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The Assassination As it Happened


FreeThinker

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On Friday, November 22, 2013, we will have a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness history in a way that is quite rare. Beginning at 12:40 pm US CST, (1840 GMT) CBS News will begin streaming their coverage of the assassination of President John F, Kennedy-- the ENTIRE four days of nonstop coverage, as it happened at the same times as it happened, beginning with their cut-away from the soap opera As The World Turns and proceeding on through to the shooting of Oswald live on TV Sunday morning, to the President's funeral Monday. This is a truly amazing opportunity to experience history, to travel back to Friday November 22, 1963, to see how television news was handled fifty years ago and to see, as it happened, one of the three truly momentous events of my lifetime (the others being the landing of men on the moon in 1969 and the attacks of 9/11). For those who were not alive then, this is an incredible opportunity to witness history as it was happening and to see what television was like in the era of black-and-white, to witness the event that convinced the networks to start taking news seriously. Walter Cronkite would later say that everything they knew about covering great events they learned, they invented that weekend.

An interesting anecdote about that day-- CBS at that time did not have an actual studio for the news in 1963. They simply rolled a camera into the newsroom and set it in front of Walter Cronkite's desk for their usual evening broadcast. When the first flash of a shooting in downtown Dallas came over the UPI wire, there was no television camera for Cronkite and he had to go into the CBS radio booth for the first twenty minutes of his broadcast over the TV network while the control room simply showed a graphic on the screens reading "CBS News Bulletin." At that time, they had to wheel a giant, cumbersome camera in from another studio and then it took twenty minutes for the vacuum tubes in the camera to warm up before they could use it. It was not until after 1:00 CST before they could actually show something other than the CBS News graphic. It is amazing in this day of ubiquitous webcams and instant communication through multiple media that such was the case back then.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57612192/cbsnews.com-to-stream-1963-broadcast-coverage-of-jfk-assassination/

A personal anecdote-- I was six years-old at the time and lived in Ft. Worth, Texas. I was privileged to see President Kennedy the night before he died when my parents took me downtown to see the President and the First Lady at the Texas Hotel. The following afternoon, I was in my Kindergarten class at South Hills Elementary School, when we were all lying on our little rugs on the floor taking a nap as my teacher, Mrs. Cox, entered the classroom with moist eyes and struggling not to cry to announce the President's death. After school, I walked home and found my mother crying before the television set in the living room, which frightened me terribly. She served me a dish of Neapolitan ice cream to make me feel better.

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That is one of the questions everyone used to ask prior to 9/11: Where were you when Kennedy was shot?

I was sitting in my 8th grade social studies class and an announcement came over the PA system that teachers should turn on the televisions in their classrooms. We all sat stunned as the news was broadcast, the most somber bunch of fourteen year old kids I have ever seen.

In the week that followed I could see the change in people no matter where I encountered them. It was a feeling that everything we had come to expect as a nation had now changed. Perhaps I was fortunate, my father was in the news business. We had friends across the broad spectrum of print and television media.

My father had covered Kennedy when he was a senator in the days before the Democratic convention where he was nominated. I had shaken the hand of President Kennedy, only one of several I would meet, but by far the greatest. And then he was gone.

The long lines to see the coffin lying in state spoke to the affection so many had for Kennedy. The images of his family attending the funeral and burial brought tears to the nation. How should you feel when your dreams are stolen?

John Kennedy had given us hope that we could and would achieve a greatness in this nation. Had he lived I'm not so sure his legacy would have survived the Vietnam era, he firmly believed in the domino theory that kept us in that despicable war for so very long.

I marched against the war while I was in college. If Kennedy had been around as an elder statesman he would have supported that war and I would have turned against him as I did against Johnson. History was made in those years and I lived through all that media coverage after the assassination. Not sure I could endure another dose of that material, I still have my own thoughts.

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Anyone who saw Oswald shot on live TV by Jack Ruby won't forget it. Talk about pandemonium! We were all still feeling shaken that our president had been assassinated. It seemed unreal that that could have happened. Then, on TV, we see his killer shot!

Our national self-confidence took a serious, debilitating blow that week. Many people think we've never really been the same since.

C

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The coincidence is astonishing. my beloved and I watched the movie Parkland last night, and all the memories came flooding back.

Parkland is like a documentary filmed by a camera that was somehow sent back in time.

Lest anyone think that America was alone its shock, its grief, or sense of loss I can assure you that we Australians were weeping with you.

I wrote and recorded a poetic sound-scape in homage to the president and in attempt to console both the people of the United States and ourselves. Unfortunately, I have lost the recording, but it was my first artistic venture into using sound and words to express my feelings.

