Monday, November 24, 2003
Walkin' after midnight:
Went outside to lock bike up, cool clear night, decided to go for a walk over to Dunkin'. This is risky, not because of street crime but because I've been stopped & unpleasantly interrogated by Rahway police. If I were someone other than a short WASP guy wearing an orange "Surf Club" cap I'm sure it would happen all the time. The walk went without incident, other than seeing a car with the rear door open in a driveway next to an unlit house, which I checked for a dead body then closed.
Doing early afternoon WFMU fill-ins on Thanksgiving & Christmas. Last time I did a Christmas program, many years ago, I had to leave a warm fireplace & drive to the studio on frigid Christmas night & vowed never to let that happen again if I could help it. One of the best services one can render fellow DJs is covering for them on major holidays. Had early t-day dinner a few weeks ago, at Edie Eustice's, a reminder of how enjoyable the occasion can be when one is not considered a loonie, radical &/or duncehead by others at the table. & oh, to be able to have real conversations - from music (classical & jazz) to current events to movies, with Miles & Trane & Billie & Beethoven & Satie as common musical ground. & really great OLD movies everyone has seen. This isn't "high brow" stuff. & it's not even really necessary. I've spent holidays with folks who chat about baseball, NASCAR, Lynyrd Skynyrd, & the Englishtown flea market, that was fine, too.
The problem with conspiracies is that the more complex they are - the more surely they will unravel when prodded & probed. Something goes wrong. Happened in Nixon's White House. Happened in the families trying to cover up culpability in the Seton Hall dorm fire. Happened to Benedict Arnold. After years of rejecting the "single gunman theory" in the Kennedy assassination, I've reluctantly concluded that the Warren Commission probably had it right in the conclusion if not entirely in the details. Surely, if Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, Lyndon Johnson, the C.I.A., a bunch of neo-fascist homosexual nut cases in New Orleans, a Chicago mafia family (double payback for Bay of Pigs failure & Sinatra being barred from White House) & a sleazy Dallas strip club owner managed to get on the same team, someone - Marilyn Monroe? - would have spilled the beans.
A lot of extremists - right & left - wanted Kennedy dead. Seems most likely that Oswald, with his strange associations & slippery political ideas, picked up on these sentiments & in effect believed he was doing the will of others, if not actually carrying out their direct orders. Others within the power structure may have deliberately placed President Kennedy's brain in harm's way through lackadaisical security, hoping something would happen. Perhaps Oswald believed he would be rescued, secretly whisked off to Argentina or Cuba, & provided with a hacienda & a new identity. He was that weird. & a crack-shot as well as a crack-pot. But big conspiracy? As time passes that appears less & less likely. Many people in danger of being scapegoated - doctors, cops, Secret Service, various aides & flunkies, needed to protect their asses - & their jobs - in the aftermath, which was the "cover up." But for many decades there has been more to gain by telling the truth rather than lying. In a sense, greed never lies.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Went outside to lock bike up, cool clear night, decided to go for a walk over to Dunkin'. This is risky, not because of street crime but because I've been stopped & unpleasantly interrogated by Rahway police. If I were someone other than a short WASP guy wearing an orange "Surf Club" cap I'm sure it would happen all the time. The walk went without incident, other than seeing a car with the rear door open in a driveway next to an unlit house, which I checked for a dead body then closed.
Doing early afternoon WFMU fill-ins on Thanksgiving & Christmas. Last time I did a Christmas program, many years ago, I had to leave a warm fireplace & drive to the studio on frigid Christmas night & vowed never to let that happen again if I could help it. One of the best services one can render fellow DJs is covering for them on major holidays. Had early t-day dinner a few weeks ago, at Edie Eustice's, a reminder of how enjoyable the occasion can be when one is not considered a loonie, radical &/or duncehead by others at the table. & oh, to be able to have real conversations - from music (classical & jazz) to current events to movies, with Miles & Trane & Billie & Beethoven & Satie as common musical ground. & really great OLD movies everyone has seen. This isn't "high brow" stuff. & it's not even really necessary. I've spent holidays with folks who chat about baseball, NASCAR, Lynyrd Skynyrd, & the Englishtown flea market, that was fine, too.
The problem with conspiracies is that the more complex they are - the more surely they will unravel when prodded & probed. Something goes wrong. Happened in Nixon's White House. Happened in the families trying to cover up culpability in the Seton Hall dorm fire. Happened to Benedict Arnold. After years of rejecting the "single gunman theory" in the Kennedy assassination, I've reluctantly concluded that the Warren Commission probably had it right in the conclusion if not entirely in the details. Surely, if Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, Lyndon Johnson, the C.I.A., a bunch of neo-fascist homosexual nut cases in New Orleans, a Chicago mafia family (double payback for Bay of Pigs failure & Sinatra being barred from White House) & a sleazy Dallas strip club owner managed to get on the same team, someone - Marilyn Monroe? - would have spilled the beans.
A lot of extremists - right & left - wanted Kennedy dead. Seems most likely that Oswald, with his strange associations & slippery political ideas, picked up on these sentiments & in effect believed he was doing the will of others, if not actually carrying out their direct orders. Others within the power structure may have deliberately placed President Kennedy's brain in harm's way through lackadaisical security, hoping something would happen. Perhaps Oswald believed he would be rescued, secretly whisked off to Argentina or Cuba, & provided with a hacienda & a new identity. He was that weird. & a crack-shot as well as a crack-pot. But big conspiracy? As time passes that appears less & less likely. Many people in danger of being scapegoated - doctors, cops, Secret Service, various aides & flunkies, needed to protect their asses - & their jobs - in the aftermath, which was the "cover up." But for many decades there has been more to gain by telling the truth rather than lying. In a sense, greed never lies.
