Fifty years have passed since the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
but our fascination with the event has endured. The film “Killing
Kennedy,” based on Bill O’Reilly’s book, was the most watched show ever
on the National Geographic Channel last Sunday night.
Tonight at 9 p.m. on CNN, yet another assassination special will
air. “The Assassination of President Kennedy” was produced by multiple
EMMY® Award-winning executive producers Tom Hanks and Gary
Goetzman, and EMMY® Award-winning producer Mark Herzog.
According to CNN; “the two-hour film explores the events on the
day that changed the nation – and the world, as well as how the public’s
perceptions of what happened that day have changed through the years.
As the Kennedy shows continue leading up to the November 22
anniversary of his assassination, the various theories still resonate
with us all these years later, but why? Maybe it is because we refuse to
accept the fact that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could kill
one of the most well guarded people in the world.
It is much less unsettling to believe Kennedy was killed as the
result of a well planned and elaborate plot by a group at odds with his
plans for America’s future. Whether we believe it was the Russians, the
CIA, the FBI, Castro, the mob, or Vice President Johnson who were behind
the assassination, we want to believe Kennedy died for a higher purpose
than the attention seeking actions of a lone gunman.
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy
five years later only served to confirm our suspicions that we had
little power in determining the direction of our country.
SEE RELATED: TV tonight: Bryan Cranston on ‘How I Met Your
Mother’ and ‘JFK’ on PBSAn endless series of revelations of government malfeasance
followed. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Watergate scandal, the
Iran-Contra scandal, the missing WMDs, the Benghazi Embassy attack, and
most recently the NSA’s spy tactics have all served to undermine any
lingering confidence we may have in our government.
IN 1963 we had a president who instilled hope and inspired the
belief that we could lead the world on a path of peace and
understanding. Kennedy told us we could go to the moon, and we did. He
told us that maybe we should look at the Russian people as our neighbors
sharing a small planet instead of our sworn enemies.
He accomplished the unimaginable task of getting Khrushchev to
agree on the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 just one year after the
Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy brought us all together in the belief that
we could work toward a common goal, no matter how hard it might be.
Say what you will about John F. Kennedy, but it cannot be denied
that he was a president who knew how to lead. These days we are at the
mercy of leaders who have made the shutdown of the government a regular
possibility. About the only thing our leaders can agree on today is the
fact that they will always disagree, regardless of how much it hurts the
country.
What we have as a result is a country so at odds with itself that
we see conspiracies everywhere, whether they exist or not.
Is it any wonder that we still question the assassination of
President Kennedy?
