Chris Mathews new book on JFK

Chris Matthews Plays Loveball With JFK In New Biography

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/chris-matthews-jfk-biography_n_1033273.html

Chris Matthews -- current host of MSNBC's "Hardball" -- was a 15-year-old working as a paperboy for the Philadelphia Bulletin when he found his political loyalties shifting.

Like the rest of his immediate family, he considered himself a Republican, but something about John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign had inspired him, made him question what he stood for. Not only did he find himself suddenly rooting for a Democrat, but he had grown enamored with the entire Kennedy dynasty, and momentarily cheered the possibility of a two-term JFK presidency, and a Lyndon Johnson presidency to follow.

Thus began a lifelong fascination that hasn't ever let up. In 1996, while still the D.C. bureau chief for theSan Francisco Chronicle, Matthews published "Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America," and on Nov. 1 he'll release "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero," a wide-ranging biography that focuses on the life and dual natures of the 35th president.

Jackie Kennedy famously called her husband both "elusive" and "unforgettable," and in this new work, Matthews seeks to elucidate the conflicting shades of Kennedy's character, while also celebrating a leader who he believes united the American people more than any other president since the 1960s.

In an interview with HuffPost, Matthews reveals the Kennedy traits that caught him off guard, why he made everyone feel "included," and a few essential qualities he thinks Obama -- and other American politicians -- could pick up from Kennedy.

Was there any significance to releasing this book now, or did it just work out that way?
I've been working on it for years. I started back in the 80s, looking at the Nixon/Kennedy rivalry, but since then I've been working on this for a long time. I guess I was thinking about the 50th anniversary [of the assassination], sure, and I didn't know what the current zeitgeist would be. But I think it's the perfect time for it. The country wants to be reminded what a leader is. A hero. We haven't had a hero since Kennedy, really -- a guy who proved himself in battle, a hero in war who had a rite of passage like that. This guy was the guy. He was it.

What surprised you most to learn about him?

How sick he was. I say in the book how he was a greater hero than he wanted us to know. He was sick all the time, had a terrible stomach injury, blood counts all through high school, it went on and on and on. He was always in a hospital. He must have had a record in Choate for the number of days he was in the infirmary. Also, he was always reading. Always. He was a reader, and a hero worshipper, and he became who he became because he was incessantly studying King Arthur, Churchill, the history of World War I, the Times every day in high school. I got this from his classmates.

You repeatedly discuss how much Kennedy loved politics, in general, and how he was proud to be a politician. What about politics appealed to him most?

He loved meeting people, loved campaigning, loved the competition, loved the zest of it. He loved building a party and punishing his rivals. It's all there, what a politician has to be. Even the day he was killed, he was going to the airport in Fort Worth, asking people what the difference was between Dallas and Fort Worth politically. He was always asking questions, always trying to learn more about it.

Was Kennedy feared?

You can't be loved for long if you're not feared. Kennedy did not hold grudges, but he dealt politically with people. I think he'd make Eric Cantor fear him a little if he were [president today]. He was tough on his enemies, he always was. Look at everything he did: He beat Nixon, he beat Johnson, he beat them all. He didn't join those guys, he beat them. You think Johnson wanted to be his running mate? He had this stick, this ability to enforce. He wasn't moved by those emotions around him and he could stand up to people.

You write in the book that Kennedy knew, more than anyone, "that nations die or thrive on the ability and judgment of their leaders to stir them at perilous times." How was Kennedy able to stir people?

Everyone was part of his mission. There was always this inclusion of bringing people in and making everybody participate. It was never, "Let's see how smart he is," it was always him bringing other people in, making people a part of it all. Ask anybody from that generation, they felt included. I think the big Kennedy distinction was the ability to make everybody part of the effort. "We're all in this together."

How did he do that, specifically?

