But here's something more subtle that I only noticed on the third listen:
Zapruder's film I seen night beforeI have never forgotten the Lyndon Johnson quote: "That’s the ugliest thing I ever saw." He was looking at a portrait of himself — seeing it for the first time.
Seen it thirty-three times, maybe more
It's vile and deceitful, it's cruel and it's mean
Ugliest thing that you ever have seen....
I'm just trying to understand the song, not unravel the mystery of John Kennedy's death. I did once write on the blog: "I must say that when I read 'The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. IV' by Robert A. Caro, I kept wanting to hear more about how LBJ managed to avoid being the target of suspicion. There's so much material in that book that makes you think he had the motivation."
I don't think the song is better if it is intended to push this theory. Quite the opposite. And I tend to hear in it some sort of notion that we all killed Kennedy, but I don't want to go there because I happen to know that Dylan is on record hating that idea:
when I spoke of Lee Oswald, I was speakin of the times
I was not speakin of his deed if it was his deed.
the deed speaks for itself
but I am sick
so sick
at hearin “we all share the blame” for every
church bombing, gun battle, mine disaster,
poverty explosion, an president killing that
comes about.
it is so easy t say “we” an bow our heads together
I must say “I” alone an bow my head alone
for it is I alone who is livin my life
I have beloved companions but they do not
eat nor sleep for me
an even they must say “I”...
Posts
101 comments:
And I tend to hear in it some sort of notion that we all killed Kennedy,..
Where did you get that notion...from Mick Jagger?
that's a reach, if you look at the zapruder film, you can see what he's getting at, no I don't put much stock in either barr McMillan's or roger stone's speculations, which are a mirror of carl oglesby,
Oh hell no it was going around in the media. I remember it well and was still young and stupid enough to ponder whether it was true.
But of course, "we" wasreally those other, awful Texans and conservatives who wanted it to happen.
Dylan’s record in the arena is pretty awful.
Rueben Carter was guilty. The song “Hurricane” wreaked havoc on the families of the murder victims’ families. They continue to be hounded and insulted to this day. Carter was convicted not once but twice. He should have spent the rest of his life in jail or have been executed.
This part of Dylan’s career, the social justice years, is best left unspoken.
And I really get tired of people saying "we" when they know damn well who they mean and it's not themselves.
"Where did you get that notion...from Mick Jagger?"
Yes, I was quite aware that I wrote essentially a line from "Sympathy for the Devil." It's a thought out there in the world, and it was there before "Sympathy for the Devil" too. It's something that Dylan was already talking about in 1963, long before SFTD. And it could make its way into this song. If you've listened to "Murder Most Foul" a few times, let me know what you think Dylan is saying about the Kennedy assassination. I'm just saying that I WOULD drift to the theory that somehow we are all responsible for what happened, but I resist that theory because I think Dylan expressed contempt for it at the time.
another recent meditation on the matter comes from Stephen hunter's third bullet, he posits a cell of brahmin operators in the company, responsible for the matter, headed by a former poet type like angleton named meachum, who do the deed because they feel jfk would be a disaster on Vietnam, that turns out to be a prophetic mistake, like the king in the perseus tale,
The LBJ theory was malarkey from the get go.
Jackie Kennedy, who had ridden in the back of the hearse with her husband's body, follows the casket up the steps and heads for the [Presidential] bedroom. She is shocked to find Johnson, Fehmer, and Youngblood inside it—with Johnson, depending on the account, either still on the bed or having just lifted himself off it. The Pains In Baines Showed Mainly On The Plane
I'm with Bob.
"Zapruder's film I seen night before
Seen it thirty-three times, maybe more
It's vile and deceitful, it's cruel and it's mean
Ugliest thing that you ever have seen...."
Now that's poetry. For people who don't like poetry.
Give that man a Nobel.
Why do you Ann Althouse ascribe such signifance to this song, or to any of Bob Dylan's songs?
