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" . . . it was truly a fateful turning point in our country’s history—but, I believe, in a sense exactly opposite to what Oliver Stone imagines. Rather than marking the rise of Stone’s fictional militaristic right-wing to national power, it marked the rise to influence of a left-wing culture of alienation typified by people like Oliver Stone himself. These members of the adversary culture, unable to absorb Kennedy’s murder as the terrible event it was, chose to see it as a confirmation that America itself was evil, that America would always block the exaggerated hopes for unlimited individual fulfillment and social progress that Kennedy seemed to personify for many people. It was shortly after Kennedy’s death that the deadly notion became current that the “system” was blame for everything, thus turning Americans against their own country."

That's a good point. I'm also a fan of Posner's book, and was for that reason scathingly dubbed a "Posnerite" by a Freeper conspiracy-theorist. I have nothing but contempt for Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison, whose false and defamatory versions of the assassination have unfortunately become historical fact for millions of Americans.

I have nothing but contempt for Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison, whose false and defamatory versions of the assassination have unfortunately become historical fact for millions of Americans.

Amen, Steve. I would also throw in contempt for Lee Harvey Oswald. I was just a child, and when Ruby shot him I came running out of my granddad's den yelling, "Alright! They shot the sonofabitch that shot the President!" I was told that if I used that word about anyone else, I would be in for a mouth washing. But in this one case, my grandmother made an exception.

I do think that the big fault line is between the TV watchers and the readers. People who live their lives in front of a tube seem to need to have all the loose ends neatly tied up in time for station identification. Conspiracies will always be popular in the imagination, and were long before TV, because they take the randomness out of life and apply a structure to it, albeit an evil one. Lost your job? Depending on time and who's selling you the conspiracy, the Jews did it, or the banks, or the big corporations. Someone in your family died of an awful disease? Naw, they were killed by environmental despoilers. Can a pilot screw up and crash a plane? No, it was brought down by terrorists (or by rogues in the US military, depending on the prejudices of the conspiratroid in question).

You see all this in the merchants of Kennedy conspiracy theory (starting with RFK, and continuing through Stone to the present day). Their perpetrators are all over the place: the Mafia, the CIA, LBJ (really...), the generals, basically whoever's the particular conspiracy buff's personal bogeyman. People don't want to admit it was just a scrawny little nebbish who failed at everything else he ever tried in his short, miserable, attention-seeking life.

If someone had killed the nut job that whacked John Lennon, no doubt Stone would do a movie that said that the other ex-Beatles did it, and then Paul and Ringo had George hit to cover up the misdeed. I mean, you don't really think lifelong smokers die of cancer, do you?

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F