As we enter into the final run-up to the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I have a declaration to make. I am a buff. I can hold forth on the single bullet theory and tell you why it is certainly true. I can tell you why the Zapruder film confirms, rather than contradicts, the theory of a single shooter in the rear of the motorcade. I can engage you in a conversation about the identities of Door Man, Umbrella Man and the Hoboes. I can go on for longer than anyone should be able about the odd life of Lee Harvey Oswald.
So I was taken aback by Duane Dudek's review of Killing Kennedy, a film version of Bill O'Reilly's book that aired last night on the National Geographic Channel. The film, he writes, "doesn't tell us Jack."
Cute line but wrong. The film is derivative but it tells a story that most of us have not heard.
One of the things that has always struck me is that there is a public narrative about the assassination that is spectacularly false. Kennedy is often claimed - or implied - to be a martyr to some generalized notion of "American" or even right wing violence. Recently, there have recently been a few cringeworthy examples of that narrative in the liberal press (Salon, Slate and the New York Times) and the idea is advanced in a new book called Dallas 1963.
But the facts are these, Kennedy was shot by a Marxist who had defected to the Soviet Union and tried to defect to Cuba in the month before the assassination. In March of 1963, he had tried to kill former General Edwin Walker, an extreme right wing figure living in Dallas. In the months before the assassination, he had been trying to engage the Communist Party USA, Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Daily Worker (all of whom held him at arm's length) in support of his political activities.
I'll bet most of you didn't know that.
This isn't to say that the "left" killed Kennedy who was an enthusiastic Cold Warrior. Oswald was an angry man with delusions of grandeur whose pathologies expressed themselves in left wing terms. He
was actually as ignorant of Marxist philosophy as he was of capitalism.
But it does undercut the Kennedy as a martyr of some American or right wing "sickness" and, for that reason, is useful to know. "Killing Kennedy" is a (mostly) accurate portrayal of those facts (there is a bit of dramatice license and compression) and, contrary to Dudek's claim, will tell most viewers quite a bit that they did not know.
Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.
6 comments:
Ok. So you believe the conclusion of the Warren Commission ,while disregarding the HSCA conclusion that Kennedy was the victim of a probable conspiracy,as was MLK.
Please explain to me the following :
Why did Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach write to Bill Moyers three days after the murder that " The public must be satisfied that Oswald is the lone assassin;that he did not have confederates who are still at large and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial . "
The above sounds to me that they we not going to investigate any further.
J. Edgar Hoover told Johnson's man,Walter Jenkins, on Nov.24th, " The thing I am most concerned about,and so is Mr.Katzenbach,is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald was the real assassin. "
Hoover also testified before the Warren Commission that he believed the reason Oswald did not fire at Kennedy as the motorcade headed up Houston St. toward the depository was because a tree was blocking the field of fire.There are no six-story trees on Houston St.
Why no one of the medical personnel who attended to Kennedy described his head wound as a shot from the front. Not one !
Doctors at Parkland also describe an front entry wound to the neck of the president.
Please explain the photographs of a nick in the windshield of the presidential limo as well a bullet hole in the metal frame above the windshield. Oh yeah...only three shots, right ?
Explain how the remaining bullet fragments in Governor Connaly's wrist are more than that which are missing from the " Magic bullet " ?
How about the Secret Service agents who turned witnesses to the shooting away from running into the railroad yard. The Secret Service claimed that at no time were agents assigned to the knoll.
How does an old World War Two rifle with a terribly misaligned scope ( the FBI had to place three shims on the rifle to steady and ready the gun for any type of accuracy )hit a moving target where the last shot is the most effective ?
What of the 7.65 German Mauser that was discovered by two Dallas law enforcement officers on the 6th floor of the Depository ? Why it just happened to diasppear after the shooting.
How does a low to medium velocity weapon ( The Carcano ) fire what was to be discovered as high velocity bullets ?
Oswald never admitted to shooting the President as well as Officer Tippit. In fact, if you watch his press conference , you can see that he is visibly shaken when he is informed that he was indeed charged with killing JFK.
The list of questions go on and on.
Have a nice day.
What I meant was the doctors did not describe the head wound as a shot from the rear. My error.
Dave Zweifel at The Capital Times repeats the Left's revised history that JFK succumbed to the right-wing paranoia of Dallas 1963, where Adlai Stevenson was spat upon. (Cold warrior Scoop Jackson was spat upon in Madison in the late 1960s.) Zweifel references Gen. Walker, of course, never mentioning that Lee Harvey Oswald also tried to kill the general. A truly disgusting article: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/dave_zweifel/plain-talk-after-years-have-zealots-learned-a-lesson/article_43c17d3c-38c2-5190-852a-7af533d4ce66.html.
It was a left wing, Soviet defector that put the optional moonroof in Kennedy's head.
It's funny how Kennedy went to bust unions and cut taxes, yet the left spits on the right for his death.
It was someone who we think was a left wing, Soviet defector. Too much uncertainty and mystery to know for sure. It's disconcerting, anony 3:27 p.m., your ignoranace.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a Soviet defector and sympathizer.
Moonroof...that's hilarious.
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