Joseph McBride

https://www.wrkf.org/show/talk-louisiana/2021-11-22/monday-november-22nd-rusty-yates-joseph-mcbride-brian-mitchell

Thanks, Denny. Yes, Mike was the second smartest guy in our class, after Dick Benka, with whom I saw DR. STRANGELOVE and learned to understand and appreciate black comedy after Dick insisted we sit through it a second time (the first time I had thought it was a scary Cold War thriller). Mike was warmhearted and always friendly. The guys at my high school treated me well, which was a relief after my hellish grade school. And the Jesuits helped me learn critical, logical, skeptical thinking.

I've seen a photo of the nuns and kids who stopped JFK. The Dallas Morning News ran a story about the man who jumped into the street during the motorcade, supposedly to warn JFK. He was subdued by the Secret Service.

I am sorry to learn of the death of my Marquette University High School (Milwaukee) classmate Mike Weber. I remember him fondly as one of the smartest guys in our class, a very tall and gangling and kind-natured young man. What I most remember about Mike, though, is how prescient he was. On the day President Kennedy was shot, during our junior year, I came back to school in a cold driving rain (the storm that had migrated from Dalllas) from a drugstore where I had been listening to the radio reports. I arrived back just in time for our 1:30 (CST) Religion class. Incredibly, the scheduled topic that day was "The Ethics of Murder." The question was whether and how murder could ever be justified. Our Jesuit priest, Father Charles Shinners, I suppose numbly, didn't mention that Kennedy was rumored to be dead but just ploughed ahead with the topic. It's easy to say now that Father Shinners (the most brilliant priest in our school) could have adapted the class to fit the circumstances, but it seemed surreal to be having that discussion. At about 1:40, the loudspeaker crackled on -- I still remember the dreaded sense of finality that caused me to feel -- and our principal, Reverend Daniel A. Laughlin, S.J., announced, "Word has just been confirmed of the assassination of President Kennedy. Let's stand and say a prayer for the repose of his soul." We did so, I made a note of what the principal said, and we resumed our chillingly abstract but strangely apropos theologizing with no further mention of that day's historical events . . . until a few minutes later when Mike Weber suddenly cried out, "Oh, no! LYNDON JOHNSON is president!" I vivdly remember Mike burying his head in his hands on his desk and keeping it there. The reality of the dark new world in which we were now living sank in as we went on talking numbly about murder. Ave atque vale, Mike. https://www.churchandchapel.com/obitua.../Michael-D-Weber...

I like the documentary very much and think it's effective for both people who know relatively little about the case and for people such as us who want to learn more, as it enables us to do. Both Oliver Stone and Jim DiEugenio did sharp and smart work on telling the story and focusing on revelations since JFK came out in 1991. The decision to focus the last half hour on Kennedy's partly thwarted legacy in foreign policy and his lasting achievements in civil rights was a shrewd one, as well as how the documentary toward the end points out how the assassination and coverup have polluted our government, media, and national discourse. Now I look forward to the full expanded version, which should enable it go into even more depth. (One small glitch: Walt Rostow at one point is identified in a graphic as "Walter Rostow," but his full name was Walt Whitman Rostow.)

Derek, I am glad you enjoyed my book WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO ORSON WELLES?: A PORTRAIT OF AN INDEPENDENT CAREER; an updated edition will be published in paperback in January by the University Press of Kentucky. As for your question about Detective Leavelle, no one involved in the investigation/coverup of the Kennedy and Tippit murders should be taken at face value, of course; their comments need to be weighed against all the other evidence. Leavelle made some significant admissions to me that are revealing about some aspects of the case. He seemed unusually candid on many points but cagey or withholding on others, as did DA Henry Wade, but together their comments, when viewed with the other evidence, were important insights into how flimsy/nonexistent the cases were against Oswald for both murders, and how they both quickly recognized the problem (as did Captain Fritz at least to some extent). (FYI, J. D. Tippit's name is still being misspelled here and elsewhere after all these years.) I write about Leavelle and Wade at length in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, which I hope you will read to find more detailed answers to your questions.

Kudos to your Dad on Veterans Day. SAN PIETRO is still a great film, because of its artistry and the way it convincingly simulates battle, but it would have been better if we had known earlier how it was filmed.

That's a great film, but most of it was staged after the actual battle. The actual title is SAN PIETRO. Huston's LET THERE BE LIGHT is also a great film. It was banned for 35 years until I led a press campaign to free it.

