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The Kennedys and Civil Rights: How the MSM Continues to Distort History


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4 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

This is important historical perspective. Thank you Jim DiEugenio. 

I was struck early in Part 1 by the fact that Southern power structures and individuals were left in place. As a result Reconstruction was a failure, undermined at every turn. When I think about our current predicament, the constitutional crisis we are now facing, the hatred of the ‘other’ that plagues our body politic, it reminds me that we made the same mistake after WW 2. The Nazis were not stripped, they were incorporated. 

Economically, however, the Marshall Plan was a tremendous success-- especially compared to the fiasco of the Versailles Treaty, which, surely, laid the groundwork for the rise of fascism in Europe, and WWII.  The darkest side of "incorporating" Naziism, in my opinion, was the way Allen Dulles and our Cold Warriors "imported" the Nazi weapons and intel people (like Reinhard Gehlen, et.al.) into our military-industrial- espionage complex.

But, getting back to Reconstruction and Jim's new article, Rutherford Hayes and the Republican Party were too easily manipulated by the Southern plantation-owning aristocracy into abandoning the freed men of the former Confederacy in the aftermath of the split 1876 election.  Hayes was a thoroughly decent man, and a true Civil War hero, but the North was weary of the military occupation of Radical Reconstruction, and experiencing a recession.

What happened to the black citizens of the South after 1876 was a truly terrible tragedy.  By 1900, black voters had disappeared almost entirely from the voter roles in places like Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, which had elected black legislators during Radical Reconstruction.  Foner's statistics about this are horrifying to contemplate.  What happened to the black population of South Carolina in the 20th century?  Their numbers shrank from 60 percent (of the state population) in 1865 to less than 30 percent a century later!

No doubt, there was some emigration to the North, but the numbers indicate significant rates of genocide.

Edited by W. Niederhut
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Regarding Brown vs Board I think it can be said it carry's forward to this day in some ways not positive to the public.  It inspired James McGill Buchanan to fight it in Virginia and eventually through George Mason University led us to Citizens United and the predicament we are in today.

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Chains-History-Radical-Stealth/dp/1101980974/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541737083&sr=1-1&keywords=democracy+in+chains

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But I look at that Ron as the failure of Eisenhower and Nixon to support the decision.

I mean can you imagine that they just left those poor kids in Prince Edward County with no schools?  And one of the big problems Kennedy had there was the fact that Eisenhower had appointed guys like Haynsworth to the Fourth Circuit.  See, Kennedy could work with the Fifth Circuit, but it was harder in Virginia. If you recall, when Nixon started enacting the Southern Strategy, Haynsworth was one of the guys he tried to get on the Supreme Court.  The idea that JFK had to actually create an entire school system for those kids in Prince Edward is kind of incredible.  But that is how almost pathologically prejudiced their leaders were. (Meanwhile Thurmond is having an illegitimate child with an Afro American woman.)

The other thing is: Why did the networks not expose these awful things?  I mean these were startling stories that had great visual and dramatic value.  Where was NBC or CBS?  Its not like their reporters did not want to do these stories.  ABC had a guy, Jim Wooten, who was so inspired by RFK's visit to Mississippi that he wrote a story about it and kept it in his jacket pocket the rest of his career.  This is what RFK talked to Tom Hayden about in 1967, TV time,  something he was going to push for. Which is probably why Hayden was seen sitting alone in a pew at St Patrick's weeping at Kennedy's requiem mass.

One of the things I learned while doing this research is just how nutty the pathology of the south was, and how it was allowed to grow and fester because the Republican Party deserted its ideals upheld by Lincoln. (As Andrej said, this probably impacts on the attitude of the Dallas authorities toward the FJK case) And how the Supreme Court and several presidents did absolutely nothing about it.  I mean, how about that picture with Coolidge and those Confederate veterans?

In fact, this  research was so disturbing that I was reminded of the fate of Iris Chang after her book on Nanjing.

 

Edited by James DiEugenio
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VI just came back and finished part four last night.  The article is concise for the depth of the subject yet detailed.  It is Very enlightening and yet disconcerting regarding both my own education and personal family history understanding.  I had at least one great great grandfather that I feel sure owned slaves as not a plantation owner but successful farmer in Mississippi in the 1850s who lost 3 sons in the uncivil war.  Another likely did as a east Texas settler in the 1840's and state congressman in the 1850's (served with Samuel maverick in 1852).  Yet another did not, served in the uncivil war and spoke of wasting four years of his life after getting wound twice.  Another faced with a forced choice of joining one side to the other in Tennessee headed north.  Apprehended by confederates he died of starvation as a prisoner on Belle Island in Richmond Virginia. It's now a state park, no mention of the prison on the website.

http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/belle-isle#general_information

I wasn't raised to hate or overtly discriminate, discrimination was subtle.

