"Back, and to the right. Back, and to the right." HBO has been running Oliver Stone’s JFK on one of its side-channels recently and I caught myself watching it again last weekend. Donald Sutherland’s "composite" spook and his "ask yourself who benefitted" speculation notwithstanding (although I wouldn’t put anything past LBJ), I thought the movie got the scattered facts of the conspiracy theorists mostly right, although the seriousness of the subject matter deserved a little more care, even for Hollywood. For his sins, Stone ended up as a subject of scorn for daring to violate the ultimate historical taboo – one of the first victims of a new kind of assassination, that being the politics of personal destruction through ridicule (see below).Plaisted speculates (after reading a Paul Krugman column) that, just as Oliver Stone was "assassinated" by ridicule, so too will the Democratic presidential nominee. What he doesn't say is it helps us "wing-nuts" when they are so ridiculous.
But then, so is the conspiracy-believing Mike Plaisted. Oops, I just "assassinated" him.
