I love this, I really do. Yes, the JFK photo found by TMZ and trumpeted elsewhere, including here, is a hoax.
Since the photo conveys no new or false information about JFK’s proclivities, its main significance is that TMZ was sloppy, and since it is well established that it traffics in gossip and rumor anyway, this means Ethics Alarms and others were gullible and careless.
I apologize.
A few points:
- All the questions raised in the post stand.
- This reaffirms my conviction that postng a hoax of any kind on the web, whether photo or otherwise, without clearly designating it as such, is unethical.
- Let us all give thanks for “The Smoking Gun.”
Ethics Alarms 
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We’ve known for more than a decade that pictures do NOT speak a thousand words, and that they can be altered, “shopped,” etc., by almost anyone. That now the internet and electronic means allows more people to do it means nothing. I don’t take “photo evidence” seriously anymore, because the average 15 year old (e.g., my own son) can produce a picture of Hitler kissing FDR any time he chooses. This creates historical fact?
All this proves to me is that ANY historical documentation of ANYTHING has to be proven by demonstration of contemporanaeous fact. Period.