Frank Rich Is Wrong: Hate Didn’t Kill Kennedy, But It Is Killing Civil Discourse in America
Today marks the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The slain president’s wife, his successor, and the liberal media blamed the murder on Dallas’ “climate of hate.” That smear cast a pall on the innocent citizens of that city for decades. I know, because I grew up in the shadow of Big D and in the shadow of Kennedy’s killing. For decades after Nov. 22, 1963, you could go anywhere in the country, tell anyone you were from Dallas, and if you spent enough time with that person, Kennedy’s assassination would inevitably come up.
Frank Rich chose to mark the 48th anniversary by smearing Dallas, again, and by extension conservatives of the present. It’s a column which should get him ridiculed and fired; no one who is so irresponsible with the hard facts of life has any place in the commentariat.The title gives Rich’s game away. It’s “What Killed JFK?” not “Who Killed JFK?” as it should be. A “what” is much easier to abstract, isolate, and attack than a “who” who had inconvenient opinions and motivations, and a madness to move.
The cold, hard fact of that day in Dallas is this: Whether Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman or by a conspiracy that included others, Dallas’ “climate” had nothing to do with it. Dallas was the scene of the crime but wasn’t responsible for it. Lee Harvey Oswald was not a mainstream Dallas man. He would not have been a Tea Partier. Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist. He had defected to the Soviet Union, become disillusioned, and returned. He had tried to travel to Cuba and failed. If hate was Oswald’s motive in Kennedy’s killing, the hate lived in the chest of a man who had failed at life, had rejected the freedoms of his country, and used bullets to write himself into the history books. Lee Harvey Oswald was an America-hating leftist.
Or, alternatively, Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy to stop his Vietnam policy or whatever the Oliver Stones of the world think. You make the call. Either way, Dallas is not collectively guilty of Kennedy’s death anymore than Washington DC is collectively guilty of Lincoln’s.
To the extent that his politics are relevant today, Lee Harvey Oswald belongs to the same ideological strain that later gave us Pentagon bomber Bill Ayers. That same strain of politics can be traced through a certain church in Chicago, right to the camps in Oakland, Los Angeles and Wall Street. People who subscribe to this strain of thought blame others for their feelings of powerlessness. They reject American freedom and damn America. They accept some violence as a legitimate political tactic. They despise America and want to bring her down to create a moment in which they can rearrange power to their benefit.
But I’m less interested in them at the moment than I am interested in Frank Rich. His column shows that in all the decades since Kennedy’s murder, the left has never really changed. They blamed Dallas for Kennedy’s death then, and they blame Sarah Palin and conservatives for the senseless shooting in Tucson this year. The facts of the story change, but the smear stays the same. Frank Rich blames “hate” for both, but the only hate on display is his own. It blinds him to the fact that Oswald was a man very much of the left, and that the Tucson shooter had no discernible ideology at all. But men of the left such as Rich prefer to assign collective guilt on their political enemies. Without pushing that collective guilt on others, their own lives have no meaning. They cannot convince themselves of their own superiority without an inferior other to hate. And collective guilt is a useful tool to intimidate. There is a reason that Saul Alinsky has found such a receptive audience among the left. They’re fueled by hate; Alinsky gave them the means of channeling that hate toward useful (to the haters) ends.
Frank Rich’s hatefulness is killing civil discourse in America. It dishonestly condemned an entire city for generations and turns an innocent campaign map into a murder map. It replaces individual responsibility with collective guilt, and turns what should be a unifying national tragedy into corrosive partisan crossfire.
I read the article and in starts and fits alternately wanted to puke then write some fire in lieu of swinging a fist – don’t think I would have done it justice. Glad to see you eviscerate that article of Frank’s. It deserves derision and some fingers thrown in contempt for both lousy article and the lier that wrote ir.kp
I’m old enough to remember that Rich’s song is the same one as the media’s old one back in that time, when we were all supposed to feel guilty about Kennedy’s murder, even if we didn’t live in or around Dallas.
Sheer projection on Rich’s part, much like how the street-brawling Left is forever warning about the threat of violence from Tea Partiers.
