Pat Oliphant for November 22, 2013

Nice… I was in the 5th grade when I got the news.

I was in the eighth grade. School let out without giving an announcment. I heard a couple of kids joking about it, but I had no idea what was actually going on. I then picked up from others on the city bus what was going on. When I got home, my mother was apoplectic. I was simply stunned.

I was in the first grade, and admittedly didn’t really understand much. I thought it was weird when he died, but my real freak out was about a year later when Hoover died. I didn’t know when he served; all I knew was they were dropping like flies and I never wanted to be president.

I was in second grade, and have no recollection of hearing about the assassination. One day it was a fact, and that’s about it. We didn’t have a working TV in the house at that time, so I wasn’t in the pipeline of coverage.

Not sure if it was the same year when I heard my first conspiracy tidbit from another student who said that Oswald said “Ruby!” just before he died. Ominous stuff for a kid, and totally made up.

While I agree that too many people worship celebrities (check out circulation numbers of People magazine, for example), I think you might want to do some research before you dismiss Mr. Kennedy as just another Flavor-of-the-Day. Read some of his speeches: they were powerful and spoke of the need for (and the capability of our society to create) achievement for the betterment of the world. Bobby Kennedy was a lightweight until after his brother was killed, and he also was intelligent and focused. Certainly, not every Kennedy is as capable or worthy, just like in other celebrity political families, but in dismissing JFK you miss an important part of history. I think the biggest reason why there is so much feeling of being unfulfilled as a result of his assassination is that, although he wanted strength, he wanted peace and a family-like support system between nations. He was not into the military-industrial complex which has devoured so many lives and trillions since 1963; this may well have been the true reason he was assassinated.

When I was younger I got very interested in the Kennedy assassination and I read widely about it. At first I was inclined to credit some of the conspiracy theories — there is a lot of weird stuff in the story — particularly about how easily Oswald got into and then out of the Soviet Union, and also Ruby’s involvement, which just doesn’t make sense. (I was also influenced by my aunt, who thought it was a bungled CIA hit — she said “You know, the people they get to be assassins are not very reliable.” She spoke from a position of some knowledge. Just general knowledge, I should say, she never claimed to have specific knowledge about Oswald.) But the more I read, the less credible the conspiracy theories became. With some reluctance, I have reached the conclusion (for now) that the Warren Commission was essentially correct. And all the improbabilities in the story are just the universe being improbable. So that’s what I think. For now. Always open to new evidence or a better argument.

I was just finishing up BUDS when it happened

Thank you, Pat. Now that’s a tribute.

I am so happy for your Mother. She probably hummed a happy tune for the rest of the day.

Of course Occam’s Razor doesn’t cut it when it comes to literature. Nobody wants the simplest explanation in a thriller. So the part of me that enjoys thrillers can get caught up in the conspiracy theories, but then there’s a part of me that tries to think things through. I wouldn’t believe the Warren Report just because it’s official, and overall I think the conspiracy theories have been useful as a test of the official story, but so far the official story seems (to me) to hold up.

Whereas the Republicans & Tea Partiers are hoping to finish turning it into “Ask not what you’re country can do for you, ask how you can pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate subsidies.”

For some reason the memory of the loss of JFK and his brother Bobby hurts more this year – the sense of lost potential for greatness of America. We have become more destructive of ourselves and others, more polarized, less healthy and less scientific in the last 50 years. Not that letting John F. Kennedy finish his presidency or having Bobby Kennedy become president instead of Nixon could have changed all of the bad things that have happened – or could it?

Interesting that this is the only comic that I get that discussed the topic that is on everyone’s mind. All the comments on some of the other comics are about the assassination, whether the comic addressed it or not.

I was responding to what you wrote. You made it sound like something your Mother was looking forward to.

I’m glad you liked the Dylan video. It’s one of my favorite songs, and I think they’ve done a good video for it.+Idealism is a funny thing. I guess there’s a kind of rhythm — some periods are relatively idealistic, and some are not. But there is also the power of the ideological apparatus — I think after the sixties, that power got turned on big time, and one result was the North American immersion in consumerism. My hunch is that this kind of consumerism can’t be maintained over the long term. But for some reason those who control the ideological apparatus don’t see the looming crisis. I fear that we’re heading for a crash. It would be better to make a smoother transition, and of course some people are working on that.

What is strange to me is not that this past event happened 50 years ago — the Past is always receding in our wake — but that this Present is not so different and wonderful as we at the time were led expect. .I expected the Future to be a sparkling era with space travel and world peace. And yet U.S. soldiers are still dying in wars, politicians are still squabbling, science is still “fighting” cancer, and there is still poverty amongst general prosperity. .Not much further advancement to useful common wisdom, either, building upon past knowledge to improve society. In fact, ignorance is tolerated and even valued as a perverse form of freedom. The old prejudices are considered allowable opinions, and evils are one by one redefined to make them acceptable. . We’re still the same old humans, maybe a little more comfortable and better entertained — but on the cusp of another historical sine wave, I think. There’s something in the air (in addition to increasing CO2), a corruption that feeds on superstitions and fear. Some soon to be embodied rough beast crouches forward to be born, as in Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming.” Maybe I should be “Sailing to Byzantium”?

There is something seriously wrong with hoping that someone has a violent death (her words). If you don’t understand that, then there is no point in discussing this matter with you.

One question: When you were in the chow hall, there was no announcement that the Commander-in-Chief had been fatally wounded?

Well done! Truly why O is the dean of his profession.I was in 3rd grade in Lutheran School in Jonesville, Indiana. The Pastor informed our Teacher. She told us the President had been shot. We prayed.A short while later, the Pastor again knocked on the door. He whispered to the Teacher. She gave us the news. The President was dead. Stunned silence and tears.To those of us who remember the way it was before, and have lived through what has come after. . .

Her words according to her son:-“Don’t have to worry about that SOB, someone will blow his brains out”."-Clearly meaning that killing JFK would be a solution to whatever problem he represented to her.

MDG meant that his mother only called liberals SOBs. I can only imagine what she called blacks and Jews.