50th Anniversary of JFK Assassination

[cartman]

It was 50 years ago at this moment that the presidential motorcade was winding through downtown Dallas, and about to make that fateful turn onto Houston Street then Elm Street on Dealey Plaza in front of the Texas Schoolbook Depository building.

[Kodos]

A sad day for America.

[Logan]

A few people on my Twitter feed have mentioned this...but I also find it a little weird that there's this massive online effort for us to "relive" that day when a President was assassinated.

[cartman]

Yeah, I've seen quite a few Twitter feeds that are "historically live tweeting" the event. That is strange.

[Logan]

Yeah, I've seen quite a few Twitter feeds that are "historically live tweeting" the event. That is strange.

Yeah and just to be clear, this is what I meant and not anything to do with articles about emotional impacts, where the country was at the time, etc.

[cartman]

Like I posted in the Random Thoughts thread, I was at a funeral yesterday and the cemetery is the same one where Lee Harvey Oswald is buried. Due to numerous defacings and attempted thefts, the gravestone was replaced with a simple, flush-to-the-ground marker that just reads 'OSWALD'. The cemetery won't tell people who ask about it where it is located. So during the burial yesterday there were quite a few people wandering around the cemetery trying to find it. A few people evidently did find it, and I saw that there were flowers left at the site.

[DaddyTorgo]

A few people evidently did find it, and I saw that there were flowers left at the site.

Fuckbags.

[claphamsa]

Fuckbags.

why? he had family too... and a shocking number of people believe he was just a patsy.

[molson]

In a way it seems like ancient history since I wasn't born yet, but it's weird to think that the year I was born (1978), America was only 15 years away from that event. Which is only a few years more than we are separated from 9/11 right now.

[molson]

Yeah, I've seen quite a few Twitter feeds that are "historically live tweeting" the event. That is strange.

It is, but I kind of get the appeal of that stuff. I like to read or watch the contemporary news reports of events if I can, and there's been various projects that report on the Civil War and WWII as if they were happening in real time. There's something about that that connects me to an event or helps me understand it more than reading a history book. Obviously the twitter thing is taking a different, anachronistic approach, but I think they're just going for that same kind of thing.

[Autumn]

Yeah there's something about seeing history from a different perspective, seeing what people were writing and saying as it happened, rather than hindsight. It's a shallow version of hitting the primary sources.

That said I saw an excerpt from a book by one of Kennedy's interns he had an affair with and it's kind of soured me on all the Kennedy hagiography this week. Nothing really new in it, but reading the details of how he treated her certainly makes it hard to get sentimental about the guy.

[Senator]

I had tickets to the event downtown, but the weather and health stuff kept me from going. Was hoping to get a few minutes with McCullough.

[jbergey22]

I just wish the truth would come out about what really happened.

The Warren Commission report has issues but also these conspiracy theories all have something missing as well.

I will never understand that if LHO really did do it why he wouldnt have admitted it. You dont kill a president with the intention of getting away with it I wouldnt think. You would do it for the attention.

I can only go off of what I have read and watched but Kennedy seemed ahead of his time and did so many great things in his time in office. Sadly, all of his changes and good he was trying to do ultimately led to his death.

[Autumn]

I don't look into the theories deeply. But I think we go astray when we forget that people do dumb stuff all the time, stuff that defies any explanation or logic. Would someone kill the president and deny it? It's not stranger than half the things you see in New of the Weird or th eDarwin Awards is it?

[molson]

Audio recording of conductor interrupting Boston Symphony Orchestra concert to deliver news of assassination - before going into the Beethoven's funeral march. Imagine what that was like, with no cell phones to get updates, you just keep sitting there, listening to this music, just contemplating what the ramifications of it all are, I guess.

Conductor Erich Leinsdorf breaks the news of Kennedy's assassination, plays Beethoven's 3rd - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVNKNz-lc6k)