I agree with Frank Rich that it was “hate”. It was hate that drove the motives of the left then, and it is hate that drives the motives of the left today. All the other things they say and do are merely to hide their bottom line agenda; hatred of freedoms, capiltalism, and the USA.
Was Oswald a Communist? Let’s see: 1.) He was not a member of the tiny Communist Party USA, 2.) He has not been identified as a “secret member” of the Communist Party, 3.) He was not a member of the Socialist Workers Party, 4.) he has not been identified as a “secret member” of the Socialist Workers Party.
If Oswald was a small “c” communist, it is highly probable he would join a Communist Party. Communists believe in collective action, not lone-wolf assassination attempts. There are no records or evidence he was a member or either organization. It is common knowledge Communists join organizations: labor unions, front groups, peace groups, civic organizations. Oswald was a loner. Oswald’s activities in support of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” appear silly, in retrospect. He was the only “member” of the group in New Orleans. Communists don’t operate this way. Communists are many things, but silliness is not one of their characteristics. They are mostly serious people when it comes to political activity. They know how to organize, put together front groups, exert political pressure. Oswald had none of these skills. Made little or no effort to acquire these political skills. Communists accept discipline from the Party. Oswald was very undisciplined. The belief Oswald was a Communist or a small “c” communist is unlikely. In my opinion, he was a fake Communist. An imposter. The controversial photo of Oswald posing with a rifle and sporting a copy of the “Worker” and the “Militant” is pure vaudeville. Any one who knows Communist history understands that the “Worker” and the “Militant” are very different publications, at opposite ends of the communist spectrum. The “Worker” is an official CPUSA newspaper and the “Militant” is the paper of the Trotsky-ist opposition. The two groups are not on speaking terms. We know it was a Stalinist secret agent who killed Trotsky in Mexico. A real communist understands the difference, a fake communist doesn’t know the difference.
Spies defected to the USSR. There is a long list of spies defecting to the USSR. Dues paying CPUSA members don’t defect to the USSR. They acquire positions in front groups, peace groups, unions, organizations, distribute their newspapers and literature. If they behave and follow the Party line they are sent overseas on junkets to the World Youth Festival or World Peace Council. Today, Communists like to travel to Cuba or send their youngsters to Cuba on summer vacations. Oswald’s defection to the USSR is bizarre behavior for a dues-paying member of the CPUSA and utterly unbelievable for a member of the SWP.
There are many inconsistencies in the official record. It is not my purpose to solve the mysteries surrounding the JFK tragedy, only to attempt to illuminate certain unbelievable claims made about this mysterious man known as LHO.
Frank Rich devotes a lot of ink to reviewing the histories and recent fictional accounts of the JFK tragedy. I have yet to read a single post devoted to debunking these sources. There is a lot of disgust and hate directed at Rich, yet very little attempt to debunk the critics, historians, and novelists.
Finally, I don’t believe the Left hates Texas or Dallas. There was an elevated level of extremist activity in Dallas in 1963. I don’t believe for a minute that political assassination was anywhere on the agenda of the Right wing or the Left wing. Not their style. There is plenty of hate to go around in 1963 and today. This does not translate into a plan to assassinate the POTUS.
I’m convinced there are more facts to discover. It will take many decades of research to get to the truth.
Lawrence, you’re extrapolating a lot of facts and arriving at the wrong conclusion. Number 1 on your list should have been: Lee Harvey Oswald was not dealing with a full deck and taken it from there.
I’ll jump in the middle here and it will be short because I have to leave soon. Oswald was the only member of “Fair Play for Cuba” because he was trying to impress the head of the, I believe, New York Communist Party. He had the picture of himself taken so he could send it to him as a credential of him being a dedicated Communist. They thought he was unhinged, too.
Oswald was a known Communist sympathizer who left this country and went to Russia to prove his faithfulness to Communist ideals. After he got there they discovered he was a wacko and realized they couldn’t use him for anything so they gave him a job in a factory. He was dissatisfied because he was getting little or no attention in Russia so he returned to the USA with his Russian wife. Being a total narcissist he was abusive to her which was known by many people acquainted with them at the time.