I've printed parts 1 & 2 to review with a highlighter and will do so with parts 3 & 4 tomorrow.   I hope to discuss it with my old friend Bob.  He told me of going to the side window of a restaurant in Louisiana in the late 50's - early 60's to pick up his order, he couldn't go inside because he's (still is) Black.

Edited by Ron Bulman
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On 11/9/2018 at 9:42 AM, James DiEugenio said:

But I look at that Ron as the failure of Eisenhower and Nixon to support the decision.

I mean can you imagine that they just left those poor kids in Prince Edward County with no schools?  And one of the big problems Kennedy had there was the fact that Eisenhower had appointed guys like Haynsworth to the Fourth Circuit.  See, Kennedy could work with the Fifth Circuit, but it was harder in Virginia. If you recall, when Nixon started enacting the Southern Strategy, Haynsworth was one of the guys he tried to get on the Supreme Court.  The idea that JFK had to actually create an entire school system for those kids in Prince Edward is kind of incredible.  But that is how almost pathologically prejudiced their leaders were. (Meanwhile Thurmond is having an illegitimate child with an Afro American woman.)

The other thing is: Why did the networks not expose these awful things?  I mean these were startling stories that had great visual and dramatic value.  Where was NBC or CBS?  Its not like their reporters did not want to do these stories.  ABC had a guy, Jim Wooten, who was so inspired by RFK's visit to Mississippi that he wrote a story about it and kept it in his jacket pocket the rest of his career.  This is what RFK talked to Tom Hayden about in 1967, TV time,  something he was going to push for. Which is probably why Hayden was seen sitting alone in a pew at St Patrick's weeping at Kennedy's requiem mass.

One of the things I learned while doing this research is just how nutty the pathology of the south was, and how it was allowed to grow and fester because the Republican Party deserted its ideals upheld by Lincoln. (As Andrej said, this probably impacts on the attitude of the Dallas authorities toward the FJK case) And how the Supreme Court and several presidents did absolutely nothing about it.  I mean, how about that picture with Coolidge and those Confederate veterans?

In fact, this  research was so disturbing that I was reminded of the fate of Iris Chang after her book on Nanjing.

 

 

Jim,

        As your latest work shows, the Republican Party more or less abandoned any meaningful support for the Constitutional (14th and 15th Amendment) rights of black citizens after 1876.   But, along with later Republican leaders like Eisenhower and Nixon, Senator Lyndon Johnson also collaborated with his fellow Dixiecrats in the Senate to sabotage meaningful civil rights legislation prior to 1960.

       Then, after JFK's murder, LBJ shocked and alienated his Dixiecrat colleagues by championing the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

       Do you have an opinion about why LBJ went to such great lengths to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, after his lengthy career as a Dixiecrat civil rights saboteur in Congress?  Was it mainly a maneuver to win the support of northern "liberals" after 11/22/63?

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1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

 

Jim,

        As your latest work shows, the Republican Party more or less abandoned any meaningful support for the Constitutional (14th and 15th Amendment) rights of black citizens after 1876.   But, along with later Republican leaders like Eisenhower and Nixon, Senator Lyndon Johnson also collaborated with his fellow Dixiecrats in the Senate to sabotage meaningful civil rights legislation prior to 1960.

       Then, after JFK's murder, LBJ shocked and alienated his Dixiecrat colleagues by championing the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

       Do you have an opinion about why LBJ went to such great lengths to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, after his lengthy career as a Dixiecrat civil rights saboteur in Congress?  Was it mainly a maneuver to win the support of northern "liberals" after 11/22/63?

W, I can't begin to try to approximate any potential answer by Jim.  He's obviously studied the issue in greater detail than you, I, and the so called historians he mentions who've bothered to try to broach the subject.  IMHO LBJ wanted to capitalize on both JFK's popularity and (sympathy regarding) his death to both ensure his re-election and his legacy and own popularity in turn.  The civil right's act and great society would be recorded in history as having happened under "his" watch.

