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DEALY PLAZA TAKE-OVER

 

The Dallas Way to Honor John F. Kennedy in November 2013: Silence Pesky Free Speech

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Dear John F. Kennedy Library Foundation:

Good move on blowing off the Sixth Floor Museum and executive director Nicola Longford regarding her plans for a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza. Believe me: You don't want to touch this gang with a 10-foot pole.

According to a story in this morning's Dallas Morning News, Longford and her assassination museum "are planning to take over commemoration activities" at Dealey Plaza in 2013. Their avowed aim, The News says, is to "avoid the carnival atmosphere that has often prevailed at previous anniversaries on the plaza."

Yeah. Let me tell you about that. There will be a hearing in federal court this Friday on another attempt to avoid a carnival atmosphere in Dealey Plaza -- that attempt being the city's decades-long goon-style campaign of intimidation against best-selling author Robert Groden. Groden has been hauled into court 81 times by his own count, including at least one tough session in jail, for the offense of selling books and tapes and speaking his mind about the assassination in Dealey Plaza.

More than 80 times the city has attempted to shut down Groden's exercise of free speech in Dealey Plaza. They have been tossed out of court by their own municipal judges every single time. Groden finally decided to sue in order in preserve the right of free speech and assembly for himself and all people in this very important place, a national landmark.

OldDealeyPlazaPics.jpg

In The News story today, Longford is quoted as saying, "We have reserved Dealey Plaza for that date [November 22, 2013]. I think, for the 50th anniversary, we have an opportunity to offer a dignified, appropriate event for the city of Dallas."

So, John F. Kennedy Library Foundation: I ask you to think about this. What does that mean, "take over?" How do you "take over" a national landmark with the avowed aim of controlling speech there?

I spoke this morning with Groden's lawyer Bradley Kizzia, who said he had never heard of anyone taking over Dealey Plaza in order to prevent other people from coming there and doing whatever they want to do within the law.

"It's a federal national historic landmark," he said. "I doubt that that entity [the museum] can legally do that. They sure shouldn't be able to do that, to preclude the access of other citizens seeking to exercise their First Amendment right. That sounds very troubling to me."

I talked to Groden as well. He scoffed at the idea that the museum had even contacted you about participating. I'm sure you know who Mr. Groden is -- proprietor at one point of the world's most authoritative film and photographic library on the assassination. He told me he has contacted members of the Kennedy family in the past on various issues and that they have shown no interest in Dealey Plaza or what goes on there.

It sounds from the story in The News, that you, John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, feel the same way. Longford is quoted as saying: "I don't think the Kennedy family has changed their stand."

No kidding. Why did she even ask? I have a call in to her about it, of course, but based on past behavior I would guess she will not return my call. So I am left to wonder what is it that she does not get about this situation?

Groden gets it. He understands that Dealey Plaza is not and will never be a memorial to the life of JFK, no matter what ludicrous efforts the Sixth Floor Museum may expend to create such an absurdly euphemistic, historically irresponsible impression.

It's where he was killed. That's what's important about Dealey Plaza. It was the scene of brutal catastrophe. What, we might ask, can be dignified about an assassination? JFK's murder here, even after half a century, is still an ongoing source of anger, confusion and anxiety in our nation. The only way for Dallas to even approach expiating its own role would be to stop trying to stifle debate in the place where it happened.

Let's talk about this whole thing of planning two years ahead to take over Dealey Plaza to make sure everything will be "dignified." I think you should put it in a certain context. On June 13, 2010, Dallas Police arrested and jailed Groden. Groden alleges that the arrest came about at the request of Sixth Floor Museum security personnel. That's a fact at issue in the ongoing lawsuit. The museum has refused to comment when I have tried to ask them about it in the past.

But I ask you this, John F. Kennedy Library Foundation: Have you ever even been accused of getting authors thrown in jail? What is dignified, pray tell, about slapping the cuffs on a late-middle-aged scholar, tossing him the back seat of a cop car and hauling him off to the slammer? And by the way, when is the last time you tried to take over a prominent public space in order to control speech here?