He never stopped trying to impress CPUSA with his Communist beliefs because he believed there he would get the kudos that his narcissistic personality demanded. Oswald’s wife related that he told her he had shot at Maj. Gen. Walker, which was the night before he shot President Kennedy.
It was a murder, not because of any particular hatred, but to feed Oswald’s self-obsessive personality so he could be the center of all attention.
At that particular time to be a Communist was a very bad thing and nothing would get someone like L.H. Oswald attention like being a Communist and when that didn’t get him enough attention, shooting an anti-Communist president would do it.
He finally got his wish.
Iluvtea: Thank you for your observations. At the end of the day, LHO was never a member of the CPUSA or the SWP. The CPUSA did not want anything to do with him, nor did the SWP.
“He had the picture of himself taken so he could send it to him as a credential of him being a dedicated Communist.” The picture shows two conflicting radical newspapers, the “Militant” and the “Worker.” This contradiction goes right over you head. You don’t appreciate the difference between the “Militant” and the “Worker.” I will stick with the observation that LHO was a fake communist. Of course you know that the CPUSA was involved in the civil rights movement. He could have found the communist club in his
home district. No need to be a lone-wolf sympathizer. If you want to make a life decision to join the CPUSA, the address is in the phone book and their office still is located on W. 23rd St, Manhattan. LHO enjoyed traveling. Just hop on a Greyhound, get off in NY and walk to headquarters and sign up. No need to embarrass the party with one man shows of loyalty. If it wasn’t such a deadly story, it would be a vaudeville act.
As for my double post, I see it got you up and singing. HaHa.
Even for Rich and the NYT this was an abysmally stupid column. Still blaming Dallas after all these years–it’s Tucson/Palin redux.
From what I know of Oswald, today he would be a member of Occupy Wall St – or else, a lifetime Democrat congressclown from some deep blue state. You could easily take any number of his ramblings and imagine Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi or Barney Frank saying them as well.
Or a trusted member of the current administration. Probably not a cabinet position given the assassination of a former president would probably come up in the hearings, but at least a CZAR of gun violence or some such nonsense.
Dallas is a handy target for boobs like Rich. But you do have to wonder how he could keep his job writing stuff like this.
You could easily take any number of his ramblings and imagine Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi or Barney Frank saying them as well.
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Plus the fact he was a trained expert marine marksman and could put holes in a moving target at 300 yards..
Wish Kennedy had shipped him off to the Cuban Bay of Pigs.
The Democrats held sway in the South and most of the country in 1960. The Senate had65 Democrats including all of the South. The KKK, the armed wing of the Democratic party was in full sway. If it wasn’t for the Republicans, the 1964 Civil Rights Act would have failed. MLK voted Republican. JFK’s ineptitude with the Bay of Pigs invasion led to the nuclear missile crisis. The failure to recognize Russia’s weakness and lack of nukes led to expansion of the cold war. The Vietnam War was brought about by JFK & LBJ’s failures. Oh, yeah and the Republicans created a climate of hate that was somehow responsible for all of this. I guess my response would be why be a Democrat? I mean if Bush can be out of power for three years and still be responsible for the daily workings of the government and a party deeply out of power in the 1960′s can create a national aura the leads to the assassination of a sitting President (by a left-wing insurgent), then why bother being a Democrat. When Republicans are in power they manage to have full responsibility for everything including viral diseases in Africa. When the Democrats are in power they are always in the shadow of the Republicans. If the Democrats are so incompetent, then shouldn’t we just elect Republicans and plead with them to be good? As they seem to be all powerful, there is little use denying them.
Loved your comment. Sounds like the kind of satire Rush often uses to make a point. Much better than some of the popular websites that are supposed to be so good at satire most of which I find tiresome. I’d love to hear one of our candidates use this to illuminate the hypocrisy of the left. Good satire is priceless.
If it wasn’t for the North, the bill would have failed.
