If you are of a certain age where you remember the 1960s, get out the DVR and record National Geographic’s documentary of all original footage from that day and those immediately following. If you are not, do it anyway. It’s a great history lesson. Next airing Sunday, November 29 at 11:00 a.m. EST.
I was only three years old when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but the world I grew up in was powerfully influenced by the shockwaves that rippled out from that horrific event. I watched the documentary last night with my wife and it was riveting.
The film is all original tape from that day, some home movie footage thrown in as well, and all from the local Dallas airwaves. Just fascinating. It starts with the city preparing that morning for the president’s arrival, and it seemed that all of Dallas was enthralled according to the press coverage.
One of the most poignant moments in the film was watching a huge luncheon being prepared with thousands of guests that was to take place at 1:00 p.m. Of course, the president never made it, and to watch people in real time go from excited anticipation to painful shocking reality was powerful.
Among several interesting observations, it was stated several times during the day’s coverage that Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist and had spent time in Russia. The left has pushed a narrative of the Kennedy assassination that he was killed by a bunch of country hicks in Texas who hated the northeastern liberal. Clearly Oswald was no country hick (see Camelot and the Cultural Revolution), and likely despised Kennedy the passionate anti-communist.
Another one is the quality of the black and white footage. It was actually remarkable; probably because we have a 52-inch high def TV, but I was still surprised.
Mike, I think that your article is excellent, John’s comment quite thought-provoking, and your response superb.
I believe that a big reason that the Kennedy assassination was such a riveting moment was its cultural significance. What would come to be called the New Left had been forming since just after World War II, and President Kennedy represented the first major instance of what would become at the end of the decade the most consciously thought-out response to that movement: neoconservatism. Kennedy fits the definition with astonishing accuracy.
Like neoconservatism, Kennedy’s politics included a big role for government while preserving a space for the market economy to create wealth, plus a significant amount of involvement in international affairs and a penchant for crusades. In fact, it would be difficult to find a modern-era president whose policies were closer to those of the despised George W. Bush than Kennedy.
Evidently, in politics as in culture, context is king.
John, I’m not so sure I would say “sick” is the reason as much as I would say human nature. I’ve been watching The Tudors on DVD of late, and last night I saw the scene where Sir Thomas More is beheaded, and there was another unfortunate soul who had the same thing done to him earlier in the episode (don’t want to cross old Henry VIII).
At the ceremony, if you will, the town square was filled with people, most of whom were distraught over the spectacle. Throughout history people have wanted to see other people put to death. Not unlike traffic accidents that people just have to stare at as they travel down the other side of the road.
Having said this, human nature is indeed “sick.” Christians call it sin and the event that caused it the Fall. The macabre desire to see evil done is but one example of the dreadful state of our souls.
This murder has so infected our national conscious and subconscious as to create a cultural sickness. Beginning with the violently pornographic Zappruder Home movie (the ultimate snuff film) which is shown each and every November. This sickening scene of carnage which we can all play in our minds so vividly is again repeated for our collective “reboot” over and over again. We can watch with both horror and morbid facination as the man’s head is blown away from the comfort of our living rooms…..sick.