today my boyfriend bought a LIFE magazine at a thrift store from feb. 21, 1964, and if i'm extra careful, i might just spill my beer on it. on the cover is the incriminating photo of lee harvey oswald brandishing his rifle and communist propaganda (back when leaflets could kill) and inside is a "clinical" analysis of oswald's life, including disturbing stories of junior high truancy and poor spelling grades in elementary school. poor spelling leads to a life of crime! it's fascinating to see the extent they went through to show how oswald was destined to be an assassin from age two- you can see it in the way he smiles in his baby pictures. discontent!
like any good skeptic, i plunged head first into the worst kind of internet distraction available to easily distracted people: reading wikipedia articles on JFK conspiracy theories. oh, i watched a little zapruder, looked at autopsy photos, considered the "tramps" theory, read about magic bullets. it was great fun until i realized that i had been looking at fairly unsubstantiated information for an embarrassingly long time, but recovered my intellectual confidence as we came to a conclusion that conspiracy theorists and people acquiescing to a totalitarian state are using the same part of the brain. naturally i can't recall the premise right now, but i'm pretty sure it was close to brilliant. or maybe bullshit, hard to say.
it's an awfully iconic photo to have lying around, though- it seems important somehow and i can't stop staring at it. and inside there's a story on beatlemania, and adds for bright orange toasted american cheese sandwiches! hours of fun!
3 comments:
You CAN tell if a two-year-old child will be an assassin when they grow up...didn't you know that?
Seriously...it was the same sort of reporting that is going on today...Obama went to a Muslim school! Obama doesn't understand his Bible! (and they don't see any contradiction with that)
And, there are HUGE conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11...I have an intelligent, very well educated friend here where I live who firmly believes that there is far more sinister forces involved than some guys just flying commercial airplanes into three buildings and a field. I'm sure you could pass hours and hours looking up all that on the internet too.
The irony of reading about that tragedy in an old magazine, and watching a movie like "good night and good luck" is that you realize that everything we think is "new" is just recycled from a different generation.
If you haven't read it yet, read the June issue of Vanity Fair..there is an excellent article about Robert Kennedy's decision to enter the presidential race, and the early months of his campaign. It is amazing (and frightening) how many of the speeches he gave about our involvement in the Vietnam War could be made today about our involvement in W's War in Iraq.
And toasted cheese sandwiches SHOULD be orange! Just like tomato soup should be an unnatural color of pink/peach/salmon!
maybe the recycled effect is part of why obama is so popular- people like the prospect of there being a 'second chance' for their ideals to come to fruition after a bloody first go-around. at the beginning of june (june 5th, to be exact) when RFK was in the news again, I watched some of his speeches and was astonished at how similar the message is to what we want now. growing up reagan, I thought that message had been buried by the influence of conservatism.
in true faux historian form, let me throw out my theory, freshly baked, of how this LIFE cover serves as an iconic beginning of the end of hope in america. here we have a mini-biography of an assassin, complete with a staged self portrait of america's threat, possibly the first time such a theme took a front page position in a national magazine. (it would be interesting to know whether such an article was published, and about who, before this one- wait, now that I think about it, they did a piece on stalin in the 30's- but i think that was focused more on the mystery, not so much on the killing. ok, and probably there were big spread on john wilkes booth back in the day. hm, i'm beginning to doubt my theory...)
Back.... and to the left.
Back.... and to the left.
Back... hey, who is the "we" that came to the brilliant conclusion?
Maybe that WAS the beginning of the end of hope, but then again, it was also the beginning of Beatlemania!, which I would offer has, over time, given more people hope than Oswalt stole away.
She was just 17, and you know what I mean,
And the way she looked was way beyond compare.
I couldn't dance with another.
Oh!
When I saw her standing there.
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