At 19, I was well aware that I was living through the horror that my generation thought could never happen again. Assassinations were what happened in times long past; such things weren't supposed to happen anymore.

In time, I would recall my mother's dismay at the report of Gandhi's assassination on January 30, 1948, when I was 4 years old, but on that November day in 1963 I was absorbed in the unthinkable, and our lives were robbed of the promise which we felt could then never be fulfilled.

All the conspiracy theories that flooded the media since that day, have but fed the fear for any president's safety, and for the promise of the American experiment in democracy for equality, of and by equals. There is no doubt that there are those who would attempt to deprive us of Obama's Presidency, but today political assassination is implemented through obstruction of the democratic process in the Congress. In memory of the hopes and dreams we thought were inevitable in those days, in the memory of what JFK meant to so many of us, I plead for the people to make sure the mid-term elections reflect those memories, those hopes and dreams, by returning a Congress capable of not being the instrument of obstruction that is really little more than a modern form of political assassination, not only of the President's effectiveness, but an attack on the Constitution itself.

If we are to take lesson from the past, then of all the threats to our existence, it is the guns of bigotry loaded with the ammunition of ignorance and superstition that endangers us, all. It seeks to replace love with hate. Ignorance and superstition are all that are needed to obliterate and assassinate love, and as many people have realised and proclaimed so many times since ancient days, love is the only sane and satisfactory reason for life. Any society which excludes the development of love assassinates its own future, and life's hopes and dreams will perish from the Earth.

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Thanks to Free Thinker for the heads up. I don't think I can stand reliving the entire of those four days, but I plan to give it a look in. I'm not sure I can revisit the 1960s, a dreadful and shameful chapter in our U.S. history, framed by President Kennedy's assassination at the front end and Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations at the other, with the Vietnam War adding to our domestic turmoil in between. Little wonder social order broke down and the generations split apart in the '70s.

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Looking back now I can see that the impact of the assisnation was more than most people realised at the time. I was a 15 year old student in Further Education at the time. The loss made me realise that if we wanted anything done we could not rely on anybody else to do it for us we had to do it ourselves. This led me to protesting about compulsory attendance at Christian worship in our morning assemblies at the college I was at, which had a large number of none Christians in the student body. Eventually I was thrown out of college for my protest but in the end the college had to give in.

I was not the only student who started to stand up for what we believed to be right then and I think it is true to say that the change in thinking amongst the youth of the early 1960s that came from the assisnation led to much of the protest movement we saw around the world in the later half of that decade. The death of Kennedy hit everybody around the world it also started something that I don't think anyone expected or realised at the time. It is only in the last five years or so that I have spoken to people about my age (I'm 65) and found that they had felt the same way as I did. Kennedy is no longer there to make the change so we must do it ourselves and we did make a change, every one of us in our small way.

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A personal anecdote-- I was six years-old at the time and lived in Ft. Worth, Texas. I was privileged to see President Kennedy the night before he died when my parents took me downtown to see the President and the First Lady at the Texas Hotel. The following afternoon, I was in my Kindergarten class at South Hills Elementary School, when we were all lying on our little rugs on the floor taking a nap as my teacher, Mrs. Cox, entered the classroom with moist eyes and struggling not to cry to announce the President's death. After school, I walked home and found my mother crying before the television set in the living room, which frightened me terribly. She served me a dish of Neapolitan ice cream to make me feel better.

I'm just a little ahead of you, F.T.: I was 9 years old in 1963, and we had seen Kennedy in Tampa, Florida three times on Monday, November 18th, just four days before he died. That was 50 years old today, which is stunning to think about. My parents were die hard conservative Republicans, but even they were terribly affected by the assassination -- angry at the disrespect to the office of the Presidency and the violence of this senseless act.

I still find JFK's death tremendously sad, and I've tried to explain to younger people who weren't around that the world of 1963 was far more innocent and simplistic than it is today. Kennedy's death was far worse than 9/11, because during the early 1960s, nobody ever expected terrorist attacks or violent murders like this. I've always felt that the 1950s really ended at the end of 1963, and then the 1960s really began in 1964 when the Beatles hit in January. The difference to me between 1963 and 1964 was like an explosion: everything changed in pop culture, the hair, the music, TV, movies, clothes, cars, everything. It was an amazing time to be alive.

I also think Kennedy's death is one of the greatest murder mysteries of modern times. I know the popular opinion is that Oswald did it alone, but it seems to terrible to believe that one lone nutball could kill such a great man. It's easier to believe that it had to be a conspiracy of multiple people behind such a horrible crime; I don't think it's a vast conspiracy, but I do think there's at least a dozen bizarre, unexplained events during the assassination that I want to believe there isn't a simple explanation for the whole thing.