Texas has always been ridiculed and sneered at by many people in other states and Hollywood. There are even writers at the Ft. Worth Star Telegram who make fun of traditional Texas values. It’s just something that most Texans expect. Maybe it goes back to the Civil War? Even when the state opened its arms to Michener in his efforts to write a story like “Hawaii” about the lone star state, in the first chapter he says the only bright students at UT are northerners. That was a bummer because I paid $25 for the stupid book, only to throw it in the trash unread past Chapter 1. Now Texas is suffering because it isn’t leftist enough, although ironically Dallas is just behind Austin as the left-most city.
Prejudice is an ugly thing, whether it comes from the NYTimes or Michener. It is also illogical, as anyone who has mastered math and science know it is dangerous if one is seeking truth, for it blinds the mind.
I agree that what Frank Rich is really illustrating is his own hatred, of anybody who disagrees with him politically. With Oswald being a former communist, we could morph his assisination of JFK into an indightment of the bankrupt values and hatred of the left, but we are smart enough to realise that such projection is idiotic. Most assasins have their own wierd reasons, that can’t be pinned on any group, especially if they are not a professed member of that group. I wonder, will Frank Rich apply the clear implications of his own theory, and say that the Muslim killers of 9/11 illustrate the complete bankruptcy of the entire Muslim religion. I would not, even though there the connection is much clearer, but that just illustrates how incredibly stupid leftist arguments like this are.
Lee Harvey Oswald, a committed communist, shot Kennedy in retribution for the Bay of Pigs invasion and other anti-communist activities.
It’s no more complicated than that.
But the liberal establishment got together immediately in the wake of the assassination and decided to blame it on “hate.” They did this because they chose, with the agreement of Jacqueline Kennedy, to make Kennedy a martyr to civil rights. That, they figured, would be his legacy, not his anti-communism.
James Piereson’s Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism has a lot to say about the decision and its downstream effects on the left.
I didn’t read Frank Rich’s column but I have no doubt that it is pretty dumb just as Mr. Preston describes. However, Mr. Preston’s article is not all that great either. I agree that the city of Dallas has been unfairly maligned, they just drew the short straw. It could have been another city. There is strong evidence that Chicago was an alternate choice by the plotters. The threat was strong enough for JFK to cancel a planned trip there shortly before Dallas.
In the 48 years since that black day there has been an enormous amout evidence uncovered that clearly points to a conspiracy largely orchestrated by a coterie of off the reservation CIA people. There is no longer any doubt that in the period leading up to the assassination there was an Oswald imposter in play. The real LHO did not travel to Mexico City. That scenario was one of many performed by the imposter. One of the principle suspects in this deadly charade was CIA super spook David Atlee Phillips who before he died admitted that the real LHO was not in Mexico City.
The real LHO was a Marine with a very high security clearance and worked in a radar unit responsibe for controlling U-2 spy planes. He was recruited into the CIA’s false defector program. After his stint in the Soviet Union he breezed back to the U.S. no questions asked. He then began working as a street level intelligence asset. It was during this period that his handlers began to lay the groundwork for the assassination with him as the patsy.
You can fill a small library with all the JFK assassination books that have come out over the years. If anyone is interested may I suggest one of the best and one of the most recent books titled “JFK and the Unspeakable” by James Douglass. The “Unspeakable” in the title refers to the unspeakable fact that JFK’s assassination was planned, carried out and covered up by elements within our own government.
Just how much is a tin foil hat going for nowadays?
And pray tell, John J, what is the price of unflappable ignorance?
Interesting dilemma. On the one hand, all of the actual forensic evidence points to Oswald as a lone gunman, with no need for any elaborate conspiracy. On the other hand, if Oswald is part of a conspiracy, then Jack Ruby can be part of the conspiracy. If Ruby is part of the conspiracy, then we get to blame the Jews.
Sorry, I can’t blame the Jews for this one. I’ll stick with a former Marine marksman hates the president, finds out the President’s car is going right by his workplace, takes a gun to work, sticks it out a window, and shoots at the president’s car. I suppose there could have been a conspiracy, but most of the conspirators must have really bored, since Oswald took care of everything.
Jack Ruby was a mobster from Chicago. He was send to Dallas to open strip clubs. Does that help?
