
Having two years of research
dismissed with a sniff and the petulant stamp of some cravenly-ambitious
reporter’s little foot left us a bit miffed. But while casually leafing through
New Yorker magazine recently we discovered: it’s a trend.
“Angels and Ages:
Lincoln’s Language and Its Legacy” is one of the New Yorker’s famously
mind-numbing 7000-word long articles about something so obscure that its the
magazine equivalent of an episode of Seinfeld, the TV sitcom
famous for being about nothing.
Or, in the case of the
article, next to nothing: the critical ‘controversy’ over
the famous epitaph uttered by Lincoln’s Secretary of War after the great man was
assassinated: “Now he belongs to the ages;” or ‘Now
he belongs to the angels.’”
How precious is that? We
know. You're breathless with anticipation, so we won’t give away the
ending. In fact the only reason we mention it is the article’s author, a
man named Adam Gopnik, has the effrontery to insert the following
ridiculous and unsupported statement:
“One of the odd things in
American history is that we are inclined to “psychologize” acts of
assassination that, whatever dark corner of the psyche they are torn from, are
clearly and explicitly political in motive. Oswald shot Kennedy in an act of
terrorism on behalf of Castro..."
Lone nut gunman meets lone nut cadre
Thank
you, Mr. Gopnik, for putting that controversy to rest.
What rankled was how he'd passed off his ridiculous opinion as fact with no hint
of uncertainty, without even having the decency—if that’s the word—to
use the “Some are saying…” locution popular at Fox News when they
engage in insinuation.
“Oswald shot Kennedy
in an act of terrorism on behalf of Castro.”
Assassination and talk of military coups
(“Manchurian Candidate, Dr. Strangelove, Seven Days in
May") was in the air. None mentioned Castro, except a secret program
developed by the Joint Chiefs called Operation Northwoods, designed to create a
provocation and blame it on Castro.
Which brings up the
question: Why is the New Yorker publishing someone so ignorant of American
history?
Also (not to beat a dead
horse, or Gopnik) to people who were there
that day--none of whom suspected a lone nut malcontent--Gopnik's lone gunman
will come as a surprise.
Jackie Kennedy, for example, covered in
red-rust stains, her husband’s blood caked even under her bracelet, dismissing
suggestions that she change out of her gore-soaked pink Chanel suit on the
airplane on the way back to Washington D.C., shouting: “No! Let them see what
they’ve done!”
And Kenny
O’Donnell and Dave Powers, White House aides in the car behind Kennedy, World
War II veterans who know the sounds of gunfire, both reported they heard shots from
the front, from the grassy knoll area, as well as from behind.
Or Bobby Kennedy, who, when he heard the news,
according to the excellent new
“Brothers” by David Talbot,
O said “I
thought they would get me, instead of the President.”
"They"
is not the pronoun used to describe lone nut gunman, is it? None of Kennedy’s
inner circle that day, Talbot reports, felt the nation had been victimized by a
wayward malcontent, but by an organized and powerful “they.”
But this is apparently still too chilling
(career-wise) for fawning journalists to contemplate.
Careerist ambitions... or the truth?
Why are
we belaboring this aside from Adam Gopnik?
A recent Bill Moyers PBS
Special on the media’s failure to ask hard questions during the run-up to the
war in Iraq called “Buying the War” offered the careerist concerns
of reporters as one reason they marched in lock-step with the Administration's
“No questions asked” mind-set.
“Nobody wants to get
necklaced,” was the way Dan Rather put it.
That’s people like Gopnik in
spades, who is, apparently, roundly
loathed for exactly the reasons Bill Moyer’s mentioned in his PBS
Special.
“A careerist with
delicate antennae,” wrote James Wolcott in New Republic in an amazingly
personal slam. “I sometimes wonder if Adam Gopnik was put on this earth to
annoy.”
In the first half-dozen
reviews of his latest book on Amazon, Gopnik’s work is called:
“Unoriginal, self-centered and dated.”
