Sixty Years Ago

[maumann]

Not to hog the thread, but the idea that Frank McGee had to relay Robert McNeill's report because the telephone coupler wasn't working just shows how primitive technology was in 1963. Here we are, communicating on individual devices across a network supported by satellite relays at near real time, and back then, the Dallas TV guy didn't even have time to fix his toupee!

 

[Liut]

I saw a piece on CBS this morning that spoke with a professor at LSU who said that the modern conspiracy theory really took off with JFK.

The History Channel was running a documentary on Kennedy. Must've been a few years old, but it was interesting.

IMHO, what the LSU professor said was a major understatement. Heck, JFK conspiracy theories became an industry unto itself.

 

[Liut]

Not to hog the thread, but the idea that Frank McGee had to relay Robert McNeill's report because the telephone coupler wasn't working just shows how primitive technology was in 1963. Here we are, communicating on individual devices across a network supported by satellite relays at near real time, and back then, the Dallas TV guy didn't even have time to fix his toupee!

Not hogging at all.
It's also worth mentioning that Dan Rather was on two phone lines with a CBS radio producer in New York and Eddie Barker of KRLD. The producer thinks Rather is confirming Kennedy is dead while Rather is actually discussing said possibility with Barker. As Rather has told the story, he quickly hears anchor Alan Jackson announcing JFK's death with attribution to Rather.
Dan's sphincter got real, real tight.

 

[Captain_Kirk]

Well, I'll be one of the contrarians apparently and I'll go my grave believing there was a conspiracy, and Oswald was certainly not acting on his own. I can see his patsy statement as believable, or at the very least, can buy Starman's comment that the machinery was put in place to allow this to happen by higher powers.

Has it been proved? I guess that would be a negative. But just way too many strange occurrences to allow me to come to the conclusion a guy who was allowed to flit back and forth to Russia during the height of the Cold War pulled the trigger on his own (from a window I believe that wasn't even the best shot/sightline to complete the kill on the 6th floor) and then he conveniently gets snuffed out two days later by a guy with mob ties who is allowed access to walk right in and take him out.

Not to mention the inconsistencies in the doctors reports from Parkland vs Bethesda, the frickin' magic bullet, a lot of people related to the event dying unusual and early demises, et cetera et cetera.

I've seen both of the documentaries mentioned above, and as assuring as they are in stating there is no conspiracy, there are a number of good books (High Treason by Groden and Livingstone, Crossfire by Marrs to name a couple) that at the very least should leave one very uneasy accepting the solo Oswald theory as fact.

You can go ahead and fit me for my tinfoil hat--I'm comfortable in how I feel about this event and what I believe really happened.

 

[ChrisLong]

Sixth grade. Miss Davis left the room briefly and came back crying. There was a community TV on a roller cart that just happened to be in our room at that time. She turned it on to the news. I really don't remember much else. Some classmates have said that we were sent home so I guess I went home. My mom was a housewife so she was home. I don't know about the kids who didn't have anybody at home at that time. Mom was very pro-Nixon, but sad nonetheless that this could happen.

 

[maumann]

Not hogging at all.
It's also worth mentioning that Dan Rather was on two phone lines with a CBS radio producer in New York and Eddie Barker of KRLD. The producer thinks Rather is confirming Kennedy is dead while Rather is actually discussing said possibility with Barker. As Rather has told the story, he quickly hears anchor Alan Jackson announcing JFK's death with attribution to Rather.
Dan's sphincter got real, real tight.

News gathering in real time was messy in 1963, just as it is today. The people we revere for their roles in telling the tale of that day were making the sausage live, and you can see all the glitches and confusion play out as more facts get handed to them. I had my Challenger moment in 1986, and I hopefully tried to sound competent and professional with absolutely zero information to go on other than a big ball of flame in the sky overhead.

I'm certain all of us have had varying shades of "OH shirt!" stories at some point in our careers. You do your best. You learn. You're better for it.

Maybe I'm getting cynical, but a JFK/9-11 sized story now would be cluttered with "instant analysis" and posturing. Plus a ton of stammering and eyebrow frowning. I just don't think this era of communicators has the poise to sum up a situation consisely and clearly with very little to go on. I'd be glad to be proven wrong, although I really don't want the nation to go through that type of disaster again.

Don Lemon couldn't even utter a coherent sentence standing in a building where a tornado just hit.

 

[kickoff-time]

One of the more interesting stories to come out of the JFK assassination was the end of comedian Vaughn Meader's career.

He did an uncanny impersonation of JFK and his album, "The First Family" even won a Grammy for Album of the Year. But Kennedy's death basically also was the death for Meader as well.

JFK Impersonator Vaughn Meader: Death of a Career

 

[Liut]

News gathering in real time was messy in 1963, just as it is today. The people we revere for their roles in telling the tale of that day were making the sausage live, and you can see all the glitches and confusion play out as more facts get handed to them. I had my Challenger moment in 1986, and I hopefully tried to sound competent and professional with absolutely zero information to go on other than a big ball of flame in the sky overhead.

I'm certain all of us have had varying shades of "OH shirt!" stories at some point in our careers. You do your best. You learn. You're better for it.

Maybe I'm getting cynical, but a JFK/9-11 sized story now would be cluttered with "instant analysis" and posturing. Plus a ton of stammering and eyebrow frowning. I just don't think this era of communicators has the poise to sum up a situation consisely and clearly with very little to go on. I'd be glad to be proven wrong, although I really don't want the nation to go through that type of disaster again.

Don Lemon couldn't even utter a coherent sentence standing in a building where a tornado just hit.

If something like that happens again, I will find a CBS radio affiliate airing the network's wall-to-to wall coverage for reasons you have stated. IMHO, there still exist some very good network broadcast journalists regulated to the "basement" of radio.

 

[tea and ease]

I was 5 years old, and as I said on another thread I look very similar to Caroline Kennedy. Much more so the younger we go. I remember people starting to stop us to comment on it, yet I didn't understand the significance of this sudden interest. I do now. And I think that's why I'm shy. Too much.

 

[HanSenSE]

I was only 3 when it happened so have no memories. The A&E broadcast (it appears not to be on) is one of my windows to the events.

 

[justgladtobehere]

Anybody read Libra by DeLillo. Just remembered I read that.

 

[Amy]

I have a vivid memory of sitting in my second grade classroom and Mrs. Barnes standing in the doorway crying, telling us the President had been shot and sending us home. The only problem with that is I was in first grade. My guess is Mrs. Barnes did come to my first grade classroom and, since she was my teacher the next year, it got jumbled together in my memories. I checked with my brother who was also in grade school that year. He remembers a teacher coming in, whispering something to his teacher, then she told the class and sent them home. I don't think we walked home together, although it feels like we should have.

Since my first memory is wrong, I'm not sure about the rest of them, but I think I remember getting home and the whole family already there, sitting in the den watching TV. And pretty much being ignored while everyone was glued to the TV for days. I know I didn't understand what happened when Ruby shot Oswald. I was totally confused about who Ruby was and who got shot. My brother remembers seeing the shooting. My sister has bitched that she missed this big moment of history because that was when she finally took a break from watching TV.