JFK... 50 Years Later...

I’m shocked.  Extremely so.  I have a great deal of respect for Bill Simmons and his wonderful ability to frame sports in the context of culture though his writing gifts, but I honestly could not believe what I heard this past week on his podcast, the BS Report.  It was a two-part series, where Simmons tackled the JFK assassination and it’s 50^th anniversary, and it was a real shame.  Of course I think Bill Simmons is a brilliant person and he naturally brought in bright people to talk turkey, Chris Connelly, Bill James, and Chuck Klosterman, but their ridiculous interview turned out to be anything but.  What a waste.  Of course the Underdogs weighed in on things-Dallas a few times, Here and... here.  There are so many interesting and bizarre elements to this case, that I'm sure I have become overly sensitive or easily offended when people casually dismiss or leave out specific details, but even from my flawed viewpoint, these guys totally missed the mark.         

I understand that these guys are writers, and therefore are very creative and artistically influenced, so they will inherently resist the mundane or the “widespread thought theories” at least philosophically, but I was still shocked at the lack of real substance in any of Simmons’ guest’s editorial opinions.  It felt like a group of giddy fraternity brothers talking.  After two hours, the general take-away from this debacle of a double-podcast was the following: that Oswald had acted alone, and JFK was shot from the front “accidentally by a secret-service agent.” 

You have got to be kidding me.  Even excluding political and economic concerns, this is a hugely absurd possibility.  Fractionally improbable, percentage-wise, at best, and even if all parties involved (in this broadcast) may now work directly, or indirectly for a major corporation, there is a responsibility or a collective opinion to come to.  But what we end up with here in Simmons’ podcast is a group of 40-somethings “of means,” simply wasting all of our time.  That's the best they could do?  No real opinion is challenged, and no discussion is terribly realistic at all unless they are simply intentionally trying to be counterintuitive. 

At one point, Klosterman, ridiculously so, explained it like this, “at 21, I was convinced of a CIA centered conspiracy, at 31 I didn’t know, and today, (hopefully, at 41 for these literary punks) I think Oswald acted alone,” is proof positive.  People give in to comforts.  Nothing has changed fact-wise, it’s just a matter of waxing-poetic.  As cliché as it is to talk about human nature and finding comfort in conspiracy theories, it’s so much more damning for these spineless writers, who are risking nothing, to swing the complete other direction, in spite of real evidence and to completely ignore its significance. They become bored so they find a new angle.   

Or maybe we should just presume ignorance, because in the face of perhaps the most important of possible truths we could learn is that there were real business consequences at stake.  And these reporters should have known the difference.  At the time, there was a tremendous amount of money on the line, nationally and internationally, and it would prove an absolutely pivotal time in the market-capitalistic-opportunistic-war-friendly-American possibility. All of the arguments made by Klosterman were so fanciful that it renders the whole conversation laughable.  It would never be so simple that then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, would actually be a conspirator to a horrendous killing, but that doesn’t mean that certain select people within the American power structure didn’t know that his political policies would much better represent their personal business interests, in the place of a specifically removed President.  And of course, that doesn’t mean any thought to that effect can actually be proven, but it also doesn’t mean that we have to bend over backwards to force a bunch of random puzzle pieces to fit together in order to convict a convenient killer either.  But it seems like that’s exactly what the Warren Commission did in the following year. Maybe they were trying to calm an uncertain nation or clean things up neatly, but one thing is certain; they weren’t trying to actually solve the mystery.  And what’s more realistic anyway?  Extremely effective, ruthless businessmen acting in defense of their multi-billion dollar international business interests, that would prove to shape the whole world for generations to come, got something done with extreme precision, or that one guy performed a scientifically impossible one-man-hit job because he was upset about national policy and wanted the brief attention he would get by sacrificing himself?  What makes more sense?              

Of course this has all been said before, and maybe that’s why at this point in time, it just seems to be so ridiculously overlooked, by such cavalier journalists.  Of course it’s not ground-breaking information.  But maybe, because these opinions don’t really “belong” to our specific generation anymore, real evidence is being casually tossed to the side, despite its reputable contradiction to the official myths.  I can’t believe that people who are reported as intellectuals such as this group would waste their time talking about theories on emotionally based arguments, like they would a “Mafia based motive” or an action by a “communist sympathizer.”  These are overly simple and improbable explanations, and there is no evidence to support any of them.   

