tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/jfk-15969/articlesJFK – The Conversation2024-03-15T12:11:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2240352024-03-15T12:11:53Z2024-03-15T12:11:53ZDid Biden really steal the election? Students learn how to debunk conspiracy theories in this course<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582032/original/file-20240314-24-in072o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump supporters attend an election fraud rally in December 2020 in Washington, D.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporter-and-qanon-follower-jake-the-q-shaman-angeli-news-photo/1297805096?adppopup=true">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/uncommon-courses-130908">Uncommon Courses</a> is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.</em> </p>
<h2>Title of course:</h2>
<p>Debunking conspiracy theories </p>
<h2>What prompted the idea for the course?</h2>
<p>I am interested in how people internalize or learn about political beliefs they go on to adopt. This interest coincided with my concerns about the seeming ease with which some far-right conservatives and supporters of former President Donald Trump peddled patently bogus conspiracies about <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-2020-election-lies-debunked-4fc26546b07962fdbf9d66e739fbb50d">election fraud in 2020</a>.</p>
<p>One of the outcomes of these schemes was Trump supporters’ attack on the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/trump-indictment-jan-6-2020-election/">U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021</a>. Sadly, the belief that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, even in the face of overwhelming <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-fact-check-on-jan-6-anniversary-trump-sticks-to-election-falsehoods">evidence to the contrary</a>, has remained one core element of the Trump 2024 campaign. I remembered the work of historian Richard Hofstadter, who coined the term <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/">the “paranoid style” in politics</a> in a Harper’s Magazine essay in 1964. His main idea was that some politicians were using fear and a paranoid style of thinking to sway voters. They refused to accept the current state of society and wanted to make it appear that there was a looming threat to the country. </p>
<p>Hofstadter’s work was prompted by the actions of an extreme right-wing movement called the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/a-view-from-the-fringe">John Birch Society</a>. I had a feeling of déjà vu with Trump. </p>
<h2>What does the course explore?</h2>
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<span class="caption">A 1970 conspiracy theory handout lists the similarities with the killing of John F. Kennedy and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.</span>
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<p>What’s the real truth about the moon landing? Who <a href="https://time.com/6338396/jfk-assassination-conspiracy-culture/">really killed JFK?</a> These are just some of the questions we explore in this course. My goal is to balance the serious with the absurd. </p>
<p>I want students to identify the root causes of the conspiracy, use vetted sources and learn to be good consumers of online information.</p>
<p>I also want to train students in the practice of critical analysis. The American Psychological Association has shown that people who <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000392">practice conspiratorial thinking are more likely</a> to seek simple solutions to complex problems and experience feelings of fear and isolation. </p>
<p>We begin the course examining what we can learn from both political science and psychology. We look at the long history of hoaxes, frauds and deliberate conspiracies in American history, stretching back to the Illuminati, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/catholics-and-conspiracies">anti-Catholicism</a> <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitic-attitudes-america-conspiracy-theories-holocaust-education-and-other">and antisemitism</a>. </p>
<p>What is old is new again. The idea that a mysterious group <a href="https://theweek.com/62399/what-is-the-illuminati-and-what-does-it-control">like the Illuminati</a> is secretly in control of the world has not gone away. False beliefs about various groups such as Catholics and Jews are, sadly, recycled again and again.</p>
<p>The course also covers the current <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/01/1228373511/heres-why-conspiracy-theories-about-taylor-swift-and-the-super-bowl-are-spreadin">conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift</a>. This includes the false belief that the outcome of the February 2024 Super Bowl was predetermined so that the Kansas City Chiefs would win, and Swift, the girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, would announce her support for President Joe Biden. </p>
<p>My course also explores much more serious threats, like QAnon – a dangerous movement that falsely believes secret government operatives are running child sex rings. </p>
<p>We also take a look at topics like UFOs, aliens, Bigfoot and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-loch-ness-monster-real-197338">Loch Ness monster</a>.</p>
<h2>Why is this course relevant now?</h2>
<p>In the current age of <a href="https://theconversation.com/republicans-and-democrats-consider-each-other-immoral-even-when-treated-fairly-and-kindly-by-the-opposition-220002">political polarization</a>, it is critical that I do all I can to equip future leaders and citizens with the tools they need to suss out fact from distraction and outright fiction. </p>
<h2>What’s a critical lesson from the course?</h2>
<p>My hope is that my students leave the course with the confidence that they need to not only recognize but to openly combat disinformation. We live in an age of oversaturation of information. My students are digital natives. They rarely receive information from traditional media outlets like newspapers. When one considers the wealth of disinformation on the internet, or the prospect <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/">that TikTok is their primary source of news,</a> it is critical that students are educated about how to evaluate information.</p>
<h2>What materials does the course feature?</h2>
<p>I use a <a href="https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/">number of resources</a> in this class, including <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-brainwashing-and-how-it-shaped-america-180963400/">magazine articles</a>, academic papers, books <a href="https://www.callingbullshit.org/tools.html">and websites</a> that give people tools to recognize false information. </p>
<p>Our reading list includes the books “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520276826/a-culture-of-conspiracy">A Culture of Conspiracy:</a> Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America,” “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/yale-scholarship-online/book/17546">Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America</a>” and “<a href="https://www.burnsiderarebooks.com/pages/books/140941664/richard-hofstadter/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics-and-other-essays">The Paranoid Style in American Politics and other essays”</a>.</p>
<h2>What will the course prepare students to do?</h2>
<p>My students will feel some discomfort at times confronting their own biases and preconceived notions.</p>
<p>The idea is that my course will prepare students to question and then determine the veracity of patently false information. My students will also be prepared to recognize that most conspiracies are born from conditions of stress and the fear of the other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Cason does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of history of education and American politics explains what is behind his course on conspiracy theories and how students learn to debunk fake ideas.David Cason, Associate Professor in Honors, University of North DakotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2170902023-11-21T23:04:11Z2023-11-21T23:04:11ZJFK’s death 60 years on: what Australian condolence letters reveal about us<p>US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas 60 years ago, on November 22 1963. Within hours, the news ricocheted around the world. </p>
<p>Perhaps we could imagine a substantial impact in Europe, where Kennedy had only recently, and somewhat famously, <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/berlin-w-germany-rudolph-wilde-platz-19630626">declared</a> “Ich bin ein Berliner”. </p>
<p>But Kennedy’s death was also deeply felt in Australia, prompting many people to write personal letters to Jacqueline Kennedy. They paint a revealing portrait of life down under in the 1960s.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jfk-conspiracy-theory-is-debunked-in-mexico-57-years-after-kennedy-assassination-148138">JFK conspiracy theory is debunked in Mexico 57 years after Kennedy assassination</a>
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<h2>Letters from ‘far flung corners’</h2>
<p>People from around the world felt compelled to write to the first lady. </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/11/jfk-assassination-jacqueline-kennedy-mourned-in-public-with-grace-purpose-and-blood-on-her-suit.html">45,000 letters</a> arrived on one day alone. White House staff were still processing more than one million letters years later. </p>
<p>Sometimes they came with cards and gifts, including pieces of especially composed music. </p>
<p>Hundreds of letters came all the way from Australia, from what a Rockhampton woman described as “a far flung corner”.</p>
<p>At a time when the national sentiment under Menzies’ leadership was more in favour of the United Kingdom than the United States, it’s somewhat surprising Kennedy’s death prompted such an outpouring of grief.</p>
<p>Kennedy never visited the “far flung corner”. There was some talk that he would come to Australia as part of a wider visit to the Pacific, but diplomatic sensibilities and logistics proved difficult to overcome.</p>
<p>In any case, one of the proposed dates clashed with <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00000843.pdf">a visit</a> from the Queen Mother. </p>
<p>But some believed it was the assassination that ended the plans. A Sydney couple wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I believe you were to honour us by a visit from you & the President this year […] but fate decided against it to our deepest disappointment […] and regret. We were all looking forward so eagerly to that great pleasure. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interestingly, that same letter suggested that Robert Kennedy might have time in the future to bring Jacqueline and the children to Australia, revealing how restrictive gender roles were understood in 1963.</p>
<h2>Political figures as personal friends</h2>
<p>Many of the letter writers admitted they mourned Kennedy as if he was a family member or a close friend. </p>
<p>A lot of this intimacy came from watching Kennedy on television.</p>
