Today in Supreme Court History: September 5, 1922

9/5/1922: Justice George Sutherland takes the oath.

Justice George Sutherland

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Moore v. Brown, 448 U.S. 1335 (decided September 5, 1980): Rehnquist refuses to stay injunction requiring Mobile, Alabama school board to be elected by district (instead of traditional at-large); at-large system was not facially discriminatory because it was instituted in 1826, and District Court erroneously pointed to the effect of excluding blacks, as opposed to the intent, but the parties had agreed to hold district election for now and can return to at-large later if appeal succeeds (the Court ended up agreeing with Rehnquist via a companion case, 446 U.S. 55, 1980)

[SMP0328]

The companion case was Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), which ruled that only intentional racial discrimination in voting rules was prohibited by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That decision was overruled by Congress in 1982 via an amendment to the VRA that prohibited voting rules that have a discriminatory effect.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks!

[Dan Schiavetta]

today’s movie review: JFK, 1991

Probably history’s most gripping pile of real-sounding bullshit, wherein we are told that a coterie of disparate persons and organizations, normally unable to agree on which side of the bed to get up on in the morning, riven by internal disputes and not with a particularly sterling record of accomplishments as separate entities, concocted without putting anything in writing a complex plan with a lot of moving parts in some secret place (I suppose with good coffee because this would have taken hours), and then in one beautiful moment executed (sorry) the plan perfectly, everybody hitting their cues and nobody dropping the ball or spilling the beans, to set up Lee Harvey Oswald as the man who shot President Kennedy. And not only that but as the man who shot Officer J.D. Tippit of the Dallas Police Force a couple of hours later outside Oswald’s apartment when Tippit tried to question him on suspicion. And also that somebody put Jack Ruby up to shooting Oswald the next day, something which probably every American with a gun had the urge to do at that point.

The film starts with Kennedy’s signature a few weeks before ordering a modest withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Whether JFK would have made the same mistakes in Vietnam that LBJ did is an ongoing debate. JFK was an avid reader of history (Richard Nixon called him a “bookish type” and not a natural politician) and had grown skeptical of military advisers after being burned with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. (Though if Goldwater had won in 1964 Vietnam would have been nuked, hardly a better scenario.) Somehow the film makes JFK’s withdrawal an impetus for the Grand Scheme which means the coterie had only a few weeks to hire a preparatory army of winkers and nudgers and under a false name reserve large basement room (a really large room) at a 1963 version of Starbuck’s.

The late ’60’s were the era of color photographs and television, rebellion, wild hair and clothes and music. The early ’60’s were black and white, men in conservative suits, short hair, music that was pretty much a continuation of the late ’50’s. It was looked back on as a lost world and memories of it also grew more black-and-white. I refer you to the New York Times Magazine article of November 4, 1973, with JFK on the cover, and an article by William Manchester called “Then”, detailing the changes, great and trivial, between the world of 1963 and that of 1973.

It was also a world with less information connections. For example, the lady in the Dealey Plaza photo wearing a babushka and holding a camera — it’s not surprising that she has never been identified, or her camera film found. She could have died soon after. Or lost the camera in the confusion. Nowadays she could probably be found and such a mundane story verified. We might get somewhere with facial recognition technology, or digital records of when that model of camera was purchased, and by whom. Knowing the purchaser, we can find her car, trace her movements via toll and highway cameras.

My own memory of that event is vague because I was only six years old. I remember a few days of disorientation, grownups watching TV, their emotional phone calls with relatives and friends, school being canceled. I was in Catholic school and it must have been especially traumatic for the nuns and priests, with the first Catholic President being shot and killed, but I don’t remember that. Even so I don’t agree with the airy conclusion going around at the time of this film that the assassination was some kind of trigger (sorry) of cultural or political change. Great changes happened after 1963, but they would have happened anyway and they were already starting to happen. There was no big jolt. This is a boring analysis, but I go by the Rule of Boring: if there are various explanations for something, I go with the most boring one as the most likely correct.