But that’s all Bill Simmons and his friends talked about.  What a waste.  There was very little talk about the Dallas Police or the CIA’s ineptitude to complete even the most basic of investigations.  That they um, gee… forgot to make any record of Oswald’s 12 HOUR incarceration after his arrest, or the curious realization that they could have possibly pinned the murder of a policemen, Officer Tippet, on him as well, that according to testimony, Oswald could never have been close to.  Or that all of the controlling interests in war-time-anti-Kennedy-interests that seemed to be represented there in Dallas too, always seem to get an unexplained pass.  Oh, and by the way, Oswald was murdered in a police-department basement as well.  Jack Ruby just happened to get in there with a loaded pistol, and shot him on National Television.  Yet it passed like just another blip on the radar as far as national relevance is concerned.  No real outrage here.  Oswald was never convicted, but everyone still labels him as a killer of a President.  Incredibly, Simmons and his friends, in their joyful banter, didn’t really mention this either.      

So what’s the other explanation?  If you want any real explanation from all of this new film evidence most recently making its way to light, instead of wasting your time with all of the conjecture of which random bullet did what, or how many seconds passed, while a certain head was at a certain angle, just stop and take a minute to look at all of the wide open windows left completely unchecked directly above the President’s parade route.  A route that was admittedly changed at the last minute; for a President’s motorcade.  An absurdly illegal route as well in this way.  Think about that.  Who ran Dallas at the time?  And why did the Federal secret service, for some reason, somehow accidentally forget to protect their client that day, when they’ve never been nearly so incompetent before or after so?  Complicit through intentional incompetence perhaps?    

It just couldn’t have been so random.  There was no mystery.  The Secret Service could have very easily checked out and secured the route days ahead of time, much less hours or minutes like they had done in the past, but for reasons never explained, they chose not to.  This lack of protection in such an environment, had never happened before or since for any American President, so why was it ignored on this day?  And why most importantly, why was it so underreported after the fact?  And why has it never been explained?  Simmons and his guests laughed it off as a Secret Service tradition in Dallas, that they were all out late the night, out on the town, and that their hung-over morning accounted for the troubles that day.  I hope that this can only be accepted by 50 years of desensitization, because it is just horrible.         

Has there ever been any real culpability taken, ever, by any government service, other than that of ignorance or incompetence?   Not that I know of.  It was at the very least an unforgivable dereliction of duty, but it was much more likely something more sinister.  Not by the men in the field, but as usual, by the ones pulling the strings, who have no face.  The ones who could manipulate a very large certain situation and then in one way or another also dictate the next forty years of American international policy.  They also made hundreds of billions of dollars too, through (many-times shady) American business interests all over the world.  It doesn’t take a conspiracy.  But like-minded people.  And no one is to blame.  It’s just business.    

I just don’t think anyone should forget this.  Even as academic as it can get when we talk about the 50 year anniversary of JKF’s assassination, at least this possibility still has to be in play.  The assassination has become a footnote in history, as easily dismissed as a stock-market crash or a war-peace-treaty, and maybe if you remove emotional attachment, it was just as important for certain businessmen, in the shaping of modern American Corporate global dominion.

 

And in a lot of ways that may be true, and maybe in some twisted way it was for the best economically.  But that’s why we depend on people like Chuck Klosterman, and Bill James, and Chris Connelly, and Bill Simmons to remind us that the bottom-line isn’t the only thing that’s important.  But this week they sold us out.  They are far too complacent; far too comfortable to make a realistic argument without laughing or trying a clever quip.  And if we do that, or agree with it, just because it’s easy, then we all fail.

But as far as trying to solve the crime, I feel like it has to be time to accept that we will never really know what happened that day.  So I guess I need to accept Klosterman's and Simmons' opinions.  

After 50 years of conjecture it's time to move on. 

Okay, Im done.   

  

Thanks for Reading,

Underdogs OUT!   

   

World Wide Sports and Miami's Vice...