Yes elements within the government and some elements outside of government. The driving force in the plan was the Chicago Syndicate who had the connections with the individuals in the Dallas PD. They carried out the plan together with some individuals from CIA and some individuals from the anti Castro movement. What they had in common was that they had worked together on the failed attempt to assassinate Castro.
Don’t pay attention to the lemmings that still believe in the cover story of LHO as the lone gunman. They pride themselves as being part of sane society. But they are really just useful tools. The cover story was an age old Sicilian trick of using a patsy. The mob’s biggest fear was that it was too obvious. But it turned out that they needn’t to worry. The gullible public ate it hook line and sinker. And still do despite the theory’s obvious flaws (Like the last bullet would have needed to go through the first lady after it exited the skull). It’s the same kind of psychology that make people see the emperors clothes. They are simply afraid of standing out from the crowd. So they look around and see what everybody else does. In that sense they are the glue of society. They are the people that follows the unwritten rules in corporate culture and office politics. So don’t be mad at them. Actually you can use them too. I know I do.
And another question needs to be asked. What and Who killed journalism in America? Pieces like this by people like Frank Rich. Frank Rich and his ilk are in the business of abstraction because, in dealing with the concrete reality of any historical event, the facts won’t let them off the hook like a good abstraction will.
Frank Rich is NOT ‘wrong’.
Frank Rich IS a liar.
He gets paid for it.
President Kennedy was assassinated by the international “left,” not by the US “right,” as the “left” then and always claims. Mohammedans belong to the international “left,” those driven by jealousy.
– say about Adlai? “A bitter old man with…”
Good Lord what a self-indulgent, self-referential piece of crap Rich’s piece is! It is a millstone for Boomers that some took Kennedy’s Inaugural Address and the MLK “Dream” speech as something they had something to do with in the same way that football fans stupidly say “we,” as if they had anything to do with what the overpaid thugs on the field were doing.
I heard and saw the Inaugural on a black and white TV bought with federal education money that also supported the Georgia “educational TV” system, back when education was the justification for public TV. My 6th Grade teacher told us how wonderful Robert Frost, who we’d never heard of, was. Most everybody I knew voted for Kennedy but it wasn’t because they liked either Yankees or Catholics, but because only a hundred years later, Southerners still hated Republicans more. But there were chinks; some White people held in considerable regard were beginning to become apostates and vote Republican.
I heard about the assassination in Mr. Harper’s 5th Period Geography class. First an announcement that the President had been shot, later an announcement that he’d died. There weren’t any tears. I was in the Band, and we were scheduled to play in a Christmas Parade in a nearby town; there wasn’t any thought of cancelling it. The talk on the school bus as we rode to the Parade was about whether it was more likely to have been the communists or the KKK, with the edge going to the communists but the KKK was strongly in the running.
Came home from Church Sunday just in time to see Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV; live TV was still quite a thing in ’63. From what I could hear from my father and the other menfolk, they weren’t heartbroken about Kennedy’s assasination, but they thought it was a terrible thing for any President, even one they didn’t much like, to be shot. Most old-time Southerners really regret Lincoln’s assasination because they hate Reconstruction more than The War, and they believe that the horrors of Reconstruction were a direct result of Lincoln’s assassination.
I still don’t know why the Kennedys were so focussed on Texas. JFK infuriated the Left by not pursuing “civil rights” strongly enough, and Texas was no segregationist hotbed anyway. The reality was that so long as JFK didn’t go all in and introduce serious civil rights legislation, he’d have carried Texas and the rest of The South in ’64; they hated Republicans that much. But he let RFK have his head in pursuing the Patriots in Action, Minutemen, and other anti-communist groups. There’s something in there we mere mortals don’t know about why RFK wanted to go toe-to-toe with the Hunt Brothers. Ironically, almost fifty years and 5000 miles away, here in Alaska the expatriate Texas militiamen of that era are the basis of a lot of the politics of interior Alaska, Sarah Palin’s stomping grounds. Some say that N. Bunker Hunt paid to move a lot of them from Texas to Alaska. And it is certainly no coincidence that the major State of Alaska office building in Anchorage was built as the “Hunt Building.”
