I remember the day JFK was shot in Dallas. I was attending Northeast Louisiana State in Monroe and staying with my grandmother. My morning classes were over and I was taking a short nap that fateful afternoon. Grandmother came into the room and woke me up and told me to come quick that Kennedy had been shot. Needless to say, I like most Americans was glued to the T.V. for the rest of the day. Only three major news channels in those days---ABC, NBC and CBS. I quickly noticed a developing theme. One of the major news anchors, I don't recall which one, commented that Dallas had been a hot-bed of right wing activity in recent months. The vast Right-Wing-Conspiracy was being developed and the theme spread to all three networks. Everyone, myself included, believed it. Then Oswald was captured and information about him began to come out. Shocker---he was not a reactionary right wing loon, but rather a committed leftest. He had lived in Russia and was a member of a pro-Castro organization called "committee for fair play for Cuba". Suddenly, the vast right-wing conspiracy was gone. But did a left-wing conspiracy take its place--logic would dictate that--no, that did not ever happen. The silence on this was deafening. The national news media had long before that time shown their colors, but to me this was the first time I really took notice of the bias they expressed under the banner of "Objectivity". Finally I saw the truth. And the truth was an ugly reality.
I came across a short article on the Kennedy and that fateful day in Dallas, its basically the reactions of a left leaning newsman recalling the event. Decided to include it in this post:
The key line in Dyckman's statement is "I WAS HOPING IT WOULD BE A RIGHT-WINGER." There was no way to spin this into a right-wing conspiracy because of the over-whelming evidence to the contrary. The left however, did manage to get stronger gun-control laws as a result of the events in Dallas. No more mail-order guns. One last note. I got my first gun a 22 rifle, when I was 11 years old---purchased it through the Sears and Roebuck Catalog. One of the happiest days of my life was when the mail carrier delivered it to the farm.