Skip to main content

The Magic Bullet Theory

By

We haven't heard much about Jim Garrison since Oliver Stone made a hero out of him in  JFK in 1991.  Garrison died one year later, but here we are 20 years later and his "classic account" has been reprinted.  It was first published in 1988 and had a profound impact on Stone.  In it, Garrison put forward the theory that the CIA was behind Kennedy's death, and implicated quite a number of people, including Lyndon Johnson.  Alex von Tunzelmann debunks Garrison's theory in her review of the film, although she gives the film kudos for  entertainment value.  Here is Costner as Garrison expounding on "the magic bullet theory."

Comments

  1. Rick DiguetteDecember 17, 2012 at 7:06 PM

    Tha magic bullet theory isn't any more believable than the CIA theory. I would put my money on the Mob.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonDecember 18, 2012 at 9:57 AM

    Mob makes most sense, especially having lost Cuba to Castro, but my guess Oswald was just one of those demented souls determined to be remembered in history.

    I was watching a special on conspiracy theories and one of the analysts said that people need conspiracies to deal with losses like this. It is hard to accept that a lone wolf could take a man as big as Kennedy, and so we shroud the event in a conspiracy to assuage our collective consciousness.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonDecember 18, 2012 at 7:05 PM

    Oh, I think it is very mysterious that Garrison died within a year of the release of this movie.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rick DiguetteDecember 19, 2012 at 1:39 PM

      Eureka! The magic movie theory. There must be a publisher out there who would be intersted in this.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more