<p>One man from Mt Kuring-gai explained after he began his letter with “Dear Jacki”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I ask your pardon for using your Christian name, but I feel that both you and John Kennedy are my personal friends. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similar sentiments were expressed by a Brisbane woman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Television is a wonderful thing […] although you have never met me, yet by seeing you several times on the television screen, I feel that I have met you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>During the Kennedy years, the quantity of TV time devoted to news in the US expanded considerably, meaning that mediated access to Kennedy also increased. </p>
<p>His youth, Hollywood good looks, and his glamorous wife became part of US and Australian cultural consumption. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-withering-public-trust-in-government-be-traced-back-to-the-jfk-assassination-87719">Can withering public trust in government be traced back to the JFK assassination?</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/41860109?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F112%2F1962%2F10%2F10%2Fpage%2F4932576%2Farticle%2F41860109">Australian Women’s Weekly</a> also helped to popularise the Kennedy image. Readers were shown how to make their own Jackie pillbox hat and cultivate Jacqueline Kennedy’s intellectual style. The magazine instructed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Start by reading the newspaper, go to art exhibitions, see a few historical film spectaculars, and learn to read a menu in French. Don’t chatter. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Seeing themselves in the Kennedys</h2>
<p>Widows and mothers especially identified with Jacqueline Kennedy. They wrote to her “as woman to woman”, relating their own grief experiences and offering to help mind the “kiddies”, if only she lived closer.</p>
<p>Catholics also wrote in large numbers. Kennedy was the great Catholic hero at a time of deep sectarianism in Australian society. They were proud of his political success. </p>
<p>It also helped that he had Irish roots, like much of the Catholic priesthood in Australia at the time. </p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-luck-of-the-irish-might-surface-on-st-patricks-day-but-it-evades-the-kennedy-family-americas-best-known-irish-dynasty-201445">The luck of the Irish might surface on St. Patrick's Day, but it evades the Kennedy family, America's best-known Irish dynasty</a>
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<p>During the Cold War, Kennedy offered a sense of security.</p>
<p>That proved important to Robert Menzies in his reelection campaign, given that Kennedy died only a week before polling day. Labor Party leader Arthur Calwell saw the writing on the wall. </p>
<p>When Menzies mentioned Kennedy while electioneering, Calwell <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20635464?seq=4">complained</a> that Menzies was trying to use the assassination for political purposes. </p>
<p>Calwell’s messaging didn’t cut through. Instead, voters wanted safety and familiarity in their leadership amid global upheaval.</p>
<p>One Strathfield woman who wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy explained that the idea of Menzies’ having “been in too long” disappeared with the assassination. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] there was a great swing to Liberals & they won with the amazing majority of 22 seats.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A unique mixture of television, religion and personality meant Kennedy’s death had cultural repercussions in “the far flung corner”. We would not see a grief response like this again until the death of the Princess of Wales, 34 years later. </p>
<p>But so great was the impact in Cold War-era Australia that the death of an overseas president also had some bearing on the formation of government back home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Clark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hundreds of Australians wrote to Jackie Kennedy after her husband was killed. The letters paint a revealing portrait of who we were and who we wanted to be.Jennifer Clark, Professor of History, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2162032023-11-20T17:32:17Z2023-11-20T17:32:17ZJFK assassination 60 years on: seven experts on what to watch, see and read to understand the event and its consequences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558315/original/file-20231108-15-vkkr55.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C204%2C1920%2C1233&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas minutes before the assassination. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JFK_limousine.png">Walt Cisco/Dallas Morning News</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>November 22 2023 marks 60 years since US president <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-F-Kennedy">John F. Kennedy</a> was shot and killed as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. The event shocked the world. But it also sparked the minds of filmmakers, authors, artists and conspiracy theorists. To commemorate the anniversary of one of the most famous assassinations in history, we asked seven experts to recommend a film, artwork, book, resource or place that can help to understand the event – and its myriad consequences.</em></p>
<h2>1. JFK (1991)</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for JFK.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Historians of the assassination of John Kennedy divide into two camps. There are those who accept the official version provided by <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/intro">the Warren Commission</a> – that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for the murder and was himself assassinated by Dallas nightclub owner <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-Ruby">Jack Ruby</a> before he could face trial. And there are those who subscribe to one of the various conspiracy theories. </p>
<p>The most famous of those conspiracy theories emerged at the end of 1991 when the film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/">JFK</a> by maverick director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000231/">Oliver Stone</a> was released. That it became so widely discussed was due to the power of film, Stone’s bravura reputation (having won Oscars for his recent films on the Vietnam War) and the reception of JFK – which received eight Oscar nominations. </p>
<p>JFK told the true story of New Orleans district attorney <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/finding-aids/garrison-papers.html">Jim Garrison</a> (Kevin Costner) who brought a case against businessman Clay Shaw for conspiracy in Kennedy’s murder. But Stone also used the film to develop the idea that the assassination represented a coup. In the film, generals and the CIA plot Kennedy’s murder as they were enraged with Kennedy’s Cold War policies, particularly with what Stone portrayed as his plan to withdraw from the Vietnam War. </p>
<p>Most significantly, the debate over the movie influenced politicians on Capitol Hill to pass the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk#:%7E:text=Almost%2030%20years%20later%2C%20Congress,and%20Records%20Administration%20(NARA).">Assassination Records Collection Act</a>, expediting the release of many hitherto classified documents on the assassination.</p>
<p>_by Mark White, professor of 20th century US history, Queen Mary University of London</p>
<h2>2. <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk">John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection</a></h2>
<p>Three decades after the Kennedy assassination, the US Congress passed a law mandating the release of all assassination-related material. The collection comprises over 5 million pages of state files, photos, recordings and artefacts. </p>
<p>The catalyst had less to do with transparency than countering the impact of Oliver Stone’s conspiratorial 1991 movie, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/review-board/report/summary.pdf">JFK</a>. Public scepticism about what actually happened in Dallas was high, despite the official inquiry by the <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/features/warren-commission-report-and-hearings">Warren Commission</a> publishing its 888-page report and 26 volumes of evidence in 1964. To curb conspiracy theories, the JFK Records Act made it law for the US government to disclose all its records (apart from items vital to national security). </p>
<p>Anyone with an internet connection can <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk">browse the collection</a>, with <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/30/politics/jfk-assassination-documents-national-archives-review/index.html">99% now public</a>. Less than a month ago, a handful of the final files were <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release2023">released by the US president, Joe Biden</a>. It is the most systematic revelation of state records in modern history. Yet the notion that more government information enables better public understanding confronts the fact that <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-thing-in-politics-most-americans-believe-in-jfk-conspiracies/">more than 60% of Americans</a> continue to believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. </p>
<p><em>by Kaeten Mistry, associate professor of American history, University of East Anglia</em></p>
<h2>3. Flash-November 22, 1963 by Andy Warhol (1968)</h2>
<p>Flash-November 22, 1963 is a portfolio of works by the pop artist Andy Warhol. It will be displayed at the <a href="https://www.telfair.org/">Telfair Museum</a> in Savannah, Georgia to mark the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. </p>
<p>Warhol created the pieces as part of his persistent interrogation of the cultural role of image and media. <a href="https://revolverwarholgallery.com/portfolio/flash-41/#:%7E:text=%22I%27d%20been%20thrilled%20about,everybody%20to%20feel%20so%20sad.">He said</a> JFK was “handsome, young, smart, but it didn’t bother me that much that he was dead. What bothered me was the way television and radio were programming everybody to feel so sad. It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get away from the thing.” </p>
<p>It’s worth wondering if the programming has continued, or even intensified, today.</p>
<p><em>by Peter J. Ling, emeritus professor of American studies, University of Nottingham</em></p>
<h2>4. Love Field (1992)</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Love Field.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Love Field forgoes the conspiracy theories, governmental intrigue and macho histrionics of films like JFK (1991) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105291/">Ruby</a> (1992). Set in the days surrounding the assassination, it instead focuses on the intertwining lives of a white woman, Lurene Hallett (Michelle Pfeiffer) and black man, Paul Cater (Dennis Haysbert), against the backdrop of the era’s upheavals.<br>