Capra's first WHY WE FIGHT film, PRELUDE TO WAR, won an Oscar, along with other documentaries. That was it for Capra's films during the war. Stevens's work during the war didn't win Oscars. But it was used at the Nuremberg Trials to help convict the N-a-z-i war criminals [why does this website convert the actual word into a silly euphemism?]. John Ford's unit did the Nuremberg films along with Stevens and others. Ford's documentaries THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY and DECEMBER 7TH won Oscars, though not for him personally, as he later claimed. The Oscars for World War II films went to the government services. And no individuals could be credited onscreen for those films.

I just don't see the table of contents, just a list of contributors. I will have to wait until the issue arrives. Looks like another good one.

I ordered the issue but can't find the table of contents via the link.

PS, I meant "trips," plural. Vince, you've posted revealing stuff from many JFK trips in the US and abroad. All relevant to the security collapse on 11/22.

Vince, keep up the great and revealing work. A book with photos and other documents of this kind from Kennedy's trips, contrasting the security with Dallas and analyzing why the differences existed, would be a worthy endeavor for you as the expert in the field.

It looks like the Z film has been deleted from the new English-language trailer available on YouTube. Let's hope it is not deleted from the documentary itself.

Are these actually colorized?

Thanks for the info. Looking forward to seeing both versions. Congrats.

Thanks, Jim. I am glad we will see the docu soon. Does this mean Showtime will show the four-hour version in November or later?

It's reported that Showtime will show the documentary on Nov. 12. Perhaps Jim could elaborate on the plans.

My mother, Marian McBride, was in that Milwaukee motorcade on May 12, 1962. She was vice chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party and was riding several cars behind the president along with Evelyn Lincoln and Admiral Burkley. Earlier she had been among the group greeting JFK as he deplaned at General Mitchell Field. My mother helped set up some of the events along the long motorcade route from the airport to downtown, including having school bands playing as the president passed. She later complained that the Secret Service was difficult to deal with. I wish she were around now so I could ask her what she meant by that. I kick myself for not watching that motorcade. That night I was part of the "honor guard" for the president at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner at the downtown Milwaukee Auditorium and Arena and had a brief exchange of greetings with JFK afterward as he passed backstage five feet away before he turned to walk down a ramp into the limousine in which he would be killed the following year. At the VIP reception beforehand, my father, Ray McBride of the Milwaukee Journal, was introduced to the president and had time for one question. So he asked Kennedy if he ever worried about being assassinated. JFK said he recognized that possibility but couldn't think about it or he would not be able to do his job.

Jim, what is the US distributor for this documentary?

This doesn’t pass the smell test for me.Can you even imagine a CIA training camp forsnipers in which the snipers wear name tags?? That sounds like a Mel Brooks gag. (I did get JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy to sign a "Hello, My Name Is" name tag on April 3, 1960, but I can't envision a name tag reading "Hello, My Name Is Lee Harvey [aka Harvey Lee] Oswald" at that camp.)And the family admits it is trying to make a TV dealwith this yarn. This seems another feeble attempt to implicateOswald, who didn’t own a gun and was a mediocreshot in the Marines.The CIA hitman father claimed to have beeninvolved in the bombing of the Cuban airliner, the one in which Poppy Bush and the CIA wereimplicated. So this stinks of Bush family (et al) disinformationabout Oswald, who didn’t shoot anybody on Nov. 22, 1963, ashe told the cameras.

David, thanks for the rundown. Certainly the autopsy photographs always need to be viewed skeptically. I was just pointing out what I think I can see on the trach photo, for what that is worth. As you and others have shown, that trach and the wound it obscured were egregiously altered.

My review of the Sahl documentary from Daily Variety, 1989: https://duckprods.com/projects/mortsahl/ms-dailyvariety890918.html

Robert Weide in tribute to Mort Sahl has made his hard-to-see documentary MORT SAHL: THE LOYAL OPPOSITION available for free for one week on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/364958125

Kudos to the late Mort Sahl for his sacrifices on behalf of President Kennedy. Sahl said in Robert B. Weide's 1989 PBS American Masters documentary about him, MORT SAHL: THE LOYAL OPPOSITION, "The social democrats in this country have a lot of guilt. They didn’t stand up to Vietnam. They didn't stand up to the encroachment of the intelligence community. And they walked away from Jack Kennedy. The most they could come up with after he was shot in the street like a dog was to say, 'He wasn’t that good a president anyway.' Yeah, let me tell you, he had a strange group of friends. Remarkably absent when he fell."