What Killed JFK (barf alert: "right wing" hatred threatens Obama..just as it "ended" JFK's life)

What Killed JFK (barf alert: “right wing” hatred threatens Obama..just as it “ended” JFK’s life)

New York Magazine ^ | November 20, 2011 | Frank Rich

Posted on Monday, November 21, 2011 11:38:16 AM by Seizethecarp

Immediately after the assassination and ever since, the right has tried to deflect any connection between its fevered Kennedy hatred and Oswald’s addled psyche with the fact that the assassin had briefly defected to the Soviet Union.

America’s violent culture wars had started before JFK was shot. They were all on display in Oswald’s Dallas. At least in 1963, polling showed that only 5 percent of the country—a fringe—subscribed to the radical anti-government views championed by the John Birch Society and other militants of the right. These days, that fringe, whether in the form of birthers or the tea party or the hosts of Fox & Friends, gives marching orders to a major political party.

…read Manchester or 11/22/63 or any other account of that time, and the vitriol that was aimed at Kennedy in life seems as immediate as today. It’s as startling as that “You lie!” piercing the solemnity of a presidential address like a gunshot—or the actual gunshots fired at the White House last week by another wretched waif. In the end, that political backdrop is what our 44th and 35th presidents may have most in common. The tragedy of the Kennedy cult is that even as it fades, the hothouse brand of American malice that stalked its hero stalks our country still.

(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com …

via What Killed JFK (barf alert: “right wing” hatred threatens Obama..just as it “ended” JFK’s life).

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