He was all about relationship politics. It wasn't about transactions -- "Once you're with me, you're with me." He stuck with them. Obama's sort of like, "You elect me now, I'll do the job, and watch me do it." The Clintons were all about relationships, too, but the entire Kennedy party -- that was everything. He was always building a team around him, and people trusted him. He had 12 kids in the mud, 12 guys in the military, he saved his crew. When you go out and you carry your 42-year-old engineer on your back for four hours, the strap of his life jacket in your teeth, it creates a certain competence. Those guys loved him.

Because he was strong on the battlefield.

He was a leader! It's not about the ability to give a good speech or to be smart, it's about a talent to really lead people. I don't know if Romney or Obama have showed that kind of leadership, someone who men and women want to follow into battle. "We want to go with him. I want to go with that guy." Kennedy could walk into a room and men and women both would just melt. He was very impressive in terms of personal chemistry.

Have any politicians since Kennedy possessed similar qualities?

Scott Brown got a bit of it in Massachusetts, he connected with that anti-establishment thing in Boston. But that's more parochial. Jimmy Carter in '75, '76, he picked up on the country's mood for a while. I think Reagan picked up on some of it in his time.

Does Obama possess some of those qualities?

Obama hasn't clicked into the zeitgeist the way Kennedy did. Does [Obama] feel what we feel the way Kennedy felt what we felt? Does he get us right now? I hope he does, but I don't know. Kennedy connected with the country. We were losing the Cold War, the world's global map was changing from red and pink and we could see it. He said, "Let's get this country moving again." He knew exactly how to brace us for what was [to come] -- that sense of when to strike something. [Kennedy] always had this fear of complacency, and he knew the times, he knew us. Obama hasn't clicked into the zeitgeist. Is there an Obama party? I don't know.

BK: CHRIS MATTHEWS - WHO USE TO SPEND SUMMERS IN OCEAN CITY NJ DURING HIS COLLEGE DAYS, AND WORKED AT THE CHATTERBOX - MAY HAVE ADMIRED JFK - HE CERTAINLY GETS HIS DEATH WRONG.

Here’s partial transcript of Chris Mathews putting his foot in his mouth again, and Jerry Policoff’s response.

'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Friday, April 15th, 2011
Read the transcript to the Friday show

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/

…MATTHEWS: “Let Me Finish” tonight with the grassy knoll. That was the place in Dallas—near the Texas Book Depository—that the crazies believe people shot at President Kennedy from.

Well, to the conspiracist mind, it‘s important to always have a grassy knoll. It‘s their grotto of denial, a place to travel mentally and find deliverance from reality. Those who don‘t like reality need a grassy knoll to get through the night.

I do not wish to do injustice to these desperados. I know exactly why people need grassy knolls. They need them because they cannot bear the suffering that truth brings to the heart and to the mind.

How could some loser—some misfit who went to the Soviet Union because he thought he liked communism and believed he could find a happy life there, then came home and fall hard for Fidel Castro on the rebound, how could this squirt kill the regal Jack Kennedy? It doesn‘t balance out, does it? How could a nobody kill such a great somebody?

Well, worst yet, how could a man of a hard left—a communist—kill Jack Kennedy. Why wasn‘t it a right-winger who killed him? Then we could blame it on them?

I‘ve got it. We‘ll come up with a conspiracy theory—don‘t actually have to prove anything, of course, that says—just say it. Just say it. It really was a right winger. It‘s that guy - oh, those guys over in the grassy knoll. Don‘t you get it? It was the right wing that killed our hero.

Well, a half century later, we‘ve got a new grassy knoll, another place for retreat for those who can‘t stand a hard truth. The truth is that Barack Obama is the president of the United States. Got it! President of the United States, duly elected leader of the country living right there in the White House.

And they can‘t stand it. They can‘t stand that it is, in fact, a fact. No way around it. No way.

Just look at the history books. Look at the newspaper. Dang it! This guy is president. He was elected president. A majority of the people wanted him president and went out and voted for him.

How do we change that? How do we change that reality?

I got it, with this—it didn‘t happen. You see, he wasn‘t born here. He‘s not eligible to be president.
I read it somewhere that he‘s from somewhere else. Can‘t put my finger on it but he‘s not really an American, you see? Not natural born anyway. He‘s from out there somewhere.

