Kennedy 101

I was greeted upon waking and logging on this morning with this article at Yahoo news. I'll save you the trouble of clicking the link if you like, it seems researchers, including a former top FBI scientist, have found reason to doubt that there was a lone assassin doing the shooting on November 22, 1963. They've unearthed new evidence that indicates more than two bullets struck President Kennedy in Dealey Plaza that day which would necessarily mean Oswald had at lease one accomplice.

REALLY?! You don't say!

I mean, please. Now that Gerald Ford is dead (and they've stopped touring his poor corpse around Washington landmarks), is there really anybody out there that thinks Oswald acted alone?

I didn't think so.

I'll just go ahead and admit right now that I'm a Kennedy-phile. I've read tons of the books written about the family, never tire of learning new minutia about Jackie, nearly died of heartbreak when John-John, the sexiest man ever produced in this country, plunged into the Atlantic, and of course, I've watched all the History/Discovery/Prime time channel specials about the assassination. I own the movie JFK.

In fact, I come directly from a line of three generations of Kennedy-philes which includes my mother and my Grandmother. Between the three of us, we pretty much know everything there is to know about the Kennedys. Knowledge about the Kennedys is actually encoded in my DNA.

For instance, did you know that Jackie was a chain smoker? That she actually committed suicide? That she wore a size ten shoe? That she stole Ari Onassis from her sister Lee Radziwell? That Jack was in love with and wanted to marry a Swedish actress, but his father, Joseph, put a stop to it? That Jack tried to hunch Shirley Maclaine in a limo who, unlike everybody else of the time, refused his advances actually leaping from the car? That Bobby and Jackie had a brief affair after the assassination?

I could go on.

My point (and I do have one), is that when you are a student of the Kennedys like myself, the very first thing you learn is that Lee Harvey Oswald was just what he said he was: a patsy. And that, hell no, he most certainly did NOT act alone.

This point was driven dramatically home to me when I visited the Texas School Book Deposity, now a museum, in the now infamous Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Even I was not quite prepared for the obviousness of the situation when I stood in sixth floor of the book depository and looked out that window and on to the plaza.

The fact is, that Oswald would have had tons of opportunity and clear shots at Kennedy before the limo made the turn onto Elm Street. The fact that the shooting didn't start until the limo was well down Elm Street is just more evidence of the obvious, in my opinion.

I don't guess the American people will ever get to the bottom of what really happened that day in Dallas.

But we sure as hell deserve to.