A quarter century ago I interviewed the late Stanley Marcus about the assassination, and he told me he thought Dallas bore significant blame. He said the city's fault was for refusing to recognize the festering climate of extremism in its own backyard before the assassination. If anything, Longford's impulse to clamp down on freedom of expression on the anniversary is of a cloth with the same phenomenon Marcus described a half-century before. If someone were going to write a senior thesis about it at Harvard, he or she might even call it "Why Dallas Slept."

If I were you, I wouldn't come to Dealey Plaza until Dallas wakes up.

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Dealey Plaza, JFK, Robert Groden

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I also do not think that 9-11 was a conspiracy.  I do think that Bush and Cheney took full advantage of it to force their own mis-directed foreign policy goals, but I don't think they caused it.  Ever since the JFK assassination, people who want to cover up what really happened have been happily sewing disinformation including creating fake conspiracies in order to convince the public that all conspiracies are "crazy" - including the JFK assassination conspiracy.  The CIA's black ops base at Area 51 was only too happy to help spread the Rosewell Aliens conspiracy in order to divert attention from the true purposed of Area 51 and they've been helping spin outrageous conspiracies ever since as part of their anti-JFK conspiracy campaign.

  • Excellent list Robert.  There's some on it that I will be very interested in looking at in the future.  I was particularly impressed with the five volume set by Douglas P. Horne - "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board".  I would also add to this list, "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK" by Peter Dale Scott, even though it was published in 1993.  It looks at the assassination within the framework of all "underground, behind the scenes" secret alliances involved in "Deep Politics" in US history - one connection he makes clear is the connections between the powers-that-be and the international drug trade.  It is certainly a political science theoretical approach, but given its earlier publication date it does a good job of connecting the dots and showing the behind the scenes connections.
  • Sorry Jay, I realize that I thought I was responding to Joe L.  My mistake, I didn't see any indication, mistaken or not, that you have an open mind on this subject, after all.
  • I don't know, although I doubt it, because it would have then been mentioned in Barr McClelland's book, I would expect.  However, Barr McClelland is the father of George W. Bush's former press secretary, Scott McClelland.
  • This is the typical excuse that people with their heads buried in the sand make for not bothering to read anything that might challenge their all-ready-made-up-minds.  If you're not even willing to read one well-documented book (such as "JFK and the Unspeakable - Why He Died and Why It Matters" by James W. Douglass), then clearly you have a closed mind on this subject and no amount of factual information will weaken your defensive pose.  I thought from the way you had stated your message that you were more open minded than that, which is why I took the trouble to give you some suggestions.  Clearly I wasted my time.
  • I highly recommend the book LBJ: Mastermind of JFK's Assassination by Phillip Nelson. The highly acclaimed second edition is out this month. It would make a great read and a great Christmas gift. http://www.amazon.com/LBJ-Mastermind-Assassination-Phillip-Nelson/product-reviews/1453503013/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_pop_hist_5?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFiveStar James Fetzer: From first chapter to last, this is a beautifully written, intellectually captivating, and ultimately persuasive account of the role of LBJ in the assassination of JFK. I had more than 100 conversations with Madeleine Duncan Brown, one of his many mistresses but the only one who bore him a son. She, too, became convinced that Lyndon was profoundly involved in the death of his predecessor. On New Year's Eve, six weeks after the assassination, they had a rendezvous at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, where she confronted him with rumors, rampant in Dallas at the time, that he had been involved, since no one stood more to gain. He blew up at her and told her that the CIA and the oil boys had decided that JFK had to be taken out. She wrote about it in her book, TEXAS IN THE MORNING. Her account has been reinforced by Billy Sol Estes, the Texas wheeler-dealer who made mountains of money for Lyndon, Connally, and their buddies, who explains in his book, A