61 years ago today, accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was gunned down by Jack Ruby on live television. Ruby palled around with the po-po and was able to sneak a gun into the slammer. It was the second disgrace in a row for Dallas. It was a really big Dealy…
This post was published on the 50th anniversary of Jack Kennedy’s murder. A wave of speculation and conspiracy theories ensued that continues to this day. Like other infinitely less important true crime stories such as Jack The Ripper and the Zodiac Killer, the buffs will never be satisfied by any answer. Oliver Stone will see to that.
The post was originally called The Fog of History: The Oswald Enigma. The fog hasn’t cleared and Oswald remains an enigma, so it’s time to revisit this 11 year old post.
Other than adding a 2024 last word, I’ve barely tweaked the post. It’s quite tweaky enough, thank you.
Set the Wayback Machine to 11/23/2013.
Frontline is consistently one of the best non-fiction shows on teevee, so it’s not a big surprise that Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald is one of the best entries in the macabre 50th anniversary sweepstakes. Did I really say sweepstakes? Yeah, just deal with it.
The Frontliners give us a comprehensive look at one of the most baffling aspects of the whole story: what drove Oswald to do what he did. The puny and unimpressive nature of the man himself is one reason that so many people have a hard time believing that he killed a great man like Jack Kennedy.
There are many assassination buffs who take Oswald literally when he claimed to be a patsy. I am not one of them. Oswald clearly fired at least 2 shots on that horrible day in 1963. The argument lies in whether or not he had help in doing so. I think that he did but there are strong arguments on the other side. For one thing, Oswald was a loner and *not* a joiner to say the least.
Oswald was an elusive and rather slippery character. Just when you think you have a firm handle on his character and motivation, something else catches your attention and leads you down a rabbit hole. It’s like trying to nail Jello to a wall, not that I’ve ever tried that; that sounds vaguely Midwestern, actually. Frustration thy name is Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Oswald story has become so familiar that it’s easy to forget how fucking weird it is. A skinny dumbass from New Orleans studies rudimentary Marxism, joins the Marines, moves to the Soviet Union, becomes a pro-Castro activist, then an anti-Castro agent provocateur and finally murders JFK and a Dallas cop. He is then whacked by a Jewish strip club owner with mob ties. It doesn’t get much stranger than this, y’all.
Oswald was born in my town, New Orleans, and spent a good chunk of his weird and pathetic life being weird and pathetic here. As much as I hate to admit it, the kids at the Picayune and NOLA.com are doing a pretty good job covering the extensive links between Oswald and our fair city. Oswald did most of his growing up in NOLA and retreated here in the months preceding the murder of President Kennedy.
The Picayune’s team has assembled two swell maps illustrating what they call “key locations for conspiracy theories” and a map of places that weird Lee lived as both a child and an adult. The latter map is of special interest to me because the place on Magazine Street, where he lived in 1963, is 3 blocks away from Adrastos World HQ. It’s a double that looks neither sinister nor imposing, sort of like the assassin himself.
I’ve pondered Oswald for many years and remain puzzled as to what made him tick. I didn’t necessarily learn anything new from the Frontline film, but if you haven’t wasted much time trying to understand Oswald, you’ll learn a lot from this film. In the end, it’s damnably hard to explain the inexplicable, and everything about Oswald was damned enigmatic.
That is all.
The 2024 last word goes to Emerson, Lake, & Palmer:
Oh, how I remember the “Four Dark Days” and working so hard to process it all as a 3rd-grader who was in a family of Kennedy fanatics and had no kids my own age with whom to discuss something so heavy because they weren’t as knowledgeable (indoctrinated?) in politics. Ex: Four months before the assassination (on Aug. 9), I was the only kid I knew who had been awakened by their Mom with the words, “little Patrick died.” I was crushed that the Kennedy baby didn’t survive.
On Nov. 22, even though my cohorts didn’t have my background, they were just as stunned when our teacher was called away to the office and we saw every teacher rushing down the hallway. My 3rd grade class was left alone to conduct our usual mischief, but we were stuck to our seats and never made a peep…it was that obvious that something huge was happening. We got confirmation when our schoolbuses started lining up outside, hours too early, to take us home.
My only comment on Oswald is that while he was a pathetic loner, he also had an ego that made him easy to manipulate. Make him feel important and he’ll follow you to the USSR and back. He may even have thought he was the all-important lone gunman, but heard shots other than his own and knew it wasn’t true…”shit, I’m not THE MAN, I’m just a patsy!” What a blow that would have been!!
😱 It occurred to me after I posted my comment outing myself as a “Child of the Camelot Generation,” I might be seen as loving all Kennedys. Nope! RFK, Jr. is a nightmare in every respect!! He has always been a stalwart defender of the family rapists and murderers! And, a man who has had access his whole life to health tips like come in out of the sun or use sunscreen, yet still looks like the last hot dog on the heating rollers at 7-11, should never be in charge of our nation’s health system!! 🌭🔥