In 1963, Southerners didn’t like Yankees and they didn’t like Yankee meddling in Southern affairs, especially in the Southern affair of how Southern Whites dealt with Southern Blacks. But Kennedy, like Roosevelt before him, did just enough to keep the Left and the Blacks more or less supporting him but not so much as to alienate the still solid South. Southerners understood that politics. Sure, there were “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards all over The South, but there weren’t any “Kill Earl Warren” billboards, and Warren was hated, Kennedy not so much. Kennedy was a patriot and a war hero, that overcame a lot of being a Yankee and a Catholic.
This whole thing is the self-absorption of limousine liberals. The “hateful” Southerners really didn’t care enough about Kennedy to kill him, and it is one of the greatest disappointments that Left has ever had that they couldn’t pin Kennedy’s assassination on some redneck Southerner. It really sucked that the guy most agree shot him was a communist and all the lefties try so hard to convince everyone that they’re progressives, not communists. In reality, JFK was a lousy President whose great Cuban Missle Crisis “victory” was a lie; he removed our missiles from even closer to Moscow than Russian missles in Cuba would have been to Washington, but nobody knew that little detail. His Administration was marked by over-intellectualization and indecision and he put us on a course that dramatically diminished our standing in the World, tore our Country apart internally, and cost the lives of 58,000 good men who deserved better. Yet this Yankee fool longs for Camelot and thinks we “hateful” Southerners deprived him of it. Sorry, Frank, it rains before 5 everywhere.
The biggest mystery to me is why anyone bothers to read Frank Rich. I found out a while ago that if I read Frank Rich for 5 minutes, I end up 20 minutes more stupid. Life’s too short, so I don’t read him.
Oswald was a highly unbalanced individual whose troubled mind was detected very early on when he was at school in the Bronx. His father died before he was born and his mother was delusional, difficult and narcissistic. For a while she put Lee and his brother in an orphanage…
Lee had some teachers in his life who cared but his mother put a stop to that every time…. Lee felt a personal helplessness and couldn’t take it anymore.
It was a combination of tragic circumstances; a hyper-difficult childhood that prompted him to kill Kennedy. There are some good books out there on what made him tick.. Try “Marina and Lee” for starters.
JFK was killed because he managed, in three short years, to anger almost every group with lethal capabilities:
1) His brother, RFK, had Carlos Marcello, who controlled organized crime from East Texas to Northern Florida out of New Orleans, picked up after an INS meeting, and flown to Guatemala and dumped there without money or papers.
2) The anti-Castro Cubans hated him for canceling air support for Bay of Pigs. The CIA shared their hatred for the same reason.
3) The pro-Castro Cubans hated him for trying to have Castro killed.
4) J. Edgar Hoover hated him because he intended to replace Hoover after the 1964 election.
5) The USSR hated and feared him because of the Cuban blockade and ringing them with missiles in Turkey and other places.
6) Lyndon Johnson hated him because JFK intended to replace him as VP in 1964.
7) The segregationists hated him for integrating Ol’ Miss and other similar things.
8) The mob in general hated him for RFK’s declaring war on them, not to mention the loss of the Cuban casinos and not getting them back.
9) Jimmy Hoffa hated him for his legal troubles, also attributed to RFK.
With enemies like these, it’s amazing he lasted 3 years. Dallas was just convenient. BTW, Oswald had an uncle who was connected to Marcello, and Jack Ruby owned a Marcello connected club in Dallas, and had Cuban connections; he had worked in the mob’s Cuban casinos.
One thing that’s mostly forgotten about JFK is that he was staunchly anti-communist, and his larger-than-life/domineering father was even more. Oswald, unhinged by frustration and rage, may have decided to target JFK for that alone.
Although this always reminds me of my wise grandfather, RIP, who told me that regardless of who pulled the trigger, the mafia was behind it. Because the Kennedys used them, then crossed them.
William J. Murray’s autobiography, My Life Without God tells about the night that Oswald was arrested/ His mother, Madelyn Murray O’Hair, went down to the Baltimore office of Fair Play for Cuba to search the files for any documents with Oswald’s name on them, so that she could remove them. O’Hair, like Oswald, was a ferocious Communist.
