On the Edge: JFK assassination

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60th Anniversary and Other Reads

Unbelievably, today marks the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination in Dallas. Of course, there are many articles and videos about it, and people can always view the original television coverage on YouTube channels.

I want to link this article from the Dallas Morning News noting the strange fact that not a single president of the United States has ever made a trip through Dealey Plaza, not even laying a wreath in memory of JFK. Not a visit to the 6th Floor Memorial in the old Texas Book Depository. The 11 presidents since JFK have made numerous trips to Dallas, but none have ever gone to The Site.

In my own life, in many ways the assassination seems like yesterday, but then in other ways it does indeed seem like a long, long time ago. I was only eight years old, almost nine, when it happened. I will never forget it.

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Cheaters just gotta cheat. Unbelievable this kind of fraud is allowed in women's sports.

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A new book is coming out which discusses among other things the feud between the Falwell brothers.

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55 Years Ago Today

The first hour or so of CBS coverage, which cut in during the airing of As The World Turns:

I was in third grade, in Mrs. Scott's class, in Phoenix Elementary School, Phoenix, Oregon. It was announced in the cafeteria, and we went home early that day.

Anybody Who Remembers the JFK Funeral in 1963 Remembers the Riderless Horse, Black Jack

(sometimes written as "Blackjack"). The man who was leading the horse, who proved to be a handful, talked about him the other day:

Carlson also had no idea the kind of fight Black Jack was going to give him.

"He'd always been a calm horse. He knew his job and he did it. No problem," Carlson said.

The Sunday after the assassination, the day Lee Harvey Oswald was shot, they followed the coffin to where Kennedy would lie in state. A metal gate resting against the wall of a tunnel they passed through came crashing to the ground.

"It made a hellacious noise," Carlson said. "Black Jack got spooked, he stayed wild for two days and then he was back to normal."

The next day, as they followed the caisson with Kennedy's coffin to Arlington, Carlson had to keep control of a terrified horse. Prior to the military, Carlson said his only experience with horses was seeing them in the movies.

JFK Assassination: Day 4

The rest of the funeral coverage was on this day in 1963. There was a full band in this procession, unlike the previous day, playing pieces like Chopin's Funeral March, and continuing the unforgettable drum roll.

Services at St. Matthew's Cathedral and march to Arlington National Cemetery to the graveside services are on this day's coverage. As an aside, at least one person agreed with me about Richard Cardinal Cushing. Fortunately there was television commentary translating whatever Cushing was trying to say during the "low mass."

It's almost too much to take after all these years.

There are nitwit "journalists" like Karen Tumulty, who is the same age I am and old enough to remember those days, who regard the webcast as "creepy" and tweeted as much. The moron was probably playing with her Barbie dolls during those four days and probably missed Yogi Bear more than she missed the president of the United States. She is probably still playing with Barbie dolls.

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The National Archives

has the complete Warren Commission Report online, for those who would like to read it and all of those exhibits.

After all of these years, there is still no evidence of a conspiracy.

That doesn't mean they will die out completely, however, no matter how utterly stupid they are.

JFK Assassination: Day 3

The birth of the crackpot conspiracy industry actually occurred on this day fifty years ago, when Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Station. Millions upon millions of us remember this which happened at around noon eastern time, 9 a.m. Pacific, and it was unforgettable. It was the first murder ever broadcast in American television history.

Although Ruby, himself a disturbed individual, thought himself a hero for killing JFK's and Tippit's killer, by silencing Oswald forever and denying him a trial, he started all of this bullshit about a conspiracy surrounding the assassination itself and a conspiracy surrounding Ruby's part in it. An Oswald trial would have stopped any belief in it, and his conviction and likely execution would have ended speculation once and for all. We wouldn't have the Stone/Garrison groupies to deal with these days. The "researchers" would have had to find another line of work. Sadly, though, it was not to be.

Ruby was tried and sentenced to death, but he died of cancer just a little over three years later, early in 1967.

Other events during Day 3 included a mass and the funeral cortege to the Capitol building, where JFK lay in state for the public to pay their respects. Literally hundreds of thousands of people did.

This is where it gets almost unbearable for anybody who remembers the assassination. The initial reports were traumatic enough, but then the reality sinks in. When you see Jackie Kennedy and the two children, John, Jr. and Caroline, and especially how little those kids were, it's almost too much.

