Twenty years ago, Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ was released and was less a film than a Molotov cocktail thrown at the “establishment.”  Stone called his film about the 20th century’s most infamous Presidential assassination “a history lesson” (a characterization he quickly withdrew) and hoped to be vindicated by the passage of time.

Stone’s thesis in a film designed to appeal to middle America is as follows: the military-industrial complex, allowed free reign under Eisenhower, killed Kennedy because he was trying to end the Cold War, especially in Cuba and Vietnam (the latter extremely important to the obsessed Stone).  Their point men were apolitical snipers, vengeful anti-Castroites, and a manipulated Oswald.  Far from being an angry leftist loner, Oswald was in fact a perpetrator for the more dovish elements of the American government’s schemes.  The low-level plotters included Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, and David Ferrie, a member of the Operation Mongoose team, a CIA operation in constant efforts to kill Castro.

Like all history lessons, the yardstick is whether further evidence has proved him correct.  On Shaw being a CIA agent, Stone was on sure footing: CIA Director Richard Helms admitted that the New Orleans defendant was an agent.  On Shaw and Ferrie knowing each other (a charge Shaw denied under oath at his trial in New Orleans), evidence in  the form of a car loan for Ferrie co-signed by Shaw has vindicated Stone.

But other revelations have not been so kind.  Far from being a patsy four  floors down from his supposed sniper perch, Oswald was shown in documents released after the film by the Dallas Police that his fingerprints were on the trigger of his Manlicher Carcano.  Re-created shooting by world-class snipers has shown that the head-shots did in fact come from the Sixth Floor Depository.  Computer analysis applied to the grassy knoll reveals that in order for a shot to have come from there the sniper would  have to have been on a forty-foot ladder (a stance that would have attracted notice). (more…)

Warning: Spoiler alert!  

The “Mad Men” finale was a satisfying, although a bit too tidy, end to its 3rd season. When I was 8, my teenage sister introduced me to a card game called “52 Pick-Up.” When I handed her the deck, she tossed cards across the room. As I whined, she said, “What else did you think a card game called ‘52 Pick-Up’ was about?” When writers Weiner and Levy created chaos with all my familiar characters in the opening episode, I should have thought “52 Pick-Up.”

After all, they just had a merger for heaven’s sake. What else to expect? Relationships between and among characters changed as work and economic status changed, and they were reshuffled into new and less pleasing ones. But we became gradually more accustomed to the new “order,” although the dominant “feeling” was a cheerless dreariness. There were some memorable moments. When a drunk Lois amputated the erstwhile new Brit super star Guy MacKendrick’s foot with a John Deere tractor in the office, I laughed out loud for minutes. Taken one show at a time, they were good, but the cumulative gloom and doom became stifling. (more…)