The incandescent Dylan of the first half of the '60s disappeared after the drugs, the motorcycle spill, and the time off hiding up in Woodstock. A different guy emerged; I respect him as an entertainer, but whatever that was that was tearing through him in the first half of that decade, it was gone and never returned.
Not faulting him, it was extraordinary and he himself couldn't keep pace with it. When he feared he was killing himself, he had to change. But for the rest of his career, he became an unusual singer who did a lot of work touring and reformatting his music into different arrangements and approaches. None of it especially noteworthy, to this guy's tastes.
And maybe somewhere along the way, the JFK story seemed to carry some of the same story as his own trajectory. A teensy bit of pop psychology, I know. But this guy's work does not sustain a Nobel Prize, nor even heavy analysis of his intentions.
Obviously you differ but I have no idea on what basis.
from the author
But what does it say if you play it backwards?
Kai
She sings the songs that remind her of the good times
She sings the song that remind her of the better times.
In other words: a break from covid covid covid trump trump trump. I don’t blame her!
Shouting Thomas, 1:13, absolutely right.
From your link:
"On the other hand, Phillip is a friend of mine who went to Cuba. I’ll stand up and to get uncompromisable about it, which I have to be to be honest, I just got to be, as I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don’t know exactly where —what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too – I saw some of myself in him. I don’t think it would have gone – I don’t think it could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw things that he felt, in me – not to go that far and shoot."
Was Dylan saying that he, like LHO, felt like killing Kennedy because of Cuba?
The biggest mystery of the Kennedy assassination is why Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oswald a Marxist killed jfk, in a rather gruesome way, sirhan a Palestinian, to his brother, and ray an ex con and a racist killed king, now we can spin baroque tales, ala DeLillo, or Pynchon but the reality is clear,
LBJ was close to being arrested and ruined for his part in the Billy Sol Estes mass fraud. He had no hope of being the VP in 1964. His only way to survive was a coup d’etat removing JFK and The hated Bobby Kennedy.
Much like DJT, the power brokers from the CIA to the super wealthy were in JFK and His brother’s sights to be destroyed. Many think JFK had to die to remove Bobby. But Barr McClellans life time insider investigation pins it on LBJ cooperating with Bush I. As the CIA point man.
Looking at this again , there popped up another book coming out in May by McLellan. No audible so far. Don’t miss it.
I don't think it's necessary that we impute to Dylan personally the belief that LBJ was involved in the murder of JFK.
Dylan is writing a song. He's telling a story. I'm sure the belief that LBJ was involved with JFK's murder plays well with a goodly fraction of his audience.
I also don't think it was important if Dylan actually believed that John Wesley Hardin never shot an honest man. I just wanted to say that for the public record.
But what does it say if you play it backwards?
Notlob.
Maybe Dylan is just trying to get laid?
"It's just this war... And that lying son of a bitch Johnson ! "
Suspicion that LBJ was involved in the assassination was nurtured by Barbara Garson's play "MacBird" (1967). She herself later said that she'd never taken the notion seriously and that, in any event, it would have been the least of LBJ's crimes.
https://archive.org/stream/nsia-MacBird/nsia-MacBird/MacBird%2005_djvu.txt
But Barr McClellans life time insider investigation pins it on LBJ cooperating with Bush I. As the CIA point man.
This must be the reason behind one comment I read about the song that said the wolfman wasn't the DJ, but was meant to refer to the senior Bush's secret service code name, Timberwolf.
As for Dylan’s song, it was as good as his best ones in hitting home with words sung to music. And as my son says,Dylan cannot sing. But as I told him, he sure can write words.
The biggest mystery of the Kennedy assassination is why Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald.
Yes, just kinda of a black hole there, isn't there? I think Ruby died in prison and we got nothing more out of him.
I used to work for one of his old nightclub partners in Dallas. He'd get all sentimental and, Jack wouldn't do that, he was a sweet guy, he wouldn't - dude, it was on TV. Oh but that's not like him etc.
Then he'd swear it had to be a conspiracy, everyone knows that, but sweet Jack Ruby had nothing to do with it. Oh-kay.....