TEXAS LEGEND, how he became convinced that Cliff Carter, LBJ's chief administrative assistant, and Malcolm "Mac" Wallace, his personal assassin (by whom Lyndon had a dozen or more persons terminated, including one of his sisters), had been personally involved. E. Howard Hunt, in his "Last Confessions" in ROLLING STONE, explained to his son, St. John, that LBJ, Cord Meyer, William Harvey, David Sanchez Morales, and others in the CIA had been involved in the assassination. For an overview, enter "John F. Kennedy: History, Memory, Legacy", and download Chapter 30. Or visit [...], "Reclaiming History: A Closed Mind Perpetrating a Fraud on the Public", and you will understand the context within which it took place. For a short course, try "Reasoning about Assassinantions" via google. I also recommend James Douglass, JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE. Both make profound contributions to the case.
  • There seem to be a lot of aggressive and incredibly ignorant "lone nutter" posters on this thread. You folks have a lot to learn. Here are some good books to read on the 1963 Coup d'Etat: 1 LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK's Assassination Phillip F. Nelson 2 JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters James Douglass 3 Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years David Talbot 4 Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America Russ Baker 5 The Dark Side of Camelot Seymour Hersh 6 The Tatum Chronicles (Google "Chip Tatum Pegasus" for free on internet! Extremely important!) D. G. "Chip Tatum" 7 The Final Chapter on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Craig Zirbel 8 The Texas Connection Craig Zirbel 9 The Men Who Killed Kennedy - the Guilty Men DVD, episodes 7,8,9 on YouTube Nigel Turner 10 Blood, Money & Power: How L.B.J Killed J.F.K. Barr McClellan 11 The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson Joachim Joesten 12 The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed Russell S. Bowen 13 Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson Madeleine Brown 14 JFK - Director's Cut - 2 Disc Special Edition (1991) Oliver Stone 15 Defrauding America: Encyclopedia of Secret Operations by the CIA, DEA and Other Covert Agencies Rodney Stich 16 Bloody Treason: On Solving History's Greatest Murder Mystery: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy Noel H. Twyman 17 ILLUSION AND DENIAL in the John F. Kennedy Assassination Noel H. Twyman 18 Conspiracy: Who Killed President Kennedy? Anthony Summers 19 The Last Investigation Gaeton Fonzi 20 Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald Judyth Vary Baker & Edward Haslam 21 Oswald and the CIA John Newman 22 Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence Philip H. Melanson 23 Who Shot JFK? Robin Ramsay 24 Barry & 'the Boys': The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History Daniel Hopsicker 25 Billie Sol Estes a Texas Legend Billie Sol Estes 26 Jesse Ventura, Conspiracy Theory Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell 27 History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, & the Murder of President Kennedy Martin Schotz 28 Lee Harvey Oswald: The True Story of the Accused Assassin of President John F. Kennedy, by His Lover Judyth Vary Baker 29 The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider Al Martin 30 Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK Mark Lane 31 To Kill a President: Finally an Ex-FBI Agent rips aside the Veil of Secrecy that killed JFK  Wesley  Smearingen 32 JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy Fletcher Prouty 33 The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World Fletcher Prouty 34 Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed Charles Crenshaw 35 Regicide: The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy Gregory Douglas 36 The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline James Perloff 37 A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power J. Evetts Haley 38 The Men on the Sixth Floor Glen Sample & Mark Collum 39 Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy Jim Marrs 40 Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why Gerald D. McKnight 41 Power Beyond Reason: The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson D. Jablow Hershman 42 Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes 1-5 Douglas P. Horne 43 Someone Would Have Talked Larry Hancock 44 On the Trail of the Assassins Jim Garrison 45 Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency Donald Gibson 46 Evidence of Revision: The Assassination of America Anonymous DVD 47 War is a Racket: the Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier Smedley D. Butler 48 Dog Days at the White House: The Outrageous Memoirs of the