Newspaper Clippings on Jfk Assassination

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exile again and for a moment wastheione-man office of the New Or-
leans chapter of the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee. And yet to identify.-too directly with the doomed _Oswaldis to exclude oneself from the possi-
bilities of the future. _
The paradox is enraging, andwhen one's situation begins to be-
come clear one struggles with su-
preme energy against any self-reve-
ation which will vault one from
certainty-to doubt: At the UCLA con-
spiracy conference I was struck byt e volume of laughter that greetedthe sarcastic speculation that Fidel
Castro _(hero) may have been in
league with the Dallas Police De-
partment (villain); or, again, that an
action of the left on a particular
occasion could have resembled anaction of the U.S. Marines.
The police, according to this cast
of mind, are, at the command of the
Establishment, out to murder the
young. Such theorists can accept this
ecause at the base of belief must lie
the disposition to believe, and manyof the persons gathered in the nameof the exposure of conspiracy seem to
possess their own persona causes,
complaints, fears and mental strug-
gles, which they seek to submerge mthe abstract, and so dissolve.
. 1' i i Q
I asked the». proprietor of the Birch
Society's American Opinion Book
Store in North Hollywood if his shop
carried information on co-nspiracy.
He replied, “We got information oh
conspiracy like you'll never believe.”
True. I count at least 22 American
Opinion bookstores in Southern Cali-
fornia, and I understand that more
than 400 exist throughout the nation.
They serve as the principal gather-
ing places for conspiracy theorists of
the right, and as centers -for the dis-
tribution of their basic books, films
and tapes. Of the stores I have been
in, each one looks like the others,
perhaps because they carry identical
stock.
Theorists of the right, unlike those
of the left, support t eir local police
while tending to believe that the
federal police, or military force, is“ reparing the way for the end of the
Ueiited States as a nation." In Henry
Kissinger Soviet Agent, a book of the
right, weare told that “Kissinger
and his intellectual colleagues want
international order, which would
consist of World Government in a
World of Disarmament.” This is bad.
It is “a surrender of nationhood."
The right theorist believes that
Kennedy was killed by Communists.
A pamphlet, The Killers: Assassina-
tion to Order, tells us that almost
every death of a political person dur-
ing the last 25 years was “part of a
deadly operation managed with
gent skill by the International
mmunist Conspiracy." The cap-
tion of a (photograph showing Rubyshooting swal at the Dal as Jail
explains, “Communist assassin Lee
Harvey Oswald was silenced by Jack
Ruby, a Castroite who died in 1966
from,'cancer.' Ruby was certain that
thedisease had been induced. In
June 1968 Sen. Robert Kennedy was
murdered by Sirhan Sirhan,_ a
Communist trained in assassination
at the Qataneh camp outside Damas-
cus.” ‘
.Alan Stang, in another pamphlet,
Arthur Bremer: The Communist Plot
gm Ki'1IGeawe Wallace, a-sserts that
n
argument. Characterization is poor was the speaker most in demand onarfiflmenh -the university lecture cirtuit duringo person exists named the Estab- the recent.‘ season. Close behindlishment, in, for example) ‘~‘The Dean, according to the’ChronicleofEstablishment is saying The Higher Education, come those who
l
ple are not only: anxious to control iugwgg-_ For soeverythin but determined not In let in lhg qfiige.
,
'
go of any&in'g.,Be this as it may, the
-
_ use of laxatives seems to increase asContinued From E-I
him is unsufferable. On the rare
occasions when Harry Cohn dined
out, he was said to place a telephone
book surreptitiously on his. chair.
“Elevator shoes," which romise an
additional two inches in height, ap-
peal to the same insecurity.
Height means something to le,
and its wise not toforget
chairman of one great conglomerate
is said to have a pedestal behind his
desk so that he appears to be about afoot taller than he really is when he
stands up to greet somebody, and it
is rumored that a stockholders meet-"ing had to be delayed because an
underling) had forgotten to place the
pedestal ehind the podium. It is cer-
tainly true that he ii es to have short
men around him; one's chances of
success at this particular corporation
are vastly increased if one is under 5
feet 8 inches in hei ht. Indeed, being
tall is dangerous fihere. The chair-
man loves to humiliate people whoare taller than he is, and sometimes
promotes them gust so-that he can
make them suf er. “Big is dumb,
short is smart " he once told anexecutive who had displeased him.
If shortness supposedly spurs us onto power, health is usual y taken as a
sure sign of having it. Years ago, I
remem er seeing Robert F. Kennedy
walk into 3:l'OO1'H full of_ eople in
Maine, all of them rich and) healthy,
and noticing that he positively radi-
atedtioodhealth and energy. "God! "
brea ed the lwoman beside me,“look what power does to you. I wish
I had it! "
It is a curious sign of our admira-
tion for ower that we associate
power anti) hwlth; in former times,
power was popularly supposed to
ead to worry, illness, premature
aging and baldness, rather like mas-
turbation. Today, we expect the
powerful to dglow with health,_and
they mostly 0. The successful exer-
cise of power, like a satisfactory sex
life, tends to make people feel good
about themselves, whatever the real
state of their health, and constant ex-
citement tones up the system won-
derfully. .