Love Field portrays the day of the assassination as both a national trauma and instigator of its central protagonist’s quest for self-discovery. Lurene, a Jackie Kennedy-obsessed hairdresser from Dallas, boards a bus to attend JFK’s funeral, but her “journey” soon encompasses her escaping an oppressive marriage and rethinking her entire life plans. A chance meeting and subsequent relationship with Paul who, along with his daughter, is on the run from the authorities, introduces Lurene to the racism from which she has long been sheltered. </p>
<p>In its portrayal of an unequal society divided by class, race and gender, Love Field goes some way to unravelling the glossy, nostalgic image of JFK’s administration, often promoted by politicians of the 1990s. Though its social analysis does at times slip into cliche, strong performances from Pfeiffer and Haysbert nonetheless make Love Field an emotionally charged, thought-provoking exploration of personal lives and politics circa 1963. </p>
<p><em>by Oliver Gruner, senior lecturer in visual culture, University of Portsmouth</em></p>
<h2>5. The Runnymede Memorial, Windsor, England</h2>
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<img alt="The JFK memorial at Runnymede, stone block with names engraved." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559392/original/file-20231114-17-9i6vv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559392/original/file-20231114-17-9i6vv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559392/original/file-20231114-17-9i6vv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559392/original/file-20231114-17-9i6vv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559392/original/file-20231114-17-9i6vv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559392/original/file-20231114-17-9i6vv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559392/original/file-20231114-17-9i6vv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The JFK memorial at Runnymede.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/runnymede-surrey-uk-1st-sep-2019-1504799231">Chris J Mitchell/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Britain’s memorial to Kennedy, designed as a site of reflection by architect <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/obituary-sir-geoffrey-jellicoe-5607830.html">Geoffrey Jellicoe</a>, stands on the banks of the Thames at Runnymede. It consists of a stepped, woodland path leading up to a large slab of Portland stone on which are inscribed words from Kennedy’s inaugural address. </p>
<p>Speaking at the <a href="https://britishheritage.com/history/queen-elizabeth-jfk-memorial">dedication ceremony</a> in 1965, Queen Elizabeth II described JFK as a man “who in death my people still mourn and whom in life they loved and admired”. In fact, Britain launched an appeal to raise £1 million to build the monument as a symbol of the “special relationship” with the US. But popular ambivalence about the American superpower and the wealthy Kennedy clan induced Harold Wilson’s Labour government to contribute half this amount to avoid embarrassment. </p>
<p>The memorial can therefore be interpreted as evidence of the public’s divided views on the American superpower, rather than of its vaunted affection for JFK.</p>
<p><em>by Robert Cook, emeritus professor of American history, University of Sussex</em></p>
<h2>6. 11/22/63 by Stephen King (2011)</h2>
<p>What if John F. Kennedy hadn’t died on November 22 1963? Would the US, the world, be different, better? That’s the question that drives Stephen King’s novel, 11/22/63. His protagonist, Maine high school teacher Jake Epping, has the chance to return to mid-20th century America to prevent Kennedy’s assassination. </p>
<p>Jake’s quest represents the ultimate liberal fantasy: that had JFK survived, the US might never have experienced the horrors of the Vietnam war, the damage of Nixon and Watergate and the myriad problems which stemmed from them.</p>
<p>King is too smart a writer to allow this to be the only theme of the book. He explores the light and darkness of the US of the late 1950s and early 1960s, reminding us that America was only great in that period for some of its citizens. As Jake tries to work out how to save Kennedy, the reader is also introduced to various elements of the conspiracy theories that have swirled around JFK’s death. </p>
<p>Does Jake succeed? No spoilers here, although long-time King readers will know that “be careful what you wish for” has been a regular theme of the author’s work. At the very least, King punctures the liberal fantasy about JFK’s death and reminds us that events are the result of more than the actions of a single person.</p>
<p><em>by Emma Long, associate professor of American history and politics, University of East Anglia</em></p>
<h2>7. November 22, 1963 (2013) and The Umbrella Man (2011)</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">November 22, 1963 by Errol Morris.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Errol Morris’ two short films, November 22, 1963 and The Umbrella Man, are a great introduction to some of the key issues surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Morris speaks with Josiah Thompson, a philosopher turned private investigator, about the problems facing anyone trying to research the assassination. </p>
<p>For example, what if an event is too bizarre to fit into a coherent narrative? Despite his years investigating the assassination and looking through the many films and photographs taken that day, Thompson says it is difficult to find any meaning behind the event. As he puts it: “we couldn’t put a ‘why?’ answer on it – it seemed to be beyond that.” </p>
<p>Thompson also describes the role of mass media in the aftermath, with amateurs photographing and filming the shooting, professional journalists sharing those images around the world and ordinary citizens interpreting the meaning of the photographs for themselves. This seems to anticipate some of the challenges we face today, with political polarisation, social media, and talk of “alternative facts” making it difficult for us all to agree on who can be trusted to tell truth from falsehood. </p>
<p><em>by Adam Koper, post-doctoral research fellow, Cardiff University</em></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Koper has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaeten Mistry has received funding from the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Ling receives funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) and the British Academy. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Long, Mark White, Oliver Gruner, and Robert Cook do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The event shocked the world. But it also sparked the minds of filmmakers, authors, artists and conspiracy theorists.Mark White, Professor of History, Queen Mary University of LondonAdam Koper, WISERD Civil Society Post-Doctoral Fellow, Cardiff UniversityEmma Long, Associate Professor of American History and Politics, University of East AngliaKaeten Mistry, Associate Professor of American History, University of East AngliaOliver Gruner, Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture, University of PortsmouthPeter Ling, Professor of American Studies, University of NottinghamRobert Cook, Professor of American History, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2164772023-11-20T17:32:13Z2023-11-20T17:32:13ZJFK 60 years on: his leadership style and the reality behind the myths<p>John F. Kennedy retains an iconic status as an exemplary – even inspirational – public figure and his leadership approach has been influential for decades.</p>
<p>The former US president (1961-63) projected an idealist image of <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/john-f-kennedy-a-leader-for-our-time,13059">leadership</a>, which, at its best, demonstrated that the political system can address society’s most profound challenges. His was an optimistic and ambitious presidency that, although tragically cut short, achieved considerable success across a range of activities as diverse as <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/kennedy/domestic-affairs">poverty reduction</a>, <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/nuclear-test-ban-treaty#:%7E:text=Kennedy%20signed%20the%20ratified%20treaty,the%20nation%20conducting%20the%20test">bans of nuclear weapons testing</a>, and the Mercury and <a href="https://history.nasa.gov/moondec.html">Apollo</a> space programmes. </p>
<p>At 43 when elected in November 1960, JFK remains the <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/1600/presidents/johnfkennedy">youngest president</a> to take the oath of office – and his youth might have been considered as a disadvantage, especially in foreign policy leadership – but he had honed his foreign affairs knowledge to an extent with his very extensive overseas travel during his time in Congress, and during military service. He also appointed an extremely able and <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/life-of-john-f-kennedy/fast-facts-john-f-kennedy/officials-of-the-kennedy-administration">highly educated cabinet</a>. </p>
<p>As the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s death approaches, it’s worth remembering that the Kennedy presidency laid down a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23631185">marker</a> for ambitious, informed and progressive styles of leadership. Jack, Robert and Edward Kennedy all contributed in various ways to Democratic political causes, such as expanding civil rights and legislating for healthcare reform.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/romantic-heroes-or-one-of-us-how-we-judge-political-leaders-is-rarely-objective-or-rational-214943">Romantic heroes or ‘one of us’ – how we judge political leaders is rarely objective or rational</a>
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<p>JFK’s leadership style has been hugely influential, acting as a political and cultural <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-image-trumps-ideology-how-jfk-created-the-template-for-the-modern-presidency-78073">model</a> emulated by subsequent presidents as varied as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. While politically to the right of Kennedy, Reagan (a former actor) arguably shared JFK’s sense of <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/f/fitzgerald-blue.html">political theatre</a>. Clinton tried to develop a <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/7964385/image/3/version/mobile/bill-clinton-presidents-playing-football">youthful, vigorous</a> and idealistic image <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41940033">modelled after JFK</a>, although many of his attempts to pass legislation contributing to key Democratic goals (such as healthcare reform) ultimately failed. Clinton, like JFK, liked to gather together large groups of <a href="https://eu.recordnet.com/story/news/1995/01/01/clinton-parties-with-thinkers-s/50877460007/">intellectuals and leaders in their fields</a> to discuss policies and issues. Obama believed in diplomacy and negotiations, even with adversaries, as JFK did, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q6G96iX0xW8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=kennedy+sorensen+book&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=kennedy%20sorensen%20book&f=false">according to Ted Sorensen</a>, JFK’s former speechwriter.</p>
