[Link to PBS JFK American Experience page]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/jfk/player/
This video history (two two-hour broadcasts November 11, 12, 2013) reminds of Joseph P. Kennedy's admonition to his sons, "It doesn't matter what you are. It matters what people think you are." One Kennedy Cult homosexual reminded me when he said to me, "What do you care what other people think of you." after 30 years of the Kennedy cult FBI telling everyone I knew, know and met "He's a retired drug dealer."
Then there is Jay-Z, really a retired drug dealer who is invited to the White House, celebrated on music award shows and earning money endorsing major retail stores in New York City. In case of any negative public discourse about Mr. Jay-Z, the Reverend Al Sharpton, television host is available to counter the attacks and to characterize Jay-Z's critics as racist. One relentless element of character assassination directed at me for 34 years is "He's a racist." The public perception of me as a retired, racist drug dealer did wonders for my social, economic and political lives. So it mattered, matters to me what other people thought and think of me. As Mark Twain pointed out, "The lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on."
Two additional one-hour features were broadcast on the day following (November 13, 2013) the second part of the JFK two-part special. The first one discusses in detail the forensic ballistics evidence of the three shots that were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. The second one discusses in detail how journalists reported the assassination, focusing on Walter Cronkhite. One question remains. Why did it take 50 years to make these features? Some technology was not available in 1963. But some was available earlier than 2013.
The day after I posted this report the charming compassionate Harvard University medical school graduate psychology sociopathic student, descended from the nation of India, increased her criminal harassment. She disturbs my sleep every one or two hours, causes my computer to repeatedly crash, stalks, harasses, insults, ridicules, humiliates, and threatens, "They are going kill you." Her character assassination includes, "He's homeless." "He's mentally ill." "He's not real." "He's a racist." Vigilant Harvard University campus police protect this ongoing criminal abuse along with superintendents of Harvard's real estate division. This is an essential part of Harvard's mission of education (and abusing vulnerable elder citizens?).
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JFK PBS, American Experience
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Part 1 of 2
[From video history]
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Jack's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was one of the wealthiest men in America. An Irish Catholic businessman, who had grabbed his fortune in the WASP dominated world of high finance.
[There was no mention of the elder Kennedy's businesses during prohibition importing and distributing illegal "medicinal" booze.]
[. . .]
Robert Dallek, historian: "After the stock market crash occurred in 1929, John Kennedy didn't know that there was all this privation in the country. He never wanted for a meal. And it wasn't until he read something later in high school and college about The Depression that it registered on his consciousness."
[. . .]
"Non stop competition. Where Joe Jr. and Jack were concerned, friends remembered, everything was a contest."
[. . .]
"By the time Joe Sr. was recalled from London, reporters on both sides of the Atlantic were calling him a Hitler apologist, a defeatist."
[. . .]
"He showed up at his [congressional] office as little as possible. Took scant interest in constituent services, and only middling interest in his committee assignments."
[. . .]
"He spent his evenings racing to movie theaters in his convertible, jockeying with the Washington trolley, a different girl in the passenger seat every night. Was it a movie star, the newspapers wondered? A socialite? Another airline hostess?"
Dallek: "He's a playboy. [. . .] It was a period of great self indulgence."
[. . .]
"And it wasn't just his womanizing that stunned Jackie. Politics was sort of my enemy, she confided. We had no home life whatsoever."
[. . .]
Robert Caro, writer: "Johnson said Kennedy was pathetic as a congressman and a senator. He didn't know how to address the chair, by which he meant he didn't even know the rules. What particularly irked Johnson was that he couldn't depend on the man. Kennedy was often absent. He ducked the controversial censure vote on Joe McCarthy."
[. . .]
"The press was unable to make sense out of the vote totals out of Cook County [Chicago] Illinois."
* * * * *
* * * * *
Part 2 of 2
* * * * *
This part begins with the inauguration in January 1961. Frank Sinatra gave a party.
* * *
Richard Reeves, writer: "People suddenly see this glamorous young couple from the upper class, who were almost impeccable in everything they do in public. And we want to be like them. It is the new America." [To some, the Kennedy family was anything but the upper class.]
[. . .]
Sally Bedell Smith, writer: "JFK held the great man theory of government."
[. . .]
Evan Thomas, writer: "We had the best, the brightest, the smartest, and if you just get enough of those guys in a room, everything will be clear and all problems will be solved."
[That sounds a lot like Harvard University (and Barack Obama, ya think?) where they believe they are the best, the brightest and they know best. If they do not know it it is unknowable. Obama worships credentials. Was it the same for JFK?]
[. . .]
Richard Reeves: "Kennedy had a real respect for the people in the intelligence agency. And made the obvious assumption they knew what they were doing."
[. . .]
"Of the 1400 Cuban exiles who made the attack [at the Bay of Pigs] 1200 were killed or captured. Many of the survivors we headed for the firing squad."