It’s certainly not boring to insinuate (and insinuate and insinuate) that it was a put-up job. Oliver Stone’s film is a masterpiece of cutting, acting, dialog. It’s actually like watching an extended, best-ever episode of Mission: Impossible, not ruined by the fact that your bullshit detector is beeping and shaking and falling off the table. Yes, others besides Oswald wanted JFK dead. It doesn’t mean they were in on it. LBJ requested that a few seconds of his 1969 interview with Walter Cronkite be deleted (he got grief for this) and it turned out he was saying, “I’ve never been free of the suspicion that foreign agents were involved”. But you can never allay that suspicion. You can’t prove a negative. What we do know is that Oswald was sympathetic to Communists, had been to Russia, had formed a pro-Castro group, knew that JFK wanted Castro eliminated (hardly a secret), was a former Marine who knew how to use a gun, had himself photographed outside his apartment with a rifle “joking” that he was a “killer of fascists”, and had tried to shoot the right-wing General Walker a few months before.

But I can picture someone leaving the theater after this film and believing the whole bill of goods. To what extent did Oswald let himself be played? Was that really Oswald? Was that rifle photo faked? Is this really the Downtown Odeon Cinema I’m walking out of? Is this really Main Street? Is my name really John Q. Public?

“And you may tell yourself, ‘This is not my beautiful house’ And you may tell yourself, ‘This is not my beautiful wife’”. (The Talking Heads)

[Mr. Bumble]

" (Though if Goldwater had won in 1964 Vietnam would have been nuked, hardly a better scenario.) "
So instead it was napalmed and doused with agent orange.

[grb]

My takes?

1. It’s not credible to believe JFK would have avoided the mistakes of Vietnam. To my eye, he was highly susceptible to the Best & Brightest mentality which pulled us deeper and deeper into the quagmire.

2. I was four and don’t remember the event at all. By the time of RFK and MLK I was old enough for the wider world’s chaos to make an impression.

3. I never saw the Stone movie and refuse to do so. Conspiracy mongering is one of the more toxic kinds of brainless human Stupid.

4. Stop Making Sense is heading back to theaters / IMAX and worth another wide-screen look. I was exotically intoxicated the only time I saw on the big screen.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I was one of many who loved Stop Making Sense despite not having listened to that band previously.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Very small point, actually no "The" in the band name, just Talking Heads. They even released an early live album called "The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads."

[Dilan Esper]

I don't think bands really get to do this. The Eagles tried to do that for awhile too, but eventually gave in to the public. If the public puts the "the" there, it's there. Screw the band.

[David Nieporent]

The Ohio State University would like a word.

[Dilan Esper]

Same thing. They whine about it all the time but as long as the public calls it Ohio State or Ohio State University, they can't force us not to.

[Dan Schiavetta]

JFK (and LBJ) had been painted into a corner by Eisenhower, who forever lost the good graces of the Vietnamese (and Ho Chi Minh) by double-crossing Ho. Ho had withdrawn his forces from the South pending a country-wide election but then Eisenhower, knowing that Ho would win any such election, invented b.s. reasons for objecting to it and split the country in two. JFK and LBJ's advisors were well aware that Ho was the natural leader of the Vietnamese, having led their fight to eject the French, and to hold "elections" in South Vietnam where Ho's party was not allowed on the ballot was a hopeless farce, as were their attempts to win the Vietnamese's "hearts and minds". The only way to end the war earlier was to reach some kind of accommodation with Ho's people who were understandably not about to negotiate again, at least not in good faith.

(P.S. By "Eisenhower" I mean his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who according to those who dealt with them was calling the shots.)

[Dilan Esper]

Eisenhower's partition was a mistake, but it's worth remembering that the war was Ho's fault. Once the country was split, he had no right to invade the South. Not any. Not at all. He needed to stay up north and run his state.

And he's responsible for the millions of his own people who died because of his murderous desire to overthrow the South Vietnamese government.