Was Dylan saying that he, like LHO, felt like killing Kennedy because of Cuba?
Damn you masters of war
I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
On a pale afternoon
blah blah blah
And I'll stand over your grave,
Til I'm sure that you're dead
Delillo's libra, points to the chaos element, plans are made by a company clique, they involve Oswald, it gets out of hand,
https://babalublog.com/2020/03/28/flashback-how-the-cuban-dictatorships-doctors-in-venezuela-were-used-to-coerce-voters/
I am a late boomer (born in the last months of the second Eisenhower administration).
I cannot understand the desire of some boomers to see something in the Kennedy assassination that is not there. Kennedy was a young Democratic president who was killed by an American communist driven half-mad (at least) by Kennedy's contempt for Castro & his revolution.
That is it. That is all it was.
If Kennedy had lived the world would be pretty much as it is now.
The Kennedy assassination was almost 57 years ago. In 1970, most boomers could not have told you who the US president was in 1913.
Apropos of nothing, I always loved the way Kelly Bundy phonetically pronounced JFK "juhfck."
I favor James Ellroy's take on the whole JFK death fiasco.
As a side note I was on a troop transport entering Tokyo Bay the morning it was announced JFK was shot. All we wanted to know was if liberty would be granted to the troops.
We had spent the prior two years watching JFK and the
Berlin Wall, JFK and the Bay of pigs, JFK and the Missile crisis, JFK and Diem murder, JFK and putting Laos/Cambodia off limits. We had loaded trucks and ships back and fourth, in and out while the best and the brightest played their games, we being the pawns.
1964 found us again moving about in ships as Johnson installed he beat and brightest who could not locate Tonkin Gulf on a bet. Three and a half months on troop transports sailing up and down and then home. Six weeks later Johnson went whole hog.
1965 and saving the Dominican Republic for Resorts International. After that round of foolishness I took my discharge and went home, just in time to welcome the Great Society into Chicago.
I Never trust a Fed..
YH: "Dylan is writing a song. He's telling a story. I'm sure the belief that LBJ was involved with JFK's murder plays well with a goodly fraction of his audience."
I have been reliably informed that the Entire City of Dallas and The Conservative Culture Of Texas killed Kennedy.
Though some minor details involving a communist shooter should probably not go completely unmentioned....
The LBJ theory was malarkey from the get go.
Gerald Posner satisfied me with Case Closed, but if the question is Cui Bono, the Occam's Razor says LBJ.
"Though some minor details involving a communist shooter should probably not go completely unmentioned...."
Hence the lines
when I spoke of Lee Oswald, I was speakin of the times
I was not speakin of his deed if it was his deed.
Poetic licence to weasel, I guess.
IMO, Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" conclusively debunks all the assassination conspiracy theories.
Lewis Wetzel said...
I am a late boomer (born in the last months of the second Eisenhower administration).
I cannot understand the desire of some boomers to something in the Kennedy assassination that is not there. Kennedy was a young Democratic president who was killed by an American communist driven half-mad (at least) by Kennedy's contempt for Castro & his revolution."
I am the same age and I have never been able to understand the obsession either. I read Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" a long time ago and thought it valid. Screw all these half-baked conspiracy theories.
And to hell with the Kennedys too. I was over the maudlin romanticizing of JFK back in 1980.
I don't much care for Peggy Noonan but one true thing she said was that this country will never honestly evaluate JFK's presidency as long as the Boomers are still alive. That's true, though, only of the older Boomers who all remember where they were when they heard....
DiLillo's "Libra" is a fairy tale, but a well-constructed one: it's very good at showing how events can spin out of control, how they can take on a life of their own, gaining agency and volition through momentum -- not dissimilar from situation that obtained in the summer of 1914. I feel that his is kind of what happened to DiLillo in the writing of the book: he lost control of the subject, the book began to write itself, and he went with it, going where momentum and the internal logic took him, namely to a conspiracy by CIA elites who never intended for things to go so far.
