Boy, that piece sent my poor detritus filled mind off all over the place, walking back in time.
I actually saw Cockburn talk once, late 80s I think. He was pretty cool, I felt a little sorry for him. It was on campus, they passed the hat after the talk. I'd just learned about what fatuous conservatives like George Will were making on the conservative lecture circuit, felt sorry for the guy. It sure pays a lot better to suck up to rich people than to stick with your convictions.
The first memory I have of MacNeil / Lehrer is from the Camp David accords, 78-79? There was this loose end, Carter and Sadat thought there was a settlement freeze on the West Bank, Begin, not so much. So they had some Israeli diplomat / expert / flack guy on, and he was saying, of course Israelis can settle in the West Bank, you wouldn't say they couldn't settle in Arizona, would you? He was just super cool and matter of fact, like, who could possibly disagree with such a reasonable propostion? So I'm thinking, no, it's not like that at all, the correct analogy would be, can West Bank Palestinians settle in Israel? But not a word of challenge from the interviewer. The Israeli was you know, one side of the old talk to both sides, balanced reporting thing.
But the thing about Lehrer running into Oswald was something else again. Kennedy's assassination is pretty much my first major detailed current events memory, I remember a little bit about the early space shots, but a lot about Kennedy. I remember Manchester's book being serialized in Look magazine, over Jackie's objections. Never heard the MacNeil story, though, so I had to look that up. First story I came up with was this:
The circumstantial similarities that appear in both statements seem to justify the notion that MacNeil and Oswald were indeed together for a brief conversation. These similarities are: (1) MacNeil asked a man on the front steps of the Book Depository where he could find a phone. Oswald was in front of the same building when a man came up to him and asked for the location of a phone. (2) The man whom MacNeil spoke to was young and wearing a shirt. Oswald was 24 years old and had on a shirt. (3) Oswald spoke to a man who must have been wearing a suit and tie as befits a Secret Service agent; MacNeil was wearing a suit and tie.
Yet here the similarities end. The differences in the other details bring intractable difficulties upon any attempt to recon¬cile them into a single incident: (1) The man whom Oswald spoke to had a crew-cut; MacNeil's hair was long enough to comb down; (2) Oswald spoke to a young man; MacNeil at the age of thirty-two was older than Oswald by eight years, It is not likely that Oswald would refer to MacNeil as "a young man," (3) MacNeil was wearing a press badge, whereas the man whom Oswald spoke to was not wearing a badge; instead he had a "book of identification" which he had to pull out of a pocket, most likely the inside pocket of his suit coat. (4) The man made a declaration to Oswald that he was a member of the Secret Service; his credentials must have also indicated that he was Secret Service. This one fact alone should dispel any speculation that Oswald spoke to MacNeil.
Although superficially similar, the statements of MacNeil and Oswald are actually two separate and distinct descriptions of two entirely different episodes. Under normal circum¬stances, it would have been a remarkable coincidence to find two very similar incidents occurring at nearly the same time at virtually the same location. But the assassination was an event that completely shattered the ordinary routines of daily life. All of a sudden the need to communicate became overwhelmingly urgent, putting a huge demand on every available telephone in the area. There must have been quite a few people criss-crossing through Dealey Plaza in the search for telephones. The Book Depository would naturally have been one of the most obvious places to look. It should not be surprising to find one phone search incident at the Book Depository closely followed by another. educationforum.ipbhost.com Never was much into the Kennedy conspiracy thing, though. In retrospect, I feel a lot worse about Bobby than Jack. Jack was pretty reckless. Bobby seemed to have a big heart, and he would have been president at a difficult time where we really needed somebody to bring us together. We got Nixon instead. Google vectored me right to Wikipedia on my memory of that one, en.wikipedia.org .
One more story, looking further down the google list there was this story: jfk.org
Five future anchors on the scene, pretty amazing. No sign of Chancellor, though. Looking him up, Wikipedia did have an amusing anecdote from that era.
At the 1964 Republican National Convention, he was arrested for refusing to cede his spot on the floor to "Goldwater Girls," supporters of the Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. When security came to get him, he was forced to sign off: "I've been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office. This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody." He then became the director of the Voice of America in 1965, at the request of President Lyndon Johnson, a spot he held until 1967. Ok, I got to stop now. Back to post-truth current times. |
