The conspiracy theory that won’t go away - Robert F Kennedy and the secrets behind the assassination of JFK

Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Early in Oliver Stone’s hyper-paranoid film JFK, Guy Bannister (played by Ed Asner) grumbles that he hates the fact that, by 1963, African Americans could  more or less vote safely.  He adds, “[Blacks] get together with the Jews and the  Catholics and elect an Irish bleeding heart.”

According to the film, Bannister -- and a whole bunch of other people -- did  something to stop that “Irish bleeding heart.” 

Bannister and the mob and the CIA and Lyndon Johnson and perhaps even Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

The Warren Commission later argued that Oswald, in fact, acted alone. But most Americans remain skeptical of the Warren Report.

Bobby Kennedy Jr., it turns out, is one of them.  Earlier this month, JFK’s nephew, as well as his niece, Rory, sat down for an interview in Dallas.

Eventually, Bobby Kennedy’s two children were asked about the conspiracy theories swirling around JFK’s murder. “The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman,” RFK Jr. said, though he didn’t elaborate much beyond that. 

He did add that his father, who himself was assassinated in June of 1968, also believed their was another killer aside from Oswald. According to RFK Jr., his father considered the Warren Commission report “shoddy.”

RFK Jr. added, “He publicly supported the Warren Commission report but  privately he was dismissive of it."

RFK Jr. also suggested that the most likely co-conspirators were mafia leaders who were targeted by JFK’s attorney general -- who was none other than Bobby Kennedy Sr.

To quote another famous mafia figure, “Every time I think I’m out...they pull me  back in!”

Things have been quiet on the JFK conspiracy front.  And then, RFK Jr. went and made his comments. 

And then, a few days later, an apartment in Dallas which Oswald called home in 1962 and 1963 was torn down, briefly resurrecting interest in Oswald’s bizarre life prior to being thrust onto the world stage.

And so we have, arguably, the most compelling defender yet of a conspiracy  theory to kill JFK -- his own martyred brother and his crusading son. 

It means nothing to me.  For years I waded into the muck and mire of the JFK conspiracy underworld and emerged unconvinced. 

Yes, there is a lot of evidence to suggest others were involved in the Kennedy killing.  Yes, the Warren report is flawed. 

But I also discovered that most people who buy into the JFK conspiracy do so not only based on facts, but also on something that can only be described as vaguely  religious.

You also see this from those who buy into conspiracies surrounding another  tragedy which hit Irish America hard -- the 9/11 attacks.  Part of the allure of  conspiracy theories surrounding both 9/11 and JFK is that they explain the seemingly unexplainable.  

How could one Marxist loser end Camelot?  How could 20 fanatics with a few hours of flying lessons murder 3,000 people? No, it must have been something larger.

But have you ever noticed that people don’t talk much about conspiracy theories when it comes to plots that more or less failed?

In December of 1960, a man named Richard Pavlick packed his car with dynamite and was going to ram the vehicle into a Kennedy home in Florida.  He chickened out and was arrested. 

Had he succeeded, perhaps great energy would have gone into uncovering a broader conspiracy. Instead, the truth was fairly easy to swallow.  The guy was an anti-Catholic nut who hated JFK.

And why so few conspiracy theories about the 1993 effort to topple the World Trade Center?  Why do theories about rogue government elements, and, yes, even Israel and the Jews, flourish only around the 2001 attack that actually brought the towers down?

It is generally futile to go detail for detail with conspiracy theorists.  They are dogged in their shaping of facts which support their view, and, like the  religiously faithful, defend their organization of those facts. 

As for me, once I read Gerald Posner’s book Case Closed, I was able to accept the fact that Oswald acted alone.

The odd thing in all of this is why RFK Jr. was not asked if he believes Sirhan Sirhan acted alone when he killed Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles in 1968?  Why not ask that question?

Must be a conspiracy.

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

The most tragic Irish American Joseph Patrick Kennedy - for better or worse a product of the immigrant experience

Joseph Patrick Kennedy

It is understandable why many people believe John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the most important Irish American.  He was the first Catholic president, a trailblazer who visited his family’s ancestral home in Ireland just months before he was fatally shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

But there would have been no JFK without JPK - his father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy of East Boston.
Esteemed historian David Nasaw has just released a 900-page biography of the old man entitled The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.

Yet another Kennedy book, you say?  More hazy malarkey about Camelot?

Or another rehashing of the extramarital affairs or the assassinations, proof of the existence of some “Kennedy curse”?

