The History Channel is hardly PBS. They run all sorts of idiot stuff on there.

If they deface Mt. Rushmore by putting Reagan on there I want the closest dynamite concession. It won't last a year.

The History channel can be bought. All they want is viewers. They are completely devoid of any sort of ethics. Their only interest is to boost viewership. If that means right wing smears of the Kennedy family so be it. If they thought they could boost ratings by showing left wing propaganda they would do that.

The right wing has been smearing the Kennedy family for 50 years now. They have already convinced the people that are susceptible to their character assassination efforts. But the vast majority of Americans will continue to view the Kennedy's realistically and favorably no matter how much screaming and yelling and lieing the right does on the History channel or elsewhere. Americans know they Kennedy's were not and are not perfect. They understand well how human the Kennedy family was and is. They also know, and no amount of propaganda can change this, that the Kennedy family has done more for the common people in this country than any other political family in the history of the Republic.

From a progressive point of view JFK was no hero at all he was a far right McCarthyite when you come down to it. As a human being aside from a good sense of humor, very deficient. He has been deflated as a legend for most of us that really loved him back then. We progressives never liked Reagan, so there was nothing much to deflate, the people who did like him still do, probably always will. Both of them would be absurd on Mt. Rushmore... but then again Mt. Rushmore is absurd to begin with.

The "History" Channel (air quotes mine) likes to run "The Men Who Killed Kennedy," a travesty of pseudojournalism that advances one of the more lunatic of the JFK Assassination conspiracies. So in a strange way, adding Surnow's junk to the lineup may provide a useful balance to its bankrupt, pseudo-historical programming.

This thread has been hilarious and revealing how it has come full circle.

Jon Taplin starts out with the premise that the "REAL" JFK legacy frustrates and annoys conservatives who feel it outshines Ronald Reagan, so they have anointed Surnow, who is portrayed as a violent conservative thug to fabricate a bunch of lies to show an "UNREAL" legacy of the Kennedy Clan to some how elevate the undeserving 40th President.

So we have the real story of JFK told by the left...and the lies told by the alleged Kennedy haters on the right.

Forgetting the fact that none of us has seen the product Surnow will produce, we immediately are inundated with a psychedelic moon dance of liberal jibberish about how conservatives killed the golden boy of Socialism, President Kennedy. Yet we was not a socialist, he was killed by a socialist because of his anti-socialist beliefs. But that is the rub. The reason for the crazy conspiracy stories can be found in the alleged comments of Jackie Kennedy at the time. When she was told that her husband had been killed by a Socialist who hated her husbands anti-communist beliefs, she is said to have lamented that she had wished for his legacy's sake it had been a white supremacist. According to Pierre Salinger, Jackie Kennedy decided at that moment to create the concept of Camelot and in an interview only days after his death, she told Life magazine of stories of the two of them before bed listening to the music of Camelot in the White house, even going so far as to quote the lyrics.

So Kennedy insiders have always taken pride in the Kennedy family's skill at manipulating imagery to their favor such as the stories of the Kennedy Nixon debate. But those lying Republicans are always trying to bring in fact checkers to sneak a peek behind the image that has been created.

Now here we have the defenders of the truth.

You trot out James Douglas' JFK conspiracy theory. Oh Really?

This piece of garbage is a favorite of fantasy land's number one fool, Oliver Stone. It is required reading amongst the 911 truther communities. And is hailed by an army of conspiracy buffs, 99% of which are all on the left. They consider this the REAL story about JFK.

But why is this JFK meme so favored by the left?

Because just like the 911 truthers with their stories of Jews fleeing Manhatten, Bush planting charges in the World Trade center, Rumsfeld firing missiles at himself in the pentagon and so on, it is just too hard to accept the truth, because the truth shatters a construct of reality that they are just too delusional to let go of.

If you were to accept the idea that JFK was killed by a Socialist that hated the President for his well documented anti-communist core beliefs, that he took with him to the grave (regardless of the wishful thinking of Oliver Stone and other adherents to the death bed conversion), then you might be admitting that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had he lived might not have liked you or your left wing politics. Furthermore to admit that a leftist killed your hero, is to admit that leftists are sometimes murderers and bad guys. There seems no justice in it to you. It doesn't fit into your nice and tidy worldview that all evil has one source...not Islamic radicals, not Josef Stalin, or Mao or Benito Mussolini...it all comes from the party of Lincoln. They must have done it. You want them to have done it. Just as Jackie wished a white supremacist had done it, so she could say he died for Civil rights, which he had dragged his feet on, much to the anger of MLK.