How very postmodern of DiLillo, the ultimate postmodern write, to take this path (or follow it).
I dont know how to say this without sounding weird, but as I listened to the pretty graphic lyrics, I got a "tit for tat" kind of of impression, like Kathy Griffin territory. They got our guy, so.....it would only be fair if..... catch my drift?
" Kennedy was a young Democratic president who was killed by an American communist driven half-mad (at least) by Kennedy's contempt for Castro & his revolution."
How many leftists want to admit a leftist murdered a Democrat?
How many pro-Palestinian Dems want to dwell on the fact RFK was murdered by a Palestinian angry over RFK's support of Israel during the 6 Day War?
I mean, is this subliminally an very anti Trumo song? Why, after all these years, is he singing about the murder of a sitting US president??
Enough with the Boomer hatred, already. Very tiresome.
Trump. My Fucking fat thumbs, cant type.
Shouting Thomas said...
Dylan’s record in the arena is pretty awful.
Rueben Carter was guilty. The song “Hurricane” wreaked havoc on the families of the murder victims’ families."
If Nixon had been assassinated, Dylan would have written "The Ballad of Lee Harvey Oswald."
Well I tried several times to listen to the song, but only made it less than a minute. As some here have already said, I do not get the deification of JFK at all.
He was killed by Oswald, who in turn was killed by Ruby.
As a President, I think his biggest acheivement was staring down the Soviets over the Cuban missle crisis. But he was not our greatest President of all times.
And why release the song now? It is morbid and frankly does not relate to the current situation at all.
Just Dylan getting old and living in the past? I do not know. I am fairly sure it is onlky important to his friends and family.
Would you just stop already. No one under 60 cares about Dillon or what is unintelligible songs might be hinting at. I mean really, no one cares.
His name isnt Bob "Dillon," its Bob Zimmerman. Oh wait, no it's not.
How many more posts will this song get here?
Dylan is no longer the touchstone he once was.
Mark
It's a palindrome!
I think Barry Goldwater would have beat him.
How about a dirty commie killed Kennedy? Has the advantage of being educational.
Dylan’s record in the arena is pretty awful.
Rueben Carter was guilty. The song “Hurricane” wreaked havoc on the families of the murder victims’ families. They continue to be hounded and insulted to this day. Carter was convicted not once but twice. He should have spent the rest of his life in jail or have been executed.
..and George Jackson and John Wesley Hardin(mentioned above)
When I first heard the song I thought it was about how an atmosphere of hate can lead to the assassination of a president and the lies and hysteria surrounding said president obscure reality. I do however appreciate Althouse’s take, “ we need to remember that the soul of America can be found in our endlessly beautiful popular culture that Bob Dylan feels honored to be part of.”
Dylan is not a conventional singer but he is a great singer. Most of the time.
Dylan was also wrong about William Zanzinger.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/01/lonesome-death-of-william-zanzinger-or.html
We had spent the prior two years watching JFK and the
Berlin Wall, JFK and the Bay of pigs, JFK and the Missile crisis, JFK and Diem murder, JFK and putting Laos/Cambodia off limits. We had loaded trucks and ships back and fourth, in and out while the best and the brightest played their games, we being the pawns.
1964 found us again moving about in ships as Johnson installed he beat and brightest who could not locate Tonkin Gulf on a bet. Three and a half months on troop transports sailing up and down and then home. Six weeks later Johnson went whole hog.
1965 and saving the Dominican Republic for Resorts International. After that round of foolishness I took my discharge and went home, just in time to welcome the Great Society into Chicago.
Doesn't sound like Kennedy was all that great. Maybe he was golden boy because he beat the evil Nixon? An Obama kind of popularity?
BTW, was it common knowledge about his (prescribed) drug use and his infidelity? I keep reading about it but wonder if media talked about that kind of thing back in those days?
I think we should discuss this song everyday until the Great Panic is over.