<p>Kennedy’s open and engaging style made government and public service seem worthwhile and <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/165902/americans-rate-jfk-top-modern-president.aspx">relevant</a>. Methods used to construct presidential “leadership rankings” <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/business-society/research/management/policy/archive/trump_presidential_performance_evaluation/">are often challenged</a>, but JFK has consistently been ranked in the <a href="https://scri.siena.edu/2022/06/22/american-presidents-greatest-and-worst/">top ten</a> of many, despite having just over 1,000 days in office. The Kennedy family thrived on ambition and power, but their professed duty to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/the-legacy-of-john-f-kennedy/309499/">serve the public</a> seemed genuine, as did the desire to learn and to do better. </p>
<p>JFK governed from the centre, appointing a cabinet with varied political backgrounds. He had an <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/jfk-style-over-substance/">effective record</a> of passing legislation while in office, and he contributed to the eventual passing of the historic civil rights legislation under his successor, Lyndon Johnson. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">JFK gives a speech about space exploration.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In our own archival <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17427150211042153">research</a>, we explored the development of what became known as the Hickory Hill seminars, a series of talks and social gatherings that usually took place at Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s home in McLean, Virginia. The events functioned as a place to explore social problems and their solutions, and as a kind of proto-leadership development seminar. Topics of discussion ranged from great literary works to child poverty. Invited speakers included the environmentalist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rachel-Carson">Rachel Carson</a>, and the philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Ayer">A.J. Ayer</a>. The inner circle of the Kennedy administration would actively engage with external people and ideas, in stark contrast to the partisan, secretive and often walled-off <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715016680666">styles of leadership</a> that are so common today.</p>
<p>JFK’s presidency and leadership featured some notable successes. He used the federal government to enforce racial desegregation in several high-profile <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-kennedys-and-civil-rights.htm#:%7E:text=President%20Kennedy%20defined%20civil%20rights,and%20require%20public%20schools%20to">situations</a>. And his administration prepared the ground for the aforementioned civil rights legislation which was passed after his death. Less positively, the power of Kennedy as a brand was deliberately cultivated and policed by his inner circle. His father crowed about selling Jack’s image “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/07/jackie-natalie-portman-behind-the-creation-of-jfk-camelot-movies">like soap flakes</a>”. </p>
<h2>Avoiding groupthink</h2>
<p>JFK’s weaknesses as a leader were also substantial. He acquiesced to the disastrous <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2149944">Bay of Pigs</a> incursion, where military experts wrongly predicted that Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba could be overthrown with ease. JFK learnt a lesson the hardest way possible about accepting military advice. After the Bay of Pigs incident, JFK introduced new ways of <a href="https://hbr.org/2013/11/how-john-f-kennedy-changed-decision-making">working to avoid “groupthink”</a>. His later success in the Cuban missile crisis was partly derived from this lesson.</p>
<p>But Kennedy also deepened the US’s appalling <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/kennedy-commitment">intervention in Vietnam</a>. He subscribed to the “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/072924701791201576">domino theory</a>” about the supposed need for the US to confront communism in Asia whatever the cost. His administration dragged America towards an unwinnable war by propping up the unstable South Vietnam regime, and colluding in a <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm#docs">bloody coup</a> against one of its leaders.</p>
<p>Speechwriters and academic historians such as Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr expended huge efforts in curating and promoting the Kennedy family image as a form of progressive, even heroic, leadership (Schlesinger was in charge of the day-to-day running of the Hickory Hill seminars, and was a key figure in the development of presidential leadership <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2657937">rankings</a>). These efforts surely influenced the depth and longevity of the Kennedy appeal.</p>
<p>There are other connections between JFK and the study of leadership. Leadership theorist James MacGregor Burns wrote a campaign-trail <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cm2LCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=john+kennedy+a+political+profile+burns&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=john%20kennedy%20a%20political%20profile%20burns&f=false">biography</a> of JFK, and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lhrPS_s7EawC&printsec=frontcover&dq=burns+leadership&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=burns%20leadership&f=false">Burns’ work</a> heavily informs the ubiquitous notion of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/135943299398410">“transformational leadership”</a>, the idea that the most effective and ethical forms of leadership are those that emphasise vision, change and inspiration, rather than the more prosaic forms of leadership that amount to little more than looking after the shop. </p>
<p>JFK is widely remembered as a good president, but the idealistic Camelot vision has <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726702055002181?casa_token=scvlPoRIIJ4AAAAA:Zv0pJNULlB2-Enc0_MH4fQlSaNpsbiGCg-fPy-cGjjC5JkYZ8mUMimq0gjCZ8L279VHc13S6tHrw_g">undoubtedly been exaggerated</a>.</p>
<p>JFK was due <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/10/jfk-foresaw-donald-trumps-america-00038627">to give a speech in Dallas</a> on what became his final trip, warning of “voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality” – which, he feared could “handicap this country’s security”. Those aggressive and populist leadership styles are in the ascendancy, as personified by Donald Trump. </p>
<p>Rather than engage with political rivals, their approach is to dismiss and attack them. Robert Kennedy junior, for instance, is running for president following a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508419870901">Trumpian playbook</a> of vilification and populism, positioning himself as an outsider who will “clean up the system”, rather than a scion of one of America’s most influential families. </p>
<p>Despite this, the JFK legacy retains the potential to promote a serious and ethical approach to leadership. It incorporates visions of idealism and public service, not selfishness and vilification. However, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/sep/13/jackie-review-natalie-portman-kennedy-jfk#:%7E:texilsils%20t=Portman%20is%20altogether%20astonishing%20in,had%20on%20those%20around%20her.">this portrayal</a> often fails to acknowledge JFK’s flaws and failures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216477/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>JFK’s leadership style has been hugely influential, acting as a model emulated by subsequent presidents including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.Leo McCann, Professor of Management, University of YorkSimon Mollan, Reader in Management, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180022023-11-20T13:18:30Z2023-11-20T13:18:30ZGood profits from bad news: How the Kennedy assassination helped make network TV news wealthy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560217/original/file-20231117-28-k0daxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C2983%2C2436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President John F. Kennedy is seen shortly before his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TV-MemorableMoments/4239d513431b455cb8a35299340210b1/photo">Associated Press</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In journalism, bad news sells. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a famous industry catchphrase, which explains why <a href="https://www.routledge.com/If-It-Bleeds-It-Leads-An-Anatomy-Of-Television-News/Kerbel/p/book/9780813398198">violent crime</a>, <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/terrorism-and-the-media/9780231100151">war and terrorism</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118841570.iejs0202">natural disasters</a> are ubiquitous on TV news.</p>
<p>The fact that journalists and their employers make money from troubling events is something researchers rarely explore. But even if it seems distasteful, the link between negative news and profit is important to understand. As <a href="https://cmj.umaine.edu/faculty-staff/michael-j-socolow/">a media historian</a>, I think studying <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2023.2195346">this topic</a> can shed light on <a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00046-w">the forces</a> that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4">shape contemporary journalism</a>.</p>
<p>The assassination of John F. Kennedy 60 years ago offers a case study. After a gunman killed the president, television news offered wall-to-wall, nonstop coverage at considerable cost to the networks. This earned TV news a reputation for public-spiritedness that lasted decades.</p>
<p>This reputation – which may seem surprising now but was widely accepted at the time – obscured the fact that TV news would soon become enormously profitable. Those profits are due in part because awful news attracts big audiences – which remains the case today.</p>
<h2>The JFK assassination made Americans turn to TV news</h2>
