JFK: Really, Let It Go

Hmm, I didn’t know that Salon founder David Talbot was a JFK conspiracy crank. According to Brinkley, his approach seems to be that JFK–like, er, every other president–had factions who did not benefit from his administration, one of them was probably responsible, but he doesn’t endorse any one theory because this would make it more easy to falsify. What I find especially annoying, however, are conspiracy theories that assume that a cautious, centrist president of unimpressive accomplishment was killed because he was some kind of dangerous radical, and this was a national tragedy because he found “some measure of greatness.” (Apparently the measure isn’t, say, consequential legislation passed under his tenure, idiotic wars not started, etc.) Really, can we please stop the Camelot mythologizing? Granting that he benefited from a halo effect, LBJ was also a more progressive and vastly more effective president. If the conspiracy that nobody can find evidence for killed JFK because he had “had made bitter enemies of conservative Southerners because of his embrace of the civil rights movement,” boy did they ever screw up.