Murray has a very amusing chapter describing what happened when his mother decided to “defect” to the Soviet Union. She sold their house, bought one way tickets for herself and the kids to Paris, and then went to the Soviet embassy to ask for asylum. (After all, they were Godless Communists, and she was America’s most famous atheist. Why would they not want her?)
After a while, some low level official came out to speak to her. He asked her if she spoke Russian. “No.” What did she do for a living? She was a social worker and a political activist. “I am sorry, but we have no need for either in the Soviet Union.” And back she went, humiliated, to the United States.
William J. Murray’s autobiography, My Life Without God tells about the night that Oswald was arrested/ His mother, Madelyn Murray O’Hair…
You had me going for a second there! I thought you were saying that Madelyn Murray O’Hair was the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald….
I don’t think the Mafia, Castro, others etc. put a hit on Kennedy.
They like for us to think they did
because it makes for good conspiracy/mystery reading.
The Mafia had already produced several newspaper articles with pictures and lusty stories showing Kennedy as a perverted old man having sex with pretty young girls, (puts Bill Clinton to shame)
and were preparing to defeat him with their man in 64 but then withdrew the lurid stories because-
Along comes a pissed off Marine Expert Sniper Marksman with his $21.45 NRA rifle bought March 13, 1963.
The price included $19.95 for the rifle and the scope, and $1.50 for postage and handling.
The rifle without the scope would have only cost $12.78.
He saved the Mafia millions..
Sorry, couldn’t get past the first few sentences that tried to link the Kennedy mythos (whatever it supposedly was) to the current big eared empty suit currently occupying the black, er, white house.
JFK was killed by Oswald acting alone. We also went to the moon, and the earth is not flat. Get used to it, because these are facts.
How can you take anything Frank Rich writes or says seriously?
This collectivization of blame for the purpose of demonizing others extends far beyond Frank Rich and the NYT. Consider the sordid case at Penn State, where the act of a child molester and the non-action of a witness have become an excuse to demonize the entire institution and, in some accounts, the town adjacent to the university.
Even the (allegedly) level-headed conservatives of the Fox news round table chimed in, round table contributor Steve Hayes claiming that “at Penn State, they’re concerned about everything but the one thing they should be concerned about.”
That being, of course, “the children”
The collectivization of blame is a wonder way of putting it. And while I try not to go in for psychological projection, Rich’s labored unwillingness to blame this particular man is almost too rich to pass up.
Why all the bother about Rich? Why is anyone surprised/concerned when a cockroach acts like a cockroach?
Oswald was driven by his own madness, his own grandiose sense of himself coupled with a lack of competence. He would have shot any famous person who drove by the Texas Book Depository. He fired his shots over the heads of a cheering crowd, not an angry mob. After driving through Dallas streets crowded with exuberant well-wishers, the last words Kennedy heard came from Nelly Connally telling him that Dallas loved him.
This liberal media meme that Dallas killed Kennedy began with Walter Cronkite while the assassination unfolded. The local Ft Worth station played the TV broadcasts as they happenned on the 25th anniversary of the murder. Right from the beginning, Cronkite was playing up the hate in Dallas for Kennedy, sure that some right wing nut had shot JFK.
When the name of Oswald came up as the probable shooter and that he was a Communist and a defector, that sat Walter back in his chair for a moment, disrupting the narrative he was building. However, he didn’t switch to saying a left wing nut had shot JFK, but rather the climate of hate in conservative Dallas was to blame.
For the liberal media, it’s always about pinning the blame on the conservatives. It’s just a short hop from Cronkite blaming conservative haters for killing Kennedy to the modern media blaming Sarah Palin for the Arizona massacre.
Frank Rich belongs with Olbermann in a tent in Zuccotti Park.
Having read Gerald Posner, case closed. I’m not able to read Frank Rich’s writing which should be entitled, mind closed.
In the vernacular, this is called the Otter Defense, after the character in 1978′s Animal House movie. You can’t blame the Frat/University/coach without blaming the society in which it exists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PYb_anBMus
NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE PROVIDENTIAL DEATH OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
Click my name to read one of the most unusual articles ever written on the assassination of JFK.