BTW, I did not realize until reading the article JFK and RFK had done so much to try to right the situation in Prince Edward County.  I was shocked reading about the school closing's rather than admit blacks in McLean's Democracy In Chains but did not know about their efforts  to right the ship so to speak.  Commendable efforts on their part. 

 

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2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

W, I can't begin to try to approximate any potential answer by Jim.  He's obviously studied the issue in greater detail than you, I, and the so called historians he mentions who've bothered to try to broach the subject.  IMHO LBJ wanted to capitalize on both JFK's popularity and (sympathy regarding) his death to both ensure his re-election and his legacy and own popularity in turn.  The civil right's act and great society would be recorded in history as having happened under "his" watch.

BTW, I did not realize until reading the article JFK and RFK had done so much to try to right the situation in Prince Edward County.  I was shocked reading about the school closing's rather than admit blacks in McLean's Democracy In Chains but did not know about their efforts  to right the ship so to speak.  Commendable efforts on their part. 

 

Ron,

   Is it also possible that LBJ reversed his position on civil rights after 11/22/63 in order to minimize any suspicions that he was involved in the JFK assassination plot-- e.g., aligned with Southern segregationists who opposed the Kennedy brothers' efforts to uphold civil rights? 

   A related phenomenon would be LBJ's public insistence after 11/25/63 that he was continuing JFK's Vietnam policies (which we now know was NOT true.)

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The only answer to that question I have is two fold and resembles Ron.

1.  In congress, LBJ was very close to Richard Russell. As I noted, he saw what happened to his mentor as a result of Jim Crow in the south.  Russell, who had national aspirations, could not make headway in the north and west because of the issue.  LBJ then reversed course in 1957 in order for a prospective run at the White House in 1960.

2.  As Clay Risen shows in his book The Bill of the Century, LBJ really did not have a big role in the 1964 act. He deferred to JFK and then RFK after Dallas.  But the fact that it started under him as VP and ended under him at POTUS meant that he could not now turn back.  Especially after he told the country he was going to continue with Kennedy's policies.  (Which as WN notes he did not on Vietnam.)  But civil rights was much more immediately visible, what with Selma etc.  

But its really unfortunate, when you read part 4, what LBJ did with the War on Poverty.  I mean, I think the Kennedys looked at that as being the continuation of the failed Reconstruction of 1865-76.  And with Dave Hackett and RFK's wonderful idea about the CDC's it may have succeeded.  I will say this, without Vietnam, and with JFK campaigning on the issue in 1964, I do not think what did happen, would have happened.  That is, the anti war demonstrations and racial rioting breaking the USA  apart and giving us Nixon.

 

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Let me comment on something that the acute WN noted earlier.

It is truly incredible that by the Gilded Age, when most of those sickening confederate monuments went up, Robert E. Lee was being hailed as some kind of a great hero throughout the land, and US Grant was being caricatured as a sodden, drunken fool, tripping over himself in the White House.

I think this can only be understood with regard to that phenomenon I wrote about at the end of Part 1, the cover up that was snapped on in both the mass media and in academia.  Except in this case, I think the Dunning School of book writing was really more guilty.  But nevertheless, it caught on.  

I also blame this continued imagery on that inflated mediocrity Ken Burns and what he did with his long series on the Civil War.  I thought it was outrageous that he gave so much more screen time to that confederate apologist Shelby Foote and his whole Lost Cause spiel.  Someone counted the instances he was on versus everyone else, it was not even close.  Burns made Foote a millionaire because it greatly boosted the sale of his books.  Geez.  I really think this is one reason the MSM liked that series.

Someone said, why don't they construct a statue of Lee whipping his slaves and put it on display at UV?  I would actually think it better to put up a dual statue there, outside the law school of both Kennedys with King.  

Won't happen, even though RFK went to that law school.  In fact, it would never even get out of the gate I would wager.

Edited by James DiEugenio
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On ‎11‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 7:38 AM, James DiEugenio said:

This essay is part of the phenomenon  I call the Posthumous Assassination of JFK.  I have been working on this for a long time, going back to the nineties.

The idea is to kill the man's image and reputation and somehow that will take the sting out of his assassination.  The MSM goes to amazing lengths on this subject e.g. Sy Hersh, the late John Davis, Thomas Reeves, Collier and Horowitz.

It’s seemingly my role to be the roving contrarian, but I just don’t believe this is a thesis that will withstand scrutiny.  As far as I can discern, the “Posthumous [or Second] Assassination of JFK” by the “Main Stream Media” is a meme unique to the conspiracy community and conspiracy-oriented sites.

