Thursday, November 22, 2007

Strange Convergence

It is not often that Thanksgiving lands on the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. It was 44 years ago today. I was in the narrow hall leading to the high school band room when the director popped out and said "the President's been shot!"

"You're kidding!" He wasn't. School let out a few minutes later as the formal announcement came over the loudspeakers. A lot of the next few days was spent in that same band room playing "Hail to the Chief" in preparation for a memorial assembly.

And a few days later came the first live-on-TV murder, as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

I've seen the runs of the Zapruder film on the internet. I still think he was hit from the front, and that the real perpetrator went free. I have a law enforcement friend who is still convinced that the CIA was responsible. This day may be more vivid to me than 9/11, when I was quite grown up and quite used to seeing malice and mayhem on television.

We see so much synthetic violence that the impact is diluted. This is a Bad thing.

1 comment:

Jim Yeager said...

I've decided that Lee Harvey Oswald was deeply involved in this murder, but he had at least one other person helping him out. That right there makes it a conspiracy. There is no way Oswald did this deed all by himself...