HOW AMERICA’S LOVE AND ADULATION OF JFK KILLED HIM: REFUTING FRANK RICH AND THE HATE DRIVEN LEFT
Apart from the supreme role Providence certainly played in the death of the charismatic, patriotic, anti-communist JFK, love and adulation of the New Frontiersman was the overriding mundane factor. Indeed, Frank Rich and the America hating radical Left-going back to James Reston in the sixties-cling to the persistent, laughable, easily refuted fantasy that an undercurrent of right wing vitriol and hate, causing a toxic climate in Dallas, Texas, is what ultimately killed JFK, when in reality the opposite is the case. In reality, before Kennedy’s death the national mood (as I vividly recall) was one of near intoxication: the American people were soaring with optimism, hope and patriotic fervor due mostly to JFK’s pro-American, nationalistic, inspirational presidency. In reality, it was Kennedy’s great success in Cold War politics and morale boosting, visionary leadership that ultimately did him in. In other words, it was the great love, good will, and adulation he enjoyed, deserved and basked in that tragically killed him.
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Was Oswald a Communist? Let’s see: 1.) He was not a member of the tiny Communist Party USA, 2.) He has not been identified as a “secret member” of the Communist Party, 3.) He was not a member of the Socialist Workers Party, 4.) he has not been identified as a “secret member” of the Socialist Workers Party.
If Oswald was a small “c” communist, it is highly probable he would join a Communist Party. Communists believe in collective action, not lone-wolf assassination attempts. There are no records or evidence he was a member or either organization. It is common knowledge Communists join organizations: labor unions, front groups, peace groups, civic organizations. Oswald was a loner. Oswald’s activities in support of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” appear silly, in retrospect. He was the only “member” of the group in New Orleans. Communists don’t operate this way. Communists are many things, but silliness is not one of their characteristics. They are mostly serious people when it comes to political activity. They know how to organize, put together front groups, exert political pressure. Oswald had none of these skills. Made little or no effort to acquire these political skills. Communists accept discipline from the Party. Oswald was very undisciplined. The belief Oswald was a Communist or a small “c” communist is unlikely. In my opinion, he was a fake Communist. An imposter. The controversial photo of Oswald posing with a rifle and sporting a copy of the “Worker” and the “Militant” is pure vaudeville. Any one who knows Communist history understands that the “Worker” and the “Militant” are very different publications, at opposite ends of the communist spectrum. The “Worker” is an official CPUSA newspaper and the “Militant” is the paper of the Trotsky-ist opposition. The two groups are not on speaking terms. We know it was a Stalinist secret agent who killed Trotsky in Mexico. A real communist understands the difference, a fake communist doesn’t know the difference.
Spies defected to the USSR. There is a long list of spies defecting to the USSR. Dues paying CPUSA members don’t defect to the USSR. They acquire positions in front groups, peace groups, unions, organizations, distribute their newspapers and literature. If they behave and follow the Party line they are sent overseas on junkets to the World Youth Festival or World Peace Council. Today, Communists like to travel to Cuba or send their youngsters to Cuba on summer vacations. Oswald’s defection to the USSR is bizarre behavior for a dues-paying member of the CPUSA and utterly unbelievable for a member of the SWP.
There are many inconsistencies in the official record. It is not my purpose to solve the mysteries surrounding the JFK tragedy, only to attempt to illuminate certain unbelievable claims made about this mysterious man known as LHO.
Frank Rich devotes a lot of ink to reviewing the histories and recent fictional accounts of the JFK tragedy. I have yet to read a single post devoted to debunking these sources. There is a lot of disgust and hate directed at Rich, yet very little attempt to debunk the critics, historians, and novelists.
Finally, I don’t believe the Left hates Texas or Dallas. There was an elevated level of extremist activity in Dallas in 1963. I don’t believe for a minute that political assassination was anywhere on the agenda of the Right wing or the Left wing. Not their style. There is plenty of hate to go around in 1963 and today. This does not translate into a plan to assassinate the POTUS.
I’m convinced there are more facts to discover. It will take many decades of research to get to the truth.
Lawrence,posting it twice doesn’t make it any more true.