My partner is a huge conspiracy fan and watches this stuff all the time, and we were able to visit Dealey Plaza back during a broadcast convention in Dallas in 1984. That's a weird place to walk around, looking at the actual Grassy Knoll, standing where Abraham Zapruder shot his 8mm home movie of the murder, and standing on the street and staring up at the 6th floor window of the Texas Book Depository Building. There's a very strange vibe to the whole area; as more than one commentator says, because of the several tall buildings and the freeway overpass in the area, it's almost tailor-made for an assassination, with a half-dozen possible places where other assassins could have pulled the trigger.

I've always believed Oswald was involved, but I don't think he was alone. I'm particularly angry at Jack Ruby for killing the suspect, because that silenced any chance we ever had at getting to the real truth.

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I think Pecman makes a good point about the drastic difference in thinking between 1963 and 2013, the innocence of that period and the cynicism of today. And, I think Chris James makes a very good point that had Kennedy lived, we would have a completely different perception of him. He would have continued the war in Vietnam and probably escalated it. I wrote a paper in college about Kennedy's foreign policy and one of my sources was Cold War and Counter-revolution, by Richard Walton, in which describes how much more of a hawk and anti-communist JFK was in the 1960 campaign than Nixon. He also believed in the domino theory. His father's foreign policy was quite conservative as Ambassador to the UK and later. Joseph Kennedy, in fact, was a friend of Joe McCarthy, who was actually Robert Kennedy's godfather and hired Bobby to join his staff. I suggest Bobby's later opposition to the war in Vietnam was inspired more by his loathing of Lyndon Johnson than by his idealism, as witnessed by the fact that he didn't enter the 1968 Presidential race until after Eugene McCarthy's strong showing in the New Hampshire primary. The doves had begged Bobby to run and he had refused until Eugene McCarthy, (no relation to Joe McCarthy), had done the hard work and demonstrated Johnson's weakness.

And, we should remember it was Johnson who pushed through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Equal Housing Acts after JFK had vacillated on the civil rights issue, fearful of losing the south in 1964 and not speaking out on the issue until after the outrages of Birmingham.

This is not to say the JFK wasn't a good President and a great man. He was inspiring and brilliant and he saved the world from nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis by persevering over the fascist General Curtis LeMay, who was demanding an all-out attack. For that alone, we should honor Kennedy. He was an inspiring President, but had he lived, we probably wouldn't revere him to the extent we do. Was the assassination the defining event of the sixties? Yes. Was it the event that disillusioned young people in America and around the world? Yes. Was Kennedy an inspirational leader? Yes. Very much so.

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Excellent summary, FT.

Many older, non-partisan observers privately stated that JFK was assassinated too soon to know if he was indeed as good a President as he had been believed to be.

I would note however that cynicism had well and truly taken root in the young as early as 1969. The cultural revolutionaries were about to be seduced by the 'Establishment' and the once freedom, love and peace fighters were beginning to give in to the temptations of a steady income. By 1974 the few peace and love-niks who remained, were erecting signs on the highway of the culture that read,

"Turn back you're going the wrong way."

The most famous of these was of course John Lennon.

The path to the future is paved with the bodies of the assassinated.

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I think Pecman makes a good point about the drastic difference in thinking between 1963 and 2013, the innocence of that period and the cynicism of today. And, I think Chris James makes a very good point that had Kennedy lived, we would have a completely different perception of him. He would have continued the war in Vietnam and probably escalated it.

You forget National Security Action memo #263 in mid-November 1963, which did start to order the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam:

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsam-jfk/nsam-263.htm

There have been alternate history books of fiction of what it might have been like if Kennedy had lived. My fear is that somebody might have eventually found out about Kennedy's illnesses (including Addison's Disease), the large number of painkillers and pep pills he was taking, and the numerous romantic affairs he was having. If those had come out at the time, it would've been the biggest political scandal of the age.

I'm of the opinion that Kennedy had his flaws, but he was an essentially good man doing the right thing, and he understood politics and compromise. I want to believe the world would've been a much better place had he lived, and had Bobby Kennedy eventually been elected in 1968.

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I is the runt of the litter I suppose.

I wasn't around for Kennedy's assassination but I've suffered through way too many of the conspiracy theories that it spawned.

Sad as it is, assassination has been a tool of statecraft since way before Brutus sealed Caesar's deal. The more progressive the politicians, the more likely they are to be targeted by ideological and religious wing-nuts.

