The JFK obsession: 40 years and still going strong

Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter ^ | 11/20/03 | Michael M. Bates

[mikeb704]

Mrs. Kennedy, at least when she spoke, didn't strike me as the sharpest knife in the drawer. Her voice had a certain nasal, breathless quality that reminded me of someone doing a Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield impersonation.

Gee, I'm not showin' my age, am I?

[N. Theknow]

I was alive then and my thoughts were not the same as yours. I would have said "colorless antimacassar" rather than "vapid armpiece."

ROTFLOL

Well, Hello Doily.

[mikeb704]

Hang in there, Dan. It won't be long.

[mikeb704]

JFK wasn't very popular in the South where I grew up.

I may be wrong, but I think Kennedy won both Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and West Virginia in the '60 election.

[texasbluebell]

Well said!

I'm getting tired of people telling me to "get over it", or else posting more disinformation in hopes of getting another sucker to still believe the Warren Comm.

This country went down the tubes after this crime.

And I wish someone someday would tell us the truth, though after seeing the History Channel program (and I understand the first 3 episodes run tonight) I now have a pretty good idea who was behind this.

[CyberAnt]

I have always believed that this cover-up by the democrats .. of the JFK murder .. was the beginning of the end for the party. The dem party had already stooped very low to maintain their power during the FDR years by cozying up to the Communists. But covering up this MURDER was the ultimate in dem deception. And .. once they got away with it .. it emboldened them.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Actually, a careful study of the Zapruder film shows that JFK's head moved slightly forward, then violently back. A Nobel winning physicist has explained this effect, and it has something to do with the bullet traveling faster than sound, and causing some kind of shock wave or something. I have seen video clips of a skull placed on a ladder that when struck by a bullet flies off the top rung TOWARD the shooter.

[SoCal Pubbie]

��5{��������out the windshield is old as the hills, and like all the other "proof" of conspiracy, is a ginned up deal. IIRC, the damage was on the inside of the window and was caused by debris from the curb as it shattered. There was no bullet hole in it!

[N. Theknow]

You are correct that he carried the South in the 1960 election. Now do you know why he carried the South and why he was so despised two years later that his assassination would bring about the response I posted?

[Wallace T.]

The South had been solidly Democratic at virtually all levels since 1876 through the time of the Kennedy-Nixon Presidential race. Voters motivated by racial issues would have been upset at the Republicans because Eisenhower demonstrated at Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 that he was willing and able to enforce the Brown v. Topeka ruling that declared public school segregation as un-Constitutional. The GOP had been the "civil rights" party from Reconstruction onward. Its main strength in the South was among blacks (until they were effectively disenfranchised in the last 20 years of the 19th Century) and in Unionist areas such as East Tennessee and the Texas Hill Country.

By 1960, conservative Southern Democrats had become increasingly wary of the liberal wing of their party, as represented by Adlai Stevenson. However, John Kennedy, an Irish Catholic from Boston, was not perceived as a liberal, especially in light of his father's conservatism and his refusal to condemn Joe McCarthy. His religion was a detriment in the South at that time, but more so in the Upper South, where there were few blacks and the white population was predominantly Scotch-Irish, with their historic animosity to the Irish Catholics. Race was more important an issue than religion in the Lower South, which also was home to the South's small white Catholic minority, from the port cities of Savannah and Charleston through South Louisiana to the German and Czech Catholic settlements of Central Texas.

By 1963, the region's image of Kennedy had changed. He was as willing as Eisenhower had been to enforce Brown vs. Topeka. His "best and brightest" bore many similarities to Roosevelt's "Brain Trust," a group of East Coast, Ivy League advisors that made Southerners uncomfortable. Unlike FDR, JFK made little effort to assauge the South and relegated LBJ to the outer fringes of his administration.

Had Kennedy not been killed, he would have found himself in an awkward position in 1964 as Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders intensified public pressure for greater Federal protection of black access to public accomodations and the voting booth. Acceeding to black demands or holding the line would have jeopardized the political base that enabled him to gain a narrow victory in 1960. Kennedy just didn't have the political skills that Johnson had to get things done.