Bugliosi Huffs McWatter's Diesel Fumes

[19e...@mail.com]

On page 63 of his ridiculous book, "Pretense To History," lame brain
Bugliosi tells us, "the smell of diesel exhaust" permeated the floorboards
of the bus. No footnote. Why does he think he knows this? Are there holes
in the bus's "floorboards?" Does a bus even have floorboards? What is this
garbage? This is fiction without even pretense to fact. You'd expect this
sort of thing from Bill O'Reilly's ghost writer, but we're supposed to
take Bugliosi seriously, aren't we? He's written this 1500-page book,
pared down from...I forget how many pages he said...and he leaves in his
stupid speculation about "floorboards?" Has Bugliosi ever ridden a bus, I
wonder? Why would there be holes in the floor of a Texas bus? Maybe in the
northeast, the road salt would rot them out, but even a 50-year-old bus
should have an intact floor in Texas. Was Texas buying 20-year-old buses
from the MBTA? This stupid hack Bugliosi is just making up stuff. That is
not history.

[BOZ]

WAS JFK KILLED BY THE DIESEL EXHAUST? WHO CARES?

[19e...@mail.com]

Diesel fumes killed "Reclaiming History," not JFK.

[Robert Reynolds]

You are underestimating the detail available from the Warren Commission
documents.

Commission Document 488
(https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10888) includes half a
dozen photographs of McWatters' bus, No. 433, as well as a seating
schematic and technical details. It obviously has floorboards, or the
seats would be suspended over nothing. Having lived overseas in places
where busses made by the White Motor Car Company were still in use, it
sounds normal to me that diesel fumes would seep back into the bus when
you are stuck in a major traffic jam. There is other detail in the passage
you cite that can probably derived from various other sources: McWatters
tapping his air-brakes, traffic backed up four blocks, etc.

Is Bugliosi at fault for using these details without word by word
annotation? On page 1535 he defends "writing in a narrative style normally
reserved for fiction" because "the unprecedented richness of the
historical record on every single incident in this case has permitted it."

I for one don't find any problems with this; the main point is that the
evidentiary data is sourced in almost agonizing detail. Find a detail in
this passage where Bugliosi has gotten this wrong.

[19e...@mail.com]

Of course the bus had a floor, but do you really think they were boards?
More likely, they were riveted or welded steel plates. Yes, a bus stopped
in traffic might produce the smell of fumes in the bus, but are they
coming up through the floor? Isn't it more likely that it comes in through
the windows?

Of course, who cares? But the very point is the Omniscient narration.
Bugliosi does not know that the bus got smelly with diesel fumes. Yet he
states it as fact, the purpose being, presumably, to hoodwink the jury. He
writes in a fictional style because it is more persuasive than a factual
style. But it is more persuasive just because it is fictional; it allows
the author to define every detail and create the illusion of omniscience.
It is dishonest. Who cares whether there were diesel fumes in the bus?
What's the point? To keep the reader spellbound. It's a mind control
technique, not history. YOU prove to me that the floor of that bus was
made of boards! I don't believe it. Bugliosi isn't casting any spells on
me.

[BOZ]

Vin Diesel?

[Robert Reynolds]

Okay I understand your objection better now, but I still think you are
mistaken on the meaning of the word floorboard. The floor of a car is
generally called a floorboard, or floorboards in some cases, especially in
the days before unibodies.

See e.g. the testimony of William Greer (2 H 129): "The back seat on this
car would raise 8 inches. It was electric and you could lift, you could
raise the seat 8 inches from the ground, from the floorboards."

I also think you are off on the meaning of omnisicent narrative, I will
comment on the thread with that title to keep the discussion from
spreading across too many different threads.

[redhair...@gmail.com]

Yes, "floorboards" can be used as a colloquialism. I know that. But a bus
would not have literal floorboards, so how are the diesel fumes going to
come up through the bus's floor? The point isn't really about wood vs.
steel, it's about Bugliosi using tricks on his readers. He makes up shit
to sell his story.

[Anthony Marsh]

First time on the Internet?
That is a very old meme that we discussed here several times.
Yes, JFK could raise the rear seat and he did for other trips, but not
for Dallas. You would notice the difference right away.


http://the-puzzle-palace.com/JFK-Limousine-6-15-61--03.jpg

[redhair...@gmail.com]

Of course, you couldn't do it without intentionally misunderstanding the
poster's point, but you made yourself slightly useful. I've never seen the
rear seat raised up like that. Maybe you're not as useless as everybody
says after all.

