The headline is one of the few accurate descriptions in Michael Rechtshaffen’s March 25, 2017 LA Times review of John Barbour’s new documentary, The American Media & The Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The headline says that the “title says it all.” Yes, the title absolutely does say it all. The documentary, part two of The Garrison Tapes, absolutely links the American media to a second, obviously metaphoric assassination of the nation’s 35th president.
Rechtshaffen then begins to paint with wide brushes over the two hour and ten minute film that he deems as “long-winded as its accusatory title.” What Rechtshaffen terms long-winded is what many will judge as being detailed. With the wealth of specific examples Barbour and co-producer Myra Bronstein had at their disposal, the documentary could have easily ran four hours and twenty minutes.
The proverbial cutting room floor could have been littered with hours of the History Channel’s Greatest Misses alone. Throw in the Discovery channel, the many Gerald Pozner appearances, the Gary Mack heel turn, and the stream of frothing anti-Stoneists appearing all over the media in 1991, and you would have a veritable Sgt. Pepper’s of LoneNutology albums.
The crumbling house of cards that is the Oswald-as-Lone-Nut theory has been in disrepair from the moment Dallas police officers stormed the Texas Theatre because – on a day when the president had been shot in their city – a complaint was called in that a man hadn’t properly paid to see Van Heflin’s thespianic skills on display.
In his lead, Rechtshaffen states that the film amounts to “two-plus hours of conspiracy theorist porn.” Not only does that feed the American mainstream media’s narrative of the alt.thinker as the gun-toting nutter or the tin-foiled hat guy in Mom’s basement, it also does something that I’m sure Rechtshaffen never intended.
Who would Rechtshaffen have to include if he were making a true list of so-called conspiracy theorists? A short list would also have to include those public figures who have either expressed publicly or privately (then later reported) their views. The CIA’s James Jesus Angleton and Chief Justice Earl Warren have, strategically or not, hinted toward Russian involvement. Ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann, columnist Jack Anderson, and Johnny Roselli all questioned a possible Cuban influence. Lyndon Johnson at various points also questioned both Russia and Cuba (though many would say to hide his own foreknowledge). G. Robert Blakey, John H. Davis, and David Scheim have all fingered the mafia. Richard Nixon and H.R. Haldeman, as well as Bill Clinton and Webb Hubbell, questioned the Warren Commission’s findings. And from the Camelot era, may we include Ted Sorensen, Pierre Salinger and, yes, RFK?! Would they also be on Rechtshaffen’s list of conspiracy theorists in search of conspiracy porn?
Rechtshaffen’s thesis in this brief basting is that John Barbour is a man that has turned cranky (Rechtshaffen’s word) about his “own personal resentments” against the mainstream mass media. It is his theory that this is Barbour’s response to “networks that passed on the previous documentary.”
This could not be less true. If John Barbour has one media-centered axe to grind, it is not about what the media did to him. It instead concerns what the media – particularly Barbour’s own employer, NBC – did to his friend New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, the one man who had the courage to file a case in the murder of President John F. Kennedy. The distasteful treatment of Garrison by NBC – detailed in the film – still affects Barbour today. It should be pointed out that the film’s harshest specific treatment of U.S. media figures is aimed at former anchors and hosts at CBS and FoxNews, not NBC.
The American Media & The Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy is an important film. If justice is done, it will debunk the million-dollar corporate media debunkers and do for media complicity what the documentary Harlan County USA did for the working conditions of the blue-collar poor in the Midwest or what Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle did for meat packing industry.
In an era when we still discuss the insensitivity of an 18th century Chris Columbus, the horrors of 19th century slavery, and the religious intolerance of the centuries-old Inquisition and Crusades, should Rechtshaffen really be pained by the idea that John Barbour has a visceral negative reaction to those who still attempt to debunk truth regarding the only murder of a contemporary U.S. president? If this is Barbour’s cross to bear, them may we all help him bear it.
John Barbour has made a GREAT film. Interesting, factual, and important VERY IMPORTANT! If the President of the United States can be murdered and the culprits and their accomplices (cover-up jerks) get away ENTIRELY., what kind of country is the United States?
George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and other founders are DISAPPOINTED.
Thank you, this was excellent. I attempted to comment on the review in the L.A. Times but they refused to print my comment, but did not forget to use my email to solicit me for an online subscription to their disinfo newspaper. It is as if every major media outlet in the country just passes around the same interpretation of everything and they each copy the story and run it. I’d like to appropriately name their news clearing center The House of Lies. These people conspired to elect a criminal to the highest office. They are now accessories to the coverup of the murders of people involved in trying to bring down the DNC and expose it for what it really is. Never in my life did I ever think I would see such pervasive crimes being committed by institutions whose only charge it was to get information to the people in a fair and balanced way. We are not talking about bias or slant anymore, far from it. This is aiding and abetting fraud and murder!!! I suppose we shouldn’t be shocked. They have been doing this since JFK. These are desperate people resorting to desperate measures as they see their market share sinking like the Titanic and the American population rejecting their lies and turning to alternative media for information. What John Barbour has done here is masterfully tell the story of the American media and how they became traitors to their own country. They can come up with nothing new with the exception of their favorite new phrase—Fake News. They even went so far as to print a list of where the so called Fake News was coming from. Every alternative news site you can think of was on that list. Places that real Americans now get REAL NEWS because we no longer have a working media in this country, so purveyors of the real FAKE NEWS take notice!! You have been replaced!! You are no longer relevant.
John Barbour told the truth. JFK was hit by frontal and rear shots and our dishonest government covered it up with assistance by “media assets” like Cronkite and Rather. I’ve been lied to about this case since age 11, and I’m tired of it. Barbour and Jim Garrison got it right and I respect them.
That the CIA and its supporters murdered President Kennedy is of no doubt to people who have studied the case. The “second assassination”, the treatment of the truth in the face of the false narrative presented by the CIA and its minions in the press, is obvious when dissected.
And by examining American history since then, the fingerprints of our intelligence services have been over every Presidential election since then.
If you don’t know that it is because you don’t want to know, or you have been taught not to know. You are playing intellectual games with yourself.