Presidential Kennel Keeper Traphes Bryant 49 The Warren Omission: A Micro Study of the Methods and Failures of the Warren Commission Walt Brown 50 Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story C. David Heymann 51 Edward Lansdale's Cold War Jonathan Nashel 52 Not in Your Lifetime Anthony Summers 53 JFK: The Cuba Files: The Untold Story of the Plot to Kill Kennedy (Secret War) Fabian Escalante 54 Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (Secret War) Fabian Escalante 55 Who Killed Kennedy? Thomas Buchanan 56 How Kennedy was Killed: The Full Appalling Story Joachim Joesten 57 Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? Joachim Joesten 58 Marina Oswald Joachim Joesten 59 Oswald: The Truth Joachim Joesten 60 The Garrison Enquiry: Truth & Consequences Joachim Joesten 61 The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy: Stunning Evidence in the Assassination of the President Harrison Livingstone 62 High Treason: The Assassination of JFK & the Case for Conspiracy Harrison Livingstone & Robert Groden
  • Robert Groden is highly respected in the JFK assassination research community. He has every right to sell his materials on Dealey Plaza. He is being persecuted.
  • Jay, you can email me at Morrow321@aol.com and I will send you a 500 page word document on the LBJ-CIA assassination of JFK. You will learn a lot. Plenty of people have talked. Google Madeleine Duncan Brown, LBJ's mistress. Oswald was US intelligence.
  • Oswald was US intelligence and a fake pro-Castro Marxist. You folks have a LOT to learn. Another key point: Lee Harvey Oswald was U.S. intelligence and he shot NO ONE on 11/2263. Re: Oswald's intelligence connections read 1) "Oswald and the CIA" by John Newman 2) "Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and US Intelligence" by Philip Melanson 3) "History Will Not Absolve Us" by Martin Schotz (Chapter V Oswald and U.S. Intelligence by Christopher Sharrett) 4) "Me and Lee" by Judyth Vary Baker (Oswald's mistress in New Orleans, summer 1963) 5) Google “Lee Harvey Oswald’s reading habits summer 1963”
  • Lyndon Johnson and a bunch of Republican CIA and Republican Texas oil men murdered JFK. Marcus was right on the money. Think HL Hunt, Clint Murchison, Sr. and CIA George Herbert Walker Bush.
  • The 9/11 truthers have a LOT in common with the establishment types who promote the fantasy there was no LBJ-CIA conspriracy to murder JFK. [Robert Morrow – researcher into the 1963 Coup d’Etat. I have 250+ books related to the JFK assassination. Google my essay “LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK”]   If you want to get quickly “up to speed” on the JFK assassination, here is what to read:   1) LBJ: Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination by Phillip Nelson 2) JFK and the Unspeakable:Why He Died and Why it Matters by James Douglass 3) Brothers: the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot 4) The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh 5) Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty by Russ Baker. 6) Google the essay “LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK” by Robert Morrow. 7) Google “National Security State and the Assassination of JFK by Andrew Gavin Marshall.” 8) Google “Chip Tatum Pegasus.” 9) Google “Vincent Salandria False Mystery Speech.” Read everything Vincent Salandria ever wrote. 10) Google “Murray Rothbard the JFK Flap” 11) Google “Preserving the Legacy by Mat Wilson” 11) Google “Bertrand Russell 16 Questions on the Assassination” 12) Watch on You Tube the extremely important videos The Men Who Killed Kennedy, episodes 7, 8, and 9 which focus on the role of Lyndon Johnson. 13) Watch on You Tube Jesse Ventura’s show on the JFK assassination. 14) Watch the movie JFK director’s cut by Oliver Stone. 15) Watch on You Tube “Evidence of Revision.” – 8 hours of fantastic and rare footage relating to the JFK assassination.
  • Mike, Oswald was US intelligence. You are not very knowledgeable about the JFK assassination, aka 1963 Coup d'Etat.
  • Robert Groden is one of the modern American heroes, scholar and truth teller in the JFK assassination. "The LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK" Google the full essay             Fifty years after the assassination of John Kennedy, research is pointing the finger at Lyndon Johnson and the CIA as having engineered a coup d'etat. It is likely that Lyndon Johnson made a dirty deal with CIA Republicans to murder John Kennedy in the 1963 Coup d’Etat. (People like Clint Murchison Sr., H.L. Hunt, D.H. Byrd, Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, top Nelson Rockefeller aide Henry Kissinger, McGeorge Bundy, George Herbert Walker Bush, Gen. Edward Lansdale (CIA) and Gen. Charles Willoughby all are excellent candidates for elite sponsorship.) Lyndon Johnson and Allen Dulles may very well have been co-CEOs of the JFK assassination; with the CIA in charge of the killing of JFK, and Lyndon Johnson and (his close friend and neighbor of 19 years in Washington, DC) FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in charge of the cover up.             