Of course power takes its toll too.
Erik Erikson has pointed out that
Martin Luther, a man with an enor-
mous need and drive for power, suf-
fered all his life from constipation, a
misfortune which obsessed the great
reformer to the point that his spiritu-
al breakthrough took place while he
was sitting on the toilet. Erikson
points out that Luther was “compul-
sively retentive," that he stored up
his energies and his knowledge as if
aware that they would someday be
released in a single, explosive mo-
ment, a purgative flash that would at
once cleanse Luther himself and the
Church. .
Odd as it may seem, constipation
is often , the price of power, even
among less titanic figures than Lu-
ther, perhaps because powerful peo-
power increases, and a good many-of
the powerful-"people I know not only.
suffer from constipation, .but discuss
it quite openly, as if it were proof of
their success, 'a form of self~imposed
sufferinlg. I have seen a motion pic-
ture ha tedevery morning at 9:3 _ so
that the director - a man of great
fame in »-the movie business — could
fipsoff and fight the daily battle with'
recalcitrant bowels. As he left,
the cast and the crew wished him
success, and on his return he would
de‘scn'be exactly what had happened,
or not happened, in graphic detail.
Gradually‘! came to realize that
knowledge ofthedaily state of his
bowels was a kind of status symbol.
Think ofit: actually being able to
force people to discuss this as if it
were a subject of fascination. What
greater proof of power!
As if that weren't enough, a group,
of -researchers has found that power
(and “achievement orientation")
correlates very highly with serum"
uric acid, the substance in the blood
that is responsible for gout, and
which is considered "a possible risk
factor in coronary heart disease._?’
Serum uric acid is high among
powerful, successful men, and at its
owest among the unemployed. a de-
pressing piece of information for the
ambitious to consider. Blood pres-
sure and serum cholesterol both m-
crease among those who have
“responsibility for others” in a work-
ing situation, which makes it hardiy
surprising that nearly 30 per centof
the businessmen who responded to
one nationwide survey felt that their
kobs l;‘had adversely affected their
eat L" ,
'
e
The kinds of jobs that lead to
power naturallyinvolve stress and
responsibility, but I strongly suspect
that the businessmenwho felt t eir
health was-affected were simply re-
spondingto the “suffering quotient."
This is an extension of the Puritan
pleasure-pain principle, in which
pleasure must be expiated by an
equivalent or greater amount of
pain,'and implies that all power,
insofar as it is enjoyed, must be
justified by suffering. i
The basic proposition is simple —- I
am not supposed to like power,
thou h it's w at I most want, there-
fore% must pretend that it has been-.
thrust upon me by others against mywill; and I must convince everyone
around me that it is a painful burden
that I'm suffering on their behalf.
The feeling is that while it may be all
right to have power, it is wrong to
enipy it. "
_. .
ot surprisingly, many powerful
people are hypochondriacs.» On the
one hand, they want to command and
control; on’the other, they want to be
comforted and appreciated. One way
of bridging these conflictin de-
mands--is"to suffer openly, pugliclyj
constantly - to show by coughing.
sneezing; groaning. limping and
wheezing that they are stretched be-
yond endurance by the deinanq of
4
vatcty Lquuga
system p!'6‘Val.
cial. acoommo
meticulousLv c"
order to be ab
vacations." It
quotient.
-
The compla
about stress,
are -mostly bo-
real, they're
form of guilt.
The
to
Yet love it
novelist Pat:-i~
a woman you i
fomver. But tl
best people. 1
with power,
tough and his
the teeth evei
thore'll be I
you've done e
everything bi
than you’re so
"fine, whethe
ows it or i:
gives a damn.
Perhaps he
difficulty we
power — it is
sonal desire ii
intimacy of 2
with someone
trast,- is a pri
ning and the ll
we can know
won our game
i
"Power!" s
McLaughlin, t"
who was a de
ti:-il assistai:it,.
as chief exorci
White House.
about it? We
about it. We E
why don't we l
You can trai
power.” True
wonders, ju~
McLaughlin's
temporal mat
bombing of Ha
phong and thl
Watergate, w
able to perce
tween what l
'
views of powe
for an ego-ti-i_
for service."
We don't in
power. No soc
-Watergate be~
mons egan to
power-,»as if t
ichard M. N.
are of Nebuchi
Watergate bu
price of impoti
he burglary -
from. it - wa-
the baffled fa
president and l
in the White I~.
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