I don't know how much of it I will be able to stand to watch.

Video:

link

TV Changed Forever That Day

As far as I am concerned, the quality of the JFK assassination coverage--despite the usual factual mistakes and the somewhat primitive presentation--is the gold standard by which all broadcast journalism today should be judged.

Of course everything is instantaneous and 24/7 today, but even something as horrendous as 9/11 does not compare in news coverage quality with the JFK assassination. Today's broadcast journalists are simply not in the same league as those who worked for the networks in the early 1960s, many of whom became "legendary."

You were not told what to think in those days. The journalists did their jobs under total chaos, and you were not treated like an idiot.

Oh, how I miss them. I have been watching CBS's 1963 coverage of the assassination rather than NBC's because I think it was better done. How I miss those journalists who have now passed from the scene: Walter Cronkite, Charles Collingwood (my favorite one of all), Harry Reasoner, Mike Wallace, George Herman, Winston Burdett, Daniel Schorr, Nelson Benton, Robert Trout, Robert Pierpoint, and others whose names escape me at the moment. Those who are still alive are way up there in years including Marvin Kalb, Roger Mudd, Dan Rather, and Richard C Hottelet (the last of the original "Murrow's Boys" who is still alive at this writing at 96). We will never see that great a group again.

The coverage changed television forever:

The seminal event took place at the dawn of a brave new media world. Only two months before the assassination, television's three broadcast networks expanded their nightly newscasts from 15 to 30 minutes. Working with film rather than instant video, correspondents in Texas expected to cover Kennedy's visit via carefully prepared segments on their evening broadcasts.

Instead, they scrambled -- and often struggled -- to cover a heart-wrenching story as it unfolded.

Robert MacNeil, then the White House correspondent for NBC, was on the media bus with the presidential motorcade when shots were heard in Dealey Plaza. He yelled for the driver to stop and bolted outside.

"The air was filled with the most intense sound of collective screaming," he recalls. "It was like nothing I ever heard before."

MacNeil also believes he had a brush with the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, at the Texas School Book Depository.

Jim Garrison and Clay Shaw for Dummies

I still read unbelievable comments about how Jim Garrison, the disgraced and disgraceful D.A. of New Orleans in the 1960s, is somehow a hero and told the truth about the JFK assassination, when in fact he was guilty of assassinating the character of an innocent man, Clay Shaw, in one of the biggest travesties in the history of American jurisprudence.

Anybody who peddles Oliver Stone's fictional account of the assassination as truth immediately discredits himself or herself, and I ignore it.

I am old enough to remember the Clay Shaw travesty.

For those who need to be reminded, here is a good article recounting the farce.

There are a few theories running around as to why Garrison decided to persecute Clay Shaw, who was a very popular person in New Orleans and is fondly remembered by many there, including the gay community.

Snip:

If Garrison held no evidence that Shaw was responsible for the conspiracy to kill the president, he did know that making the accusation would gain him instant recognition. If the trial did nothing else, it got Garrison's name known nationally.

Then there is this possibility:

The fact that Shaw was a gay man also made it perhaps more believable to some in the conservative city that he was guilty of something. Early on, Garrison had told a journalist that he thought the assassination might have been a "homosexual thrill killing."
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Though Garrison would say in the years afterward that he did not target Shaw because of his sexuality, the trial transcript shows multiple witnesses being asked about the fit of Shaw's pants.

And then there is this possibility, which could really be it considering how unstable Garrison really was:

Or maybe Shaw was chosen for another night at Brennan's, when paths had crossed.

On this night, Garrison had raised his voice not against book seizures, but against his wife. At a nearby table, Clay Shaw stood up. The servers in the front of the house watched as Shaw publicly broke up the fight. "They all saw it," recalled Ella Brennan, now 88. "Supposedly Clay got up, and said, 'Garrison, behave yourself.'"

The district attorney of New Orleans had been made a fool of publicly. Maybe the trial had been an effort to extract social vengeance.

Regardless of the reason, Garrison made sure he was going to ruin Shaw's life. Tragically, he did.

Shaw continues to be character assassinated to this day.

JFK Assassination: Day 2 Coverage

More live stream from CBS News. Saturday was probably the least "newsworthy" of the four days, as I remember. The major stories that day were that Oswald was charged with the murder and gave a press conference of sorts, and dignitaries paid their respects at the White House.

