Abraham's Home Movie

Every ten years or so...

Some may have guessed from the previous post that I wasn't just watching C-SPAN last night. Yeah, I gave more attention than I should have to both the ABC and PBS specials last night marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.

These days, I'm pretty skeptical regarding any sort of conspiricy--full disclosure: I've read Case Closed, as well as a bunch of conspiracy books years ago, my parents bought a copy of the Warren Commission's summary (one volume, not the 26 volume full report) and I've browsed around the various websites...

I do this for several reasons: One, when I was a kid, the Kennedy myth was in full force. Hell, one of the first books I ever read was a children's book about the 35th president. I had been born not long after the assassination, and learned to read during the era of Nixon and Watergate (no lie: when I was ten, I read All the President's Men, and pretty much got the gist of it--even the reference to Deep Throat, but, no it was many years later before I saw that movie). I recall well the reopening of the investigation by the House Assassination Committee, and at the time agreed with their findings--which suggested a conspiracy.

Of course, by this time, Kennedy's legacy had been tarnished somewhat by allegations/revelations regarding his sex life, his health, and so on. Some of this was, in my opinion, inspired by Watergate--Nixon's defenders wanted to salvage their man's reputation, and did so by attacking JFK. So there were "shocking" revelations about lurid scenes in JFK's White House (my personal favorite is the story of Kennedy smoking pot--three joints, if I remember--and frolicking around with one of the young interns--remind you of anyone?).

Kennedy the politician, I learned, was a disappointment: he was largely ineffective as President, providing merely tepid support for the emerging civil rights movement, he was extremely hawkish on defense (he campaigned on a lie: that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union militarily, when the opposite was true), and he was dead set, no pun intended, on killing Fidel Castro. Add to this the fact that Kennedy massively increased our involvement in Vietnam, AND his embrace of supply side economics (oddly, after going out of their way to shoot down JFK's star, Republicans justified their own dalliance with the Laffer curve by citing Kennedy's tax cut--ironic), and I became much less impressed with the man. It seemed as if it was his image--confident, handsome, with a glamorous wife and children, and, of course, his horrible death, that became his measure.

I also find it disturbing that Kennedy was never called to task for his wholehearted support for Joe McCarthy. Nixon's defenders might have a point with this one.

These days, as I get older still, I can grudgingly accept that JFK handled the Cuban Missile Crisis fairly well--hell, his Cabinet was ready to start World War III--thank heavens he and his brother nixed THAT (RFK, it turns out, delivered an impassioned speech AGAINST PREEMPTIVE INVASION of Cuba on principles of international law--maybe Richard Perle should be forced to read the transcript). I better understand his reasons for being so lukewarm on civil rights (Johnson, as a Southerner, could get away with this, even as he correctly forecast Republican adoption of "The Southern Strategy," i.e. a wink-wink, nudge-nudge appeal to racism as a means of increasing their support in Dixie), and yeah, I also recognize his intelligence in understanding the essence of the Presidency as imagery. Kennedy knew how to use the media in a visceral sense--something no successor, even Reagan, has been able to do (Reagan ALWAYS relied on his image handlers, while Kennedy seemed to KNOW how to play the press like a violin).

By the way, the ABC program was better than PBS's, surprisingly. I thought PBS gave a little too much credibility to some true wacko conspiricy theorists, while Jennings did a nice job debunking Oliver Stone's movie (although pawning off the Zapruder film as a scene from JFK was a little much--Costner as Garrison, the fatal shot replayed 5 or 6 times--I had to turn away for a second). Jennings also pointed out something I've only seen written about by Al Cockburn from an old Nation column: In September of 1963, Fidel Castro gave a long interview to the western press where he alluded to the NUMEROUS attempts on his own life, and warned that the other shoe could fall. This story ran in the New Orleans paper, where it was VERY likely read by Lee Oswald, who at that time was trying to distinguish himself as a revolutionary communist and pro-Castro organizer. This may well have planted the seed in his mind, and when by tragic misfortune the motorcade route passed right in front of the building where Oswald worked, history was forever re-written.

For the record: those positing a CIA/Shadow Government/Lyndon Johnson conspiracy are full of it, if you ask me. In spite of the Bay of Pigs disaster, Kennedy was their guy--enamored of Special Forces-type clandestine operations, as true a blue-blood as an Irish Catholic could be, with certifiable movie star looks and charm: no, there's no way they'd off one of their own. As for the mafia, sure, there was motive--Robert Kennedy went after them like an attck dog, in spite of their collaboration on Castro--but that's the problem. If the mafia can't get Castro, what makes anyone think they could get JFK?

In closing, I'd also like to note that I watch these programs for the physical records they provide of a moment in time. There is LOTS of news footage, ranging from high quality 16 mm movie film, to the relatively primitive black and white television pictures, although, surprisingly, none of the assassination itself. Instead, we have the ultimate cinema verite--home movies taken by otherwise anonymous people like Abraham Zapruder, who suddenly found themselves forever associated with the event. This is both mundane and amazing: home movies as American History.

Seeing the low-resolution black and white television footage (video tape had just come into common use--indeed, the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was only broadcast live by NBC, although the replay was shown over and over on the other networks), along with the early 1960's automobiles, clothes, street scenes, and so on, is fascinating. This and the measure of time as it reflects upon myself and my opinions of the event (as I have no personal recollection) make marking the anniversary of the tragedy as much a measure of my own changes as anything, while simultaneously providing a way to peer back in time, as it were.

In the end, I have some opinions regarding how things might be different had Kennedy not been killed--some of these differences might have been for the better, some for the worse--but speculation is for conversation at a bar, not for this web log. And, as it stands, there are more pressing issues out in the world. Still, the Kennedy assassination is one of history's time capsules, and ten years from now I'll probably watch the specials yet again....