Such a reaction is understandable.  And yet the heft of this book is without question justified. 

Joseph Kennedy is not only the most important Irish American.  He is arguably the most important figure in American ethnic history, a symbol of the profound success which can be achieved through ambition and hard work, as well as the tragedy and damage which result from the blind drive to become “an insider.”

Not Eugene O’Neill, not Shakespeare, could have written a life story as complex and tragic as Joseph P. Kennedy’s.  Perhaps the Greeks came closest, particularly in the tale of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death. 

Along the same lines, consider that no fewer than three members of the Kennedy clan - Joseph Jr., his sister Kathleen (known as “Kick”) and JFK Jr. -- fell from the sky, dying in airplanes.

Joseph Kennedy belonged to the first generation of Kennedys born in America who did not live in poverty.  Joe Kennedy’s father, P.J., lost a brother as well his own father, to cholera. 

P.J. left school at 14 to work and help support the family, and he managed to gain a foothold in Boston, running saloons and making friends in political circles.

P.J. was able to send his son, Joe, to Boston Latin School and then Harvard, and there is your first hallmark of immigrant life -- the strive to move up the economic ladder.

But Joe Kennedy’s ladder never seemed to end.  He climbed and climbed - in part because he was maniacally ambitious, in part because American society viewed him and his kind with contempt.

Indeed, while it’s hard to view a Harvard graduate millionaire who was a close advisor to presidents as any kind of victim, the fact is that Joseph P. Kennedy endured subtle, imagined and blatant bigotry throughout his entire career.  Here is another hallmark of the immigrant experience -- disdain from the powers that be.

And this leads us to the most difficult part of all, when that ambition mixes with resentment and produces an emotional volatility that manifests itself in some of the most deplorable behavior in the
American psyche -- paranoia, rage, anti-Semitism. 

The dark side of the American ethnic experience, rarely discussed because it runs counter to our belief that we are a benevolent beacon of hope for immigrants, is that nativist hostility and the drive to succeed take a massive toll on first and second generation Americans. 

Crime, alcoholism, family dysfunction.  These and more scarred Irish American and other ethnic families from New York to San Francisco. 

Kennedy dabbled in all of these - mingling with gangsters, possibly bootlegging, cheating on his wife relentlessly, believing Jews to be the cause of so many phantom problems - as he paved a path to the White House. 

Kennedy himself was going to run for president in 1940, even though he doubted Americans would vote for a Catholic.  FDR’s decision to seek a third term made this a moot point. 

Then it was going to be Joseph Jr., but he was killed in World War II.  And so it was JFK. 

And the old man was able to witness it, even though his powers were diminished by strokes.

This meant he also had to stand by powerlessly as Jack and Bobby were killed.

In the end, Joseph P. Kennedy was admirable and loathsome.  But he most definitely was - for better or worse - a product of the American immigrant experience.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan@blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

What objects define Irish America - defining a culture through a handful of physical items

President John F Kennedy

It is all the rage to attempt to define an entire culture through a handful of physical objects. 

Late last year, the American edition of the British book A History of the World in 100 Objects was published, following a hugely successful exhibition at the British Museum.

Similarly, acclaimed commentator Fintan O’Toole has been telling the history of Ireland in 100 objects, in conjunction with the National Museum of Ireland. 

O’Toole has cited a wide range of objects going back centuries, from a Mesolithic fish trap (5000 B.C.) to coins from the 1200s and 1400s.

All of this begs the question -- if we were going to try and tell the story of the Irish in America, what kind of objects could we look at?

This would be a vast undertaking which would require much more space than this single column.  It would also require the collective brainpower of most, if not all, of the 40 million Americans who claim Irish heritage. 

Please make your own suggestions.  (See contact information below)  Here are some of my own:

1) A copy of Cotton Mather’s 1689 book Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions. It seems downright treasonous to use such a fiercely Protestant book to tell the story of a heavily Catholic people, but that, of course, is the point. 

Mather’s book gives an account of the persecution of one Goodwife “Goody” Glover, an immigrant and devout Catholic who spoke the Irish language.  This did not help her when she was targeted as a witch, when four of her children fell ill.  She spoke Irish on the witness stand and was eventually hanged. 

Mather’s account is a harbinger of all of the trouble the Irish would face in New World in the coming centuries.

2) Along the same lines, I would also include George Templeton Strong’s diaries from the middle 19th Century. 