But having said that, Eisenhower also, notably, provided only symbolic assistance to the South. 700 advisors and some money. It was Kennedy who stupidly decided we actually had to win the war, with no real plan to do so. And Kennedy further alienated the Vietnamese with stuff like his "strategic hamlet" program.

LBJ, of course, was much worse than Kennedy. But Kennedy was plenty bad.

[Mr. Bumble]

The word "clusterfuck" is perfect to describe the events in Vietnam, from the days of the French rule and all through our involvement.

[Dilan Esper]

Absolutely.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Ho's "invasion" of the South was more justified than the Union's invasion of the South in our Civil War.

[Dilan Esper]

It wasn't an "invasion". It was an invasion. South Vietnam was an independent country and did NOTHING to Ho. NOTHING. They were minding their business.

The problem was Ho was a Communist dictator who couldn't accept that there might be a separate country to his south with a different government. And he was willing to murder millions of Vietnamese rather than accept that.

Ho is absolutely the villain of the Vietnam War, and had he accepted the partition, millions of his own countrymen would have lived and both countries would have prospered. He was a scumbag and caused the whole damned thing.

And that in no way exonerates America for all of its mistakes and evil acts in the region.

[Mr. Bumble]

What went on in Asia and Southeast Asia after the end of WWII and the communist takeover in China is way too complicate to discuss adequately in a thread but all played a part in the eventual US involvement.
Early on Ho was more of a Socialist fight for Vietnam's independence who morphed into a Communist because he felt he was misled by Western powers. By the time of heavy US involvement he was more of a figurehead while dedicated Communists with the help of Russia and China increased the intensity of the war.

[Dilan Esper]

Ho made the crucial decisions on starting the Vietnam War. By the time the war was at its zenith, obviously Le Duan and other policymakers were more important. But Ho started it and he was an evil bastard who didn't care about killing Vietnamese.

[Mr. Bumble]

I won't apologize for what Ho did or what was later done in his name. I'm only pointing out that it was complicated.
Had we addressed the war early on as we did in WWII (that is unconditional defeat) rather than the step by step escalations, many lives on both sides might have been spared.

As for capt's comment below, he is full of shit. Few in the south would welcome a takeover by the north and after Tet 1968 I think many former Virt Cong (those that survived) were disillusioned about a north victory.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That is the view that LBJ & Co. were forced to express in public. In fact they knew all along that Vietnamese in the South wanted to be "invaded" (the real word here is "re-united"). No matter what the Americans did there was no way South Vietnamese could be convinced that we were on "their" side and should use our weapons to fight their own friends and family members who happened to be caught on the other side of the DMZ.

[Mr. Bumble]

You need to check into a rehab program without delay.

[Dilan Esper]

Capt,, the South Vietnamese did not "want" to be invaded. Was there support for Communism down South? Absolutely. But there was also opposition to it up North, and those people ended in prison, on boats, or in reeducation camps.

When the Vietnam War ended, far from a country welcoming their new Communist dictators, the Communists encountered a massively scared and resistant population and had to throw hundreds of thousands of them in reeducation camps while millions left.

And in fact Ho's forces killed millions of Vietnamese overall. Nobody "welcomed" that.

This was an evil regime, a brutal dictatorship that wanted to impose its will on the South. No, at the end of the day, the US shouldn't have fought him. We couldn't win. But he's one of the scumbags of history and a ton of blood is on his hands.

[Dan Schiavetta]

We could have co-opted him early on. He made repeated requests for help in 1945 and Truman blew him off.

[Dilan Esper]

That is true and is true of Castro as well.

[SRG2]

I think that there was a conspiracy associated with the assassination - just not the one people think of. Oswald was under generalised suspicion and the authorities were supposedly keeping an eye on him. The assassination indicated that they'd screwed up, whereupon they covered up that they'd screwed up. And the conspiracy to cover up a screw-up looks very much like the conspiracy to be involved in the underlying event itself.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I don’t see how the Warren Report covered up a failure to observe Oswald. It seems like the way to do that is to cast doubt as to whether Oswald was actually the assassin (and didn't need careful observing) or whether he was acting independently and other (unknown) people were behind it. The Warren report concluded that Oswald acted alone.