So, last night, the boobs in the Arizona legislature voted to require the candidates for president henceforth approved other documents besides the official document that the state of Hawaii issues as a birth certificate. They want circumcision, baptismal records. They want something that nobody‘s ever wanted before from any candidate before.

What they really want is the same thing grassy knoll people want even now—deliverance from the truth they cannot handle.

Donald Trump—take a bow for giving new hope to grassy knollers everywhere. Wow!
That‘s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42647474/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/


Dear Chris,

I was not surprised by your arrogant and ignorant denunciation of conspiracy theorists who believe JFK was fired upon from the "Grassy Knoll." Of course the last official investigation of the assassination came to that same conclusion, based in part on scientific acoustics tests that virtually proved it (despite claims to the contrary those tests have never been refuted).

I find myself wondering, however, if you ever read your former boss and mentor's book "Man of the House," in which Tip O’Neillwrites:

I was never one of those people who had doubts or suspicions about the Warren Commission’s report on the President’s death. But five years after Jack died, I was having dinner with Kenny O’Donnell and a few other people at Jimmy’s Harborside Restaurant in Boston, and we got to talking about the assassination. I was surprised to hear O’Donnell say that he was sure he had heard two shots that came from behind the fence. "That’s not what you told the Warren Commission," I said. "You’re right," he replied. "I told the FBI what I had heard but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn’t want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family." "I can’t believe it," I said. "I wouldn’t have done that in a million years. I would have told the truth." "Tip, you have to understand. The family—everybody wanted this thing behind them." Dave Powers was with us at dinner that night, and his recollection of the shots was the same as O’Donnell’s.

So I guess O'Donnell and Powers can be counted among the "crazies," as can Tip O'Neill for passing on what they told him without attempting to refute it."

You are entitled to believe what you want about the Kennedy assassination, but branding people who believe something else based upon eyewitness testimony and scientific evidence as "crazies" says a lot more about you than it says about them.

Jerry Policoff

The Big Year - the Book & the now Movie

The Big Year, a book about birders, has been made into a movie.

http://www.markobmascik.com/the-big-year

Every year on January 1, a handful of people abandon their day-to-day lives to join one of the world’s quirkiest sporting contests. With few rules and no referees, there is one goal: to see and identify the most species of birds in a single year. The few who commit to the full year – known to its participants as a Big Year – will spend a grueling, exhaustive year traveling hundreds of thousands of miles and spending thousands of dollars. In a good year, the contest offers passion and deceit, fear and courage, a fundamental craving to see and conquer mixed with an unstoppable yearning for victory. In a bad year, it drains savings accounts and leaves people raw.

In THE BIG YEAR: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession (Free Press; publication date: February 4, 2004; $25.00), prize-winning journalist Mark Obmascik chronicles the 1998 North American Big Year, the greatest – or perhaps the worst – birding competition of all time. With engaging humor and a sharp wit, Obmascik captures the enthusiasm of the birders themselves, taking readers on a rollicking 275,000-mile odyssey, as each of the three main competitors fight for the title of champion.

The three contestants were perhaps the unlikeliest set of competitors ever to meet. A wise-cracking industrial contractor from New Jersey, a newly-retired executive vice-president of a multi-million dollar company from Aspen, and a painfully divorced software engineer who continued to work full time at a nuclear power plant in Maryland while pursuing his Big Year; they were all passionate about birds.

As they traveled on the grueling, 365-day potholed road to glory, they faced broiling deserts, roiling oceans, bug-infested swamps, rising debt, and a disgruntled mountain lion. From the island of Attu in Alaska to the Florida Keys, from the deserts of Arizona to the Pacific Ocean off the coast of northern California, they crossed time zones and, occasionally, paths on their quests to see once-in-a-lifetime rarities that could mean the difference between winner and second place. Perhaps the most intense birding competition ever, by December 31, one of the contenders had set a record so gigantic – identifying an extraordinary 745 different species by official year-end count – it is unlikely ever to be bested.