Texas oil men and key LBJ supporters Clint Murchison, Sr. ands H.L. Hunt are thoughtto be key players in the JFK assassination because of their close ties to the inner core of US intelligence (Allen Dulles, Nelson Rockefeller, John J. McCloy), close ties to Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, bankers Rockefellers; Murchison was even friends with key Kennedy-hater mafia godfather Carlos Marcellos of New Orleans. Not only that, Murchison, Sr. was a patient and partner of Dr. Alton Oschner, the former president of the American Cancer Society and who ran covert cancer research for the CIA. Oschner, likewise was a Kennedy-hater. John Simkin: “One of Ochsner's friends described him as being ‘like a fundamentalist preacher in the sense that the fight against communism was the only subject that he would talk about, or even allow you to talk about, in his presence.”
  • Google the essay "LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK"
  • So DavidMyers, how many people, at a bare minimum, would it have been necessarily to involve in any field operation planned, executed and covered-up by either the CIA, FBI, LBJ, NSA or the Defense Department, as a covert operation to assassinate the president (and plausibly blame some other dumb schmuck like Oswalt)? I ask, because I firmly believe that two people can only keep a secret if one of them is dead. Grand conspiracies like the JFK assassination live long lives because there are no credible witnesses, and absolutely no solid proof, behind any of these theories. These assassination books represent nothing more than a cottage industry selling fiction to a skeptical and gullible public.
  • Are Barr McClellan and Dr. McClellan (the guy that pronounced JFK as dead) related?
  • Typical bully attitude.  I'll bet you were a holy terror as#hole in high school!
  • Yes, lets forget-about-it and put it all behind - who cares if our democracy was overthrown by a rightwing secret police coup d'etat.  Does it really matter?  For all we know they could still be in control and since we don't really know, does it really matter?  (Note, in case you didn't notice - this is sarcasm!)  The truth will out no matter how many continue to bury their head in the sand and lable those who pay attention as "loonies" and "whackos". Lyin' Lyndon Johnson - worst president ever! (multi-murder and co-conspirator along with his good buddy J. Edgar Hoover, who helped LBJ blackmail his way onto the Kennedy ticket in 1960 by providing him evidence of JFK's womanizing and health issues (Addisson's disease), allowing LBJ to blackmail his way into the Vice Presidency by threatening to expose JFK during the election campaign if he didn't put LBJ on the ticket. Then, when things got really bad for LBJ (he was about to be indicted on charges of corruption and graft in connection with the Billy Sol Estes, Bobby Backer, and TFX military procurement scandals) and when all of LBJ's allies who were also Kennedy's enemies felt their vested interests being threatened (oil depletion allowences for the Texas "big oil" multil-millionaires, Viet Nam war contracts for the military industrial complex, mafia enterprises under attack by Autorney General Robert F. Kennedy in his war on organized crime, J. Edgar's cherished FBI director for life status - JFK was going to force him to retire after being re-elected in 1964).  So, for all those parties involved, putting a Texan in the White House - thier pal Lyndon, made murder a very worthwhile enterprise.
  • Because that is exactly what the CIA and the right-wing "big-oil" extremists (such as H. L Hunt and Clint Murchison) wanted you to think.  The CIA went to considerable effort to establish their operative (Oswald)'s left-wing, pro- Castro bonefieds so that you would think he was a leftist while at the same time he was working for and following the orders of the CIA and reporting to the right-wing run FBI, which is how they were able to set him up to be the patsy (the original plan was to blame it all on Castro as a justification for invading Cuba - something Kennedy had promised Khruschev he would not do - and it helped get him killed by his right-wing military establishment who considered him a traitor to the Cold War).  Try doing some reading of your own, particularly on LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover's histories.  A good over-all starting point is the excellent and extensively documented book, "JFK and the Unspeakable - Why He Died and Why It Matters" by James W. Douglass (pub 2008).  For an intimate view of LBJ written by his auttorney, Barr McClellan, try "Blood Money & Power - How LBJ Killed J.F.K" (pub 2003) or a newer book based on McClellan's - "LBJ - The Mastermind of JFK's Assassination" by Phillip F. Nelson (pub 2010).  All of these books are available in paperback on amazon.com.
