Who Killed JFK? Two New Studies

in Books, History, Politics | May 21st, 2007

Jfkimage_2
Whether you think John F. Kennedy was a great pres­i­dent or just a guy
who enjoyed sul­try birth­day
ser­e­nades (see clip below), you have to admit
his hold on America’s cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion is still pow­er­ful four
decades after his assas­si­na­tion. Two major new works of his­to­ry tack­le
the ques­tion and, pre­dictably, come down on oppo­site sides of it. David
Talbot’s Broth­ers: The Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kennedy Years offers new evi­dence fur­ther­ing the great con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, while Vin­cent Bugliosi’s Reclaim­ing His­to­ry: The Assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy agrees with offi­cial his­to­ry and the War­ren Com­mis­sion.

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing thing about these lat­est prod­ucts of the
Kennedy indus­try is the fact that both books are tak­ing advan­tage of
new media for­mats to com­bat the tra­di­tion­al prob­lem with Big His­to­ry
texts–weight. Bugliosi’s tome comes in at a back-wrench­ing 1,612
pages, so be thank­ful that his pub­lish­ers includ­ed the many end­notes on
an accom­pa­ny­ing CD. (You would be well-advised to save a few months and
read the New York Times review here.) Talbot’s Broth­ers is only a third as long, but that’s still almost 500 pages–so why not enjoy it as an eBook instead, or just check out the excerpt on Salon? Or take in its New York Times review here. If your eyes are tired already, rest assured that both authors also appeared on the Leonard Lopate show (Bugliosi mp3; Tal­bot mp3 ). And if you hap­pen to live in the Bay area, you can go see Tal­bot will be in San Fran­cis­co pro­mot­ing the book tomor­row, May 22.

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David Halberstam’s Last Speech and Supper

in Media, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | April 27th, 2007

      HalberstamAs many know by now, David Hal­ber­stam, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist, was killed in a car acci­den­ton Mon­day just a few short miles from the Stan­ford cam­pus. As the obits were all quick to point out, Hal­ber­stam made his name dur­ing an era that par­al­leled our own, dur­ing the Viet­nam War. And he did it by report­ing facts and truths about the war that incon­ve­nient­ly con­tra­dict­ed the rosy, disin­gen­u­ous claims that were offi­cial­ly com­ing out of Wash­ing­ton. As The New York Times said about its for­mer cor­re­spon­dent, “His dis­patch­es infu­ri­at­ed Amer­i­can mil­i­tary com­man­ders and pol­i­cy­mak­ers in Wash­ing­ton, but they accu­rate­ly reflect­ed the real­i­ties on the ground.” Hal­ber­stam’s account of how Amer­i­ca got it wrong in Viet­nam were all famous­ly recount­ed in 1972 best­seller The Best and the Bright­est.

Hal­ber­stam spent this past Sat­ur­day night din­ning in the com­pa­ny of fel­low jour­nal­ists from UC Berke­ley, just after giv­ing a speech (mp3 — tran­script) at the uni­ver­si­ty (see orig­i­nal event page here). On Wednes­day, Radio Open Source (mp3) talked with Hal­ber­stam’s sup­per guests — Orville Schell, dean of the Berke­ley grad­u­ate pro­gram in jour­nal­ism; Mark Dan­ner of The New York Review of Books; and Sandy Tolan of NPR — and they recon­struct­ed their din­ner con­ver­sa­tions, which touched on the Iraq war, the com­par­a­tive state of jour­nal­ism dur­ing Viet­nam and Iraq, and Hal­ber­stam’s sense of mor­tal­i­ty fol­low­ing his heart attack last year. They also recalled Hal­ber­stam’s dogged approach to jour­nal­ism and how he resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to line up behind the gov­ern­ment posi­tion dur­ing times of war, even when faced with the threat of being called unpa­tri­ot­ic. Of course, if you watched Bill Moy­er’s PBS expose on Wednes­day, you’ll know that we’re not see­ing enough of this these days.

Give this seg­ment a lis­ten (get mp3 here), and also spend some time watch­ing the video clip below. Here, you get Hal­ber­stam reflect­ing on his days as a 28-year old reporter in Viet­nam and the sig­nif­i­cant pres­sures that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment brought to bear against him, all of which leaves you think­ing — plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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America’s Shadow Army in Iraq

in Politics | March 20th, 2007

Here is where the ide­ol­o­gy of pri­va­ti­za­tion log­i­cal­ly ends up. As part of its occu­pa­tion, the US gov­ern­ment has flood­ed Iraq with pri­vate con­trac­tors. And while some build bridges and oth­ers help pump oil, a good num­ber car­ry out mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Amer­i­ca’s name, and they’ve posi­tioned them­selves to be sub­ject to nei­ther mil­i­tary nor civil­ian sys­tems of jus­tice. More­over, they have also stead­fast­ly refused to han­dover infor­ma­tion about their activ­i­ties to Con­gress. This inter­view on Fresh Air (iTunes Feed mp3) gives you good back­ground infor­ma­tion on Black­wa­ter USA, the Amer­i­can mer­ce­nary army oper­at­ing in Iraq appar­ent­ly with­out over­sight or account­abil­i­ty.


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The Iraqi Experience in Digital

in Politics | December 11th, 2006

IraqimageThe vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans have only a remote sense of what Iraqis
are expe­ri­enc­ing these days. We hear about peo­ple dying dai­ly — 10 in a mar­ket here, 30 in a mosque attack there — but it comes across as sta­tis­tics, as num­bers divorced from a real­i­ty that we can empathize with. In past wars, you could blame this fail­ure to under­stand the war in con­crete, human terms on gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship and timid report­ing. But, with this war, the pub­lic does­n’t have that excuse. This is the first major Amer­i­can war fought in the age of the inter­net, and, as a result, a fuller pic­ture of the war has always been just  a Google search away. With that thought in mind, I have pulled togeth­er some dig­i­tal resources that paint a fuller pic­ture of what the US inva­sion has giv­en every­day Iraqis. In clear terms, you can see what life real­ly looks like in this new­found democ­ra­cy.

Pod­cast: For starters, I would high­ly rec­om­mend this recent pod­cast from Open Source, a PRI pro­duc­tion. It includes Iraqis and experts talk­ing about the dis­lo­ca­tion of many Iraqi cit­i­zens, and the grow­ing refugee cri­sis in Syr­ia and Jor­dan. (Note: this pod­cast requires iTunes, which you can down­load for free here.)

Blogs: This col­lec­tion of blogs writ­ten most­ly by Iraqis in Eng­lish will give you a real-time look at life in Iraq.

Pic­tures: This pho­to diary by CBS News offers an extend­ed archive of pho­tos cap­tur­ing the dai­ly expe­ri­ence in Iraq.

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