Mark Obmascik is the bestselling author of Halfway to Heaven: My White-knuckled — and Knuckleheaded — Quest for the Rocky Mountain High, winner of the 2009 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature, and The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, which received five Best of 2004 citations by major media. The Big Year movie, starring Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson, is being released in October 2011 by 20th Century Fox. Obmascik was lead writer for the Denver Post team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, and winner of the 2003 National Press Club award for environmental journalism. He lives in Denver with his wife, Merrill Schwerin, and their three sons, Cass, Max, and Wesley.

Fat, forty-four, father of three sons, and facing a vasectomy, Mark Obmascik would never have guessed that his next move would be up a 14,000-foot mountain. But when his twelve-year-old son gets bitten by the climbing bug at summer camp, Obmascik can’t resist the opportunity for some high-altitude father-son bonding by hiking a peak together. After their first joint climb, addled by thin air, Obmascik decides to keep his head in the cloud and try scaling all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000-foot mountains, known as the Fourteeners – and to finish them in less than one year.
The result is Halfway to Heaven, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Obmascik’s rollicking, witty, sometimes harrowing, often poignant chronicle of an outrageous midlife adventure that is now walk in the park, although sometimes it’s A Walk in the Woods – but with more sweat and less oxygen. Half a million people try climbing a Colorado Fourteener every year, but only 1,200 have reported summiting them all. Can an overweight, stay-at-home dad become No. 1,201?

With his ebullient personality and sparkling prose, Obmascik brings us inside the quirky, colorful subculture of mountaineering obsessives who summit these mountains year after year. Honoring his concerned wife’s orders not to climb alone, Obmascik drags old friends up the slopes, some of them lifelong flatlanders tasting thin air for the first time, and lures seasoned Rockies junkies into taking on a huffing, puffing newbie by bribing them with free beer, lunches, and car washes. Among the new friends he makes are an ex-drag racer trying to perform a headstand on every summit, the lead oboe player in a Hebrew salsa band, and a climber with the counterproductive pre-climb ritual of gulping down four beers and a burrito.

Though danger is always present – the Colorado Fourteeners have killed as many climbers as Mount Everest – Mark knows his aging scalp can’t afford the hair-raising adventures of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and his quest becomes a story of family, friendship, and fraternity. In Obmascik’s summer of climbing, he loses fifteen pounds, finds a few dozen man-dates, and gains respect for the history of these storied mountains (home to cannibalism, gold rushes, shoot-outs, and one of the nation’s most famed religious shrines.) As much about midlife and male bonding as it is about mountains, Halfway to Heaven tells how weekend warriors can survive them all as they reach for those most distant things – the summit of mountains and a teenage son. And as one man exceeds the physical achievements of his youth, he discovers that age – like summit height – is just a number.

The author

Wexler and Hancock write "Awful Grace" on MLK Assassination

On SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2011 at his Justice for JFK blog
http://justiceforkennedy.blogspot.com/2011/10/stuart-wexler-and-mlk-assassination.html

Joe Backes gave us a head's-up on a new MLK book when he posted:

Stuart Wexler and the MLK assassination

FYI, about Stuart Wexler and the MLK assassination. Stu is working on a book with Larry Hancock which is going to say that yes, James Earl Ray shot Dr. King all on his own because he heard about some scheme the KKK had. The KKK was offering a big sum of money, $100,000, if only someone would kill Dr. King for them. Ray heard this in prison and that's why he broke out, to kill King, and to collect the bounty. The book was previously going to be called "Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr." Now it's got a new title "The Awful Grace of God: Racial Terrorism and the Unsolved Murder of Martin Luther King Jr."

It should be called, "Aw For Fuck's Sake: Two Buffoons Promote a Lone Nut Story That Even Posner Wouldn't Peddle."

POSTED BY JOSEPH BACKES

Don't believe me? Check these out:

"Could James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., have made contact with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi? Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, co-authors of the upcoming book, Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr, are investigating that possibility."

"Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book, "Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr.," are exploring evidence that members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi were involved. FBI records show fingerprints found after King’s killing were checked against thousands of people, but Wexler said he has yet to find documents that show the FBI checked to see if these fingerprints matched any members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, which reportedly had a $100,000 bounty on King."

"Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book, Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr., are exploring evidence related to the White Knights".


Larry Hancock responds: “We really won't be able to say anything further until the book is out, other than it is a conspiracy book, not a lone nut book and is based in a series of facts that simply have not been explored before. Arguing its content with anyone who has not reviewed those facts and our analysis would be fruitless. It is a bit upsetting to face what Oliver Stone faced (even in a minor way) which is a total condemnation of your work before its even out, but appaently when you are seen to or even suspected of "breaking rank" in any fashion that's the way it goes.”

In a joint statement in response to Joe Backe’s blog notce Larry and Stu say:

“It is always interesting to find people who tell you what your book is about before they read it. Judging by the number of factual errors, and errors of nuance, in the above posting, I think Joe is someone who has made up his mind, facts be damned. It would be nice if Joe were to bother to write us and ask us-- he does know how to contact both of us-- before he wrote this. He would have realized the following: (1) We don't commit to Ray as a shooter (2) We don't say Ray broke out of prison to pursue a King bounty (3) We don't say Ray was a lone nut.”

“Kind of kills the entire essence of his post. Do we favor Joe's pet theory, informed perhaps by the uncritical acceptance of work done by people who support his preconceived political agenda? I guess we will have to wait for the book to come out. What we will say is that anyone who bases their view of the King assassination on the reliability of James Earl Ray is displaying the same degree of critical skepticism as those who believe David Phillips testimony before the HSCA. We will be more than happy to engage in a serious debate once the actual book is out.” -Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock

The Awful Grace of God; Racial Terrorism and the Unsolved Murder of Martin Luther King Jr.by: Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock

ISBN: 9781582438306 | 1582438307
Format: Trade Book
Publisher: Counterpoint
Pub. Date: 4/10/2012

Summary

Awful Grace chronicles a multi-year effort to kill Martin Luther King Jr. by a group of the nation’s most violent right-wing extremists. Impeccably researched and thoroughly documented, this examines figures like Sam Bowers, head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, responsible for more than three hundred separate acts of violence in Mississippi alone; J.B. Stoner, who ran an organization that the California attorney general said was more active and dangerous than any other ultra-right organization; and Reverend Wesley Swift, a religious demagogue who inspired two generations of violent extremists. United in a holy cause to kill King, this network of racist militants were the likely culprits behind James Earl Ray and King’s assassination in Memphis on April 4th, 1968. King would be their ultimate prize a symbolic figure whose assassination could foment an apocalypse that would usher in their Kingdom of God, a racially “pure” white world. Hancock and Wexler have sifted through thousands of pages of declassified and never-before-released law enforcement files on the King murder, conducted dozens of interviews with figures of the period, and re-examined information from several recent cold case investigations. Their study reveals a terrorist network never before described in contemporary history. They have unearthed data that was unavailable to congressional investigators and used new data-mining techniques to extend the investigation begun by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Awful Grace offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date study of the King assassination and presents a roadmap for future investigation.

T. Carter of COPA has also come out with a new book about the MLK assassination, published by Trinday, who had previously considered Larry and Stu's book, but they couldn't publish competing books. I will review T. Carter's book as soon as I read it.

Since Larry Hancock is one of the main organizers of the annual JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, which competes with the annual regional COPA conference, there is bad blood between these two organizations. Nevertheless, these two books should present new and valuable information about the assassination of MLK and such petty bickering should not prevent each of them from being read and given a proper hearing and honest review.

Larry Hancock has earned his stripes in researching and writing Someone Would Have Talked (JFKLancer, 2010), one of the best and most important books on the assassination of President Kennedy, which has been updated and will be re-released again this year.