Whenever two or three are gathered
together there is a committee and that’s what Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot is all about. It’s never been more popular for a nationally
known celebrity like Bill O’Reilly to take the credit for actually writing a
book and to attach his name for marketing purposes in order to cover for poor
scholarship and elevate a cotton candy story.
Every time Bill tells the world that his book is the best thing since
sliced bread, he should mention that Martin Dugard is the co-author and the
writer who, I suspect, did the heavy lifting.
There are telltale signs that O’Reilly
and Dugard are at odds concerning critical elements of the story like who
actually shot JFK. Bill says on TV that
Lee Harvey Oswald absolutely was the shooter, but Dugard is pretty vague about
it. Look for it. Concerning the Zapruder film; “We watched it
time after time after time to understand the sequence of events . . . .” What part of “head snap backwards, means
front shooter” don’t they understand?
The head shot was not a “sequence”, but the proof of conspiracy.
Of course, there’s the bountiful
photos eulogizing and endearing John Kennedy to the non-critical masses: family
portraits, Jackie with John-John, JFK in the Oval Office or on PT109, Carolyn
and John-John dancing in front of Kennedy’s desk, a photo with Frank Sinatra and
more. There was not one photo of Dealey
Plaza or the crime scene, just black and white maps similar to the Warren
Commission’s substitute drawings of the official autopsy. Killing
Kennedy is full of tributes, fond memories, and anecdotes of JFK. It’ almost as if Bill O’Reilly was a Kennedy
himself in mourning, but one should remember the word, “killing” in title of
the book. It implies the act of murder
involving motive, capabilities, and bad guys.
The generation contemporary to the assassination wants to know “Who and
why?” If you do, don’t buy the book.
If Killing Kennedy was my term paper, I’d get an “F” because even
though there are plenty of quotes, there are no footnotes supporting them, just
general bibliographical sources. Perhaps
the authors are so distinguished they need no documentation. There’s not even a Table of Contents
(TOC). Perhaps it was an editorial
concession for possible e-Book conversion.
Nonetheless, scholarship means references supported by footnotes. Bill O’Reilly and Conspiracy Deniers in
general fail to understand or admit that time and its mountain of accumulated
evidence by people smarter than themselves have made the lone gunman assertion ridiculous. The least O’Reilly could do for the rest of
us is to rename the book Praising Kennedy.