Jack Ruby could clearly be seen in the day's coverage in the hallway of the police station. So much for being a hit man for the mafia. He was actually on friendly terms with the police department. That was the reason he killed Oswald; the police didn't perceive him as being a threat at all. However, after he killed the killer, the police made damned sure nobody would knock Ruby off.

I will have to get up fairly early tomorrow to watch the repeat of the Oswald shooting in real time, fifty years later.

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Assassin Remembers What He Was Doing on 11/22/63

The Onion is so damned funny, but conspiracy theorists need to be marginalized and ridiculed for the crackpots and liars they are:

Saying that he will never forget the events of that fateful day, local man Edgar Denton, 81, told reporters Friday that, five decades later, he could still recall exactly where he was and what he was doing the day he shot and killed former U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

“Everyone my age has a story about where they were when JFK was assassinated, and I’m no exception,” said Denton, emphasizing that his memories of the Friday morning in which he shouldered his M14 rifle, brought the presidential motorcade into his sights, and sent a bullet into the brain of the 35th president of the United States remain as vivid as ever. “I remember I was in Dallas at the time. Specifically, I was positioned behind a fence at street-level in Dealey Plaza right when I gunned down the president.”

1964 CBS Report on the Warren Report

Very good presentation, with interviews included of key witnesses:

CBS Life Stream of JFK Coverage is Here

ALL of the original coverage by CBS as it happened to the minute:

link

JFK Assassination, Etc.

One of the saddest figures in the whole saga remains Oswald's widow, Marina. Although she has been married for years to her current husband and lives quietly in Texas, she has spent much of her life in near-seclusion. Although she always maintained what she told the Warren Commission was true and has never been disproven, she has subscribed to the belief that there was a "conspiracy" involving the JFK assassination.

I can't blame her much for wanting to believe that. It's simply too painful to cope with the reality that because you turned down your husband's pleas to relocate with the children to Dallas, you literally changed the course of history.

It's simply too big a burden to bear.

To give her a lot of credit, she has turned down all book and other offers that would have made her rich.
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I have utterly no sympathy for former senator Gary Hart who appears to swallow utter nonsense about conspiracy by chiding the media for not "following up" on Cuba, the Mafia, Russia, etc.

That's because, Mr. Hart, there was NOTHING to follow up ON.

Oswald did it. End of story.
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Dallas and other cities marked the 50th anniversary today:

Somber remembrances extended from Dallas to the shores of Cape Cod, with moments of silence, speeches by historians and, above all, simple reverence for a time and a leader long gone.

"We watched the nightmarish reality in our front yard," Rawlings told the crowd, which assembled just steps from the Texas School Book Depository building where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from the sixth floor at Kennedy's open-top limousine. "Our president had been taken from us, taken from his family, taken from the world."

Two generations later, the assassination still stirs quiet sadness in the baby boomers who remember it as the beginning of a darker, more cynical time.

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The presidential limo Kennedy rode in when he was murdered was later completely restored and overhauled. It was used by presidents until 1977, when it was retired. It is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum.

More information about the car is here.

JFK Assassination Film

David Wolper's documentary, Four Days in November, is about the best documentary covering those dark days in November 50 years ago. It was made in 1964.

I had this documentary on VHS, but of course it got lost in the move.

This Sums Up the Conspiracy Theories

Still More JFK Miscellaneous

Take that, Oliver Stone:

I suppose the kooks will say NBC News and the Clay Shaw jury were part of the vast government conspiracy when neither bought Jim Garrison's demented bullshit.

Garrison died in 1992, who until Stone's rewriting of history was disgraced and mostly forgotten.

Enough is Enough

After all these years, the "theory" Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter in the JFK/Tippit killings isn't a "theory" at all but FACT. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped the conspiracy industry to peddle more nonsense about "why" JFK died that fateful day in Dallas 50 years ago tomorrow.

Oswald's brother Robert says enough is enough:

But the facts are there. … What do you do with his rifle? What do you do with his pistol? What do you do with his general opportunity? What do you do with his actions? To me, you can’t reach but one conclusion. There’s hard physical evidence there. True, no one saw him actually pull the trigger on the president but … his presence in the building was there. What he did after he left the building is known: bus ride, taxi ride, boardinghouse, pick up the pistol, leave, shoot the police officer. Five or six eyewitnesses there. You can’t set that aside just because he is saying, “I’m a patsy.” I’d love to do that, but you cannot. …

He did not and would not talk to any of the interrogators about anything of substance. Anytime they brought anything up that pertained to the assassination of the president and the shooting of the police officer, he knew nothing about it. He would talk about anything else. He had the presence of mind then to do that.