[SRG2]

I wasn't thinking aboujt the Warren Commission covering up - I was thinking of local police and FBI failing to keep track of Oswald.

[Magister]

Of course Kennedy assassinated himself, as revealed in the Red Dwarf episode "Tikka to Ride".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikka_to_Ride

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks! Inspired by the movie, I think!

[SRG2]

And there's JG Ballard's short story "The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy considered as a downhill motor race" (inspired by an Alfred Jarry short story about the Crucifixion),

[defaultdotxbe]

I've always believed that Oswald thought he was going to impress the Russians. He had defected once before, but they never fully trusted him so he was given a menial position and not allowed to attend Moscow University like he had wanted to. I think in his mind this would show he was serious and they would give him a higher status. Of course the Soviets had no desire to implicate themselves in any way, even after the fact, so it was never going to work out for him.

[Dan Schiavetta]

That's very possible.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Stone has a long record of deliberately misrepresenting historical events in service of his narrative. For example, 'Born On The Fourth of July' begins with scenes of violence at the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami. That never happened. Kovic's group marched outside, but no violence ensued. Many sources present confirm this, including Hunter Thompson, who is as unsympathetic to Nixon as it's possible to be.

[Dilan Esper]

My BS detector didn't ruin JFK at all. It is a singularly great film, and the fact that it pushes a complete BS narrative (which it does) doesn't matter at all, because it is such gripping entertainment.

Yes, Oswald acted alone. Read Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" if you don't believe me. And yes, if you are concerned about films misleading people, I guess you won't like JFK. Newsflash, you probably won't like any of the recent biopics that have been so popular either (for everyone's information, the reason Queen needed to do well at Live Aid was because they were in trouble for having played Apartheid era South Africa-- the film says nothing about this).

But for those of us who go to the movies to be entertained, JFK is a masterstroke. Perhaps the best historical drama of all time.

[Magister]

Over 3 hours at a theater is not what I look for as entertainment. I'd much rather go with something like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter if I want to be entertained by a BS narrative about a president.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I think the band is The Queen.

[Mr. Bumble]

Freddy Mercury was The Queen but the band was Queen.

[grb]

Dilan Esper : “Read Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed” if you don’t believe me”

I did and I do. As for biopics, my standards aren’t entirely consistent. Take the subcategory of Space Biopics : I find Apollo 13 to be a calumny on the late Jack Swigert (even tho he became a Republican). Repeatedly Kevin Bacon is shown as insecure, untrusted and inadequate – sometimes cringing from the knowledge of his own unworth. This is all to service Ron Howard’s cookie cutter plot, where the awesomeness of Mattingly saves the day despite the fact he was robbed of his rightful spot on the crew – because of it in fact! I’m convinced Howard lays out his plots in crayon.

But The Right Stuff does a real number on Gus Grissom and I can’t bring myself to care. Of course TRS is a much, much better film than A13 and caricature is clearly part of its game. LBJ doesn’t come off well either. True story : When the movie was released, I was doing a yearly beach thing with old friends from high school. We always did a movie and I picked TRS, but was vehemently outvoted. The reason? The others were all zombified Right, and someone had convinced them Stuff was a secret plot to elect Glenn president. I didn’t think he fared good either, being portrayed as priggish and simpleminded. If Yeager had been running, that would have been a whole other matter.

As for First Man, the characterizations just seemed perversely wrong. Armstrong wasn’t the mopey downer seen in the movie, being pathologically reserved instead. And God knows where the take on Aldrin came from from. In the firm he’s shown something like an imp with Tourettes.

[Magister]

I liked Hidden Figures a lot, regardless of whether it qualifies as a Space Biopic or takes greater liberties with history.

[apedad]

Never saw the film so was just doing a little wiki reading on it and Holy Crap - John Candy and Bryan Doyle-Murray were in JFK?!?

[Dilan Esper]

It has an amazing cast.