Fred Litwin's new book

[David G. Healy]

17 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

I don't know the listening numbers. Personally I don't care what a person's listening figures are as long as they are well read in the assassination. Clark has been studying the assassination for something like 20 or 30 years and been doing that podcast for almost 10 years I think. He's a CTer.

ahhhh, "well read." Does that include understanding what one has "read," or is that a given. Because one purchases a $70 microphone, sets up a studio in their closet does NOT make a spiffied up William F. Buckley.... Has Mr. Clark read the 1964 WCReport, to your knowledge?

[Gerry Down]

1 hour ago, David G. Healy said:

ahhhh, "well read." Does that include understanding what one has "read," or is that a given. Because one purchases a $70 microphone, sets up a studio in their closet does NOT make a spiffied up William F. Buckley.... Has Mr. Clark read the 1964 WCReport, to your knowledge?

I'm not a spokesperson for Mr. Clark. But I presume he has read the Warren Report.

But if you are considering that Oliver Stone is a higher authority, then you should ask yourself why Stone wasn't willing to defend his own documentary and have a debate on the Joe Rogan show with Posner and Litwin.

Posner has brought up this very point in a recent tweet. All that free publicity on the Joe Rogan show for his documentary yet Stone goes into hiding?

That doesn't make Stone look too good.

[Tom Gram]

3 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

I'm not a spokesperson for Mr. Clark. But I presume he has read the Warren Report.

But if you are considering that Oliver Stone is a higher authority, then you should ask yourself why Stone wasn't willing to defend his own documentary and have a debate on the Joe Rogan show with Posner and Litwin.

Posner has brought up this very point in a recent tweet. All that free publicity on the Joe Rogan show for his documentary yet Stone goes into hiding?

That doesn't make Stone look too good.

If I recall, Jim D. actually did make a debate challenge, I think more than once, where he gave very fair terms and said his only requirement was to be able to bring one other person of his choice. The only terms they’d agree to were if he brought Oliver Stone, which is clearly unfair and pretty cowardly since Stone is not a JFK expert and Jim wrote the entire movie. 

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

If I recall, Jim D. actually did make a debate challenge, I think more than once, where he gave very fair terms and said his only requirement was to be able to bring one other person of his choice. The only terms they’d agree to were if he brought Oliver Stone, which is clearly unfair and pretty cowardly since Stone is not a JFK expert and Jim wrote the entire movie. 

Precisely. They wanted to score brownie points by "owning" a celebrity, and weren't really interested in debating the case. Some years ago a University invited me to "debate" John McAdams. I said yes but knew John well from our internet exchanges, and knew he would try to avoid substantive discussions of the single-bullet theory and medical issues by bringing up Garrison, and Stone, and Lane, and trying to force me to defend everything they've ever said. So I told the University we should limit our debate to a few issues--basically the eyewitness, medical, and crime scene evidence--and their representative agreed. A few weeks later I got a message from this representative telling me my invite had been retracted. He told me--unofficially--that McAdams (who knew me well from our internet exchanges, in which I'd regularly schooled him) had asked to instead debate David Wrone. The rep had said no but the request had been sent to his superiors, who went along with McAdams' choice of Wrone because he had letters after his name and lived within driving distance. Now, I never saw the debate but I know how it went, because I'd had many a kerfuffle with McAdams online. Whenever Wrone scored a point, John would counter with something about Garrison being a wacko, or that Wrone still believed it was Oswald in the Altgens photo, etc. 

Just as it's easy to win when you pick your voters, it's easy to hide that you're on the wrong side of history when you only debate those who are easily painted as wacky. 

[Gerry Down]

But seeing how it's Oliver Stones documentary you'd think that:

A: Oliver himself would want to be there even if he let Jim D do most of the talking.

B: The Joe Rogan audience would expect to see Oliver there as it was his documentary.

Given that, it was reasonable for Posner and Litwin to expect Oliver be there especially as Oliver has given many online interviews promoting the movie, some of which only got a few hundred YouTube views. So why not do Joe Rogan?

[Pat Speer]

3 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

But seeing how it's Oliver Stones documentary you'd think that:

A: Oliver himself would want to be there even if he let Jim D do most of the talking.

B: The Joe Rogan audience would expect to see Oliver there as it was his documentary.

Given that, it was reasonable for Posner and Litwin to expect Oliver be there especially as Oliver has given many online interviews promoting the movie, some of which only got a few hundred YouTube views. So why not do Joe Rogan?

Because it was a trap. They would have undoubtedly made the debate about him, and not the movie. It would be like an economics professor not wanting to debate another economics professor about current economic policies, unless Joe Biden was there with him. Biden would say no, and be smart to do so. 

[Gerry Down]

4 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Because it was a trap. They would have undoubtedly made the debate about him, and not the movie. It would be like an economics professor not wanting to debate another economics professor about current economic policies, unless Joe Biden was there with him. Biden would say no, and be smart to do so. 

