The avalanche of books marking the 50th anniversary of J.F.K.’s assassination is both too much and not enough. The inexplicable loss, the unanswerable questions, the sense of history suspended—they’re all still being fed by the powerful charisma of the man who was America’s first Pop president.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/11/jfk-assassination-anniversary-books

President-Elect John F. Kennedy, prayer book in hand, arrives for Christmas Mass at St. Edward Church, Palm Beach, Florida, 1960.

CLOSER THAN THAT

The assassination of J.F.K., fifty years later.
Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

The death of J.F.K. marked the last time the highbrow reaches of the American imagination were complicit in the dignity of the Presidency. In Norman Mailer’s “Presidential Papers,” published the month Kennedy died, the point is that there was a “fissure in the national psyche,”* a divide between the passionate inner life of America and its conformist, repressed official life: “The life of politics and the life of myth had diverged too far.” For Mailer, Kennedy’s Presidency supplied the hope of an epiphany wherein the romantic-hero President would somehow lead his people on an “existential” quest to heal this breach. It sounded just as ridiculous then, but there was something gorgeous in the absurdity.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/11/04/131104crbo_books_gopnik

Governor and Mrs. John Connally, of Texas, with the Kennedys, in the Presidential limousine, in Dallas, November 22, 1963.

Inconsistencies Haunt Official Record Of Kennedy’s Death

Marcus D. Rosembaum, NPR

“There is substantial evidence that points toward Oswald and incriminates Oswald,” he says, “and the only person we can name where there is evidence is Oswald. But there’s also rather important exculpatory evidence for Oswald, suggesting he didn’t do it, and that he was framed.”

Some believe the Warren Commission did not resolve the mysteries because it was part of a giant cover-up, perhaps to hide a conspiracy that reached deep inside government itself.

Others point to a more benign explanation. The new president, Johnson, was pushing the Warren Commission to come to a conclusion quickly. He wanted to move the country forward, not dwell on its traumatic past.

Besides, Gunn says, the panel genuinely believed that Oswald had killed Kennedy. “So they wanted to write the document in a way that would reassure the American public that it was a single gunman acting alone, somebody who’s a little bit unstable, and that that’s the explanation for what happened.” Since the facts aren’t clear, though, that document can look like a whitewash.

For the Warren Commission, transparency had its own difficulties. “There are serious problems with the forensics evidence, with the ballistics evidence, with the autopsy evidence,” Gunn says. “And, in my opinion, if they had said that openly, it would have not put the issue to rest.”

http://www.npr.org/2013/11/10/243981006/inconsistencies-haunt-official-record-of-kennedys-death

Jacqueline Kennedy (center), with Edward and Robert Kennedy on either side, watches the coffin of President John F. Kennedy pass on Nov. 25, 1963.

JFK assassination: CIA and New York Times are still lying to us

Fifty years later, a complicit media still covers up for the security state. We need to reclaim our history.
David Talbot, Salon

We’ll never know, we’ll never know, we’ll never know. That’s the mocking-bird media refrain this season as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of America’s greatest mystery – the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson hijacked a large chunk of her paper’s Sunday Book Review to ponder the Kennedy mystery. And after deliberating for page after page on the subject, she could only conclude that there was some “kind of void” at the center of the Kennedy story. Adam Gopnik was even more vaporous in the Nov. 4 issue of the New Yorker, turning the JFK milestone into an occasion for a windy cogitation on regicide as cultural phenomenon. Of course, constantly proclaiming “we’ll never know” has become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the American press. It lets the watchdogs off the hook, and excuses their unforgivable failure to actually, you know, investigate the epic crime. When it comes to this deeply troubling American trauma, the highly refined writers of the New Yorker and the elite press would rather muse about the meta-issues than get at the meat.

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/06/the_jfk_assassination_we_still_dont_know_what_happened/

President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy arrive at Dallas Airport, Nov. 22, 1963.

My November 22, 1963

David Sipress, The New Yorker

When huge national tragedies happen, they are supposed to bring us together, and to a certain extent they do. As we all sat watching television on November 22, 1963, and the days that followed, we were taking part in what Robert Caro has identified as an unparalleled moment, when “a majority of all Americans were apparently looking at the same events and hearing the same words … participating together … in a great historical event.” But these events also have a way of making us feel alone. The tremendous shared fear they unleash can also ignite our personal, private terrors, and these are what preoccupy us even as the world is turning upside down.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/11/my-november-22-1963.html