I thought the most telling statement in the essay (which I’m not disparaging in any way) was this at the very end:  “One is left to imagine what America would be like today if President Kennedy had lived, ….”  I’ve mentioned before that it seems to me that an extremely idealized image of JFK and a strong dissatisfaction with the America of today is at the root of much conspiracy thinking, particularly within the Deep Politics segment of the conspiracy community at which this essay is aimed.

This psychological underpinning seems to me to lead those within the Deep Politics segment to engage in speculation, draw inferences, connect dots and accept evidence that those with a less-worshipful view of JFK don’t find convincing.  The state of America today, and what we've learned about agencies like the CIA and FBI in the years since the assassination, are too-readily “read back” into the assassination via such speculation, inferences and dot-connecting.  To those for whom JFK is almost an object of worship, Deep Politics thinking also makes the assassination far more meaningful and emotionally satisfying than does the Lone Nut explanation.

Like most people, I have at least a somewhat exalted view of JFK as a visionary who might have accomplished great things if he had lived (but also as an extremely flawed individual whose Presidency might have been disastrous for the country if he had lived).  Like many people, I regard America as having declined precipitously in the years since the assassination (but mostly over the past 25 years).  However, I don’t attribute the decline of America to the assassination of JFK or to any dark and powerful forces that “must have” been responsible for the assassination and still “must be” at work today.  I don’t do this because I don’t believe the evidence supports it.  The speculation, inferences, dot-connecting and evidence of the Deep Politics segment just aren’t convincing to me, at least so far.  I don’t believe that my view of JFK or the current state of America influences my view of the assassination in the slightest.

This is from the 50th anniversary JFK assassination issue of The Atlantic, not a notably conservative publication:

John F. Kennedy was a good president but not a great one, most scholars concur. A poll of historians in 1982 ranked him 13th out of the 36 presidents included in the survey. Thirteen such polls from 1982 to 2011 put him, on average, 12th. Richard Neustadt, the prominent presidential scholar, revered Kennedy during his lifetime and was revered by Kennedy in turn. Yet in the 1970s, he remarked: “He will be just a flicker, forever clouded by the record of his successors. I don’t think history will have much space for John Kennedy.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/the-legacy-of-john-f-kennedy/309499/ 

On civil rights, the historical consensus seems to be:  Good, not great.  The record is what it is.

Nevertheless, the same sorts of polls consistently show that the public regards JFK as one of the two or three greatest Presidents, if not the greatest.  Scholars recognize that this is due largely to his extraordinary personal charisma, his tragic death at a young age, his unfulfilled potential, and the chaotic years that followed the assassination.  As one historian quoted in the above article stated, the JFK of today is an "optical illusion."  It’s almost inevitable that we “imagine what America would be like today if President Kennedy had lived.”

In short, we have a broad scholarly consensus that JFK was a solid President but not an extraordinary one.  We have a broad public consensus that he was far greater than this.  So where does the thesis of a “Posthumous Assassination” by the “Main Stream Media” fit?  I don’t believe it does.  I’ve certainly been around since the nineties, and I have absolutely no sense of any such media conspiracy.  Quite the contrary – my sense has always been that the media to a large degree feeds the overly exalted public perception.

Sure, some authors like those the essay criticizes may have their own agenda or do sloppy research – or they may simply have a different perspective on JFK's good-but-not-great civil rights record than do those who worship the memory of JFK and envision a far better America if he had lived.  If there is an increase in less-than-worshipful pieces, this is probably simply part of the inevitable pendulum-swinging that occurs as a historical figure is appraised and reappraised and finally settles into his rightful place in history.  But I just don’t believe that the thesis of a “Posthumous Assassination” by the “Main Stream Media” can be sustained.  It is (I believe) simply a conspiracy community meme, which is why it appears on Deep Politics conspiracy blogs rather than in mainstream scholarly journals or magazines.

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Monsieur Payette,

    There are so many erroneous assumptions and assertions in your above post that one scarcely knows where to begin.

     The so-called "scholarly consensus" that you reference (from 1982) was deeply flawed in many respects.  An obvious example is the false historical paradigm about NSAM 263 and NSAM 273-- the myth that LBJ was merely continuing JFK's Vietnam policy after 11/22/63, rather than reversing it.

  Do you understand that subject correctly?

