Oh yeah, I remember about someone doing something violent to a JBS office on the immediate assumption it was them. It looks like it's quoted by someone in the thread, and from Perlstein which makes sense as my source:
a deranged gunman pumped two shots through the window of a John Birch Society office in Phoenix, crying "You killed my man!"
2: One of the things that I was expecting to be in A Complete Unknown that wasn't -- that Dylan was booked to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, but because he insisted on singing that song, they wouldn't allow him to perform.
Oswald's previous target, in April 1963, was of course the disgraced right-wing general Edwin Walker - not sure if he was in the JBS but he certainly worked closely with them. One of the answers in the OP thread refers to part of the JBS anti-Kennedy ad which appeared on the day of his death: "Why have you banned the showing at US military bases of the film "Operation Abolition"--the movie by the House Committee on Un-American Activities exposing Communism in America?" The link here is that Walker, when in command of 24th ID in Germany, had also tried to indoctrinate his troops with JBS materials.
I heard it was because of the gyrating hips.
There's other comments on the insanity of Operation Abolition at the reddit thread.
Insane it was, but my CO had my back.
MRD Foot asserts (in "Resistance"), without giving a source, that both Kennedy and Oswald had read Geoffrey Household's classic thriller "Rogue Male" whose final lines are:
"One should always hunt an animal in its natural habitat; and the natural habitat of man is - in these days - a town. Chimney-pots should be the cover, and the method, snapshots at two hundred yards. My plans are far advanced. I shall not get away alive, but I shall not miss; and that is all that matters to me any longer."
When she later learned that Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested for her husband's assassination, she reportedly said, "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It's -- it had to be some silly little Communist."
https://www.biography.com/political-figures/jacqueline-kennedy-pink-suit-jfk-assassination
9 great book that and pretty decent Peter O'Toole movie adaptation
re: 9 and 11
I only read it for the first time a few years ago, after, I think, it had been discussed here. It's quite strikingly modern and dark for the time it was written.
Thinking about Oswald shooting first at Walker, and then at Kennedy - whom Walker would cheerfully have seen hanged - really drives home what an unmoored, pathetic individual Oswald was. Weak, arrogant, violent, feckless and self-pitying, he chose communism (as so many did) in an attempt to give his perpetual failure of a life some meaning, but it could just as easily have been fascism.
Just like Thomas Crooks, whose shopping list of potential targets included Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and the Princess of Wales as well as Trump - probably just convenience that made him choose Trump.
12: he's doing something really quite experimental with the idea of a man being an unreliable narrator even to himself. The tone reminds me of another recent discovery, the mid century detective author Michael Gilbert. Just as Household is Buchan, but as you say more modern and dark, Gilbert is writing what seems to be on the surface some classic Golden Age detective stories, but he's doing it fully informed by a pretty traumatic war experience which surfaces in the occasional very callous and disturbing remark. Read "Death in Captivity" and "Smallbone Deceased".
It's just too bad Crooks hadn't also been a former Marine
That reminds me, I'm going to Bethel Park this week.
If we are going to discuss the Kennedy assassination, we need to get Halford back to yell at me like last time. (something re: Texas political landscape at the time--which was complicated--and relvance or not to the assassination).
Speaking of the John Birch Society , as I have note here before, Mike Allen of Politico and now Axios (I think) was the son of A spokesman for the John Birch Society (something more than just a member). I think his father would be jealous of how much more substantial damage his son has part of doing to liberal democracy than he did.
Not saying Mike Allen has any of those beliefs, but his brand of centrist Washington insider reportage and punditry has been a key part of the erosion of American democracy.
I'm now wondering to what extent Travis Bickle was modeled after someone like Oswald. Though he didn't go from one politician target to another politician.
Very closely - the screenwriter drew a lot from Arthur Bremer, who shot George Wallace, according to wiki.
It's just too bad Crooks hadn't also been a former Marine
I don't even want to think about the sort of thing people on this site would be saying if Crooks had shot at the Princess of Wales instead.
That would have been a horrific crime and furthermore would have done nothing to save the republic.
20: I thought I recalled that Bremer targeted others and it seems he at first went after Nixon but concluded security was too tight.
And he's been out of prison since 2007. last known to have been living in Cumberland MD.
"But obituaries are in the back pages."
"Not the one I'm looing for."
Punchline to an old Soviet joke.
It's probably nice to live so close to Dolly Sods.
That would have been a horrific crime and furthermore would have done nothing to save the republic
No... no, I think the general tenor of the conversation here would be more like "hur hur hur i bet it was wills because he's angry she found out about his half-lizard child, also it wasn't her who was killed it was her clone".
26: Gosh, ajay, is that really how you think of us?
27: that is how I think you'd react to news of something terrible happening to the Princess of Wales, yes, because I've seen how you react to actual news of something terrible happening to the Princess of Wales, and it was not an cheering spectacle.
Was that to peep personally or to the commentariat generally? Because I really think you should be more careful and specific with such accusations.
29: I didn't take 26 or 28 personally, because I'm pretty sure I've never written anything here about the British Royal Family (saving all that material for my tell-all memoir).
Were we mean about her having cancer? That's weird of us.
Or were we mean before we knew she had cancer? That seems more reasonable, as the whole family is such a weird spectacle and they were being goofy about hiding her for months with no context. At most jobs, you'd let others know you were going on medical leave, at least.