Posner is somewhat in the same boat as Stone. Posner has written many books on topics that have nothing to do with the JFK assassination which arguably would make him shaky when getting into the details of the case.

Stone and Posner would be at the same level in the debate.

DiEugenio and Litwin would be on the same level getting in to the details.

Seems like a fair match to me.

[Pat Speer]

19 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

Posner is somewhat in the same boat as Stone. Posner has written many books on topics that have nothing to do with the JFK assassination which arguably would make him shaky when getting into the details of the case.

Stone and Posner would be at the same level in the debate.

DiEugenio and Litwin would be on the same level getting in to the details.

Seems like a fair match to me.

Really? You're thinking that this would be in a closed room. If someone yells at Posner or makes him look stupid, nobody cares, it's not news. But if Posner or Litwin made a snarky remark to Stone, or made him look stupid on a certain point? That would go viral. That was obviously their goal. To get some attention by "owning" the loud-mouthed celebrity. Stone would have to have been stupid to fall for it. And he's not stupid. 

Now, if it was Litwin with Tom Hanks, or some other celebrity who's taken a stance on the wrong side of this history, that would be another thing. Stone might go for it. But against Posner? There was no upside. 

[Simon Andrew]

11 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

Posner is somewhat in the same boat as Stone. Posner has written many books on topics that have nothing to do with the JFK assassination which arguably would make him shaky when getting into the details of the case.

Stone and Posner would be at the same level in the debate.

DiEugenio and Litwin would be on the same level getting in to the details.

Seems like a fair match to me.

The debate would go as follows -

A) Litwin would overstate his case and avoid elements he doesn’t want to talk about.

B Jim D would overstate his case on some points.

C) Joe Rogan would sit there looking confused and perhaps offer some insight he obtained through hunting trips and firing rifles.

Just my opinion- however things are somewhat more grey on both sides of the argument. However Joe Rogan doesn’t do grey particularly well.

On balance, with all things considered there is a stronger case for conspiracy. However I can understand why the powers that be don’t want to go there.

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

If I can draw an analogy. It's sort of like the Jim Di's forever haranguing Noam Chomsky.  Noam Chomsky was a noted author well on his career path and made what he saw as a prudent career decision that he wasn't going to get sidetracked on the JFKA.  You can castigate him for that if you will.

But similarly, as Pat says,  there's no upside at all for Stone to subject himself  to Posner and Litwin on Rogan's show.

At this point, under no circumstances is there probably going to be a dramatic upsurge in following for the film.  And there could be a lot of downside for the reasons Pat mentioned.

[Anthony Thorne]

I was browsing the list of names of folks who gave Litwin accolades for his book TEENAGE JFK CONSPIRACY FREAK. One of them was from Ronald Radosh, who was cited as

Quote

Professor Emeritus of History at CUNY, opinion columnist for The Daily Beast and co-author of A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel

That's all great, but Radosh's full biography is slightly more illuminating.

Ronald Radosh

Adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute, Research Director for the United States Information Agency (USIA)

From Wikipedia - "Former USIA Director of TV and Film Service Alvin Snyder recalled in his 1995 memoir that "the U.S. government ran a full-service public relations organization, the largest in the world, about the size of the twenty biggest U.S. commercial PR firms combined. Its full-time professional staff of more than 10,000, spread out among some 150 countries, burnished America‘s image and trashed the Soviet Union 2,500 hours a week with a 'tower of babble' comprised of more than 70 languages, to the tune of over $2 billion per year". "The biggest branch of this propaganda machine" was the United States Information Agency (USIA)."

Litwin's earlier book has quotes of praise from Conrad Black and Daniel Pipes. Those two guys are already well known, but they both also sit on the board of a particular group with some interesting figures as company. No bombshells, but it might shed a little more light on the folks who are probably supporting Litwin's career. Will post more about it later.

Edited February 18, 2023 by Anthony Thorne

[Jonathan Cohen]

17 minutes ago, Anthony Thorne said:

No bombshells, but it might shed a little more light on the folks who are probably supporting Litwin's career. Will post more about it later.

Do you have a shred of actual evidence that these individuals are "supporting Litwin's career" ? I didn't think so.

[Bob Ness]

8 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Posner is somewhat in the same boat as Stone. Posner has written many books on topics that have nothing to do with the JFK assassination which arguably would make him shaky when getting into the details of the case.

Stone and Posner would be at the same level in the debate.

DiEugenio and Litwin would be on the same level getting in to the details.

Seems like a fair match to me.

Not really Gerry. They're just trying to leverage his name. If they were actually interested, they'd debate people who know more about the subject. It's an attempt at a parlor show with a big name. He has better things to do.

[Gerry Down]

11 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

They're just trying to leverage his name. If they were actually interested, they'd debate people who know more about the subject.

So you're saying Oliver Stone does not know much about the JFK assassination.

[Gerry Down]

You're saying that Posner and Litwin know more about the JFK assassination.

😆