Oliver Stone and James Douglas are part of a community that not only blames conservatives for the murder of JFK, they have specifically named Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, GHW Bush, and yes, even George W. Bush was in on the JFK assassination conspiracy.

Wow, that's a pretty big dragnet. Every Republican President elected in the last half century was involved in the murder of JFK. As the story goes, Nixon was the bagman. He started laying the Cuban groundwork as VP. Reagan played his part as governor by obstructing certain extraditions. Ford doctored the Warren commission AND appointed Bush 41 to CIA who sent his young son to strongarm witnesses to not testify.

Oh it gets better....

The 911 truthers who host Douglas regularly at their events and brag that he is a signatory on their 911 manifestos, claim that...DRUMROLL....the JFK assasination was a nearly half century old plan to lay the ground work for 911 and their ultimate goal to take over the middle east and then the world.

Ta-Da!!!

No lie. This is what Douglas and these leftist nutjobs have dreamt up as the REAL JFK story. But those lying conservatives and their fact checkers are pecking away at us. They want us to believe Bush 41 was in on the JFK assasination for some oil scheme he had with the Shah of Iran and he recruited his son George W. to join him in his crowning glory to eventually take over the middle east oil fields. It all fits together so nice, doesn't it.

These people never rest. Do they believe RFK was killed in what amounts to the first of many Middle East Anti Zionist terrorist attacks on Americans in the form of Socialist Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan? No, that would not fit into their world view now would it? Who do they claim did it?

No surprise here either. They claim the same army of people that killed his brother did it. Mafia, GOP, Anti-Fidel thugs, Right wing extremists, CIA, and a whole array of other mysterious yet tight lipped organizations. Nixon pardoned RFK Nemesis Jimmy Hoffa later so, that tags tricky dick. Reagan was Governor, so he helped the coverup. ...and here comes the Shah of Iran again...they claim Sirhan's accomplice was a spy for the Iranians, who for what its worth cut his teeth ousting Socialist Mossadeq in the 1950s while Nixon was VP and I'm sure we can toss Prescott Bush in there too somehow. So now we have three generations of the Bush dynasty whacking the Kennedy dynasty to get their paws on Middle Eastern oil. Bush 41's General Norman Shwarzkopf was in Iran while his father was masterminding Mossadeq's ouster. Stormin' Norman is in on the whole grassy knoll thing too I guess.

The nice thing about conspiracies that are so big that virtually the entire Republican party is part of it, any one that raises a doubt or questions the conspiracy must be a part of the plot and with so many millions of people involved, how can you not be attached in some way to someone that has previously been accused. Its like Lee Harvey Oswald was never even born. He is a figment of a Capricorn one sound stage and the entire Party of Lincoln has a Kevin Bacon number of ONE with every evil force and event of all time in the minds of the left.

This is why Jim Garrison was laughed out of court in his lifetime, unlike Oliver Stones portrayal. This is why Kennedy clan member Joe McCarthy undid himself.

There comes a point where you have to step back and say, maybe JFK really hated leftists and they hated him enough that one of them shot him. And maybe another leftist who hated RFK's support of Israel hated him enough to shoot him. Maybe a lot of Leftists in the 1960s were really violent and attacked a lot of people.

...and maybe the entire Republican party is not secretly plotting Assassinations in order to steal oil and destroy the earth. I think this delusional fantasy making that the left imbibes to the point of drunkeness is so ridiculous it is time someone tells the truthers and the James Douglases of the left what Republican Joseph Welch said to Kennedy clan member Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

To the point of Jon Toplin's piece about the REAL JFK legacy. It is not the conservatives that are confused about the REAL JFK, it is the legion of nutty leftists that can't wrap their brains around the fact that Kennedy might not be what they think he was, he was actually better....and the people that killed the Kennedys were not Republicans, they were something much worse, they were Hateful Socialists. I'm sorry historical events don't fall in to the slots you have laid out for them. Open your eyes and live with it. Who knows Surnow might be good therapy for your recovery.