It didn’t take spending the summer in Europe to teach me that Football is the king sport in this world, but it was quite the reminder.  Obviously, it’s more than a sport out there; it defies both cultural boundaries and sensible emotional ones.  People go crazy and I get that.  It was amazing to watch my first Classico between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid on tv a few days ago, just imagining what it must have been like to be at Camp Nou that night for the insanity.  It was impressive to watch how expertly FCB controlled the ball and the tempo, and seeing Messi in real time was great, and of course I was happy with the Barca victory.

Look, I can appreciate a good football match and the nuance of offenses and defenses even in a nil-nil draw, but for better or for worse, I must admit that I have my limits.  What can I say?  I’m American.  And now that I’m back stateside in Miami, I have been quite happy to get back to basics; to good ole ‘Murican sports.  And even though Major League Soccer is in the midst of its playoff schedule (and the LA Galaxy pushing for a three-peat,) let’s be serious for a second.  At long last, the NBA has returned to action!

I’ve written before, perhaps one time too many, about how fun the offseason is for us NBA junkies.  In a lot of ways it’s more fun than the games themselves.  It’s all about free-agents, salary cap space, new coaches, general managers, trades, and trade rumors, and we absolutely love this stuff.  Which teams got better?  How will player x, y, and/or z, play together?  Can the new coach/system work with the personnel?  What trades are left to be made?  But all of the elements regarding each team and their respective efforts to improve, all lead to one all-encompassing question.  Can any of these teams beat the Miami Heat?    

LeBron James may have said it best, when he said that, “sometimes in order to win championships and back to back championships you have to get a little lucky.”  And of course, that was never more clear than in last year’s Finals Game 6, when the Spurs basically had their fifth title in hand.  One of the greatest coaches of all time chose to keep his best rebounder out of the game in a crucial stretch, and it ultimately cost the Spurs the title.  One play, and one guy named Ray Allen, changed the entire outcome.  Sometimes it comes down something as simple as that, and history is written, and the whole underdog world is sucker-punched in the gut.  San Antonio should have been the champion!  Again!  The year before, if Oklahoma City hadn’t mystically elevated their offense to an unbelievable and absolutely unsustainable elite level in the Western Conference Finals, the Spurs would have been matched up with Miami even earlier.  And as I thought at the time they would have been in a fantastic position to beat Miami, before the Heat really solidified their playoff identity. 

It’s crazy to think how close we came to having two more Spurs championships in a row these past two years.  It’s infuriating, but it’s sports.  LeBron and the BeachBoys were just too much for all-comers.  And yea, we can complain all we want about the depleted east and how unfair it was that the Heat basically waltzed into the finals while the giants in the west had to battle it out amongst themselves, but in the end Miami was the team left standing, earning them their second straight championship.  So as annoying as it is, they are now the ninth team in NBA history to attempt the ever-elusive three-peat.  Mikan’s Lakers did it in the ‘50’s, Russell’s Celtics did it in the 60’s (twice,) Michael’s Bulls in the 90’s (twice,) and Shaq and Kobe’s Lakers in 2002.  Magic’s 80’s Lakers, Isiah’s 90’s Pistons, Hakeem’s 90’s Rockets, and Kobe’s 2011 Lakers couldn’t pull it off.  And interestingly, Russell’s Celtics couldn’t finish off their third one losing to Philadelphia in 1967, but it’s hard to imagine another team winning an incredible eight championships in a row, (so you could call it an acceptable failure.)  All in all it’s happened six times in the NBA’s sixty-six year history, and that’s what the Miami Heat face this year.  It’s just really hard to win basketball games this consistently.

So the question remains.  Who is the team to beat these guys?  What team has Miami’s Vice?  Of course it’s well documented that I think San Antonio had that squad, and still does, but getting out of the brutal West is never a given.  So this year the giant slayer needs to come from the East, and I think this team plays in the city of New York!  Only they don’t go by the greatest abbreviated nick-name in sports.  Those Knicks will falter quickly on the defensive end and go out in the first round, Indiana will put up a valiant fight but run short on talent, and the Bulls as always will be too feeble and undermanned when the moment counts the most.  No, there’s only one team in the East that has a shot to dethrone King James, and they play in New York’s most populated borough. 

Yea, I’m talking about BC Brooklyn!!!  Owned by a Russian Billionaire, they should have a European name, and the will be the ones to challenge Miami.  Mark my words!  But, more on that later... for now, the MLS playoffs are on.  
Just kidding ;)

Thanks for reading!

Underdogs out!