His writing is called
“self-absorbed drivel” by one; another demurs, opting instead for “Smug,
egotistical drivel.”
Even his ability to party is
called into question… "Gopnik, a reductionist blowhard who I suspect is
not much fun at a cocktail party…”
Ground Zero: "A hearty flavor of smoked mozzarella"
Gopnik, we learned, is notorious
for having described the downtown death smell in New York City after 9/11 as
having “the hearty flavor of "smoked mozzarella."
That’s way
beyond icky.
One thing can be
said for Gopnik: he’s in tune with the powers-that-be. He
knows which side his bread is buttered on.
What Gopnik knew, a couple
of months early, was that the JFK issue’s now been settled. The “settling
factor” was the book by the man who
prosecuted Charles Manson, Vincent Bugliosi, who calls his tome ''RECLAIMING HISTORY, THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY.”
The book is a 1600-page
monstrosity that puts faux 9/11 investigator Michael Ruppert's door-stopper to
shame. Hernias have been reported from simply picking up Bugliosi's book.
An "airtight case;" another "slam dunk"
Still,
reviewers from the major newspapers have been rhapsodic. Bugliosi’s
overwhelmingly favorable reviews suggest something's been waiting for
just such a moment…
“An airtight case
against the JFK conspiracy theorists,” read one headline.
“The days of the
grassy knoll-Mafia-missing bullets conspiracy theories might at last be over,”
read another.
“It's time we
marginalized Kennedy conspiracy theorists the way we've marginalized
smokers; next time one of your co-workers starts in about Oswald and the CIA.,
make him stand in the rain with the other outcasts,” wrote the Los Angeles
Times.
“Putting to rest
(thoroughly) the conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination,” reports
the Sunday Portland Oregonian.
How amazing that the author of celebrity biographies on notables Paula Jones and O.J. Simpson
could have written a book to put a 40-year controversy to rest.
Will wonders never cease?
Orders from headquarters?
What
occasioned all those effusive reviews of Bugliosi’s book wasn't his
impeccable logic, however. Perhaps it was something more mundane.
Judge for yourself.
Here’s the
argument Bugliosi uses to “prove” Oswald acted alone, and for why no larger
organization like the CIA, the Mob, or the military could have been involved in
the Kennedy assassination…
“It does not take a genius
to understand that no group of top-level conspirators would ever employ someone
as unstable and unreliable as Oswald to commit the biggest murder in history, no
such group would ever provide its hit man with, or allow him to use, a
twelve-dollar rifle to get the job done…”
Can you say, "straw
man?"
Bugliosi, a veteran
prosecutor, is pretending never to have heard the term “patsy” to set up
someone to take the fall for a crime. But whatever else he is, Bugliosi is
not an unintelligent man.
He's doing it on purpose.
"We'll stop theorizing when they stop conspiring."

It's as dishonest and shoddy
as the two-hour “Beyond Conspiracy” special which will forever
disgrace Peter Jenning’s memory, “proving” Oswald acted alone... with computer
animation.
Conveniently,
none of the cheesy animation shows what really happened after
Kennedy was shot. Dozens of eyewitnesses, horrified onlookers, and police
officers can be seen in the Zapruder tape responding to the shooting of the
President… before those pesky conspiracy theorists had even uttered a word.
They responded by
charging the grassy knoll.
Jennings bought himself a
ticket to ride on the Bullet Train to Journalistic Infamy, right alongside
“Gunga” Dan Rather, the only reporter in Dealey Plaza when JFK was shot. Rather,
of course, didn't see a thing. And somehow, in all the years he hosted the CBS
Evening News, his discomfort came through.
Thus the "Mighty
Wurlitzer," as the CIA's disinformation machine has been called, grinds
on.
What does this all have to do with 9/11?
TOMORROW: Some Real
Questions about 9/11:
What does a mysterious
couple in Hamburg Germany have in common with the Oswald Family's Landlord in
Dallas, Michael and Ruth Paine?
AND: What happened at
dawn on Sept 11 that the American people haven't been told?
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