<p>Shortly after Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the TV networks demonstrated their sensitivity to the tragedy by canceling commercials and <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3641671.html">devoting all their airtime to the story</a> for several days. CBS President Frank Stanton would later call it “the longest uninterrupted story in the history of television.” At one point, 93% of all U.S. TVs were tuned into the coverage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In a black and white image, a young woman is seen crying in front of half a dozen televisions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560213/original/file-20231117-23-37j1d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=64%2C0%2C3163%2C4132&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560213/original/file-20231117-23-37j1d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560213/original/file-20231117-23-37j1d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560213/original/file-20231117-23-37j1d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560213/original/file-20231117-23-37j1d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560213/original/file-20231117-23-37j1d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560213/original/file-20231117-23-37j1d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As televisions report news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a woman weeps in a Sears department store in Levittown, Pa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/as-televisions-in-the-background-report-news-of-the-news-photo/1396714258">Jack Rosen/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Estimates vary, but the networks’ decision to forgo ads <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-11-14/kennedy-assassination-60th-anniversary-tv-news-viewers-walter-cronkite">may have cost them as much as US$19 million</a> – which is $191 million in 2023 dollars. </p>
<p>For decades, the networks presented their assassination coverage as <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/42593182">the epitome of public service</a>. And over and over, network executives and journalists argued that TV news was uniquely protected from the economic pressures found elsewhere in broadcasting. </p>
<p>TV news in the early 1960s was “the loss leader that permitted NBC, CBS and ABC to justify the enormous profits made by their entertainment divisions,” ABC News’ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111206508_pf.html">Ted Koppel reminisced</a> in The Washington Post in 2010. He added, “It never occurred to the network brass that news programming could be profitable.”</p>
<p>The public-service narrative that took root in November 1963 ignored the fact that the huge audiences turning to TV news for information and comfort would soon become very lucrative. </p>
<h2>How TV news became a money machine</h2>
<p>Only two months before Kennedy’s assassination, in September 1963, the networks expanded their evening newscasts to 30 minutes. They had previously been 15 minutes, offering little more than headlines. The expanded newscasts <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884910379707">sold out all their advertising opportunities</a> immediately, as television news drew the predictable daily mass audiences that sponsors craved.</p>
<p>The Kennedy assassination coverage, combined with the expanded newscasts, significantly increased the commercial value of TV news. Throughout the 1960s, broadcast journalism began to mature into the most lucrative genre of programming on American television. </p>
<p>By the 1965-1966 television season, NBC’s “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” <a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,941023,00.html">generated $27 million in advertising a year</a>, making it the network’s most lucrative program – out-earning even “Bonanza,” the top entertainment show. “The CBS Evening News” was <a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,941023,00.html">drawing in $25.5 million</a> in advertising, making it the second-most profitable program on U.S. television. </p>
<p>Around this time, networks were telling regulators that they had sacrificed millions of dollars for public service through journalism. For example, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112068807905&seq=351&q1=a+direct+responsibility+to+the+public+in+news+and+public+affairs+which+is+not+necessarily+&start=1">in 1965 testimony</a> before the Federal Communications Commission, executives from ABC, CBS and NBC said their news divisions had loftier motives than simply making money. </p>
<p>But they were making money, and lots of it. By 1969, “Huntley-Brinkley” was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2023.2195346">earning $34 million in advertising</a> on a production budget of $7.2 million, making the program – according to Fortune magazine – “the biggest source of revenue that the N.B.C. network has – bigger than ‘Laugh-In’ or ‘The Dean Martin Show.’” A decade earlier, “Huntley-Brinkley” had been making just $8 million in ad and sponsorship revenue.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In a black-and-white photo, two news anchors, one smoking a pipe, are seen sitting in a broadcast studio at the Miami Beach Convention Center. In the background, conventioneers are seen milling around and a sign reads 'VICTORY IN 68'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560230/original/file-20231118-19-whuibz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560230/original/file-20231118-19-whuibz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560230/original/file-20231118-19-whuibz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560230/original/file-20231118-19-whuibz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560230/original/file-20231118-19-whuibz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560230/original/file-20231118-19-whuibz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560230/original/file-20231118-19-whuibz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chet Huntley and David Brinkley broadcast from the Republican National Convention in 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chet-huntley-and-david-brinkley-broadcasting-for-nbc-at-the-news-photo/1297996689">Ben Martin/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The networks didn’t tout their profits, though. Instead, they <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo12345529.html">continually promoted their efforts</a> covering the Vietnam War, civil unrest and the assassinations of the 1960s as service in the public interest. They also claimed that news production cost them millions, and they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884910379707">hid ad revenues</a> accrued by news programming elsewhere in their corporate budgets. Doing this gave them a leg up on regulatory privileges, such as station license renewals. </p>
<h2>The birth of modern TV news</h2>
<p>Ultimately, the chaotic, cacophonous and confusing decade of the 1960s would end up launching the hyper-commercial media world we live in today. Chasing sensational investigative stories, such as Watergate and the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal, would <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/07/08/Oliver-North-draws-big-ratings/8772552715200/">generate higher ratings</a> and <a href="https://niemanreports.org/articles/the-transformation-of-network-news/">more advertising revenue</a>, and turn broadcast journalists into national celebrities. </p>
<p>The original values animating network broadcast journalism at its inception would surrender to more lucrative formats. “60 Minutes” – a CBS News production – eventually became the most valuable network-owned programming property <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=n2c6DwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=Tell+Me+a+Story+60+Minutes&source=gbs_navlinks_s">in the history of American television</a>, and by the 1980s almost every local news station had <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/News+is+People%3A+The+Rise+of+Local+TV+News+and+the+Fall+of+News+from+New+York-p-9780813812076">launched its own</a> “I-Team” investigations group.</p>
<p>Eventually, the professionalism that drew audiences to TV news in the wake of the Kennedy assassination in 1963 would be supplanted by audience growth strategies <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lyWiYgEACAAJ&dq=inauthor:%22Frank+N.+Magid+Associates%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilh7nH9suCAxXOFFkFHY1GDZEQ6AF6BAgBEAE">sold by TV news consultants</a>. Audience analytics, minute-by-minute engagement metrics and Q-scores calibrating anchor “likability” would <a href="https://penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/book/?isbn=9780143113775">standardize formats and homogenize newsgathering</a> in the drive to maximize profits.</p>
<p>Yet through the decades, one constant remains: Bad news sells. It’s a media-industry truism whether we’d like to study it or not, and the news broadcasts airing today, 60 years after the events of November 1963, prove it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The JFK assassination was a landmark event in TV news history.Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014452023-03-16T12:33:00Z2023-03-16T12:33:00ZThe luck of the Irish might surface on St. Patrick’s Day, but it evades the Kennedy family, America’s best-known Irish dynasty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515585/original/file-20230315-1846-c915gj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=177%2C149%2C3527%2C2272&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A portrait of the Kennedy family taken in Hyannis, Mass., in the 1930s. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/82759243/photo/portrait-of-the-kennedy-family.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=9nlchtG6g6vHgQYHhgOoFaNIk2OepV6uOumTzI2uZ14=">Bachrach/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>John F. Kennedy, whose ancestors left Ireland <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/john-f-kennedy-and-ireland">during the potato famine of the mid-19th century</a>, was famously the first United States president of Catholic Irish descent. </p>
<p>When Americans narrowly elected Kennedy in 1960, <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/john-f-kennedy-and-religion">anti-Catholic bias</a> was still part of the mainstream culture. </p>
<p>I <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zxEAZRkAAAAJ&hl=en">am a scholar</a> of Irish literature and the author of “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/race-politics-and-irish-america-9780192859730?cc=us&lang=en&">Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History</a>,” a new book that describes how the Irish were <a href="https://www.routledge.com/How-the-Irish-Became-White/Ignatiev/p/book/9780415963091">long excluded</a> in America. </p>
<p>So when Kennedy accepted shamrocks from the Irish ambassador to the U.S. on his <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHP/1961/Month%2003/Day%2017/JFKWHP-1961-03-17-C?image_identifier=JFKWHP-ST-C57-1-61">first St. Patrick’s Day</a> in the White House in 1961, it signaled the social and <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781493024704/Real-Lace-America%E2%80%99s-Irish-Rich">political arrival of the Irish American elite</a>. It also was a pivotal moment, marking Irish Americans’ fulfilled dream of full assimilation into the U.S. </p>
<p>The dream soured when Kennedy was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/assassination-of-John-F-Kennedy">assassinated in Dallas</a> in November 1963. That tragedy – and the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/us/kennedy-family-tragedies/index.html">many others that followed</a> for the Kennedy family – began to be told by others in the Gothic story tradition, which hinges on nightmarish scenarios and <a href="https://red.library.usd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1066&context=diss-thesis">the abuse of power</a>. </p>
