In a Lame Interview, the New York Times Evades Bob Dylan’s JFK Challenge

June 16, 2020Assassination5 comments

“Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind,” the New York Times reported on June 12.  That’s for sure. In late March, as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down America, the 79 year old singer-songwriter released “Murder Most Foul,” an epic, 17-minute song-poem about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Since “Who killed JFK?” is one of the central questions of American history, you might think that the Times interviewer, historian Douglas Brinkley would ask the Nobel laureate about how he came to compose his dark and brooding take on November 22, 1963. You might think Brinkley, a CNN commentator, would ask Dylan why he decided to release the song as the country and the world reeled from a plague.

You might think wrong.

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What were JFK’s two greatest speeches?

June 11, 2020Assassination, Video50 comments


President Kennedy gave two speeches, on June 10 and June 11, 1963 that changed the course of American history, says  historian Andrew Cohen, author of “Two Days in June.” Cohen explained what JFK wrought in a recent interview with CBC TV host Peter Mansbridge.

 

June 10, 1963: A profile in courage with lethal consequences

June 10, 2020Assassination, In 1963, Video13 comments


President Kennedy’s speech to the graduating class of American University in Washington DC on June 10, 1963, represented the beginning of his “strategy for peace”  to wind down the Cold War. His bold proposal for a joint U.S.-Soviet moon flight was part of this strategy.

Kennedy’s vigorous style and clear mind never had a more important goal — or more powerful enemies.

JFK,  Dylan, and the Death of the American Dream 

June 2, 2020Assassination, Best of, ReviewNo comments

In these terrible days, I got to thinking about Tim Shorrock’s essay/review on Bob Dylan’s JFK opus:

At its most essential level, “Murder Most Foul” marks the collapse of the American dream, dating from that terrible day in Dallas, when a certain evil in our midst was revealed in ways not seen for a hundred years—a day that, for Dylan, myself, and others of our generation is forever seared into our collective memory.

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Murder on the Towpath: Soledad O’Brien’s Podcast on Mary Meyer

May 26, 2020Assassination3 comments

Mary Pinchot Meyer
Mary Pinchot Meyer, painter.

I’ll be tuning into this re-examination of the Mary Meyer case, not for the conspiracy theories (which I don’t find convincing) but for the details of the case that emerged at the trial of her alleged (and acquitted) assailant.

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JFK on Memorial Day: a Memoir

May 25, 2020Assassination, Best of2 comments

Green Beret on JFK’s grave (Credit: Louis Jarvis)

These memories of Memorial Day come from reader, Louis Jarvis.

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Digitizing the JFK Bullet Evidence

May 6, 2020Assassination, Experts, VideoNo comments

A fascinating explanation of how the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created digital imagery of the bullet evidence in the assassination of JFK.

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Coming: ‘Last Second in Dallas,’ by Josiah Thompson 

May 4, 2020Assassination, Review13 comments

Josiah Thompson was headed for a dull career as a college philosophy professor when he took an interest in the assassination of JFK.

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Understanding the Forensic Evidence and Witness Testimony

April 21, 2020Assassination, Best of20 comments
JFK in living color

At Medium, Jimmy Falls (also of WhoWhatWhy) breaks down the forensic and eyewitness testimony to JFK’s assassination with a focus on the testimony of three people-John and Nellie Connally and James Tague–who experienced the hail of gunfire that killed the president.

The presentation is careful, the conclusions inescapable.

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‘Bob Dylan, the JFK Assassination, and My Frantic Quest to Connect the Two’

April 13, 2020Assassination, Best of, ReviewNo comments

“With the stunning recent midnight release of Murder Most Foul, Bob Dylan unequivocally declared his deep distress at the unsolved mysteries surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. I wish I’d known about that sooner. It would have saved me a lot of anguish and embarrassment.

So writes the ingratiating Bob Katz in Bob Dylan, the JFK Assassination, and My Frantic Quest to Connect the Two

It was November, 1975. “Oswald’s November,” as the poet Anne Sexton once branded that gloomy time of year when daylight shrinks, weather turns dank, and hearts feel the chill. Dylan, recently emerged from an extended hibernation, had just launched the now legendary Rolling Thunder Review tour. Nov. 20 at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge was among the first dates on the tour. Next was Nov. 21 at the Music Hall in Boston. On Nov. 22, a mass rally calling for a re-opening of the investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination.

Read on Bob Dylan, the JFK Assassination, and My Frantic Quest to Connect the Two

Five Takes on Bob Dylan’s JFK Song

April 6, 2020Assassination, Best of, VideoNo comments

Maybe its his Nobel Prize but Dylan seems immune to the normally outspoken camp of JFK anti-conspiracy theorists. Rather his 17-minute rumination of the assassination of President Kennedy has attracted 2.6 million views while impressing critics and scholars of the case.

A sampling:

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Lyrics to ‘Murder Most Foul’

March 27, 2020Assassination, Best of11 comments

Twas a dark day in Dallas, November ’63

A day that will live on in infamy

President Kennedy was a-ridin’ high

Good day to be livin’ and a good day to die

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Bob Dylans’ ‘Murder Most Foul’

March 27, 2020Assassination, Best of, Video5 comments
JFK in living color

From America’s greatest living poet, a low-key rumination on the meaning of November 22, 1963.

Dylan joins Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Charles DeGaulle, Fidel Castro and a majority of Americans in believing JFK was killed by political enemies.

Or you can listen to the warbling of Chris Matthews.

Dylan illuminates two things brilliantly, I think:

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Chris Matthews’ Departure Welcomed By All Serious Students of the JFK Assassination

March 16, 2020Assassination, Best of4 comments

Chris Matthews
Chris Matthews, anti-conspiracy theorist.

Doug Horne, former investigator for the Assassination Records Review Board, welcomes the end of Hardball, the CNN talk show hosted by Chris Matthews.

“He was a dinosaur whose departure was long overdue,” Horne writes

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Tulsi Gabbard Keeps Good Company on JFK

February 21, 2020Assassination7 comments

[This story first appeared in AlterNet on Feb 20, 2019 under the headline, How the Question of Who Killed JFK Emerged in an Unexpected Way on the Campaign Trail.]

Tulsi Gabbard
Tulsi Gabbard, presidential candidate

On February 17 in Fairfax Virginia, Donald Jeffries, author and talk radio host, asked Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard about a book she had been seen carrying, “JFK and the Unspeakable.” Published in 2008, the book is a Catholic philosopher’s meditation, driven by ethics and facts, about the assassination of a liberal president John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, one of the great historical crimes of American politics,

Gabbard replied she had not finished the book She added:

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