Alex Cox takes out after Ron Rosenbaum and Errol Morris

[Joseph McBride]

http://presidentandprovocateur.com/2013/...ithsonian/


Filmmaker Alex Cox, who has written a good new book on the Kennedy
assassination and made his own incisive filmic riposte to Errol Morris's
deplorable film THE UMBRELLA MAN, fires off a witty salvo
in response to the new article by Ron Rosenbaum in the Smithsonian magazine
in which Morris (an old friend and great filmmaker whom I generally respect a great deal,
but not in this subject area) shows his ignorance of the assassination
and Rosenbaum displays more of his habitually rude, contemptuous sneering
at us conspiracy theorists. Alex strikes just the right tone
of mockery of their irrelevant ad hominem tactics and by his offering serious points
about what should be the topic at hand. I now propose
forming a society of disheveled, aging pedants who
are also conspiracy theorists and nominate Alex
as our leader.

[Anthony Thorne]

Morris should be embarassed about his snide approach to assassination researchers, a majority of whom have done more study into the subject than he has. If he dislikes conspiracy theorists that much he should blame the HSCA - their conclusions about probable conspiracy, as half-hearted as they were, are as 'official' as the CIA-assisted Warren Commission he's such a big fan of. (I appreciate that Morris has done good work - i.e THE THIN BLUE LINE and others - but reading and hearing snide attacks from 'critics' who have done zero legwork begins to pale after a while).

Joseph, can you offer some further brief thoughts on Alex's book and what you liked about it? I like Alex's writing, I'm just curious how he's fared in discussing the assassination.

[Tracy Riddle]

I have to take issue with a couple of things he wrote:

First, it could never have been used as evidence in a court of law since its chain of possession was so clearly broken. Only Oswald's murder, in police custody, allowed the film to be treated as "evidence", by the establishment media. It would have been thrown out of court if the accused had been allowed a trial.

But it was used as evidence in the Shaw trial, shown to the jury, and identified by Zapruder as the film he shot.

Second, in the possession of the Secret Service and the FBI, the Zapruder film was damaged and frames were lost.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was the original film that was damaged while it was in LIFE's possession, not the SS/FBI copies.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I have to take issue with a couple of things he wrote:

First, it could never have been used as evidence in a court of law since its chain of possession was so clearly broken. Only Oswald's murder, in police custody, allowed the film to be treated as "evidence", by the establishment media. It would have been thrown out of court if the accused had been allowed a trial.

But it was used as evidence in the Shaw trial, shown to the jury, and identified by Zapruder as the film he shot.

Second, in the possession of the Secret Service and the FBI, the Zapruder film was damaged and frames were lost.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was the original film that was damaged while it was in LIFE's possession, not the SS/FBI copies.

That is corrrect on both counts.

Concerning point number two, Robert Groden showed the restored film at Harvard in 1993. I was startled.

WHen you see it with frames 208-11 it raises real suspicions as to why why these frames "disappeared".

Because it is clear as the water around Tahiti that Kennedy was hit BEFORE he went behind the Stemmons freeway sign. Which means it was a conspiracy since the Commission said that a tree obscured the line of sight from the so called "sniper's nest"--which never existed-- to the limousine. Therefore that shot had to come from elsewhere.

I will be using this in my upcoming discussion of the Clown's performance in Skeptic. The CLown of course is my term for Dave Reitzes.

[Alex Cox]

Thanks for the corrections, fellers. I have adjusted my piece accordingly.

Will you be commenting on Errol Morris' analysis of the Zapruder film, also?

[Anthony Thorne]

Alex, I can't speak for the others here but I located and started reading the Rosenbaum/Morris article referenced at the top of this thread, and I found it excruciating. I couldn't get through it. The amount of sour swipes (both overt and subtle) towards researchers in this area makes me lose some of the will to live. My hat is off to anyone with the stomach to digest such stuff and respond accordingly.

I hope you didn't find the factual corrections to your piece (neither of which I probably would have picked up myself) to indicate a lack of respect for your efforts. It's very pleasing to see someone in the media (to whatever extent) take a responsible position towards the assassination, and doubly pleasing when it's someone I already have respect for such as yourself. (Here in Melbourne I screened your thoughtful intro to - I think - THE PARALLAX VIEW, the one that referenced Dorothy Kilgallen, to a mate, and it raised a chuckle from both of us).

Have you come across any other books on the case yourself in recent weeks that you thought were worthwhile? There are a bunch of new ones out on the case (and reprints of some old ones) but the quality thereof is all over the shop. Also since you have the floor can you tell us a bit about your book rather than me bugging Joseph to give his impressions of it?

[Jim DiEugenio]

First of all, everyone should know that Alex is one the very few people in the film world who really has taken an interest in this subject. You can count the number on the fingers of your hands. And it may not even be that many. I know this since Alex subscribed to Probe for a number of years. In fact, he actually contributed an article to the journal. We just happen to have two of them here right now in McBride and Alex. Plus Alex has a book out on the case right now, The President and the Provocateur. I have not read it yet but will soon.

I just might go ahead and reply since I have already gone after Rosenbaum twice of late. But I had no idea that Morris was in cahoots with him.