   As for the popular flawed "histories" denying the important role of the Kennedy brothers in the Civil Rights movement,  Mr. DiEugenio's latest essays have described the problem in great detail.  It's not a case of idealization of the Kennedy legacy, as you imagine, but, rather, a realistic critique of the odd devaluation of JFK by many journalists and "scholars" in our mainstream media.

Edited by W. Niederhut
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JFK, and RFK's efforts on behalf of civil rights were buried.  It now seems to me it was (is) both a concerted effort and a continued acceptance of historical "norms".  I don't remember reading about General Walker inspiring the rioters at Ole Miss in 1962 over James Meredith in lower level college history courses much less high school.  I don't remember reading about Meredith being shot by a sniper marching from Memphis to Jackson later on until I read the link below.  Just one example of important history unacknowledged.  I think in a minorities class we did read about the Tulsa riots and Wallace's stand on the steps in Alabama in relation to his Presidential campaign and shooting.  Somebody wrote the history books I read that ignored or mentioned the subject only in passing.  The owners of the publishing companies and in turn their editors chose to make light of the plight of "negros" as well as Mexicans and Indians.  Why would I think there was a concerted effort?  If there were books that broached the subject in depth they didn't sell.  State education and local school boards wouldn't approve them, it was still a controversial subject in the 70's.  

Part of this I believe was a concerted effort to discredit the Kennedys and their policies in general by the powers that  assassinated them.  As an example, from readings the past year and I think more to come soon on him (possibly from Dr. Newman?), CIA officer Sam Halpern was directed by Director Helms to besmirch the Kennedy name to stymie future influence by them.  He made it his mission the rest of his life.  At his disposal he had Cord Meyer's Operation Mockingbird.  Which held heavy influence with all media of the time from TV, newspapers, and magazines to writer of non fiction, novels and college/high school history books.  I think it continues today through the efforts of books like those Jim DiEugenio has discredited in his article.  

I know it's the History Channel but watch the two minute video for JFK's televised statement.

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/ole-miss-integration 

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BINGO, Ron.

I'm not one of the resident experts here, but you hit the nail on the head.

I was listening to an NPR interview on Thursday with the author of the recent NYT series about Russia and "fake news," and I wanted to ask the producer why they never talk about the Church Committee investigation of Operation Mockingbird, and the long history of CIA disinformazia in our mainstream media.

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Thanks gentlemen.

What Payette is doing is conflating two essays of mine.  One I wrote back in the late nineties, "The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy" ( which is in the anthology The Assassinations) and the present one on the Kennedys and civil rights. They are indirectly related.

As per the thesis of the first one, I am even more convinced today than I was then that it is correct.  That is because there has been even  more evidence adduced in that regard.  In one of the reissues of his book Of Kennedys and Kings, Harris Wofford revealed that he had a hard time finding a publisher for that book because they wanted him to spice it up with sex stories about JFK.  He said he could not do that since even though he had been with the guy for two years, he never  saw any evidence of that.  So he ended up going with a university press. Also, I had the privilege of meeting the best researcher there is on this topic.  She exposed the whole David Heymann hoax and she is busy constructing a web site on her discoveries.  With what she has collected, it turns out to be not what I wrote about but, in some ways, even worse than that.  The smear the Kennedys effort is really an industry in which the participants regularly communicate with each other, even to the point of exchanging research assistants. So much for Payette's "sloppy research". How can anyone label a  book as abominable as Sy Hersh's as "sloppy research"? There were too many instances where Hersh knew the matters he was dealing with stunk to high heaven, but he proceeded anyway. I also do not understand how one can write two books on JFK, totaling about 1000 pages, and somehow not note the importance of Edmund Gullion.  But Robert Dallek did so.  Again, I do not see that as an accident.

As per this essay, it fits into my previous thesis in the sense that I find it hard to believe that in producing a book on JFK and ciivl rights, that somehow Mr. Levingston missed all the matters that I managed to find.  And that he somehow could not assemble a chart like the one I did at the end of part 3, listing JFK's achievements in comparison to FDR, Truman and Ike. That chart shows that Kennedy achieved three times as much in the field, in about 1/9 the time.  Or that, as I showed in part 2, it simply was not realistically possible to get a civil rights bill through congress in 1961 or 1962. Which vitiates the main tenet upon which both the Bryant and the Levingston books are based.  The evidence I amassed there was available to both writers. They ignored it. For that reason, I do not consider it an accident that they ignored it. Not when you are writing a book on the subject.

