JFK

the Web Editors 1-30-2017

In the three days since the Trump administration announced an “extreme vetting” process for refugees — and failed to communicate the terms of his order with government agencies, resulting in confusion and an immediate denial of entry to many refugees and green card holders with visas — groups from international corporations to immigration attorneys have stepped up to register their concern. 

 
Gareth Higgins 12-12-2013

THE MOST common image of the assassination of President Kennedy is embedded in the collective consciousness due to the fact that it was the subject of what may be the most-seen film in history, Abraham Zapruder’s 26-second home movie, grainy and garish in color and fact. The more recent eruption of reality television may have left us nearly unshockable, but a long, hard look at Zapruder’s short, hard film is still horrifying. The most provocative context in which I’ve seen the film located is Stephen Sondheim’s meaty musical Assassins. The Broadway production had Neil Patrick Harris as Lee Harvey Oswald with the film projected onto his white T-shirt. That the show took place at Studio 54 served to underline the demonic bargain at the intersection of the military-industrial-circus complex: The nightclub theater location satirized the fact that our stories about killing can either critique the cultural appetite for destruction or serve to perpetuate more of it as a form of entertainment.

If Assassins was the most provocative screen for the Zapruder film, the most politically complex is Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK, now being rereleased to mark the assassination anniversary. It’s one of the greatest examples of cinematic craft applied to polemic (current examples are Captain Phillips and 12 Years a Slave)—edited like a dance, with a television miniseries’ worth of big name actors (Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Walter Matthau, Donald Sutherland, John Candy) in small roles holding up the edifice of big speechifying done by Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones. It’s a thrilling film, and it has intellectual substance—the point is not whether or not the conspiracy theory posited in JFK is true, but that human beings “sin by silence” when we should speak.

QR Blog Editor 11-22-2013

President Kennedy’s casket lies in state in the White House. Photo: Via RNS /Abbie Rowe, court. JFK Presidential Library, Boston

On this date 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was assasinated while in Dallas on a campaign tour. As the nation remembers this event, we reflect on President Kennedy's life and death.

Walter Cronkite, visibly emotional, announced the president's death on a CBS News bulletin.

http://www.cbsnews.com/common/video/cbsnews_player.swf

Kevin Eckstrom 11-20-2013

Photo by Abbie Rowe, National Parks Service, courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Facing crowded pews and heavy hearts, Dallas clergy took to the pulpits on Nov. 24, 1963 to try to make sense of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy just two days before.

“The ministers saw the assassination as an unwelcome opportunity for some serious, city-wide soul-searching,” said Tom Stone, an English professor at Southern Methodist University, who has studied the sermons delivered that day.

“Though Dallas could not be reasonably blamed for the killing, it needed to face up to its tolerance of extremism and its narrow, self-centered values,” Stone said.

As they finished their messages, some, including the Rev. William H. Dickinson of Highland Park Methodist Church and the Rev. William A. Holmes of Northaven Methodist Church, were handed notes: assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had just been gunned down by Jack Ruby.

President and Mrs. Kennedy arrive in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963. Photo: Cecil Stoughton, courtesy JFK Pres. Library, Boston

In November of 1963, C. S. “Jack” Lewis knew he was dying. The Irish-born literary scholar, children’s author, and Christian apologist had come out of a coma in July, only to be diagnosed with end-stage renal failure. He retired from his post at Cambridge University, choosing to die at home in the Kilns, where he lived with his brother, Major Warren (“Warnie”) Lewis.

On Friday, Nov. 22, he retired to his bedroom after lunch. At 4:30 p.m. GMT he took some tea. An hour and a half later, Warnie heard a crash and discovered Jack unconscious. Within three or four minutes, he was dead, exactly one week shy of his 65th birthday.

A few minutes later (11:39 a.m. CST), Air Force One touched down at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, as a motorcade prepared to take President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, along with their entourage, to the Dallas Business and Trade Mart. But the motorcade never arrived at its destination.

After the president suffered mortal gunshot wounds to the head at 12:30 p.m., his limousine rerouted to Parkland Memorial Hospital where the 46-year-old president was dead upon arrival.

Mike Honda 9-28-2011
[caption id="attachment_34190" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (second from the right) during his Peace Corps days in El Salvador."][/caption]
Brian McLaren 12-18-2009
As I suggested in my previous post, I was troubled by some elements of the president'
Gareth Higgins 5-11-2009
Yesterday, under the headline 'Obama's Apology Tour', FoxNews.com, in typical sneering style, published http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/10/world-stage-obama/" href="https://sojo.net/%3Ca%20href%3D"http://www.fox">http://www.fox
Molly Marsh 1-28-2009
As you've probably surmised over the last few weeks, we asked God's Politics contributors to send us some of their favorite books of 2008. Here are a few more to add to your list: