JFK Assassination Still Fascinates

By ROB PATTERSON

I was nine years old on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. I remember like it was yesterday when my fifth grade teacher was called out of the classroom and then returned not long after, tears in her eyes, to tell us that the president had been shot.

Even though that event is etched into my memory, where my recollections of the times that surrounded it also still feel fresh, “JFK: One PM Central Standard Time” – a PBS documentary streaming on Amazon – adds much to my knowledge and perspective. And that’s after much reading and research as well as working on planning two major conferences on the JFK assassination plus ghostwriting a book about a revelatory aspect of that national tragedy.

The core of the film is the reporting of Kennedy’s shooting, specifically how CBS and newsman Walter Cronkite were the first to announce the news to the nation. Cronkite became the empathetic, reliable and reassuring voice to the nation from that moment on throughout the aftermath. He was our man of the moment.

“He was writing the lead.” says his fellow CBS newsman Bob Schieffer in the doc. It’s fascinating to follow the journalistic process through the chaotic timeline from the shooting in Dealey Plaza to Parkland Hospital to when Cronkite and the CBS newsroom felt they could credibly announce that the president was dead. Especially from our technologically-advanced perspective today in which communications is split-seconds quick. Back then, reporters in Dallas struggled to find phones to contact their home offices. After CBS rolled a camera into its newsroom to be ready to broadcast Cronkite from his desk, it still took some precious time for it to warm up (as vacuum tubes were a major part of the camera’s circuitry).

And the film goes superbly beyond just its tale of the reporting. It includes the cultural, political and global context of Kennedy’s presidency to set the stage on which the president’s death unfolded. Those of us who lived through it will be transported back to how life felt just before the deadly gunshots were fired in Dallas. Younger people can get a good sense of the times and hopefully gain an enhanced understanding of the national, if not international trauma that was his assassination.

My only bone to pick with the doc is that it adheres to the scenario of the by-now-largely-disproven-theory that Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy. Then again, even merely broaching the subject of assassination conspiracies and the who-really-done-it mystery is like opening a can of worms as one tumbles down the rabbit hole. So in a way better to simply not open that can.

Watching the film piqued speculation on my part as to what may have transpired had Kennedy lived and served out two terms. I suspect that America would have become a better nation than we turned out to be, though one never knows. At least I feel confidant that if he had dodged the bullets – literally or figuratively – we likely never would never have suffered a President tRump.

And I suspect that JFK would have led the country at least slightly to the left and continued to inspire us with his youth and vision. It is largely assumed among historians he would not have gotten the nation militarily mired in Vietnam. Whatever might have transpired, I imagine he would have largely helped make America a better nation.

Populist Picks

Book: “AOC: Fighter, Phenom, Change Maker” by Prachi Gupta – A rather slim and delightfully and colorfully illustrated bio of a young woman I so admire and adore. Good primer on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her life so far. What’s to come from this brave and brilliant force of nature will fill bulging books in the future.

Film: “The Green Book” – Yes, I am rather late to the game on this one. Starts a little bit goofy, but then blossoms into an inspiring and heartwarming tale of racial tolerance in a time and place (the South) of racial injustice.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2020

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