Finally, the traditional reasons given for why JFK does not score higher in those historian votes on best presidents is that he was only in office for something less than three years. Therefore,  the record he produced is not as clear or as pronounced as say FDR or Eisenhower.  That is, of course, a defensible position.  But I would argue that 1.) Its not very courageous, and 2.) Its kind of lazy.  Considering the fact that Kennedy was only in office for three years, the achievements he did have were considerable--and I noted that in this current essay.  In fact when one compares his civil rights record with his predecessors, its more than considerable, its admirable. Secondly, it is possible to put together the outlines of what Kennedy was driving for in certain areas, for example, in his foreign policy and in economics.  And scholars who are not as lazy and not as weak kneed have done this e.g. Donald Gibson in the latter, and Robert Rakove in the former.  But their books, unlike Hersh and Dallek, are not endorsed by the likes of Time magazine or the New York Times. Again, I do not consider that an accident.

 

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But they are your quotes Jim. Let's talk about them.

Jim said:

This essay is part of the phenomenon  I call the Posthumous Assassination of JFK.  I have been working on this for a long time, going back to the nineties.

The idea is to kill the man's image and reputation and somehow that will take the sting out of his assassination.  The MSM goes to amazing lengths on this subject e.g. Sy Hersh, the late John Davis, Thomas Reeves, Collier and Horowitz.

Yes, Sy Hersh, the late John Davis, Thomas Reeves, Collier and Horowitz are card carrying members of the MSM whose collective mission in life is to kill JFK's image and "take the sting out of the Kennedy assassination". They couldn't just be personally motivated by money? That would be too obvious.This is just kind of paranoid thinking that Jim Di does over and over again. Once he imagined that Sean Hannity and  Roger Stone tricked Kirsten Gillebrand into publicly shaming Al Franken out of office because of his sexual misconduct! He just flies off on these paranoid tangents.

Post Humous Assassination of JFK???-How dramatic.Jim,  Yes they've certainly ruined the Kennedy brand, haven't they? What planet are you on? The MSM isn't trying to sweep the Kennedys under the rug. They can't get enough of the Kennedys! It's a glamorous story that sheds light on all things Kennedy that only enhances their brand, would only invite mass curiosity about the assassination, and works to the benefit of the current Kennedy political dynasty. But of course, you'd spin it so gloomily.

Completely correct in your evaluation, Lance. It's because Di Eugenio is the forum hero on victimization and has never met a MSM conspiracy he didn't love.

While there's no shortage here of love for JFK or an ideal of where his potential might have lead. I've characterized Jim's adulation of JFK as adolescent hero worship. He's continually harped on this naive historical thread that the whole world would be completely transformed now if not for the JFKA, and it's MSM coverup has been passed on with a series of batons over 55 years by now, to  a cabal of sinister  modern news people, who in reality probably just had their parents, their professors, and their employers just ignore it, not out of any imminent sense of threat to their institutions, but unfortunately to my mind,  just because they see it as a profitless rabbit  hole.                                                It's not mysterious. Is that really that astonishing to believe? 

Lance said:

Like many people, I regard America as having declined precipitously in the years since the assassination (but mostly over the past 25 years).  However, I don’t attribute the decline of America to the assassination of JFK or to any dark and powerful forces that “must have” been responsible for the assassination and still “must be” at work today.  I don’t do this because I don’t believe the evidence supports it. 

That's because there is no evidence to support it.  You can't make one straight line connection.The salient issue of the last 25 years is the economic erosion of the middle and working class and income equality and it is largely the result of economic policy. You could actually make a good case that  Di Eugenio's previous assertions that had JFK lived, there would have been a hastening of detente with the U.S.S.R, which I would agree with, and that would have brought on the resultant world globalism and many more players to the world arena quicker, including China and our current paradigm would be much older and today, the U.S. would be declining as a world power to what many would project  our status  will be in 2030-35. I don't say that with the certainty that Jim seems to have about this  projected rosy world future of 60's and 70's Kennedy rule. But only to say what a complete crap shoot any such speculation on his part is. I wished he'd do what he does best, and just stick to his coverage of the assassination and not everyone else's coverage, or take on the Kennedys.

Has forever crying and whining about how the odds have been stacked against us in the past really worked for anyone? You have to be earnestly ready to face an uphill battle in the War of Ideas.

Edited by Kirk Gallaway
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