Though a rabid bigot, Strong’s account of the New York City Draft Riots and other key events during the heaviest periods of Irish immigration are invaluable.

3) Buttons, a pipe, a beer bottle, a bone tooth brush, pottery and more have been excavated by archaeologists digging at the site of the former Seneca Village in Central Park.  Located at 85th Street and Central Park West, Seneca Village was destroyed to make way for the famed park. 

Before that it was home to Irish immigrants as well as many African Americans.  The simple objects, and the diversity of the inhabitants, show that different people in New York City were not always at each other’s throats. 

The destruction of their homes also shows that life was never easy for an immigrant, even after you believed you’d found a new place to live.

4) A collector of political memorabilia recently spent $106 for a 7-inch ribbon from 1928 which reads: “Tammany Hall: Smith and Walker.”

In terms of saying a lot in just a few words, this artifact is priceless.  Tammany Hall, for all its corruption, nurtured Irish American political power for nearly a century. 

Al Smith, that rare creature, a loyal Tammany Man untainted by corruption, ran for president in 1928.  He faced a wave of bigotry led by the resurgent Ku Klux Klan. 

And Jimmy Walker?  Well, the playboy mayor of New York proved every stereotype about Tammany politicians true.  At least he also showed that not all Catholics were disturbed by adultery.

5) Irish-born sculptor Augusts Saint Gaudens statue of Abraham Lincoln in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.  This shows not only a great (and very American) cultural contribution by a prominent Irish artist, but also would lead to discussion about the very complex relationship the Irish had with perhaps the greatest U.S. president.

6) A membership list from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).  Since there is no ignoring the Catholic element of the Irish story in America, there is also no way to ignore the revelations of the last 15 years or so.

7) JFK’s top hat.  There is such a glut of Kennedy stuff, ranging from the tragic to the sentimental.  The hat he wore on inauguration day in 1961 (housed at the JFK Library in Boston) strikes me as perfectly playful, and, no, not particularly Irish.  Which means the poet Robert Frost was right to tell the president he should be “more Irish than Harvard.”

What objects do you believe represent Irish America?  Write your suggestions to  tomdeignan@earthlink.net.

Mitt Romney bashers fail John F Kennedy test

Hopeful GOP nominee Mitt Romney (REUTERS/Rick Wilking)

How is it possible that all these years later, revelations about JFK and women still make headlines?

This week, there were more sordid tales coming out of Camelot, this one about 19-year-old Mimi Alford, who supposedly had an affair with Kennedy while she was serving as a White House intern. (You can insert your own Clinton joke here.)

Naturally, Alford has a book to sell. The bizarre thing is not that she has a book to sell but that there are people willing to buy it.

Nevertheless, these days, there are some things about JFK worth discussing.

Ironically enough, this has nothing to do with JFK’s sexual dalliances, but instead with his religion.

Kennedy, of course, was the first Roman Catholic to become president. He didn’t face the fire and brimstone Al Smith did in 1928, but the 1960 campaign had its fair share of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment.
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So, Kennedy famously delivered a speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960, attempting to confront whispers that he would be the Pope’s president.

“Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in -- for that should be important only to me -- but what kind of America I believe in,” he said.

The speech was considered a bold move on Kennedy’s part. But it was also kind of sad that a member of any religious minority had to make such a speech in the first place.

The implied message was that Kennedy had to prove that he had just as much a right to run for the presidency as any Protestant.

Now, we have a Mormon running for president, Mitt Romney. And while much has been made of the rift between evangelical Protestants and Mormons, less has been noted about the way normally tolerant liberals have also raised questions about Mitt’s faith.

Romney’s “conspicuous cone of silence about this major pillar of his biography also leaves you wondering what he is trying to hide,” writes former New York Times columnist Frank Rich in the current issue of New York Magazine.

Rich goes on, “That his faith can be as secretive as he is…only whets the curiosity among the 82% of Americans who tells pollsters they know little or nothing about Mormonism.”

Secretive? Trying to hide something?

Given what folks have said about the all-powerful Vatican in the past, these very things could well have been said about JFK in 1960. And that’s a shame.

There’s a fine line between wanting to know more about a candidate’s background and equating silence with suspicious secrecy.

The late best-selling author Christopher Hitchens, before he died, declared, “we are fully entitled” to ask tough questions about how Romney’s faith shaped his political philosophy. There is, of course, a defensiveness to that declaration.