LET'S RE-LITIGATE!
To the commentariat generally - peep was speaking on behalf of the commentariat, hence using "us". If he'd used "me" I would have replied differently.
I can definitely be more specific if you like! I think we might have seen commenters posting things of the same general tone as
"I just figured maybe it didn't occur to King Charles that his son might not want his first wife dead" http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_18563.html#2184660
and
"Five degrees of separation from the primary source, but I imagine this will come out eventually anyway if it's true, so: Kate had surgery for a perforated colon caused by the sexual proclivities of the prince"
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_18557.html#2183963
to which someone replied
"so like father, like son then."
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_18557.html#2183976
or
" There could be two princes involved at once here IYKWIMAITYD"
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_18557.html#2183984
That's what commenters here posted in response to the news that she was seriously ill, so I imagine they'd post something pretty similar in response to her actual death.
ogged just wanted to go rescue her is all.
Well guilty as charged but was it publicly known that she diagnosed with cancer at the time?
I also wouldn't have made those comments unless someone I know with inside info hadn't told me that story about Charles and Diana on their wedding night (still rumor of course but I couldn't resist)
Wow, that thread got started with the disrespect early (7). But this isn't really about disrespect, is it?
There was a different thread, a few days later, where people responded to the actual news coming out rather than the wild speculations that had preceded it.
Oh, come on, Firefox. You couldn't even include the whole link when I copied out of the address bar? This is the thread.
How is that only a year ago? It feels like 4 or more
Now I know my nice shoes are a year old.
38: It absolutely is about respect -- which is a great unfogged topic. What beliefs, attitudes and life circumstances merit respect? Why? And what does "respect" even mean in this context?
I don't suppose (as you'll see in the thread cited in 33) that I share ajay's attitudes about respect for the royal family. But I hope I expressed my opinion on that respectfully.
I promise to match Ajay in my restraint and tact going forward. I cannot match him for factual accuracy, though.
Generally I think a certain amount of celebrity gossip and conspriracy theorizing is all in good fun. After all, like Jennifer Lawrence, "I'd like to know what's going on with Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift, that's the honest to God truth."
Of course, sometimes it goes to far (Princess Diana, Johnlock shippers, etc.) which is bad, but I don't think that means all of it is a problem, you just shouldn't be a jerk about it, and you shouldn't read British tabloids since they're evil. But I don't think the British royal family gets a substantially different treatment *from Americans* than any other celebrities.
Ah, but do the royals deserve different treatment than other celebrities? Or, alternatively, are the Kardashians entitled to more respectful treatment of their personal problems?
No, and yes, respectively.
Of course reality TV stars are a bit of a weird case since their show is ostensibly their personal life, but I do think when you get into more tragic stuff (and I think both the whole Lamar Odom situation and some of the Kanye stuff qualify) that yeah even reality TV stars deserve a little privacy and respect.
The Kardashians are odious people whereas most of the royals (Andrew excepted) seem fairly innocuous and I rather like Charles and former royal Harry is downright admirable.
On the topic of unnecessary personal speculations about celebrities, when Sophia Wilson (nee Smith) was left off the US roster for the "She Believes Cup" (and putting aside the question of what it is that she believes) with the somewhat cryptic description of "not physically ready for National Team competition" everyone was like "wait, is she pregnant" and as it turns out, yes she is!
People were only just slagging on Louis V and Henry II in the other threads. Unfogged is rotten with lèse-majesté.
I'm not an expert on Kardashians by any stretch of the imagination, but surely only some of them are odious?
On the topic of the royal family, I think it's high time to let the people on the Isles of Scilly have their land.
I couldn't remember who the Princess of Wales is when the topic came up a few threads ago. Not my royal family etc. &c.
I don't know if it's significant that most of Trump's kids and kids-in-law seem to be less prominent this time around. Maybe because the Musks are the true heirs of the monarchy that we will discover was clearly laid out in the plain, original text of the Constitution.
I think Don Jr. is still in the doghouse for recommending JD Vance.
Huh, I hadn't really thought about that, but yeah thinking of it as Jared and Ivanka being replaced by Musk does clarify a lot. I think Jr. is still pretty involved, maybe even more so than last time, but he's probably too dumb to really do much compared to Jared and Ivanka. In a lot of ways the first Trump administration had a lot of relatively moderate impulses, and maybe it really was Jared and Invanka driving that. Also rather different styles of corruption between Jared (use your power to leverage your business interests) and Elon (the government has a ton of money and you can just directly loot it).
Not saying Mike Allen has any of those beliefs, but his brand of centrist Washington insider reportage and punditry has been a key part of the erosion of American democracy.
His career is a classic chicken & egg story: the popularity of Politico/Axios among DC insiders has had utterly malignant effects, but isn't the reason it was popular that those insiders were already terribly broken?
Presumably Jared is too busy "managing" the $2B from the Saudis to dirty his hands with governance.
Right, Jared was content with $2B, and Elon thinks $2B from the Saudis is thinking too small.
Maybe Jared and Ivanka don't want to have to send weekly 5-bullet-point update emails to be run through an artificial text generator.
Oh hey, I missed the NYT report last September that Jared has returned zero profits in the first 2.5 years while taking the normal fees of over $100 million.
Not everyone is good at their job.
Huh, I hadn't really thought about that, but yeah thinking of it as Jared and Ivanka being replaced by Musk does clarify a lot.
For me too.