I know it's always distressing to the Nation when I stray too far from commentary on The Little One, so you may wish to skip this entry.
I've read many of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy books, a number of the better-known ones. My bookshelf contains around 15-20 of them. I've visited numerous conspiracy websites. Walked Dealey Plaza numerous times and visited the Sixth Floor Museum a couple times. I've also read the Posner and Bugliosi LHO-did-it-alone books. Also read the Warren Report, although none of the many published volumes of evidence.
What I especially like about Gordon's approach to this is that it recognizes both fronts on the fight against nonsense: First, he knows a great deal about the facts of the assassination and, within the style and time limitations of a guy-talk format, does a good job of answering conspiricists on the merits. Second, he recognizes the illogic and flimsiness of the conspiracy investigators' methods and calls attention to the tortured processes by which they spin their very strange and mutually-exclusive scenarios. Of the couple-dozen or so shooter candidates of the various schools of assassination thought, all but one of them must be wrong. It's amazing to me that Jim Marrs, who spans both Kennedy conspiracy and UFO conspiracy, is a professor at UT-Arlington where he offers his stuff to the unsuspecting undergraduates.
Today he alluded to another strain of this debate: It is characterized on the conspiricists side by what historian Richard Hofstadter called, in a book of the same name, "The Paranoid Style of American Politics." We see it on both sides of the political spectrum, from Joe McCarthy, through the Kennedy conspiricists, to the Area 51 people, to the 9/11 Truthers, to the Obama Birthers. (I swear to God: The other night I happened on a YouTube video of a network interview with a Texas A&M professor who was seriously arguing that no jets hit the World Trade Center on 9/11.)
[By the bye, of this group, the Birthers strike me as the least incredible, mainly owing to POTUS's extremely odd reaction to the entire controversy, and the continuing reluctance to produce an original of that long-form certificate. But pretty incredible, nonetheless. For the record -- I think POTUS was almost certainly born where he says he was.]
[By the bye, of this group, the Birthers strike me as the least incredible, mainly owing to POTUS's extremely odd reaction to the entire controversy, and the continuing reluctance to produce an original of that long-form certificate. But pretty incredible, nonetheless. For the record -- I think POTUS was almost certainly born where he says he was.]
Might try to tag along on that LHO Trail of Tears if Gordon gets it up and running.
A solemn promise to the faithful Confessor: More Mike R irresponsible speculation coming right up!
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[Respectful request: Even though I didn't, let's try to keep comments tied to Gordon's work on this. Of course, you are always welcome to tell me that I've lost a reader.]
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[Respectful request: Even though I didn't, let's try to keep comments tied to Gordon's work on this. Of course, you are always welcome to tell me that I've lost a reader.]
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