Morris had done such good work exposing the DPD in the Randall Adams case, that it is kind of shocking to see him doing this crap. Plus, the stuff he got out of McNamara for Fog of War was really revealing about Vietnam. And he cannot put two and two together? The short he did on The Umbrella Man was really callow. I don't know who looked worse there, Thompson or Morris. But that was MSM all the way.

[Tracy Riddle]

I can't emphasize enough how for many liberals, the JFK assassination is a conspiracy too far. It means, first of all, hurting Earl Warren's reputation (a hero to most of them, including myself when I was much younger). That stops most of them right there. You can try to explain that Warren only thought he was preventing WWIII and a new Red Scare at home, but it doesn't help.

Also, many liberals still want to have faith in federal government institutions, and this case doesn't make any of them look good. So it's an ideological mindset that they can't change, a new paradigm they can't accept.

[Joseph McBride]

And working for the NY Times (for which Morris has a blog) does not make a filmmaker/author
eager to engage in conspiracy theorizing on the assassination. Morris
made THE UMBRELLA MAN for the Times, after all. He also does a lot
of commercials for corporations to make a living so he can do his documentary films. I am disappointed
in him on this subject, though, because I admire his other work, and as
Jim DiEugenio says, THE THIN BLUE LINE takes on the DPD in a similar
case. The murder of Officer Robert Wood and the scapegoating of
Randall Adams while the real murderer was let to roam free have many similarities to the Tippit case. And some
of the same people were involved in scapegoating both Oswald
and Adams (e.g., Gus Rose, Henry Wade). It's a great
film. Morris's recent book on the Jeffrey MacDonald case is excellent and shows
that he can dig deeply into a cold case if he wants. He used to work
as a private investigator as well.

Alex Cox's THE PRESIDENT AND THE PROVOCATEUR: THE PARALLEL
LIVES OF JFK AND LEE HARVEY OSWALD shows that Cox has done
long and serious research and analysis of the JFK case. His parallel
approach does not offer a simplistic equivalency between these two very different men
but is part of a filmic collage approach to the case that intertwines
the various conflicts in the world and the nation that both men
were involved in and that ultimately resulted in the assassination
and the scapegoating of Oswald after his legend was set up by
the CIA. This results in a complex portrait of dangerous times
and many fascinating timeline proximities of events that may not
always be directly related but are part of the overall madness of
the Cold War that the book palpably involves us in as events
approach their climax. Oswald and Kennedy are shown as
similar in that the were both in the middle of the Cold War
vortex and were torn apart by it.

Cox is from England, though he was educated at UCLA and now lives and teaches
in the US, and I found it valuable to have a European perspective
on the American involvement in the Cold War (a conflict
blown way out of proportion at the time, especially in regard
to the disparity in nuclear weapons between the US and the USSR) and the insanity
of the Joint Chiefs et al (Cox pulls no punches). He is harsh on JFK
frequently for showing timidity and equivocating, harsher than I would be in some instances
(some of these situations were more complex and what JFK was dealing with more difficult), but shows
JFK evolving toward peaceful coexistence with the Soviets and
a possible detente with Cuba and a disengagement from Vietnam. He also discusses the conflicting moves
and statements by JFK in these areas that I see as a product of a gradually maturing politician caught
between almost irresolvable pressures and trying to find a way out
with increasing clarity and courage. Cos, however, makes you
reexamine your views on that period in American and world history, in a reasoned dialogue that is always good to have whether you
agree or disagree or not.

Oswald is shown with considerable clarity as a US agent who
played multiple roles (and was doubled) and who ultimately found
himself over his head and being deceived and used by his handlers to take
the fall in their murder of JFK. The book is a lively read, and Cox
has a refreshingly witty and often sarcastic style that skewers
the madness of the hawks and rightwing fanatics of the time
as well as JFK's fitful attempts to compromise with his enemies
before realizing how futile that was.

The book has a keen sense of the Zeitgeist surrounding the
assassination, which results from an author having a long
and rich engagement and perspective. For Rosenbaum to
criticize Cox as a "pedant" (an adjective I am proud to share)
shows an anti-intellectualism all too common among defenders
of the official lone-nut theory. Even Richard Hofstadter (as I discuss
in my book) mocked conspiracy theorists for engaging in scholarship.
He criticized them (us) for "that quality of pedantry" (you see
where Rosenbaum et al get their language) and actually
wrote, "One of the impressive things about paranoid
literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the
almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows."

[Tracy Riddle]

Take the murders of Goodman/Schwerner/Chaney in Mississippi in 1964 - liberals have no problem accepting a conspiracy of local cops and KKK being responsible for that. Hoover and the FBI were forced by Robert Kennedy and LBJ to actually investigate that one and bribe an informant to tell where the bodies were buried.

But hey, that's Mississippi! We all know what they're like. And Henry Wade and Dallas police may have framed other innocent people, liberals can accept that too, as long as you don't mention Oswald's name. But once the weight of the federal government and the national media got behind the lone-nut story, the JFK official solution would have to be accepted without question.

I can only compare it to the way the Japanese have collective amnesia about the crimes they committed in China, Korea and elsewhere in the 1930s and 1940s. They won't take responsibility for it, won't admit it in their textbooks. It never happened, ok?