THIS IS “JFK WEEK” on The History Channel, which is not the only media outlet obsessed with the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. On Thursday, ABC News has a two-hour special analyzing the circumstances of the crime–running it against CBS’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” Thanks to the intrepid folks at NBC News, who have been busy collecting celebrity remembrances, we now know how Leslie Uggams felt on that fateful day in 1963. How ironic, then, that during a week the Kennedys would rather forget, the family’s most famous in-law was sworn in as the 38th governor of California. Even more ironic: for Arnold Schwarzenegger, yesterday’s inaugural wasn’t exactly Kennedyesque, not if it was meant to signal Camelot’s Second Coming.

JFK entered office on a bitterly cold winter day; the Governator benefited from milder temperatures. There was no parade through downtown Sacramento with PT-109 replicas; the tank that Schwarzenegger owns, from his days in the Austrian army, stayed in storage. Robert Frost didn’t read a poem, but Maria Shriver did recite a Maya Angelou work, prompting flashbacks to Bill Clinton’s first inaugural. Jackie Kennedy preferred to keep her children out of the spotlight; Arnold and Maria’s four children led a group of kids in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Nor was there a white-tie ball last night in Sacramento; no Frank Sinatra orchestrating a star-studded gala. Schwarzenegger’s “rat pack,” up from Los Angeles for the big day, included Rob Lowe, Tom Arnold, Jamie Lee Curtis, Linda Hamilton, Kelsey Grammer, and Vanessa Williams, who sang the national anthem.