It's what they don't say ...

I've just watched this, and really enjoyed having so much of the full history of the event laid out in factual manner.

A few quibbles, though. Like most documentaries, it wasn't rigorous about *all* its facts, and laid them out in a manner that fitted its pre-determined conclusion. I know, it's what many documentaries do, but I'm still hanging out for a warts-and-all documentary on the subject that shows both the bits that fit a certain conclusion, and the bits that don't. For instance: I know running time is always an issue, but instead of having Posner (who's incontrovertibly of one specific conclusion about the event) bluntly saying that Oswald's guilt in Tippett's murder is unquestionable, and then leaving that matter as if it was solved, some effort to show or address the eye-witnesses who refused to identify Oswald as the murderer of Tippett even when coerced to do so, along with the evidence for his guilt, would have been honest.

As a specific example of this documentary's method, I found the explanation of the so-called "Magic Bullet" very frustrating. There were distinct positives in their approach — I'd never seen, for instance, the way Connolly's jacket puffed out pointed out like that — but there was obfuscation as well. The whole business of a computer model made from the flat, 2d, low-res Zapruder film, and that mathematically "proving" the angle of trajectory of the bullet pointing back to the "sniper's nest" was just completely unscientific nonsense. And even moreso when it becomes clear that the person who created the "model" was already of the "single lone nut" opinion when he made the model to "prove" it. I'm certainly not arguing that there wasn't a single bullet, and that it didn't come from the 6th floor of the TSBD, but claiming that this computer model "proved" it was completely flim-flam, and immediately degraded the credibility of the documentary.

More to the point, though, I wanted to see how it then went on to explain the wound in Connolly's wrist and thigh, which both in the Zapruder footage and the computer model weren't in the same line of trajectory as JFK's back and neck and Connolly's right chest. But ... when it comes to those further wounds, the documentary suddenly changes the subject. And again, the cedibility of the documentary goes out the window.

And I was just disgusted when it began its character assassination of people like Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison — apparently simply because they challenged the Warren Commission findings. (No other reasons were stated.) I'm content to hear that Garrison was wrong, but I want to know why, not just be expected to accept that he was because "Many people believe that Garrison was deluded". Every person on the planet could believe that, and it still wouldn't make him wrong in fact. I wanted to hear the facts, but by this point the documentary had already become blatant propaganda for a certain point of view, with the only chosen talking heads being the people who espoused that same conclusion.

And as the thing glided towards its conclusion, it was describing different points of view with pejorative-laden terms like "conspiracy theorists". So, showing its true colours, at the end.


Ah well. I'm disappointed that we can't seem to discuss anything these days without hyperbole and emotive cherry-picking peppered with pejoratives. It seems like belief always precedes and predetermines "facts" now, and the way to differentiate one's train of thought is through ad hominem attacks on those who oppose it. That's a genuine loss, I think, and I can't respect it.



You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.