Kennedy #1

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, a significant moment for me and for many. Yet the event, so terrible and intense, so researched and analyzed, has developed almost as its own entity, its own beast, as it matures along paths of manipulation, overt deception and least resistance.

 

First, the reaction. Mrs. Kennedy's quote here is significant: "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights . . . . It's — it had to be some silly little Communist."  

 

This may not have set the tone for the management of the murder in history but it certainly was representative of it. The general reaction to the murder was completely divorced from what happened. Chief Justice Earl Warren ascribed Kennedy's "martyrdom" to "the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots." Drew Pearson wrote that Kennedy was a victim of "hate drive."A Soviet spokesman assigned "moral responsibility" for Kennedy's death to "Barry Goldwater and other extremists on the right." The NYT encouraged us all to take blame for  "the shame all America must bear for the spirit of madness and hate that struck down" the President. James Reston's article the day after the shooting--on the first page--was headlined ""Why America Weeps: Kennedy a Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in Nation." Senator Mike Mansfield eulogized the President as a victim of "bigotry, prejudice and hatred."  In Arthur Schlesinger Jr. one thousand page history of the thousand day Kennedy presidency the assassin is not even mentioned. The Manhattan Institute's James Piereson, in his 2007 book "Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism," writes that the country's illness that led to the assassination required a curative "punitive liberalism." A new book, Dallas "1963", says Dallas did it through a "climate of hatred" created by right-wing businessmen, religious leaders and media moguls. And an updated take by Alex Beam in a Boston Globe article: "Kennedy brought low by some redneck."

 

This is not simply a need to turn away and shield our eyes; there is plenty of stomach for Zapruder films and autopsy shots. This is much worse, an inability to see things as they are. It is simply not possible for the Left to accept the idea that Kennedy was murdered by a Marxist. And this refusal will lead to any number of creative narratives, consistent or not, to shift the blame from Oswald and towards a more acceptable villain. More, it is an unwillingness to see the modern world and its potential where a man of great standing and regard can be brought down by a fool. It is the egalitarian nightmare.