{"id":938,"date":"2006-05-03T17:19:43","date_gmt":"2006-05-03T22:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/one-shot-at-history\/"},"modified":"2006-05-03T17:19:43","modified_gmt":"2006-05-03T22:19:43","slug":"one-shot-at-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/one-shot-at-history","title":{"rendered":"One Shot at History"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find the figure of Lee Harvey Oswald fascinating. The more facts we know, the less of a complete picture we get of the guy. Ron Rosenbaum has a neat essay on the JFK assassination theorists in his big collection, The Secret Parts of Fortune, that (to me) forms a sort of trilogy with essays on Danny Casolaro and Kim Philby.<\/p>\n

But this essay by James Piereson<\/a> in Commentary contends that my Oswald-mosaic concept is bunk, and that LHO was set on killing JFK in response to U.S. attempts to kill Castro. More to the point, Piereson contends that most of the conspiracy-theorizing derives from the fact the LHO was a left-wing assassin:<\/p>\n

Hence, when the word spread on November 22 that President Kennedy had been shot, the immediate and understandable reaction was that the assassin must be a right-wing extremist–an anti-Communist, perhaps, or a white supremacist. Such speculation went out immediately over the national airwaves, and it seemed to make perfect sense, echoed by the likes of John Kenneth Galbraith and Chief Justice Earl Warren, who said that Kennedy had been martyred \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cas a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d<\/p>\n

It therefore came as a shock when the police announced later the same day that a Communist had been arrested for the murder, and when the television networks began to run tapes taken a few months earlier showing the suspected assassin passing out leaflets in New Orleans in support of Fidel Castro. Nor was Lee Harvey Oswald just any leftist, playing games with radical ideas in order to shock friends and relatives. Instead, he was a dyed-in-the-wool Communist who had defected to the Soviet Union and married a Russian woman before returning to the U.S. the previous year. One of the first of an evolving breed, Oswald had lately rejected the Soviet Union in favor of third-world dictators like Mao, Ho, and Castro.<\/p>\n

Informed later that evening of Oswald\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s arrest, Mrs. Kennedy lamented bitterly that her husband had apparently been shot by this warped and misguided Communist. To have been killed by such a person, she felt, would rob his death of all meaning. Far better, she said, if, like Lincoln, he had been martyred for civil rights and racial justice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now that last paragraph is hearsay, as far as I’m concerned, but Piereson uses this idea of Oswald-denial as a springboard for the meltdown of liberalism. I find it pretty fascinating, but you know what I’m like.<\/p>\n

Give it a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or just write humorless comments about how big corporations are controlling our minds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I find the figure of Lee Harvey Oswald fascinating. The more facts we know, the less of a complete picture we get of the guy. Ron Rosenbaum has a neat essay on the JFK assassination theorists in his big collection, The Secret Parts of Fortune, that (to me) forms a sort of trilogy with essays … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “One Shot at History”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-explicit","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-f8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16454,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-565-danny-fingeroth","url_meta":{"origin":938,"position":0},"title":"Episode 565 – Danny Fingeroth","author":"Gil","date":"November 28, 2023","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 565: Danny Fingeroth \"I figured my entry point into a JFK assassination book would be Jack Ruby, given my interest in offbeat \u2014 to say the least \u2014 American Jews.\" With the 60th anniversary of the assassinations of JFK & Lee Harvey Oswald, Danny Fingeroth brings us\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/fingerothcomp.jpg?fit=1111%2C800&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/fingerothcomp.jpg?fit=1111%2C800&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/fingerothcomp.jpg?fit=1111%2C800&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/fingerothcomp.jpg?fit=1111%2C800&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/fingerothcomp.jpg?fit=1111%2C800&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1402,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/agent-of-wtf","url_meta":{"origin":938,"position":1},"title":"Agent of W.T.F.?","author":"Gil","date":"March 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"For a few years now, I developed a theory that America's cold war worldviews were encapsulated in the psyche of Lee Harvey Oswald, but this relied on my belief that Oswald had so many cover stories, there was no actual person underneath them all. What do we get nowadays? A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1504,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-inconsistency-of-our-actions","url_meta":{"origin":938,"position":2},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the inconsistency of our actions","author":"Gil","date":"May 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I read The Biographer's Tale in 2000. Picked it up in Gatwick on the way home from a conference in Italy. Or maybe I picked it up on the way in; I can't remember. I suppose there's a credit-card record somewhere. Since there's no recording angel to keep track of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375725083","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2661,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-four-in-one-specials","url_meta":{"origin":938,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of four-in-one specials","author":"Gil","date":"October 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm going to cover four shorter essays this week, because it's my party. * * * Our first essay, Of giving the lie (pp. 611-615), actually continues the conversation from Of presumption, to my gratification (see last week's post to get an idea of how overwhelming that essay is). Montaigne\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3270,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-on-some-verses-of-virgil","url_meta":{"origin":938,"position":4},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: On some verses of Virgil","author":"Gil","date":"January 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I had some trepidation going into On some verses of Virgil (pp. 774-831 in the Everyman's edition), because it's more than 50 pages long and I've, um, never read Virgil. My fears were unwarranted; \"some\" verses turned out to be 8 lines, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3342,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-disadvantage-of-greatness","url_meta":{"origin":938,"position":5},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the disadvantage of greatness","author":"Gil","date":"February 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"With Of the disadvantage of greatness (pp. 849-853), Montaigne counters Mel Brooks' wisdom that \"it's good to be the king.\" M. concedes that the actions and effects of kings are awesome, but the tradeoff is that they'll never have a measure of themselves because of the deference of their subjects.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}