Because Hitchens and those like him know that you run the risk of seeming anti-Mormon, if not anti-religious, by pushing such questions. Hitchens, for one, was a proud atheist.

But one suspects that if the leading Republican candidate was a devout Buddhist or Jew -- or heaven forbid, Muslim -- people like Rich would be the first to view such questions as bigoted.

There is so much material to slam Romney on -- his flip-flopping, his cutthroat private sector policies, his thin political experience. Why go after his religion?

Yes, he himself speaks of God oh so much on the campaign trail. He is not the only one.

The problem, then, seems not to be Mormonism but religion in the political sphere in general. Liberals don’t like to be labeled as anti-Christian, but there are times when they make it awful easy for the right wing to do just that.

Sure, Romney could make another JFK-style speech about his religion. But would that really satisfy the critics who view him with suspicion?

As JFK said back in 1960, “For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew -- or a Quaker or a
Unitarian or a Baptist.”

Or a Mormon.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Please leave John F Kennedy rest in peace

Stephen King

You know how they say it took Richard Nixon - someone with strong anti-Communist credentials – to visit China back in the 1970s?

Well, maybe it’s going to take an Irish Catholic to say something uncomfortable about John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Enough.  Really.  Enough.

Horror master Stephen King has just writing a 900-page time-traveling novel about how the JFK assassination could have been prevented.

So.  Enough.

This might be the kind of reaction you would expect from a Kennedy-bashing conservative, or a twenty-something slacker who has no interest in any history prior to the great Y2K scare.

That’s not me.  And yet, I’m compelled to, if not banish all Kennedy-related studies, then at least declare a moratorium.

Later this month, we will again mark the anniversary of the assassination that supposedly changed everything.

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Fittingly, as the fateful date approaches, new waves of Kennedy studies wash upon our cultural shores.

Last month there was a new book from Caroline Kennedy about her mom, Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy.

Now there’s Stephen King’s tome and TV pundit Chris Matthews’ new (500 more pages!) book Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero.

Matthews does an interesting job putting the Kennedys on the couch, psychoanalyzing the family dynamic as well as the lingering bigotries they had to confront.

Joe Kennedy Jr., of course, was seen as the family’s brightest light.

For his parents, Joe “would be their bridge to both joining and mastering the WASP society from which they, as Roman Catholics in early twentieth-century America, were barred.”

JFK, meanwhile, had to carve out a space as the “second son,” which is the title of one of Matthew’s chapters.

“Unlike his older brother, bound to a more conventional blueprint, Jack wasn’t under the same pressure. There was a lightness to him, a wry Irishness that blended with the WASP manner rather than aspiring to it,” Matthews writes.

“With that combination, he could enter where his father, mother, and brother could not.”

I’m not suggesting the Kennedys in general and JFK in particular are not interesting.  But I can’t help but think the amount of energy which we continue to focus on this clan means we are no longer interpreting the family and their times.

We are now interpreting the already-countless, already existing interpretations.

There’s also a lot of nostalgia involved in this.

Yes, every generation is susceptible to this.

Nevertheless, certain children of the 1960s have clung to Camelot with a passion bordering on disturbing.

A Washington Post contributor recently wrote, “As a prominent television personality himself, (Chris) Matthews understands the riddle of being constantly in the public eye, but also in another space the public doesn’t see. And he has brought this intuition to a reexamination of JFK, who you might think is the most chronicled and therefore the best understood president in modern history. Not so.”

Not so?  Well, maybe that’s best as it is.

Maybe we already know enough about this president, not to mention his killer and the folks who surrounded this president and his killer.

If you don’t think so then consider King’s new book, simply titled 11/22/63.  If Oliver Stone, in his movie JFK, depicted the assassination of Kennedy as a crime so heinous it simply must have been hatched at the highest levels, then King goes Stone one better.  (FYI: Early reviews suggest King’s book accepts the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.)

What King’s book does feature is a character who stumbles upon a portal which allows him to travel back to 1958 and, thus, possibly stop the assassination before it happens.

Maybe the world would still be a great place, then, right?

It’s hard not to look at all of these Kennedy books and realize they have little to do with JFK himself.

They seem to give a voice to our own fantasies about bold, youthful leadership and more innocent times.
 
Very basic questions, of course, would force us to confront the fact that there really were no more or less innocent times.

Ending our JFK obsession would, I believe, force us to grow up a little bit more as a nation.

So let’s let Jack rest in peace.  For a little while.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)