“Hey, he killed the President—he had to be a Teabagger, right?”
…how it is that both the Washington Post and the New York Times, in the days before the anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, ran essays that link right-wing, radical, anti-liberal sentiment in 1963 Dallas with today’s conservative political positions? The Post, doing explicitly what the Times does slyly, even makes the connection direct. Its essay is called “Tea party has roots in the Dallas of 1963”—as in the implicit innuendos, ‘people like those in today’s tea party killed JFK’ and thus ‘the people who think like that probably want to kill this President too.’
We’re seeing a lot of liberal despair, nastiness and desperation these days, aren’t we? The instinct seems to be to lash out. Of course, one would think that competent, responsible and fair editors of the two most prestigious U.S. dailies would read this tripe, hand it back to the authors and say, “Hey, go home, have a drink, and take a nap. It’s not so bad, really. Obamacare may be all right. We’ve got Obama’s back. Now, I’m going to do you a favor and forget you wrote this.”
But no.
For 50 years the American Left has been trying to come to terms with the fact that a certified Leftist, a Communist in fact, killed liberal icon John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It hasn’t, so it keeps pushing the fabrication that it was Kennedy’s civil rights sympathies rather than his anti-Communist fervor that got him killed. More recently, it is furious that a grass roots movement opposing what it feels is oppressive big government wields political influence, while the Left’s current hapless leader founders. Since race-baiting is getting old (it was old years ago, in fact, but when that’s all you have…), the new tactic is apparently to suggest that the tea party is overrun with gun-toting killers—you know, like in the city 50 years ago “that willed the death of the president” [The Times].
Dallas didn’t kill Kennedy. Right-wing extremists didn’t, and the Tea Party didn’t. Lee Harvey Oswald did. As David Bernstein writes at the Volokh Conspiracy,
“The attempt to at best distract us from who the killer was and why he killed JFK, and at worst to pin the blame on entirely innocent people for inciting Dallas opinion against Texas (or perhaps to imply that the right-wingers plotted the assassination), even though those innocents were exactly the type of people Oswald hated, is just pathetic, and the Times and Post should be embarrassed for publishing these pieces.”
That’s not going to happen, obviously. But I’d like to think that at least some of the fair-minded progressives who keep insisting here against all logic and evidence that partisan voices like the Post and the Times are objective and neutral would accept reality, and stop ensuring that these kind of journalistic ideological hit-jobs continue without consequence. They should be embarrassed too.
* NOTE: The Kaboom!, the Ethics Alarms category designating such flagrantly unethical conduct that it makes my head explode, will usually be accompanied by an exploding head graphic. Given the topic, however, that seemed inappropriate.
______________________
Pointer: Volokh Conspiracy
Sources: Volokh Conspiracy, Politico, Washington Post, New York Times
Ethics Alarms 
Quit being a racist Jack
I heard a good thing on the radio the other day, people need for bad things of large scale importance to be causes by large things. It’s psychologically comforting. It terrifies people to think one unhinged loon is capable of doing what Oswald did. It had to be bigger forces. Just had to!
Nope, sorry folks, it was Oswald. Big bad things can happen because of one person. But it’s ok… Remain stron in your own convictions and virtue and if everyone else does, life goes on.
That is to say: the radio piece was good.
It’s not necessarily a good thing that people have that psychological void that needs filling.
A relevant quote from British writer Alan Moore:
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
” Its essay is called “Tea party has roots in the Dallas of 1963″—”
omg! Lol! Well I suppose they’re hurting for new material. How can anyone take this seriously?
The Westboro Baptist Church actually picketed the grassy knoll last Saturday
It is hard to believe anyone could take a lower ethical path.
They choose the most anger-inducing dates and locations possible, and write the most offensive signs possible, in hopes of being attacked physically, or otherwise have their freedom of speech infringed upon. Then they sue. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. This is their motivation, and it’s been lucrative enough that you’d think more people would be wise to their game by now.
Not that JFK or the family are above reproach, far from it, but that’s not the time, place or manner for it. Now, if after that’s all over folks want to have a reasonable, fact-based discussion on “Camelot Fallen? JFK, the Man and the Myth,” then ok.
Oswald was a communist. The tea party are not. The connection should be clear to anyone familiar with “New-speak”. The Affordable Care Act isn’t affordable, and will deprive millions of care. It’s easy once you get the hang of it. For tips and pointers, check with your local Democratic Party, university, or media.
This is a conspiracy theory that even the conspiracy theorists can’t swallow. Oswald a “conservative”/”tea partier”? LOLLOLOLOL!
In Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (Itself a conspiracy movie) Oswald (played by Gary Oldman) states flat out that he is a “Marxist/Leninist”. This syncs with actual history as Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union for a time and his radical leanings were known to many people.
Somehow, I don’t think the Tea Party is so ideologically diverse as to promote the Marxist far left.
“Texans are tough and a crisp day won’t prevent us from marking this important time in history. We believe this important event cannot be duplicated in another location, so the commemoration will take place tomorrow as planned.” -Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
Damn right and Thank you mayor.
Among the accumulated wastes of time in my life, one subset of that waste is the accumulation of attention I have paid to the infamous, late (as of November 1963) Lee Harvey Oswald.
I am convinced that Oswald was an early exemplar of the kind of narcissism our society is suffering today on a chronically, seemingly incurably, pandemic scale.
Which leads me to make predictions: Another U.S. president or presidential candidate will be murdered “before long.” The victim may be in office, or even one of the former presidents. I can’t characterize “before long” any more precisely. But, my first guess is that the murder will happen within the next ten years.
Most likely, the perpetrator will be another exemplar of the narcissism that is destroying all vestiges of what has been an extraordinary amount of individual liberty, enjoyed over an extraordinarily long time by extraordinary numbers of individuals in what has been U.S. territory. To be clear, I include among such narcissists, those who kill themselves as accessories to their acts of murder, whether any claimed religious motive is genuine or not. How convenient it must be, for narcissists to divert attention from their narcissism (however un-cleverly) by operating under the cover of “heroism” which is pre-supposed by a herd of like-minded and otherwise reprobate cowards. We have seen evolution of “ethics,” but we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
Which leads me to a few more predictions: The murdered president (or candidate) will be lionized and idolized beyond any previously “martyred” U.S. political figure. The losses and deprivations of life, liberty and access to property (let alone any property one may say any individual possesses) which will result from the powers’ reaction to the murder will surpass all previously accumulated and institutionalized losses and deprivations that resulted from the preceding murders of presidents. And the succeeding president (if there remains enough order for anyone to succeed to, claim title to, and occupy the presidency) will be the most invulnerable, inaccessible, lawless, ruthless and out-of-touch totalitarian who has ruled the “U.S.” to date.