<p>This kind of storytelling has shown to be a suitable match for the different narratives of the Kennedys as both innocent victims and wicked schemers.</p>
<p>The phrase “<a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/phrase-luck-of-the-irish">the luck of the Irish</a>” is often used of Irish America, especially on St. Patrick’s Day, observed on March 17. Since it typically refers to good luck, however, it cannot be used of Irish America’s best-known dynasty.</p>
<p>This phrase has various proposed origins, including the success Irish gold miners had in the U.S. in the 1800s. </p>
<p>Irish America’s best-known dynasty might not be described as lucky, but rather as Gothic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men wearing blue suits hold a green garland and look down at it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515583/original/file-20230315-16-c6vzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515583/original/file-20230315-16-c6vzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515583/original/file-20230315-16-c6vzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515583/original/file-20230315-16-c6vzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515583/original/file-20230315-16-c6vzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515583/original/file-20230315-16-c6vzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515583/original/file-20230315-16-c6vzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President John F. Kennedy accepts shamrocks from the Ambassador of Ireland, Thomas J. Kiernan, in 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Kennedys and Gothic</h2>
<p>Since its <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/gothic-novel-the-castle-of-otranto-by-horace-walpole">18th-century beginnings in literature</a>, Gothic storytelling uses a sinister atmosphere of conspiracy and the supernatural. It also generally features an all-powerful Catholic patriarch. </p>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.invaluable.com/blog/elements-of-gothic-literature/">other elements</a> repeat over centuries in different classic Gothic works, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393679205">like “Dracula</a>,” for example. This can include a secret or curse linked to a corrupt bloodline, endangered beautiful women and disrupted inheritance or murdered heirs.</p>
<p>For both sides of America’s <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/22/both-republicans-and-democrats-prioritize-family-but-they-differ-over-other-sources-of-meaning-in-life/">political divide</a>, the Kennedys fit the ready-made mold of Gothic, though in different ways. </p>
<p>After JFK’s assassination, liberals and Democrats who had approved of his administration’s <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-kennedys-and-civil-rights.htm">progressive policies</a> believed that the <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/kennedy-the-classic-biography-ted-sorensen?variant=32154167312418">idealistic Kennedys</a> were the blameless targets of <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/who-killed-jfk-president-kennedy-evidence-lee-harvey-oswald-what-conspiracy-theories/">dark conspiracies</a>. </p>
<p>These conspiracies included persistent questions about who or what was behind JFK’s assassination, even though a former Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, was <a href="https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth191000/">arrested in 1963</a> and charged in the president’s death. Oswald himself <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jack-ruby-kills-lee-harvey-oswald">was killed</a> before he could stand trial, feeding the conspiracy theories. </p>
<p>However, for conservatives and Catholic Irish Americans leaving <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/Machine-Made/">traditional</a> Democratic Party loyalty behind, the family known as “<a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/thomas-maier/the-kennedys-americas-emerald-kings/9780786740161/">America’s royals</a>” represented <a href="https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/the-kennedy-imprisonment/9781504045391">the corruption of the elite</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman wears a long white dress in a sepia colored painting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515607/original/file-20230315-2975-bivuio.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s official portrait, painted in 1970, is similar to some classic portrayals of women in Gothic literature.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/jacqueline-kennedy">White House Collection/White House Historical Association</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Gothic patriarch, Joe Kennedy Sr.</h2>
<p>In traditional Gothic fiction, the usual source of such immorality is the all-powerful Catholic elder. </p>
<p>In the Kennedy narrative, that role of Catholic elder is played by the president’s father, Joe Kennedy Sr. He was a wealthy investor and politician. Kennedy family biographers <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/298604/the-patriarch-by-david-nasaw/">have recorded rumors</a> of shady dealings in his numerous business interests. </p>
<p>In addition, the Kennedy <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/298604/the-patriarch-by-david-nasaw/">patriarch’s very Gothic</a> ambitions to hereditary rule were repeatedly disrupted. </p>
<p>Joe Sr. <a href="https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Founding-Father-Audiobook/B002V9ZBTS?source_code=GPAGBSH0508140001&ipRedirectOverride=true">strategized to help launch</a> JFK’s political rise only after the first-born he had planned to make president, Joseph Jr., was <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nnam/explore/exhibits/online-exhibits---collections/presidents-and-naval-aviation/artifacts/joseph-p--kennedy--jr----older-brother-of-jfk.html">shot down</a> and killed in action during World War II. </p>
<h2>Jackie Kennedy</h2>
<p>The Kennedy Gothic narrative also enfolds people who marry into the family.</p>
<p>Joe Sr.’s daughter-in-law, Jacqueline Kennedy, was filmed clambering over the back of the presidential open-top limousine in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/fashion/jacqueline-kennedys-smart-pink-suit-preserved-in-memory-and-kept-out-of-view.html">bloodied suit</a> immediately after her husband was shot while being driven in a motorcade. In that moment, she became Gothic’s classic endangered, beautiful woman. </p>
<p>Strikingly, Jackie Kennedy’s eerie <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/jacqueline-kennedy">official portrait</a> resembles the fleeing woman in a flowing white gown of Gothic paperback <a href="https://flashbak.com/loads-of-women-running-from-houses-the-gothic-romance-paperback-150/">cover tradition</a>.</p>
<p>Right after her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy talked about how the <a href="https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/345678306383007-john-f-kennedy-assassination-rosebud-from-jackie-39-s-bouquet-and-jay-watson-39-s-press-pass/?cat=0">Dallas mayor’s wife</a> had given her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3y5Qwk2e8A">blood-red roses</a> earlier that day – which she implied was a <a href="https://www.life.com/history/jackie-movie-life-magazine/">bad omen</a> of the forthcoming assassination, given the flowers’ color. </p>
<p>In the same interview, Jacqueline used the phrase “<a href="https://www.life.com/history/jackie-movie-life-magazine/">Camelot</a>” to refer to the idealism of her husband’s administration. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/new-jfk-biography-aims-to-chronicle-a-complex-life/">many biographies</a> and media stories in the years that followed painted the picture of a <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/kennedy/impact-and-legacy">morally complex</a> Kennedy family. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a pink dress suit and hat holds red roses, next to a man in a gray suit, while other people look on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515584/original/file-20230315-2405-ld71lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy receives red roses shortly before JFK’s assassination in Dallas, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHP/1963/Month%2011/Day%2022/JFKWHP-1963-11-22-B?image_identifier=JFKWHP-ST-C420-13-63">Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Kennedy curse</h2>
<p>Some Kennedy men’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/kennedymenthreeg0000blyn">sexually promiscuous or otherwise “liberal” behavior with women</a>, for example, got as much press as their liberal politics. </p>
<p>In 1969, a year after Robert Kennedy was <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bobby-kennedy-is-assassinated">assassinated during his presidential run</a>, his brother Ted drove off a bridge in Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy was yet another son of Joe Sr. with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40464379">ambitions to one day become president</a>.</p>
<p>His 29-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/14/archives/chappaquiddick-5-a-tragedy-an-enigma-a-political-achilles-heel.html">drowned after Kennedy left her</a> in the water. He did not report the accident for 10 hours. Ted <a href="https://vineyardgazette.com/news/1969/07/25/senator-kennedy-pleads-guilty-leaving-accident">pleaded guilty</a> in 1969 to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and later received a <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/incident-on-chappaquiddick-island">two-month suspended jail sentence</a>.</p>
<p>Ted later spoke about “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/06/ted-kennedy-spoke-of-a-family-curse-after-chappaquiddick-he-had-good-reason/">some awful curse</a>” playing a role in Kopechne’s death. Ted’s naming of the very Gothic idea of a family curse caught on and became popular lore. </p>
<p>Many observers have subsequently described the family’s <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/search?searchType=products&q=The+Kennedy+Curse%3A+Why+Tragedy+Has+Haunted+America%27s+First+Family+for+150+Years">tragedies as the result of a curse</a>, especially the 1999 death in an airplane crash of John Jr., JFK’s son and possible <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a28397221/jfk-jr-death-political-office-governor-run/">political heir</a>.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jfkjr/timeline.htm">the numerous premature deaths of Kennedy</a> family members are tallied, they do appear to be statistically unlikely. But whether the family’s tragedies are the result of mere bad luck or a Gothic family curse remains a matter of open interpretation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Burke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gothic storytelling, with its sinister atmosphere of conspiracy and other hallmarks, offers a way to reframe the Kennedy family lore.Mary Burke, Professor of English and Irish Literature concentration coordinator, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1481382020-11-19T20:54:48Z2020-11-19T20:54:48ZJFK conspiracy theory is debunked in Mexico 57 years after Kennedy assassination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369885/original/file-20201117-17-1iw7k3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=62%2C82%2C3323%2C2074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This man visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City while Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico in 1963. Officials thought it might be Oswald.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/unidentified-man-was-considered-to-be-a-possible-clue-to-news-photo/576878000?adppopup=true">Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/57-anos-despues-del-asesinato-de-kennedy-las-pistas-en-mexico-se-agotan-150725">Leer en español</a>.</em></p>