[David Von Pein]

On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 9:27:20 PM UTC-4, Anthony Marsh wrote:

LOL. Oh, for Pete sake, Tony! Robert Reynolds merely used that Greer
testimony about the limo to highlight the word "floorboards". He didn't
care about the rest of the Greer quote.

Don't you ever comprehend what you read? Or don't you ever read a post all
the way through? ~shrug~

[Anthony Marsh]

Thanks. You prove my point. Most WC defenders and new posters have not
seen as much evidence as I have. And I upload it to my web site so that
it is available to everyone on both sides.

[Anthony Marsh]

I like the way you post off-point. The point of his confusion was the
ability tto raise the rear seat. I know that conspiracy theory. But it
fails when you can actually SEE what it looks like when it is raised. So
that is why I wanted to post a picture that shows what it looks like when
it is raised. Do you know the trips where JFK raised it? Give you a hint.
WHo is the shortest dignitary he ever hosted? It's hailee unlikely that
you would remember him.

http://the-puzzle-palace.com/STC-336-16-63.jpg

[redhair...@gmail.com]

You have a website, comrade? Oh, I see. But you don't advertise because
you despise the American capitalist system. Yes, yes. We once had many
such as you.

[Anthony Marsh]

Advertise? Everyone knows it after 30 years. I used to include in my
signature on Prodigy or COmcast.

[David Von Pein]

Here we have a classic example of a thirsty conspiracy theorist who is
just looking for (and *dying to find!*) some little nitpicky meaningless
thing to complain about in Vincent Bugliosi's masterpiece of a book.

And, of course, the thirsty conspiracy theorist found some nitpicky
meaningless things to complain about too. The conspiracy theorist was
*bound* to find a few things to gripe about in a huge tome like
"Reclaiming History". How could the thirsty CTer possibly *not* find a few
meaningless nitpicky things to gripe about in a book of that immense
size?---especially when the first chapter of more than 300 pages was
written in a "narrative" style that is usually reserved for writers of
fictional novels which normally include quite a bit of "literary license".

I too, in fact, have found several errors and inaccuracies in Mr.
Bugliosi's excellent JFK book (see link below). But, just like the
nitpicky meaningless things discovered by the thirsty conspiracy theorist,
the errors and mistakes in my list don't add up to a hill of beans when
placed beside the enormous number of documented (and sourced) facts that
reside within the pages of "Reclaiming History".

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2015/04/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-929.html

Also....

Lacking any citation from a witness connected with the JFK case (which I
haven't been able to find), it's my guess that Bugliosi did, indeed,
employ some "literary license" when talking about the diesel fumes coming
from Cecil McWatters' bus. And I would guess further that Vince's
justification for including such a passage in his book was this picture of
McWatters' old city bus....

https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0497b.htm

....which looks to me like a bus that just might have had "the smell of
diesel exhaust permeating the floorboards".

[David Von Pein]

Once again Tony misses the point. He still seems to think Robert R. gave a
damn about the ability to raise the back seat.

And yet Anthony thinks *I* am the one posting "off-point".

Incredible.

[redhair...@gmail.com]

Was it something I said?

[Anthony Marsh]

You seemed to miss the point. This was not about what Roberts said.
The poster is hinting atthe kook concpspiracy theory that the SS raised
the rear seat to make JFK an easier target.

[robert....@xxx.com]

You seem to think that Bugliosi is describing something illogical, that one
cannot smell gas fumes on busses without a hole in the floorboards. This is
not necessarily so, especially in the case of White Motor Company busses;
see for example:

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/bus-stop-classic/bus-stop-classics-white-motors-corporation-urban-transit-buses-better-known-for-trucks-they-made-buses-too/

. . . where the poster says "I was told the Whites were pretty reliable
but passengers often complained about gas fumes in the coaches."

I will concede, however, that I have not yet found the source(s) VB used
for this particular description. If you want to rake him over the coals
for inadequate annotation because of this, that's a strict standard, but
go ahead. To say VB "makes up shit to sell his story" however is a huge
step beyond that, and requires far more substantial examples than you've
given.

To clarify on my citation of Greer's testimony, I only meant that
"floorboards" was sometimes used to mean "the floor of a car." Sorry if
that was unclear.

[redhair...@gmail.com]

Bugliosi said the smell of the fumes "permeated the floorboards." He just
made up that shit to sell his book to readers who like that kind of shit.
How do fumes "permeate" floorboards? How would he know? Has he ever put
his nose down to bus floorboards? Obviously he just made that up because
it sounds good. That is not history. That is an element of fictional
writing. He puts fictional writing into his "Reclaiming HISTORY." That is
disgusting. That's what Bill O'Reilly would do. It's not what a serious
historian would do. Ergo, Bugliosi is not a serious historian. He is a
hack.