[. . .]
Robert Dallek, historian: "It humbled him, but most importantly it made him deeply skeptical of taking advice at face value from people who were supposed to be experts in the military, in the intelligence community, in the CIA. And he realized he had to make critical evaluations of what people were telling him and he had to be skeptical."
[Is it any different with experts in any field? Psychiatry, criminologists, for example?]
[. . .]
Robert Dallek: "Kennedy had a meeting with his chiefs [of military staff] early in his presidency, in which they described to him the plans for a nuclear war; in which they would kill 175 million people, devastate every major city in the Soviet Union and China. And as he walks out of the room, he turns to Dean Rusk and he says, 'And we call ourselves the human race.'"
[. . .]
Robert Dallek: "He sees his first year as a pretty miserable experience, and there's no significant gain that he can point to either on the domestic or the foreign scene."
[. . .]
Evan Thomas: "John F. Kennedy for all his many, many qualities was reckless about his womanizing. It's a long list of all different kinds. Society matrons, 19-year-olds. I mean it just went on and on."
[. . .]
Sally Bedell Smith: "Most of the people who covered the White House in the press, were well aware that Kennedy was engaging in private sexual escapades in the White House, in Palm Springs, in Malibu, in New York, and even during one of his summit meetings with Prime Minister Harold MacMillan in Nassau."
[. . .]
Thomas Hughes, Assistant Secretary of State: "Bobby would say, 'There is no higher interest in the entire U.S. government than getting rid of Castro.'"
[. . .]
Michael Dobbs, writer: "The CIA told him that there were 8,000 Soviet technicians in Cuba. In fact there were 43,000 heavily armed Soviet soldiers on Cuba at that point. The Soviets possessed in addition to these longer range missiles that could hit the United States, they also possessed shorter range tactical nuclear weapons that could have been used to wipe out the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo or a U.S. invading force. Kennedy didn't know any of that."
[. . .]
Thomas Hughes: "He gets bad advice from everybody. All of his appointees. His chosen advisors. And they're all over the place. And they change their own views frequently."
[. . .]
Thomas Naftali, historian: "The President invited a few of his closest reporter friends to the White House for private briefings on the events in Cuba. Then he demanded a chance to amend and improve their stories about the crisis. The administration never did disclose the secret tradeoff of U.S. missiles in Turkey. Instead under the President's direction they embroidered the already fanciful tale of the U.S. Navy turning back Soviet ships. What Kennedy's Secretary of State called the 'Eyeball to eyeball confrontation between the President and Khruschev.'
Michael Dobbs: "That never happened. Khruschev already decided to turn back his ships around. And turned them around the previous day."
[. . .]
Vaughn Meader's comedy album, "'The First Family' sold a record breaking 7 and 1/2 million copies in just six months."
[I met Vaughn Meader at a New York City comedy workshop. He invited anyone to be in the audience for the recording of that album. I demurred.]
[. . .]
In 1963 "Kennedy had quadrupled the number of American troops in Vietnam in little under a year to nearly 12,000."
[. . .]
Evan Thomas: "Jack Kennedy was very conscious of images."
[. . .]
Evan Thomas: "Different parts of Kennedy's own government is telling him different things. [. . .] Kennedy has basically lost control of his Vietnam policy making part of his government. And he knows it."
[. . .]
"Jack Kennedy was the most glamorous attractive President the United States we've ever had, we will ever have. [. . .] He probably wasn't as great as he appeared to be."
* * *
[This two-part feature ended with the assassination of the President.
Two more PBS video features were broadcast the next day.]
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NOVA
Cold Case: JFK
November 13, 2013
PBS
This show is detailed scientific presentation, and gory. Numerous experts show forensic evidence using technology not available in 1963. Substantial ballistics tests are shown explaining how the bullets traveled. They specify errors made on that day by medical professionals. They indicate that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots and killed JFK.
Luke Haag, Firearms Expert, in New Mexico concluded, "The essence of good forensic science is to look at what are the competing explanations of an event. And if you can rule out that which is impossible, that which remains, however seemingly improbable, is the truth."
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JFK; ONE PM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME
Secrets of The Dead
PBS
November 13, 2013
Narrated by George Clooney
This one hour PBS special focuses on Walter Cronkhite and the way journalists covered the assassination of the President. Bill Clinton appears several times. One aspect of the 1963 trip to Texas seldom reported is that the President first went to San Antonio, then to Houston, then to Fort Worth and then to Dallas.
There are extreme details of who reported what, when. Who was first. The technical difficulties of television, radio and newspapers in 1963. The standards were higher then which is why Cronkhite delayed reporting the death of JFK until 2:00 PM New York time.
Marvin Kalb said "Walter Cronkhite was the master of the moment." He died in 2009 at 92.
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