Stephen king, definitely a boomer, figured in 11.22.63, that jfk's passing probably stopped something worse, much like in ken greenwood's replay, the civil rights movement goes violent, Vietnam still goes hot, Wallace gets elected, Hanoi gets nuked and it keeps spiraling down,
pound for pound, greg iles natchez series, is like southern fried DeLillo, with a plot that leads from the sixties to the 00s,
Dylan was also wrong about William Zanzinger.
How about Isis?
Just kidding..
@FullMoon,
I keep reading about it but wonder if media talked about that kind of thing back in those days?
Oh, Lord, no! The press never mentioned it. It was "hinted at" once in some article, but never said.
That's a big reason I loath JFK. I was in a Catholic school & parish in northern Alabama, and, needless to say, JFK was idolized as the first Catholic, the first Irishman, to make president.
Those were good people, the salt of the earth, and JFK & the Democrats abused their trust & used them. JFK was a shit who never met a vice he didn't like, and made the Borgias look like the Poor Clares by comparison. His vociferous pursuit of pussy at all cost not only abused countless women, but also repeatedly put US security at risk.
It amazes me that Democrats who loath Trump's personal life still idolize the halcyon days of JFK's Camelot.
Would you just stop already. No one under 60 cares about Dillon or what is unintelligible songs might be hinting at. I mean really, no one cares.
Careful what you wish for. We might get many more paragraphs on origins of words or phrases.
BTW, saw a movie about Oxford dictionary origination. Pretty interesting actually. Was a competition among countries who would come up with definitive dictionary.
I have read several of the conspiracy books and leave them all, convinced until I read the next. The last one had Oswald as the sole shooter but was supported by Cuba which was motivated by RFK's relentless efforts to bring down Castro after the Cuban missile fiasco. LHO was supposed to have been met by someone who would have flown him to Cuba but the rendezvous never worked out. This is the most convincing book I have read; can't remember the author.
This is the only conspiracy book you need ever read. Encompasses and puts to shame all the others. Plus sex, drugs & humor..
then there's Richard condon's winter kills, which was made into a movie, with john huston, and jeff bridges, talk about byzantine,
Seen it thirty-three times, maybe more
It's vile and deceitful, it's cruel and it's mean
Ugliest thing that you ever have seen....
I have never forgotten the Lyndon Johnson quote: "That’s the ugliest thing I ever saw." He was looking at a portrait of himself — seeing it for the first time.
Personally, I like these kind of deconstructions. Seems like Dylan was also struck by LBJ's comment
"was it common knowledge about his (prescribed) drug use and his infidelity?"
Yes and no. The MSM still had all its power back then. Of course many people wanted to believe.
Many still do, particularly older boomers, nostalgic for the 1960s, when music was so much better, and a brave generation of young people faced nuclear doom and mean principals undermining girls' autonomy by prohibiting short skirts. Hence the adulation for Barry O.
Of course, we all know progs don't mean it: lefties have not desecrated the memory of Jack, they derided the bimbo eruptions that dogged Billy Jeff, and feminists were ready to get down on their knees for him as an abortion rite. At least Althouse was a little disgusted.
The problem for the MSM is that their attitude hasn't changed but their power has. We now know who they are and what they do; we despise them and resist them; and we now have tools, even if their official hegemony is still in place. They are on top but they do not rule. They despise us for it.
(eaglebeak)
There was a time--Mark Lane, the off-off-off-Broadway play MacBird!--when you had to think LBJ killed Kennedy, or you weren't cool.
That time has past.
Educated people should know that conspiracies happen all the time. The American experience is full of conspiracies by conspirators from Free Masons, Religions and Skull and Bones to a post WWII massive CIA operation that has its own off budget money from secretive sources of legitimate and laundered monies. We do not live in the Fantasyland that the TV programmers use to sell ads. Calling true reports a Conspiracy Theory is itself a veiled threat by the conspirators to slander those reporters.