[To those who say,] “He didn’t own a rifle.” We know he owned a rifle. You’ve got all kinds of documented evidence. They’ve gone to the extreme measures to prove that he owned that rifle. You’ve got the backyard picture. They’ve got the original negative. They’ve got the camera. You’ve got all the physical evidence that ties together.

If it was any other murder case other than the president of the United States, it would have been resolved right then. Consequently, people left it wide open. It’s good that people raise questions and say, “Wait a minute, let’s take a second look at this.” But when you take the second look and the third and the 40th and the 50th, hey, enough’s enough. It’s there; put it to rest.

People just need to give it up.

More JFK

We can learn a few things about JFK's leadership, however brief it was.

One thing I have noticed when I have watched the old footage from his days as president and even before is he almost always had a smile on his face. He seemed to be a happy person despite health issues, and I think people responded to him, and to Jackie, in kind. Of course JFK could be serious, but most of the footage shows him smiling at crowds, cracking jokes, and so forth. He might have had a temper, like Bill Clinton was known to have on occasion, but it's hard to picture it with JFK.

Alleged historians, as opposed to real ones, including fakers like Horowitz and Collier who had a political agenda to push under the guise of "biography," tried to tarnish the Kennedy family as a bunch of corrupt no-goods, sociopaths even, whose tragedies didn't deserve any kind of sympathy, that the grief many of us went through during those four days in November fifty years ago wasn't real. That "revisionist" con job was especially pronounced during the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president, in some ideologues' desire to tear down idols and put new ones in their place. It was pretty obvious it was a con job, and it always pissed me off. There is still some of that today, but it isn't as bad as it was twenty or so years ago. The Jack-Jackie marriage was especially vulnerable to b.s. examination, but almost all reliable accounts have it that they were getting much closer after the death of their infant son just a few months before the assassination. The body language in those old films prior to the assassination shows as much. JFK may not have always treated Jackie well, but it is obvious that towards the end he realized she was the best thing he had going for him. He was very proud of her, and it showed. Damn it to hell Oswald ruined that and God knows what Jackie went through all of those decades before she died reliving that murder. She must have suffered from PTSD and had nightmares for years. I hope I am wrong about that. I hope that she never had any memory of what happened. I hope she never saw the Zapruder film (I can't even look at the thing myself). I've seen interviews with Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who jumped aboard the limo as the assassination happened (and is the last surviving passenger), and he was practically in tears all these years later recalling what Jackie did after the third shot and why she did it. It's just too horrible to think that she remembered any of that.

Here are some short videos, from the Von Pein YouTube channel and elsewhere, about the events of that fateful day. These are local reports or amateur films:

JFK's breakfast speech coverage by KRLD:

Parking lot speech, audio only:

Love Field landing coverage from KRLD:

Clint Hill talks with Scott Pelley about the assassinaton:

Horrific beyond belief. I don't know how Jackie Kennedy ever functioned after that.

NOVA Had a Show a Few Days Ago About the JFK Assassination

It's pretty good:

Of course Oswald did it and acted alone, as we all know or should.

link

JFK Roundup

Some interesting interviews from the CBS website:

It's possible JFK's back brace may have cost him his life.

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A photographer recalls the famous shot he took of Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby.

Jackson would have one chance to capture Oswald on the move. His flash would go off just once.

"I knew it wouldn't recycle for maybe four to six seconds. I wouldn't be able to shoot an extra frame," he said. "When [Jack] Ruby stepped out of the crowd, my first thought is, he's going to block my view. He fired, and I punched the button."

Jackson said it was "bedlam" and he was "nervous" that he had taken his photo "too soon."

"We put the negative in the enlarger and carried the wet print out into the newsroom and everybody was pretty excited."

Jackson had captured the moment Jack Ruby's bullet entered Oswald's body, firing his shutter six-tenths of a second after his competitor snapped his shot.

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Luci Baines Johnson remembers what she did that day when JFK was assassinated.

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