Taylor Marsh, the self-described “recovering beauty queen” turned political blogger, comments on the aesthetics of Rob Lowe as the iconic JFK in National Geographic’s forthcoming JFK feature and she wonders about the credibility of the script by the JFK fabulist Bill O’Reilly.
“Bill O’Reilly’s memory is playing tricks on him, to put it kindly, because there are witnesses that know he wasn’t where he said he was in his book,” she writes.
Want to know more about Bill O’Reilly, historian?
See:
“Investigator’s tape exposes Bill O’Reilly’s JFK fib” (JFK Facts, Jan. 31, 2013)
“Bill O’Reilly’s ‘fun’ JFK fictions” (JFK Facts,Feb. 4, 2103).
The “lone nutters” today of the JFK assassination, be they MSM or internet, remind me of the “Southern revisionist” historians of the early 20th century (that means 1900’s) who wrote a bunch of books saying that the war of Northern Agression had absolutely nothing to do with slavery… even though American politics had been ripped apart with the issue for the 50 years pre Civil War.
That would be folks like Robert Dallek, Max Holland, Chris Matthews, James Swanson, add in Robert Caro (who says there is not even a *hint* of LBJ involvement0.
I agree that Caro fails miserably when he gets to the JFK assassination, and the lead up in the book, “Master of the Senate” where he covers the 1960 convention. But he helped me to understand how ruthless LBJ was in his earlier volumes, and even in “Master of the Senate”. I get the feeling he got invested in the mainstream storyline and didn’t want to rock the boat or perhaps lose his “premier historian” position with his publisher and with the media. It’s still an act of cowardice, in my opinion. Perhaps 100 years or so from now, future mainstream historians won’t be invested as the present crop has been, and will dig into the truth, be more honest. Like the issues of slavery and Indian tribal removal, it took about 100 years before historians in the mainstream got the story right, and didn’t try to whitewash over what really happened.
Yep. Some folks who are invested in the fantasy have to die first, before the truth can be acknowledged among the political & historical elites.
I’m surprised that Rob Lowe is acting in a Bill O’Reilly-inspired film. I’ll bet one of his former acting partners, Martin Sheen, wouldn’t have gone near that script.
I actually read Bill O’Reilly’s book about JFK. It was interesting how he worked his way around the Oswald material, considering his former investigative journalist past. It’s as if he wanted to erase any thoughts or doubts he once had about the Warren Commission. Gerald Posner and Bill O’Reilly are the book writers working to sanitize the past. Anyone with a critical thinking brain can find the flaws, but most people don’t have the time or the interest to look very carefully. This whitewashing of our history is not healthy for our Republic. It reminds me of the Virginia history books of the fifties and sixties that we had to read in school that refused to dig into the slavery issue, painted John Brown as a ‘dangerous insane radical’ and very carefully portrayed the South’s loss in the Civil War as a lost cause, but a “noble one”. The same thing is going on with O’Reilly’s treatment of the JFK assassination.
I’m sure this will be a complete work of fiction.
Not so much as to Jack and Jackie Kennedy, about which much is known. Only so much trashing or romanticizing is possible.
But lots as to Lee and Marina, who are mysteries still.
The public will lap it up, and the producer will make lots of money.
The cause of truth, as usual, will not be served.