Every November... I Get The JFK Blues

President John F. Kennedy

Fifty years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was ambushed and killed in broad daylight as he drove with the First Lady through Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. On that fateful day this country lost something... and has been haunted by it ever since.

Dallas

I believe somehow, if you’re an American, whomever was President was when you’re born puts some kind of stamp on you, It did for me… so my President was John F. Kennedy. Sure, I was a just two years old when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963… but somehow what happened on that day long ago in Dallas haunts me forty-eight years later… in fact it makes me want to howl at the moon sometimes. Every year right before Thanksgiving, I get a little melancholy, it never fails. Why you might ask? For younger generation the question who shot J.F.K. might mean as much to them as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?  With short attention span theater of the mind, many don’t even remember that Americans are still fighting not one, but two wars as I type this blog… why would they care about a president who was around during the time when televisions used rabbit ears (many would even ask what are rabbit ears?)  Because we’re Americans and I think what happened that day ripped into the red, white and blue, and we really never really recovered from it… I speak in the big picture of things. It was a domino effect that has somehow brought our country into the mess we’re in even today!

David Ferrie

“Oh man, why don't you fuckin' stop it? Shit, this is too fuckin' big for you, you know that? Who did the president, who killed Kennedy, fuck man! It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' shooters don't even know! Don't you get it?”  That’s a piece of dialogue said by Joe Pecsi when he portrayed David Ferrie in the film J.F.K.. David Farrie was one of the cast of bizarre characters that somehow seemed to be involved in the plot to murder the President… great dialogue that pretty much sums up this gigantic cover up that has loomed large over America the beautiful for almost fifty years.

As I grew up, I remember feeling the silent reverence of my parents and the older generations, the deep feeling of disbelief of what had happened to President Kennedy. It was something that was talked about in hushed tones; it was something so horrible that a child’s ears should be covered; spared from the horror of what happened… it has been like an opened wound for so long. Then the assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King and the President’s brother Senator Robert Kennedy only made things even more surreal; it was like stir up the pot and get blown away by a lone gunman! For those like myself, we're not buying into it anymore; at least not the Warren Commissions report of what happened; a crazed lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald is going to protect the United States from a rouge president by blowing his brains out… and then the gunman himself is shot dead (on live TV no less) by shady nightclub owner named Jack Ruby… WTF?! Then Ruby dies in prison just when he wanted to spill his guts. How did this happen? I need answers! One of my biggest fears is to leave this good earth without getting them fucking answers! I'm sure that dogs who did this most surely are all dead... they lay still under cold marble... but the truth remains, waiting to be uncovered. J.F.K. wasn't a saint... we now know. But it truly seemed that he wanted what was best for America. And he was starting to push the envelope. It's been noted that J.F.K. wanted to withdraw the military advisers from Vietnam (that never happened and look what happened!) J.F.K. also wanted to do a major shake up (or even more drastic, the removal ) of The Federal Reserve (the private bankers who masquerade as a branch of the U.S. Government) who many believe rule the roost to this day... Kennedy pissed people off... a lot of people wanted him gone. But who really had the power to remove the President of the United States?

I remember back in the 70’s the theories about a conspiracies started popping up with guys like comedian Mort Sahl; who pretty much stopped being a comedian (and was black-balled when he tried to shed light on this murderous act of treason.) Still this considered a fringe group, not to be taken seriously… after all how could it be? Yeah, every President since George Washington has had his enemies, John Kennedy was no exception; Cuba, the mob, white supremacists...  But you really have to have some dark powers to kill the President of the most powerful country in  the world… a man who only 13 months before brought us back from brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union? Does the Mafia have that kind of juice? I doubt it? Only New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison had the balls big enough to try and uncover this crime (his story was the basis of Oliver Stone’s J.F.K. fill) and to bring a case against someone who might have been part of the cabal to kill the President. That man was New Orleans business man Clay Shaw (he unfortunately was acquitted and his story was almost entirely forgotten for almost twenty years, until Stone’s film.) So many conspirators, so little time.

Clay Shaw

Thank God for the famous Abraham Zupruder film…the wild card, which was something that whoever killed President Kennedy didn't count on. Zupruder was a private citizen, who just happen to be filming the president motorcade that fateful day and caught the assassination in his little movie camera lens…(and for that I think he should have been buried at Arlington National Cemetery with all the other men American heroes.) Amazingly the Zupruder film was not shown to the public until 1975! But when it was, we started to realize how ridiculous the Warren Commissions Report really was. Oswald was right, he was a fuckin’ pasty!

In my lifetime we've had the breath knocked out of us three times; J.F.K., 9-11 and the devastation of New Orleans during hurricane Katrina (Pearl Harbor and the assassination of President Lincoln, the other two great tragedies that have momentary knocked our great nation to her knees.) For me the murder of J.F.K. doesn't leave my consciousness… it's in me, it will always be with me… every November it haunts me like a ghost.  Say what you will about Oliver Stone’s 1991 sensory overload film; which if nothing else kicked up the dirt again and asked again those questions about November 22, 1963. Do you care? You should… as Garrison says in Stones film. 

Jim Garrison

Jim Garrison: All these documents are yours. The people's property, you pay for it! But because the government considers you children who might be too disturbed or distressed to face this reality, or because you might possibly lynch those involved, you cannot see these documents for another seventy-five years. I'm in my early forties, so I'll have shuffled off this mortal coil by then, but I'm already telling my eight-year-old son to keep himself physically fit, so that one glorious September morning, in the year 2038, he can walk into the National Archives, and find out what the CIA and the FBI knew! They might even push it back then, hell it may become a generational affair, with questions passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, but someday, somewhere, somebody will find out the damn truth.

Yeah maybe it’s too big, and maybe David Ferrie was right? Maybe I’ll take the big sleep and never know? But I’m gonna give it a shot and try and stick around as long as I can, and maybe someone will crack this mystery once and for all?