In the next few days, and certainly on Saturday, there are going to be a ton of stories about the JFK assassination, seeing as this year is the 45th anniversary of the crime. There have been plenty already. Many of these will talk about new evidence or some such. There will be this theory and that theory and we’ll all get stirred up again. Look. I will grant that most of these conspiracy plots are interesting in their own ways, and they have led to a few books I enjoyed thoroughly. I will also grant there is some slight chance that there was more than one shooter.
But I sincerely doubt it. Lee Oswald was just a guy who wanted to put a hole in the world, and he got his chance from the sixth-floor window of the Schoolbook Depository. He was mad he was eking out a humdrum living in a country he didn’t much care for. He was mad his wife and little girls wouldn’t move back home to Oak Cliff to live with him. He was mad. Period. He wanted to be somebody, and didn’t really care how. He thought he’d have a trial and get to talk about his beliefs. He’d be a star, albeit a dark one. The sooner we accept this and move on, the better.