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I am aware of the National Security memo, though I am also aware that Bobby was more hawkish at that time than the President and that a number of events in Vietnam in '64 would probably have persuaded JFK to continue the escalation. A bio of JFK which recently ran on PBS on American Experience describes JFK's belief in confronting Communism with small, regional conflicts instead of large-scale confrontations ala the Cuban Missile Crisis. They played a tape recording of JFK dictating his memoirs to Mrs. Lincoln in which he admits to ordering the assassination of Diem, but regretting how "messy" it was.

It is interesting that several tapes have been released by the National Archives of telephone conversations between LBJ and several Senate leaders, all of whom were southerners filibustering the Civil Rights Act in the spring and summer of 1964, but also expressing skepticism of expanding the war, including Richard Russell of Georgia, who was quite emphatic in opposing escalation, but agreeing with Johnson that there didn't seem to be an alternative that let the US save face before the Communists. I think the idea of Kennedy withdrawing is more the wishful thinking of the left, inspired by the myth of Camelot and hatred of LBJ.

Jeff Greenfield, a CBS News commentator for years and a speechwriter for Bobby in '68, has written an alternative history in which Kennedy lives. Once again, more of a liberal example of wishful thinking, but he does make some compelling arguments for a view of what might have happened. He, too, thinks JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam and that the counter-cultural left would not have formed. He also mentions the campaign finance scandals around LBJ, which Life magazine chose not to pursue after JFK's death, which would have surfaced if he had lived, resulting in Johnson's resignation as VP. Another documentary about JFK on the History channel several years ago, back when it's programming was still about history and not about 'gator wrasslin' and redneck pawn brokers, suggested that Kennedy's health issues--as well as the use of painkillers and stimulants and his womanizing-- would have come out during his second term and that the health issues might have resulted in his death during the second term. Of course, the History channel's always been more appealing to conservatives than PBS, so their interpretation might be suspect.

Here's a link to the article about Greenfield's book. I plan to read the book. I love stuff like that!

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/19/21523433-what-if-jfk-had-lived-book-reimagines-a-presidency-a-war-and-the-60s?lite

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Jeff Greenfield, a CBS News commentator for years and a speechwriter for Bobby in '68, has written an alternative history in which Kennedy lives. Once again, more of a liberal example of wishful thinking, but he does make some compelling arguments for a view of what might have happened. He, too, thinks JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam and that the counter-cultural left would not have formed.

Yes, it's interesting to reflect the music that wouldn't have happened in the late 1960s/early 1970s if there hadn't been a war to protest. Woodstock might have had 50,000 people instead of 500,000 people... we wouldn't have gotten songs like "Eve of Destruction" or "What's Going On." It'd be a very different world.

I worked on a Twilight Zone episode around 1985-1986 where it depicted an alternate 1963 where a historian from the future went back in time to witness the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, but wound up accidentally saving the President's life. The Secret Service jump on the guy, take him to the White House, and it's discovered that he has money from the future... including a half-dollar with JFK's face on it. Kennedy realizes the truth, plus reports start coming in that the world is getting ripped apart by mysterious forces. The time-traveller explains that because they've shattered time, everything's going to get sucked into some vortex... so they wind up transporting Kennedy to the future and the time-traveller takes Kennedy's place and gets killed in the limo. Strange show, but it did stick with me.

It's interesting to watch the TV coverage from that era, and reflect on how crude and primitive the news operations were from that era. There's a famous interview with Abraham Zapruder at one of the Dallas police stations, and the interviewer barely makes eye contact with the guy, staring off to one side while he smokes a cigarette on camera. Very strange TV. I missed seeing Oswald killed live on TV -- I was watching CBS, and they didn't have a live camera on that moment -- but I can remember immediately thinking, "there's something going on here."

I liked the movie JFK very much, but I don't dispute it's a distorted, sensationalized version of a lot of theories. Still, I think it's very entertaining if you don't take it at face value and understand how manipulative it is. And I like the fact that director Stone at least raised some very interesting questions about the assassination... even if I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions. It's a powerful film, extremely well-shot and well-edited, and John Williams' music is brilliant, too. Here's the clip where Mr. X explains some reasons why Kennedy was killed:

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I remember that Twilight Zone episode! I think the historian was actually a descendant of JFK. He was playing with the 50 cent piece on Air Force One and one of the Secret Service agents saw it. That was a good episode.

I once found a great book, Alternate Presidents, which is a collection of short stories in which the losers of Presidential elections or other people win their elections and what happens as a result. It was fun. This is a link to the Wikipedia review of it.

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