<p>Most conspiracy theories surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination have been disproven. Kennedy was not killed by <a href="https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=ftCGDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT28&ots=6YB2O31mx1&dq=jfk%20gas%20pressure%20device%20given%20by%20aliens.&pg=PT28#v=onepage&q=jfk%20gas%20pressure%20device%20given%20by%20aliens.&f=false">a gas-powered device triggered by aliens</a> or by actor <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKharrelson.htm">Woody Harrelson’s dad</a>.</p>
<p>But speculation about Kennedy’s Nov. 22, 1963 murder in Dallas continues, fueled by unreleased classified documents, <a href="http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm">bizarre ballistics</a> and the claim of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald – who was later killed on live TV while in police custody – that he was “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbR6vHXD1j0">just a patsy</a>.”</p>
<p>Several JFK assassination experts, like the former New York Times investigative reporter <a href="https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250060754">Phillip Shenon</a>, see Mexico as the best place to find answers regarding a possible conspiracy and who was behind it. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Images of a type-written visa with official stamps" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oswald’s Mexico visa from 1963, with entry and exit stamps.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mexican Secretary of the Interior</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just over a month before Kennedy’s killing, Oswald took a bus from Texas to Mexico City. He arrived Friday morning, Sept. 27, 1963 and left very early on Wednesday, Oct. 2, according to <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=112007#relPageId=80&tab=page">American and Mexican intelligence</a>.</p>
<p>Was Oswald a kind of rogue James Bond who went south of the border to consort <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/jfk-assassination-did-castro-kill-kennedy-a-393540.html">with communists, Cuban revolutionaries and spies</a> – or just a deranged killer?</p>
<p>I dug into that question while researching my book on <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Conspiracy-Narratives-South-of-the-Border-Bad-Hombres-Do-the-Twist/Soltero/p/book/9780367470425">conspiracy narratives in Mexico</a>, and I think I found something everybody else missed: a hole in the story of the very man who started a tenacious conspiracy theory about Oswald’s Mexico trip.</p>
<h2>Communist Mexico City</h2>
<p>Mexico was a <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/122508">Cold War hot spot in the mid-20th century</a>, a haven for <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20191113-from-trotsky-to-morales-mexico-s-asylum-tradition">Soviet exiles</a>, <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=62&tab=page">American leftists fleeing the anti-communist persecution of McCarthyism</a> and sympathizers with <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-02-24/new-fidel-castro-memoir-recalls-rebel-s-life-mexico">Cuba’s Castro regime</a>. <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/7527">Every communist and democratic country</a> had an embassy in Mexico City – the only place in the Western Hemisphere where these enemies coexisted more or less openly.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white image of Trotsky and River shaking hands, with a smiling Sedova next to them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian exile Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, meet artist and communist Diego Rivera in Mexico City, 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-revolutionary-leon-trotsky-and-his-wife-natalia-news-photo/88920114?adppopup=true">Enrique Diaz/Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to witnesses from the Cuban and Soviet diplomatic missions, Oswald visited their embassies repeatedly on Friday and Saturday. He was desperately seeking visas to those countries, which Americans were then <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1966021600">prohibited from visiting</a>. </p>
<p>Told such documents would take months to process, Oswald got in a heated argument with the Cuban consul, Emilio Azcué. Oswald also forced a KGB volleyball match on Saturday morning to be canceled when <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/106275/oswalds-tale-by-norman-mailer/">he brandished a weapon at the Soviet consulate, before bursting into tears and leaving</a>. </p>
<p>Those events are well documented by the CIA, <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=46&tab=page">which in the 1960s had ramped up</a> its Mexico operations to <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=73&tab=page">monitor communist activity</a>, even hiring <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=53&tab=page">200 Mexican agents to help</a>. The Mexican Secret Service, whose <a href="https://www.crl.edu/midas">1960s-era files Mexico has recently begun to declassify</a>, also tracked Oswald on Sept. 27 and Sept. 28, 1963. </p>
<p>Oswald’s whereabouts for the next three-and-a-half days, however, remain unknown.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Gloved hand holds a paper report entitled 'Lee Harvey Oswald'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Mexican intelligence report on Lee Harvey Oswald, declassified in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/historian-shows-a-file-us-president-john-f-kennedy-murderer-news-photo/1136375889?adppopup=true">Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A conspiracy theory is born</h2>
<p>A main conspiracy about Oswald’s undocumented time in Mexico City puts him in contact with dangerous Mexicans on the left side of the Cold War. </p>
<p>This story originated in March 1967, when the American consul in the Mexican coastal city of Tampico, Benjamin Ruyle, was buying drinks for local journalists.</p>
<p>One of them – Óscar Contreras Lartigue, a 28-year-old reporter for El Sol de Tampico – told Ruyle he’d met Oswald in 1963 when he was a law student at <a href="https://www.unam.mx">Mexico’s National Autonomous University</a>. </p>
<p>Contreras said he’d been in a pro-Castro campus group and that Oswald had begged this group for help getting a Cuban visa. According to Contreras, Oswald spent two days with these National Autonomous University students, then met up with them again a few days later at the Cuban Embassy. </p>
<p>Evidently afraid for his life, Contreras wouldn’t tell Ruyle much more. He said he himself had traveled to Cuba, knew people in the Castro regime and had blown up the statue of a former Mexican president on campus in Mexico City. Contreras feared <a href="https://theconversation.com/massacres-disappearances-and-1968-mexicans-remember-the-victims-of-a-perfect-dictatorship-104196">persecution for his political activities</a>. </p>
<p>Contreras did say this wasn’t the first time he was sharing his story, though. After JFK was shot, Contreras told Ruyle, he’d commented to his editor that he’d recently met Oswald. </p>
<h2>The Contreras question</h2>
<p>Contreras’ account hinted at suspicious, previously unknown connections between Oswald and communist Cuba made shortly before JFK’s assassination.</p>
<p>His story was, according to a memo later sent from CIA headquarters, “<a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=68260#relPageId=3&tab=page">the first solid investigative lead we have on Oswald’s activities in Mexico</a>.” U.S. government officials <a href="https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=SXUpAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT2&dq=Summers%2C%20Anthony.%202013.%20Not%20in%20Your%20Lifetime%3A%20The%20Assassination%20of%20JFK.%20London%3A%20Headline.&pg=PT306#v=onepage&q&f=false">needed to find out if Contreras was a trustworthy source</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white image of Oswald from the side and front" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oswald’s mug shot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-dallas-police-department-mug-shots-of-lee-harvey-oswald-news-photo/576877682?adppopup=true">CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Three months after Ruyle’s happy hour, a CIA official from Mexico City went to Tampico to question Contreras. During the six-hour interrogation, Contreras still refused to go into details, but he did say Oswald never mentioned assassination – only that he said repeatedly he “had to get to Cuba.”</p>
<p>In 1978, a researcher from the U.S. House Select Commission on Assassinations named Dan Hardway went to Mexico to investigate the JFK assassination. He was unable to interview Contreras despite several attempts, but in <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=149234#relPageId=1&tab=page">an influential report</a> warned his account should not be dismissed. </p>
<p>The New York Times reporter Shenon, who interviewed Oscar Contreras <a href="https://books.google.com.mx/books/about/A_Cruel_and_Shocking_Act.html?id=JRERAAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">for a 2013 book on the JFK assassination</a>, also found Contreras credible. Shenon wrote that Contreras – whom he calls a “prominent journalist” – “went much further” in their interview than he had with the CIA, alleging “far more extensive contacts between Oswald and Cuban agents in Mexico.”</p>
<p>Dan Hardway, who is now a lawyer in West Virginia, still believes Contreras. After reading Shenon’s book, he reiterated in 2015 that Lee Harvey Oswald might have been <a href="https://aarclibrary.org/a-cruel-and-shocking-misinterpretation/">part of a wider Cuban intelligence web</a>. </p>
<h2>Hole in the web</h2>
<p>Óscar Contreras died in 2016, so I could not interview him myself. </p>
<p>But in my investigation, a minute detail of his biography grabbed my attention – an apparently overlooked contradiction that could undermine his entire story. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1963 ‘Sol de Tampico’ column by Contreras.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Contreras’ telling, he fled the National Autonomous University campus and moved to Tampico around 1964. Yet Contreras also allegedly told his “editor” about his encounter with Oswald after the 1963 Kennedy assassination. </p>