(eaglebeak)
Actually, I have no idea whether Mark Lane thought LBJ killed Kennedy. That was a bit of a joke. But coolness quotient at the time demanded that the cool kids all read Rush to Judgment
The biggest mystery of the Kennedy assassination is why Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald.
Not really. Hotheads routinely try to kill Presidential assassins.
John Wilkes Booth was gunned down "without order, pretext, or excuse" by a member of the posse which cornered him (according to the report made by the commander of the posse).
Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, was shot at by two different people during his trial.
Leon Czolgosz, who shot McKinley, only avoided being killed on the spot because the police pulled the mob off of him and the still-living McKinley told people to take it easy on him.
John Flammang Schrank, who shot former president and then-candidate Theodore Roosevelt, was also almost killed on the spot, saved by the still-living Roosevelt telling people to let him live.
The real mystery would have been if no member of the public had made a credible effort to kill Oswald.
a day ending in y
where did these stories come from, mark lane, followed the guidance of carl Marzani, who had kgb ties, the anonymous tom Buchanan, was another, the soviets planted dezinforma in paesa sierra and at least one French publication, this is what jim garrison supposedly glommed on to,
summarizing what I couldn't recall,
In "Hamlet," "murder most foul" is the murder of the king by his close relation, his brother, and, though Kennedy famously had brothers, the Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, had a proximity to the President that would make the murder "most foul."
Do Bobby and Teddy have alibis or something?
And if Lyndon was involved, how do we know it wasn't self-defense?
Oh, and, yeah, a whole bunch of people started beating on John Hinckley Jr., too. It's hard to tell if they would have tried to kill him, given a Secret Service agent jumped on Hinckley specifically to protect him from being killed.
But, in general, shooting a President is a good way to get random Americans to try to kill you. Ruby shooting Oswald isn't odd in the least.
*Speech written by some dumb Russian in some dumb movie*
How many people know - or care- that the KGB mounted a disinformation campaign after JKF's death. Purpose: To change the focus from Communist Lee Harvey Oswald and his Castro connection to the CIA/Mafia/LBJ etc. Mark Lane started pushing that theory in December 1963, and Lane was a former member of the Communist dominated American Labor Party and was active in Communist front organizations his entire life.
The Liberal/Left NEVER wanted to accept that JFK was killed by a communist for his attempts to overthrow Castro. And so we get endless nut-case conspiracies. Because no matter what they do, the Left and the Communists are NEVER really the villain. It always the Right, and so even when the facts say a Leftist did it, the Right has to some how be blamed.
And nothing says Boomer like obsessing about the JFK assassination.
Regarding Hurricane Carter. I read about it, and its obvious Carter was let off by some Left-wing judge. The same type of judge that let Einhorn and Polanksi skip bail and go off to Europe. People forget that "celebrities" back in the late 60s and 70s were bankrolling the Black Panthers, AIM, and other violent left wing groups. Marlon Brando, for example, helped a Indian activist evade the FBI who were hunting him in connection with the murder of 2 FBI agents. He also loved Eldrige Cleaver, and gave the Panthers $10,000 dollars. Hollyweird was cheering on the violence. Its a good thing they didn't have twitter back then, or a lot of careers would've ended once people found out what these people were really like.
"Dallas, Texas -- Where they shoot presidents... and people who shoot presidents!"
that was the substance of my link at 5:35 rcocean,
Ugly ought to be an adverb.
I was entirely unaffected by the shooting of JFK. They called off work because the mailgirls were crying, and I went flying.
There was no internet then so nothing to do about it anyway.
I had a computer but it took punched cards and produced paper output.
I have about a hundred thousand punched cards in the basement even now. Perfectly good programs I wrote that it's a shame to throw away.
"that was the substance of my link at 5:35 rcocean,"
Thanks for the link.
So, RH could you beat Joe Biden in a pushup contest?
The Russki’s did it. Write that down.
Listening now for the first time. It's like an elegy, referencing music across the span, for the 20th. Is the Kennedy assassination the pivotal moment of the century? It could be, although I've never before considered that.
I didn't expect the accompaniment to be so piano and violin driven.
