Kennedy, eh? It’s a biggie. I suspect we’ll come back to JFK again (and again); there’s enough content for a thousand more shows. Still, we did, I think knock this bastard off right proper.
Sorry, no idea where that came from.
Next time… Well, some investigative journalism by yours truly. Well, I say journalism… I’m following up a rather curious article I’ve found and trying to find out a little bit more about why it was published and who wrote it.
The Dentith Files
Undoubtedly one of the events that will be remembered as representative of the 20th Century will be the assassination of John F Kennedy.
Matthew Dentith looks at the theory that Kennedy was murdered by other agencies rather than Oswald himself. In particular he looks at one of the many strange figures in JFK lore: Kerry Thornley.
Oliver Stone’s wonderful, yet ultimately erroneous, film JFK. Tangents include: Doctor Who and Quantum Leap.
Further Reading
A good bio of Thornley on Reasononline.
Check out Thornley’s Confession to Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK. Pretty much does what it says on the box.
Comments
This was one of the worst rationalisations of the assassination I have ever wasted my time on, and I’ve wasted my time on some pretty daft conspiracy theories (please excuse the pejorative).
Robert Anton Wilson’s wonderful book is completely irrelevant. I don’t feel comfortable actually using any valid arguments to back up my criticism of your creation-science-like denial of empirical evidence, since you didn’t use any either, and it seems that nothing would convice you of any conspiracy.
Done any audits of any institutions recently?
Thanks for the comment. Sorry you didn’t like the material. As to audits of institutions I can only say that I’m on the fence about institutions in general (you’ll have to forgive me but I’m going to cite philosophers here); Brian L. Keeley argues that we’ve got no really good reasons (politically and morally) to doubt them (as epistemic sources) whilst Lee Basham says we kind of do. Meanwhile Charles Pigden argues, rather successfully, that history is littered with Conspiracies. I’m more on Charles and Lee’s side than I am Keeley’s, but in the example of JFK I’m just not convinced anything more untoward than the official story went on. Still, it’s a large field of literature and I haven’t read everything (or, given the volume of books still being produced, close to a small fraction of everything) so maybe there is stuff out there that might change my mind. I’m not a dogmatic skeptic; I’m a Fortean and an epistemologist, in that order.
In that case, bravo and touché – I was actually thinking of mentioning Fort in further correspondence! We may not be in agreement about JFK but I could have done better to find your epistemology before jumping to conclusions. Now to actually look around this site…