As the ancien regime lurches toward yet another crisis, the Daily Mail reminds us how it used to be. Back in the good old days. The paper claims that “tapes … recorded with leading historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jr within months of the assassination on November 22, 1963” revealed she believed that Lyndon B. Johnson was responsible for the assassination of JFK. She believed LBJ did it for the tawdriest of reasons: money.
The source told the newspaper: ‘Those businessmen expected that LBJ would give them more favorable treatment in Vietnam War contracts and oil policies.
‘There is no doubt that Jackie wanted the truth to come out, but feared that she and her children, Caroline and John Jr, might also be marked for death by the conspirators.’
Well who knows? My own belief was that JFK’s brain was removed at Parkland Hospital and transplanted into the body of a black man. Kennedy, now black, spent his final days at the Shady Rest retirement home, possibly in the company of Elvis Presley, who had faked his own death for reasons unknown. Kennedy continued to live in fear of Johnson and suspected that Johnson had sent Egyptian mummies to finish the job he started. He allegedly shared his fears Presley after observing a shadowy figure in the hallway:
The President:They sent somebody to finish me off. I think maybe it was Johnson himself.
The King: Look, man, President Johnson’s dead.
The President: That ain’t gonna stop him.
The Daily Mail says, “It is believed that Caroline Kennedy, 53, agreed to release the tapes to ABC after pleading with the network to drop an embarrassing mini-series about the Kennedys that was due to air on its History Channel.” But I don’t buy it. JFK lived out his life in an obscure retirement home in Texas.
But if even a little of the Daily Mail story is true, the timing would be exquisite. It would suggest that Camelot was never as a bright and shining as it was made out to be. Perhaps for the longest time, persons of less than sterling integrity have been gaming the system, as we may be about to find out in this coming economic crisis. Yet what of it? As the King put it before he drew his final breath:
But I still have my soul. It’s still mine. All mine. And the folks up there at Shady Rest… they have theirs, too.
All will be well.
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