JFK assassination & Frank Zappa
Joey
John Kennedy was a great man who was killed due to his foreign policy
and interest in reducing the cold war. What's equally sad is that
Americans have not been told the truth about this horrible murder.
Bob Dylan expressed his horror at being depicted on the cover of
Esquire magazine as part of a four-headed image along with JFK,
Malcolm X, and Fidel Castro. He asked "what the hell was that
supposed to mean?"
Almost as bizarre is Lee Harvey Oswald's depiction in the artwork to
Frank Zappa's "We're Only In It For the Money." The artwork for this
album, a parody of the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers, positions Oswald being
shot in the upper right hand corner: the exact position Dylan occupies
in the Sgt. Peppers cover artwork.
Joe
rwalker
<josephm...@yahoo.com> wrote:
snip
>Almost as bizarre is Lee Harvey Oswald's depiction in the artwork to
>Frank Zappa's "We're Only In It For the Money." The artwork for this
>album, a parody of the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers, positions Oswald being
>shot in the upper right hand corner: the exact position Dylan occupies
>in the Sgt. Peppers cover artwork.
>
>Joe
Well, Frank was an iconoclast, and had a pretty bizarre sense of
humor.
Janice
>
> Bob Dylan expressed his horror at being depicted on the cover of
> Esquire magazine as part of a four-headed image along with JFK,
> Malcolm X, and Fidel Castro. He asked "what the hell was that
> supposed to mean?"
I didn't remember this. Here's the cover for others who are
unfamiliar with it:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/24/arts/22858683.JPG
>
> Almost as bizarre is Lee Harvey Oswald's depiction in the artwork to
> Frank Zappa's "We're Only In It For the Money." The artwork for this
> album, a parody of the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers, positions Oswald being
> shot in the upper right hand corner: the exact position Dylan occupies
> in the Sgt. Peppers cover artwork.
This might reference the Tom Paine awards speech where Dylan faux
pas'd in a room full of upright citizen-patriots by saying he could
relate to Oswald -- "I saw some of myself in him" -- which he later
explained beautifully in his subsequent letter to the Civil Liberties
Committee. His reputation was, in effect, assassinated among some
groups with that comment. Zappa of course was always an unrelenting
champion of free speech.
~`~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
yes if there's violence in the times then
there must be violence in me
- bob dylan
Joey
> John Kennedy was a great man
Yeah? What was so great about him? The fact that he got us deeply
into Vietnam or the fact that he brought us within a hair's breadth
of
a nuclear exchange with the USSR?
It was LBJ and the Joint Chiefs that put the U.S. deeply into Vietnam,
not JFK. JFK toured the region as a Congressman in the 1950s and
recognized the absurdness of a land war in Asia early on. His
intention to scale down the war is well-documented; his intentions
were even published on the front page of U.S. military journals such
as the "Stars and Stripes." National Security documents also document
his intentions in Vietnam.
With regards to nuclear war, it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff that
wanted to bomb the Cuban missiles; JFK showed great restraint under
enormous pressure and even made a secret deal at the time to remove
Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the removal of missiles in Cuba.
The Cuban missile crisis seared Kennedy (and Khruschev); they worked
together to lessen the tensions of the cold war through such actions
as the Test Ban Treaty over the objections of the Joint Chiefs. Oddly
enough, it was JFK that was removed in the more savage manner.
Joe
Janice
> The documented and true part is that he got us in there and did NOT
> take us out. The documented and true part was that the president of
> Vietnam, a certain Mr. Diem, was murdered on his watch. The
> documented and true part shows that Vietnam wasn't going to be lost on
> his watch. National Security documents show one thing: he didn't
> know what the fuck he was doing. They make that very clear. He makes
> Obama look like an elder statesman when it comes to foreign affairs.
> The book title, "Best and the Brightest" was meant to be ironic. In
> today's non-ironic times it would be called "Best and the Brightest--
> Not."
From the 1972 NY Times Book Review of Halberstam's The Best & the
Brightest:
J.F.K. himself (along with George Ball) was, Halberstam tells us, one
of the two men in the upper reaches of the Government who expressed
serious doubts about dispatching a few hundred special forces troops
to Vietnam in the fall of 1961. . .
The dominant metaphor of this book--Halberstam's second theme--sees
our Government as a great bureaucratic arena in which generals and
Cabinet officers and lesser bureaucrats all are "players" in the game
of bureaucratic politics. Their primary loyalty is to their team and
what's good for their team may not necessarily be good for the
country. The players are shown winning temporary victories which
result in their literally as well as figuratively losing the war. The
metaphor is not new, but Halberstam's application is convincing and
shrewd, the examples are legion, and the depressing message is that in
addition to deceiving the American people they deceived each other and
themselves.
>. . . JFK went on
> national television and made a public ultimatum to Soviet Chairman
> Khrushchev. Many people who watched the speech thought they'd be
> saying good night to their loved ones for the last time that night.
It was such an odd time. I remember NOT being chilled to the bone
about the confrontation, but my parents were calling and saying
goodbye to friends & family, just in case... it seemed to me to be
another indication of the inevitable. I'd been told to expect that
bomb all my life, and at that point I don't think we teenagers thought
we would ever have any say in how these final decisions were made.
That changed very quickly.
~`~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
marcus
> On Nov 22, 11:13 pm, Joey <josephmarti...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> > November 22 is the anniversary of a sad event in American history;
> > John Kennedy was a great man
>
> into Vietnam or the fact that he brought us within a hair's breadth of
> a nuclear exchange with the USSR?
>
>
>
away with it, as the press looked the other way. ;-)
marcus
I was 12 at the time, and my memory is that we didn't realize how
serious it had been until the crisis was over.
marcus
Once we learned how close we came to nuclear war, it just added to the
overall paranoia about the arms race that we all ready had. That's
why, a year later, on 11/22/63, during the first couple of hours after
JFK was assassinated, many thought it had been done by the USSR, and
World War III was about to begin, and possibly end on the same day.