  • Please do your own research.  It wasn't Intelligence activities that led to the so-called Intelligence failures preceding 9/11.  It was legally impossible for the various intelligence agencies to share information without sending some of those operators, agents, and analysts to prison for violating either the Posse Comitatus Act or various Executive Orders.  There are walls separating what sorts of intelligence can be pursued, collected, analyzed, reported on and shared by the different intelligence agencies.  Even with the governmental shortcomings, which are varied and not without merit, it still doesn't erase the fact that it was 19 radical fundamentalist terrorists who planned, organized and carried out the attack.  It was not the Bush administration, nor was it the Clinton administration's fault that 9/11 happened.
  • Where to start? When and why did JimS and the DO formally adopt this street urchin? I'm actually considering writing a book about the persecution and prosecution of assassinationologist Robert Groden, if I can only find a good open spot on Dealey Plaza to hawk it to tourists. "Best selling author Robert Groden." Really? What best selling book had Mr. Groden ever published. Anyone? Anyone? "Mr. Groden -- proprietor at one point of the world's most authoritative film and photographic library on the assassination." Really? And he keeps it all in the trunk of his car no doubt. Where exactly is this fascinating collection. Has anyone actually seen this collection? I'm just speculating, but I would bet that the 6th Floor Museum, FBI, CIA and the Warren Commission Archives have more authoritative collections. He said that a Kennedy family "member" he has contacted won't discuss Dealey Plaza with him? My guess is they won't even speak with him. Could that be because in Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed" Groden was featured and declared "guilty of misleading the American public."  Groden's subsequent lawsuit in the District Court was dismissed by summary judgment. And the Kennedy family doesn't want to chat with him. Who would want a dialogue with a street vendor retailing gossip rags basically fictionalizing your family member's assassination? Go figure. And according to Stanley Marcus, a Democrat, Dallas was responsible for the assassination for not recognizing a festering climate of extremism? Was Mr. Marcus advocating prohibiting free speech or assembly to quell extremism? Wasn't the president actually assassinated not by a right wing hate mongers but instead by a Marxists defector (who also murdered Dallas officer Tippit) over Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco? Look, Robert Groden is nothing more than a street peddler selling National Inquirer quality tripe to tourists and bored people on jury-duty wandering around Dealey Plaza. He seems to have a reqular place of business on public property, so as long as he's paying sales taxes on his sales (and bets there?), I say rent the man a booth and let him sell whatever fairy tales the public will consume. But seriously, there are more compelling free speech issues out there worthy of a good Supreme Court fight. Let's just let this one play out where it belongs, Dallas Municipal Court.
  • Damn it Joe L, stick with the narrative. If you start interjecting, you know, actual facts, the whole screed falls apart.
  • Wrong. You're total shit, but you do it very well.     
  • Except that Stanley Marcus was right for the wrong reason.  He was worried about the right-wing nut jobs.
  • Having been in Dallas at the time, I know how bad it was. You are right that the far right was the issue. Spitting on and hitting senior government officials with signs was considered okm even worth bragging about. The hateful ads in the DMN exceed even the ones we see today. When the assasination occurred ALL assumed that it was someone from the far right and were somewhat relieved when it turned out not to be the case. However the vitriol and hatred that was accepted in Dallas created an atmosphere of extremism that made anyone of an persuasion think he could act.
  • We blame the government because they do acts which deserve blame.  Please follow your own advice and do some research on pre-9/11 intelligence.  Mr. Marcus' view of the political and social tone of Dallas is also worthy of further research.  For you to dismiss it out of hand is foolish.
