anyone, that maybe, just maybe, Vaugn Meader was looking for an out? \u00c2\u00a0Because Vaugn Meader suffered indignities that other less successful Kennedy Impersonators did not know, and that the Truman and Eisenhower Impersonators that came before him could never even dream of. \u00c2\u00a0When someone approached any of them on the streets, and shouted, “Hey! \u00c2\u00a0Do that Impersonation!” — the equivalent of “Be My Monkey”– they could always say “No.” \u00c2\u00a0But with Vaugn Meader, things were much different. \u00c2\u00a0For Vaugn Meader so duplicated John F Kennedy in appearance and manners, and John F Kennedy was so much the popular culture icon, that he never even had that option. \u00c2\u00a0Vaugn Meader’s very presence was a John F Kennedy Impersonation. \u00c2\u00a0So it was never so much “Be My Monkey”, as it was “You are my Monkey”. \u00c2\u00a0And this was a nightmare that followed Vaugn Meader wherever he went, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. \u00c2\u00a0So the small fortune that Vaugn Meader was earning from his Kennedy routine — originally just a way to make the most of a crappy situation — was increasingly only exasperating the desperation — locking Vaugn Meader into this pre-determined identity that had oh so cruelly been foisted upon him, and trapping Vaugn Meader into a one sided dependency. \u00c2\u00a0Because what was Vaugn Meader to John F Kennedy? \u00c2\u00a0Nothing! \u00c2\u00a0And what was John F Kennedy to Vaugn Meader? \u00c2\u00a0Everything! \u00c2\u00a0And for Vaugn Meader, this imbalance was an equation that needed to change. \u00c2\u00a0If there was one lesson from the field of Metaphysics that Vaugn Meader has learned, it was this: \u00c2\u00a0that Vaugn Meader and John F Kennedy could not long co-exist on the same physical plane. \u00c2\u00a0And one or the other was going to have to go. \u00c2\u00a0And it sure as Hell wasn’t going to be Vaugn Meader! \u00c2\u00a0So, as the years rolled on, and the albatross grew tighter and tighter, the ball and chain heavier and heavier, with each White House game of touch football with the Kennedy kids and each game of Nuclear Chicken with Khrushchev twisting that knife in further and further, what had started out as short fleeting thought bursts inched their way into the status of epiphany, and then snow-balled into a concrete plan of action. \u00c2\u00a0What had began as a whisper heard on tour in the corn fields of Iowa, had echoed and swelled into a chorus of voices in states North and South, East and West — voices that could no longer be ignored; no longer be denied, and which arrived at its cacophony and clearest enunciation during the Presidential Caravan in Dallas, Texas. \u00c2\u00a0Voices telling Vaugn Meader, “Yes We Can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
12. \u00c2\u00a0Vaugn Meader. \u00c2\u00a0Everyone knows about how Lenny Bruce took to the stage that night, the audience holding their breath wondering how the ever irreverent and controversial comedian would address the day’s news, and how — after a long dramatic pause — Lenny Bruce opened by saying, “Man. \u00c2\u00a0Poor Vaugn Meader.” \u00c2\u00a0But has it ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13499,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13498\/revisions\/13499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}