Move Over, Oswald: Salon Says Tea Party Types Killed Kennedy

Salon (the “real” news website, not the

hilarious parody Twitter account), published an infuriating
piece on the Kennedy assassination that adds some unbelievably
off-kilter context to the president’s murder: It was all the fault
of gun-toting right-wing proto-Tea Partiers.

That’s the argument put forth by Heather Digby Parton, a
progressive opinion blogger and winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize
for Opinion and Analysis. Texas conservatives were very mad at
President Kennedy, she writes, and then he was killed, and now we
should be afraid that maybe conservatives are trying to hurt
President Obama. What else are they going to do with their
guns?

Read Digby’s history lesson
for yourself:

The morning of Nov. 22, the Dallas Morning News featured
a
full-page ad “welcoming” the president to Dallas.  After a
preamble in which they proclaimed their fealty to the Constitution
and defiantly asserted their right to be conservative, they
demanded to be allowed to “address their grievances.”  They
posed a long series of “when did you stop beating your wife”
questions asking why Kennedy was helping the Communist cause around
the world. …

You get the drift. And you probably recognize the tone. The
subject may have changed somewhat but the arrogant attitude
combined with the aggrieved victimization is a hallmark of
right-wing politics even today.

As we all know, later that day the president was gunned
down in Dealey Plaza. The entire world was shocked and
traumatized by that event and the course of history was
changed.

So why bring this up today? That was a long time ago and we’ve
moved on from those days, right?  The John Birch Society is a
relic of another time.  Anti-communism is still a rallying cry
on the right, but without the Soviet threat, it’s lost much of its
power.

Unfortunately, the venom, the incoherent conspiracy-mongering,
the visceral loathing still exist.  In fact, in one of the
most obliviously obtuse acts of sacrilege imaginable, Dealey Plaza
is now the regular site of open-carry demonstrations.  That’s
right, a group of looney gun proliferation activists meet regularly
on the site of one of the most notorious acts of gun violence in
the nation’s history to spout right-wing conspiracy theories about
the president while ostentatiouslywaving
around deadly weapons.

Emphasis added to highlight the part where maybe Digby missed
something. I’m not sure—I’m not a Hillman Prize winner, or
anything—but wasn’t Kennedy murdered by a self-described Marxist
and communist sympathizer who had attempted to defect to the Soviet
Union?

Lest you think I’m exaggerating the extent to which Digby lays
the blame for the Kennedy assassination on the right, she actually
chides Second Amendment supporters for organizing at the site of
the assassination, a place that “should be a monument to right-wing
ignominy,” according to Digby. (As if limited-government and
gun-rights supporters had killed the president, rather than a
Marxist assassin!)

Digby’s false accusations call to mind the rush to blame Sarah
Palin and right-wing “violent rhetoric” for the Gabby Giffords
shooting, even though the would-be assassin turned out to be a
weird conspiracy theorist with zero connection to Palin,
Republicans, or any identifiable political ideology.

Not that that matters to Salon. If Michael Moore blew up the
White House tomorrow, Digby and her ilk would express vindication
that Tea Party activists had finally, violently risen up to take
back their country.