He's very direct and brutal about the details of the assassination. Powerful.
It might have been gus russo, who you thinking off, he was a kennedy conspiracy but more on the mob focus.
About 3 minutes of cryptic stuff on the Kennedy assassination, and then a long recitation of a really, really good playlist.
The Mob killed JFK. They used two shooters.
If you doubt that, tell me what was Oswald's escape plan? Just walk around?
Something went wrong.
Apparently according to rob baers research he was to rendesvous at a safe house in another part of town, he was to take another bus near where he shot tippett
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil
I am a pre-Boomer (1942) and a big Dylan fan, but this song does not much interest me, and JFK and the entire Kennedy clan and fantasy do not interest me. So if Peggy Noonan is right, it is not me she is right about. Kennedy was a despicable human being and a bad president. It seems obvious that Oswald killed him, perhaps with some pathetic ideological cover of some sort for his malevolent evil soul. They mystery is why the mythology lives on. Perhaps Dylan is trying to disrupt all that in his usual thieving manner by singing a song no one can figure out, but if so I cannot tell how he's done it, and like I say, I am not likely to try to figure it out. But I do want to speak up for the pre-Boomers while there are any of us left and say do not pin the idiotic idolizing of that SOB Kennedy on us.
I was six, almost seven, when I watched the Democratic National Convention of 1960 on a black and white television in Topeka, Kansas. My parents favored Kennedy for the nomination because they liked his quips when reporters asked him questions and the way he delivered beautifully crafted speeches with a Boston accent. The primaries provided Kennedy with a commanding lead entering the convention so his nomination was largely a foregone conclusion. His closest competitor was Johnson, who trailed Kennedy by a two to one margin in delegates. The biggest question was who Kennedy would select for vice president. My parents wanted Adlai Stevenson. I wanted Johnson because he had a firm hold on second place in delegates and I liked his southern drawl. He reminded me of Walter Brennan, who had a hitch in his gitty-up as grandpa on The Real McCoys. My parents were aghast because Stevenson was an intellectual, much more in keeping with the spirit of the Kennedy campaign and the New Frontier. Wiki says Johnson was offered the nomination because RFK was worried that Johnson had enough clout to get Hoover to go public with evidence about JFK's infidelities. I think my folks also had doubts about Johnson's commitment to passing Civil Rights legislation. Wiki says JFK hoped Johnson would decline the nomination and RFK was convinced he wouldn't. Johnson figured to be far more powerful by remaining in the senate than by running for vice-president.
Jon Burack,
Of course not all pre-Boomers or older Boomers engage in Camelot idolatry. I was thinking of some of my teachers, people in my own family, and my husband's family.
It was Connally. He did it because Kennedy kept kicking the back of his seat.
Seems at odds that someone who would be a willing participant in the assassination of the man who selected him to be vice-president -- even if they didn't like each other -- would then voluntarily give up that position without a fight 4 1/2 years later. Anyone willing to commit the crime of the century probably isn't going to let a narrow win over Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire stop him from maintaining power.
The assassination of JFK was possibly plotted and directed by the USSR to get even after the Cuban missal crisis. No one wanted to consider this because then it would have been an act of war and we would have had to either start WW III or admit defeat to the Soviets. Thus, the crazy conspiracy theories, which were much more comforting. Since we know communists don’t act on their own but take orders from above, we had to explain away Oswald to avoid catastrophe.
If you doubt that, tell me what was Oswald's escape plan? Just walk around?
What was Charles Guiteau's escape plan? What was Leon Czolgosz's? Or John Flammang Schrank's? Or Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's? Or Sara Jane Moore's? Or John Hinckley's? Or Vladimir Arutyunian's? When random lunatics try to assassinate Presidents, they don't have "escape plans".
Conversely, participants in conspiracies do; John Wilkes Booth, a member of a large and elaborate conspiracy, had a getaway horse and a carefully-planned escape route.
So, the lack of escape plan is evidence against a conspiracy, not for one.
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