  • what I don't understand is: "A quarter century ago I interviewed the late Stanley Marcus about the assassination, and he told me he thought Dallas bore significant blame. He said the city's fault was for refusing to recognize the festering climate of extremism in its own backyard before the assassination. " The festering climate of extremism was extremism of the right.  But Kennedy was killed by an extremist of the left.  How can right-wing extremism be responsible for an assassination by a leftist?
  • Why do Americans always have to look for a way to blame the establishement for the atrocities?  We blame Bush, the CIA, Defense Intelligence and the Port Authority for 9/11, instead of blaming the fundamentalist whack-jobs who commandeered 4 planes and used them to attack our country.  Now this Marcus person seeks to blame the city of Dallas for the acts of THE prototypical social retard lone assassin?  What is this obsession with blaming our government for acts perpetrated against the same? To the 9/11 conspirists, the grassy knoll leprechaun-seekers, and the Area 51 ET-philes, it's ok.  The government isn't putting tracking devices in your dollar bills or flouridating your water in pursuit of mind-control.  The government is guilty of doing all sorts of dastardly stuff to and in the name of, the citizenry.  Go research the concrete evils the government commits instead of flailing your arms over what amount to, basically, side issues.
  • The political vitriol today isn't unlike 50 years ago. Look at the editorial page and ads in the DMN the week before JFK got here.
  • I think the concern is what he is doing with the books and tapes.  Is he passing them out, or is he using public property to sell them?  If he is passing them out, the city should butt out and leave him alone.  If he is selling them, he needs to follow the rules anyone else trying to make a profit has to follow.
  • Shit. You're totally wrong, but you do it very well.
  • You mean to tell me that JFK was not bumped off by the mob, in cahoots with LBJ, Jimmy Hoffa and Fido Castro. Please don't tell Bubbles, by the way, how is Bubbles these days.
  • How does that make us look like a city of assassins?  While Mr. Marcus was a great retailer, I don't buy him as an expert on group political psychology.  We do not have a clue what was going on in Lee Harvey's twisted little mind.  I'd guess it had more to do with his inadequacies as a human being than political extemism.  He did not know what he was except he knew he was a failure and everybody around him agreed.  Our taking steps to "remember" this event does nothing positive and gives a negative as an example that failures can achieve fame if they do an ugly enough act.  November 22 has no political importance.  It's the day that shows that persons inadequate in every measure of their personal and working lives can be a part of history.  The Catholic Church has All Saints and All Souls in early November.  We have All Losers' Day on the 22nd..
  • I would prefer Dealy Plaza have a circus atmosphere complete with left/right wing nuts, taco carts, and eardrum-grating bullhorns.  Dallas needs more freak shows.   JFK has a slab at Arlington National with a cool flame that never goes out unless the wind blows really hard.  That's enough.
  • But Mike, that makes us look like a city of assassins. That's not good, is it?
  • Books and tapes occupy a different place in the law -- specifically protected, especially under dallas ordinances in effect at the time of his arrest.
  • Designating Dealey Plaza a national landmark was a dumb idea.  Now we are stuck with it and its associated losers like Mr. Groden.  Just because he has free speech does not mean he is not a loser.  We should have completed changed the Plaza so it was no longer recognizable, torn down that ugly county building, reshaped Elm Street so those twits do not have a place to put their "X", and gotten rid of that ridiculous picket fence.  The only thing I agree with is the last recommendation.  Let's all avoid Dealey Plaza from this point.  No more tour buses, no more gawkers, no more self-professed expert guides.  If you want to honor JFK, go see his tomb (and brothers') in Arlington, visit his library in Boston, or heaven forbid, read his books instead the tripe offered by the Grodens now in the Plaza.
  • I guess I don't understand the free speech issue. I absolutely believe he should be allowed free speech in Dealey Plaza, he should be able to pass out whatever literature that he wishes and give out however many tapes he wants, that is his right to free speech. I take issue with him operating a business on public property, in my opinion he has no more right to sell books or tapes about Kennedy on public property than I do to set up a food cart and a mobile RedBox and sell bottled water.