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Written by Scott Meadow
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Saturday, 29 November 2003 (read 2497 times) |
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Forty-one years ago, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Since
that
time, millions of words have been written by honest (and way out-there)
researchers all over the world trying to define what exactly
happened on that day. Undeterred, Peter
Jennings tossed his hat into the ring last year and his
"The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond
Conspiracy" -- validating that Lee Harvey was the lone
gunman responsible -- was dutifully re-broadcast this weekend,
infuriating me all over again.
Jenning's special used the latest in 3-D modelling to "prove" that JFK
was indeed shot by Oswald and Oswald alone, using a "sophisticated"
computer simulation (ooooo, high-tech = truth), and "debunks" the audio
recording -- taped by a Dallas motorcycle cop during the assassination
-- that seems to indicate more than three shots were fired. All
of this is submitted to the viewer as "evidence," and then Pete spends
the next 75 minutes telling you all about what a liar Oliver
Stone is and how anyone who doesn't buy the Warren Commission is a
dangerously delusional maniac.
This must be true, because, of course, no one could possibly come up
with a biased computer simulation to "prove" whatever you wanted to
"prove" from the beginning, right? After all, it's ... science!
"Beyond Conspiracy" is just the latest whitewash job by the
establishment media to validate their mammoth incompetence in covering
the assassination in the first place. A quick and totally
unscientific Amazon search I did just now revealed 3,746 books on the
keywords "JFK conspiracy." If there's absolutely
nothing to any competing
explanation of the facts -- as Jennings would have it -- what the fuck
are all these guys writing about? One can imagine that "the
Warren Commission is bullshit" would only require 5 words of a
70-80,000 manuscript, so there must be something there worth writing
about.
Yet NONE of it --
not a single competing theory, fact, or piece of contradictory evidence
-- is ever admitted by "Beyond Conspiracy" to be anything more than the
silly ramblings of loony "conspiracy theorists." (In fact,
throughout this "documentary" the words "conspiracy theorist"
automatically imply "major psychosis" among anyone sappy enough to
think a few right wing wackjobs may have wanted to kill a liberal
Democrat like JFK.) No other theory is presented and so the
authors have themselves one nice, neat little narrative of the
assassination, free and clear of any pesky, annoying little details
that may derail their central argument.
 "A bullet can throw a body in any direction."
All in all, this is an expensive defense of an assassination narrative debunked by the government itself in the report of the 1976 U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations,
but a conclusion that Peter Jennings and his team -- after fucking
around with Maya for three or four weeks
-- are obviously in a superior position to correct. (Well, he
does get paid a lot of money, he must be right!)
And what about Stone's famous soundbite, "Back and to the left," the
common sense evidence presented by the movie "JFK" in support of the
final headshot coming from the front of the limo? "A bullet can
throw a body in any direction," Jennings condescends, and with a smirk
provides no additional explanation. Well, apparently in Maya
bullets don't have momentum and certainly don't expand as they
penetrate bone.
But there's one thing that "Beyond Conspiracy" does prove beyond a
doubt: despite the fact that 70% of the American population thinks the
Warren Commission was wrong, the "lone gunman" explanation continues to
have strong support among the cultural elite of our nation, who have
LONG AGO abdicated their role of checking government power with
critical scrutiny. These days, there are plenty of guys like
Jennings who are little more than official lapdogs of the state, happy
to spread official government propaganda -- at an enormous profit --
over the people's airwaves to the slack-jowl'ed public.
Why? That's probably another conspiracy all together.
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