Doug's Darkworld

22 November 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Huge deal at the time, though at 6 years old I was only dimly aware of it. I am reasonably sure I remember seeing his funeral on TV, possibly the first news event I have recollection of. I also remember the buzz when the Beatles came to the US a few months later, the grown ups were excited about that too. I couldn’t understand why some beetles from England were such a big deal, I was not a worldly six year old. What I thought about the Kent State shooting a few years later is even more embarrassing.

So yes, big deal at the time. Fourth US president to be assassinated. And seventh US president to die in office due to the “Curse of Tippecanoe.” IE starting in 1840 every president elected in a year divisible by 20 died in office. Reagan being elected in 1980 finally broke the curse, though one wonders just how senile he was near the end of his term, maybe technically he didn’t. The curse was completely broken by George W. Bush in 2,000, since he was appointed by the Supreme Court, not elected. Don’t worry, I’ll bash Dem presidents in future blogs, I despise virtually all politicians.

Kennedy’s assassination started the modern conspiracy theory movement. Almost from the beginning, people had trouble with the official narrative. And it’s grown by leaps and bounds since. Including all sorts of theories and quotes about what Kennedy was going to do if he hadn’t been murdered. The meme above is a great example of this sort of nonsense. And nonsense it is, Kennedy never said any such thing. The poor man probably has more fake quotes attributed to him than almost anyone in history. Most of the conspiracy theories are based on similar factual errors.

His assassination is still an interesting case, there are minor discrepancies and mysteries. I noticed a few years back when I saw a nice aerial shot of the ambush sight … what a perfect location for an L shaped ambush. That’s an ambush where the ambushers are firing from in front and the side of the people being ambushed. That way the ambushed can’t take cover behind their vehicles. And if it was an L shaped ambush, Oswald was shooting from the side, and the front shooter would be on the grassy knoll. The infamous grassy knoll where some witnesses claimed to hear shots coming from. Still, without evidence, it’s just conjecture.

One of the unsolved curiosities of the assassination is the Babushka Lady. She appears in a number of the images and films of the scene, a heavy set, possibly middle aged woman wearing a headscarf tied under her chin reminiscent of how old Russian women wear scarves. (Babushka is grandmother in Russian.) At no point though is her face visible, because she is looking away from the camera, or her own camera is obscuring her face. That’s why there is such interest in her, no film or pictures attributable to her have ever surfaced. So possibly there is photographic evidence of the Kennedy assassination that has never been examined. And she was right freaking there in the middle of it, in fact she continued to film while the people around her were running for cover!

One can be sure every effort has been made to locate her. A Beverly Oliver claimed to be the Babushka Lady in 1970 and beyond, but her story is sketchy at best. And Beverly claims mysterious men confiscated her film. That’s convenient. Maybe someday the Babushka Lady’s film will show up somewhere, likely solving nothing or even adding more mystery. All that aside though, the Babushka Lady herself is evidence of nothing. There are all sorts of utterly prosaic reasons that could explain why her and her film never showed up. Like the infamous STENDEC mystery, just because we don’t know something doesn’t mean there’s anything important behind it.

So RIP John, your death was a tragedy for the nation. A wound that hasn’t healed yet. On the plus side, President Johnson was able to get a lot of JFK’s legacy enacted, in Johnson’s Great Society initiative. This was the last time a president accomplished anything for America’s poor and working class, subsequent presidents all threw poor and working class Americans under the bus. With the possible exception of Carter, but I would need to read up on that. And sadly, JFK was the one that got the US deeply involved in a stupid little war trying to prop up an unpopular American puppet state in South Vietnam. A war that proved Johnson’s downfall as well.

I remember in third grade the teacher writing ‘Vietnam’ on the chalkboard (do schools even have those anymore?) so we would know how to spell it. This would have been 1965 or 1966, when the Vietnam War was really starting to grind people’s gears.

In local news, our lake froze a few weeks back. And last night it unfroze. The temperature has been above freezing, barely, plus rain. Not much of an Indian Summer, but I’ll take what I can get. More pictures of leafless trees coming up. If one likes leafless trees and muddy fields of corn stubble, Iowa is beautiful this time of year. Have a great weekend everyone.

Copyright © 2019 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: Fake Kennedy quote meme. Credit: Anonymous, used without permission, likely a Public Domain image.)