<p>College newspapers aren’t common in Mexico, and Contreras was a law student. So how could he have had an editor in 1963? </p>
<p>I thought his hometown paper, El Sol de Tampico, might hold the answer. Digging through its archives, I found that the newspaper ran a Sunday gossip column in the early 1960s called “Crisol,” or “melting pot.” </p>
<p>Óscar Contreras became the reporter for “Crisol” on June 6, 1963, and continued writing the gossip column in September and October that year. </p>
<p>While Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico City, Contreras was 300 miles away in Tampico. In flamboyant prose, faded back issues of the local paper show, he chronicled the sumptuous wedding receptions, quinceañeras and yacht excursions of Tampico’s high society. </p>
<h2>Three dark days</h2>
<p>I believe the Sol de Tampico archives discredit Contereras’ account. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Image of a Spanish-language newspaper with Contrera's byline" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Contreras wrote for Sol de Tampico on Oct. 6, 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sol de Tampico</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A political correspondent may live far from where his newspaper is published. But for a gossip columnist, that would be dereliction of duty. </p>
<p>This revelation plunges Oswald’s fall 1963 trip to Mexico back into the dark. </p>
<p>There are other conspiracy theories, including that Oswald had <a href="https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol3/html/HSCA_Vol3_0145b.htm">a Mexican mistress</a> who took him to a party of communists and spies. </p>
<p>But it’s more likely Mexico holds no hidden clues to JFK’s assassination. </p>
<p>Conspiracy theories offer assurances of depth and closure, a promise that the biggest enigma of the 20th century is solvable. But from what we know about what Oswald did and didn’t do in Mexico City, he was a volatile, disorganized loner who couldn’t even handle travel logistics. </p>
<p>JFK’s assassination is a cold case. And in Mexico, only exhausted leads remain.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: The lead photo caption has been changed for clarity.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gonzalo Soltero received funding from a Newton Advanced Fellowship by the British Academy.</span></em></p>In 1967 a Mexican reporter told the CIA he had met Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City just before the JFK assassination. New research and recently declassified intelligence pokes a hole in his story.Gonzalo Soltero, Professor of Narrative Analysis, School of Higher Studies, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1469202020-11-01T19:05:15Z2020-11-01T19:05:15ZThe great movie scenes: in JFK’s opening montage, Oliver Stone gets creative with history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366565/original/file-20201029-21-1y01bz2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C41%2C2701%2C2122&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">JFK (1991)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/mediaviewer/rm1184674560">IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance. (Warning: this video contains violence and may be upsetting for some viewers.)</em></p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WnwM80_yqcc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Hollywood has a century-long tradition of political narratives, such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000231/?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Oliver Stone</a>’s 1991 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/?ref_=nm_knf_i1">JFK</a>. So how do you create a concise political history in cinematic form? </p>
<p>It starts with a staccato drum tattoo and moves into a swelling string movement. The voices of leaders rise from the depths of the past as the director of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091886/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_28">Salvador</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091763/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_27">Platoon</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_26">Wall Street</a> builds a complex mosaic of American history. The images and sounds masquerade as factual account — but this is anything but objective. It’s creative storytelling using historical bits and pieces as building blocks. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>See more <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-great-movie-scenes-61548">video analysis of great movie scenes here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Thanks to Shelagh Stanton (Digital Media, University of Sydney) for editing and mixing the audio.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rewatching the 1991 film classic JFK shows the intricate choreography of montage — and the line between fact and truth still being navigated today.Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor, Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1386352020-06-18T09:45:10Z2020-06-18T09:45:10ZDon’t blame social media for conspiracy theories – they would still flourish without it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340343/original/file-20200608-176560-9t1ar7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=133%2C107%2C4100%2C2710&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The technology isn't the problem. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/curious-teenager-browsing-internet-on-his-1239519538">mooremedia via Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>COVID-19 conspiracy theories have encouraged people to engage in some <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-covid-19-misinformation-campaigns/">dangerous activities</a> in the past few months. There is no simple explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories like these, and the best researchers can say is that the causes of such beliefs are <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pops.12568@10.1111/(ISSN)1467-9221.2019-conference-vi">complex and varied</a>. </p>
<p>And yet <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-are-we-doing-doctors-are-fed-conspiracies-ravaging-ers-n1201446?cid=eml_mrd_20200507&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20Rundown%20Special%20Edition:%20The%20Coronavirus%20Crisis%2C%207%20May%202020">journalists</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/22/sacha-baron-cohen-facebook-propaganda">activists</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/26/what-happened-when-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-came-face-to-face-with-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg">politicians</a> are increasingly blaming the internet, and social media in particular, for the spread of conspiracy theories. </p>
<p>The accusations aimed at social media tend to take the same narrative form as many conspiracy theories. It might be an anecdote, perhaps testimony from a trusted source such as a doctor <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-are-we-doing-doctors-are-fed-conspiracies-ravaging-ers-n1201446?cid=eml_mrd_20200507&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20Rundown%20Special%20Edition:%20The%20Coronavirus%20Crisis%2C%207%20May%202020">claiming that social media companies</a> “truly have blood on their hands”. Or it might be the portrayal of the public as an innocent victim at the hands of malicious internet profiteers – all designed to appeal to people already disposed to distrust corporations and tech companies. </p>
<p>The problem with such accusations is that the evidence paints a more nuanced picture. </p>
<h2>The pre-internet era</h2>
<p>Conspiracy theories were being generated, spread, and believed well before the internet and social media.</p>
<p>US President John Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Shortly afterwards <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx">most</a> Americans believed – in opposition to the official explanation – that the president had been killed by an unidentified group of conspirators rather than by a lone gunman. By 1975, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx">80%</a> of Americans believed in one form of Kennedy conspiracy theory or another. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340336/original/file-20200608-176554-c3b787.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340336/original/file-20200608-176554-c3b787.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340336/original/file-20200608-176554-c3b787.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340336/original/file-20200608-176554-c3b787.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340336/original/file-20200608-176554-c3b787.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340336/original/file-20200608-176554-c3b787.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/340336/original/file-20200608-176554-c3b787.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">JFK’s last moments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JFK_limousine.png">Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the late 1940s, someone found debris in the New Mexico desert at Roswell. By 1997, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/266441/americans-skeptical-ufos-say-government-knows.aspx">71% of Americans</a> believed the government was hiding information about UFOs, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/4594/What-Government-Really-Listened-People.aspx">45% believed</a> that aliens had visited Earth, and only <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/4594/What-Government-Really-Listened-People.aspx">25% believed</a> the government’s explanation of what actually happened at Roswell. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/what-can-coronavirus-tell-us-about-conspiracy-theories/610894/">polling of Americans</a> has uncovered few examples of conspiracy theories that enjoy as much support as those about JFK and aliens from the pre-internet era. For example, the theories that President Barack Obama faked his birth certificate to illegally usurp the presidency, and that the Bush administration or some other group was behind the 9/11 terror attacks typically find support among no more than <a href="http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2013/outthere/final.pdf">30%</a> of the American public.</p>
<p>It remains an open question if conspiracy theories were even more widespread and influential before the internet. Consider, for example, the anti-communist Red Scares of the 20th century, the Illuminati panics of the early 19th century, or the witch trials of the 17th century.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/simoninis-letter-the-19th-century-text-that-influenced-antisemitic-conspiracy-theories-about-the-illuminati-134635">Simonini’s letter: the 19th century text that influenced antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Illuminati</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Technology isn’t the problem</h2>
<p>What we’re seeing now with COVID-19 is nothing new: conspiracy theories have flourished across human history, and for many reasons. Some psychologists suggest that they are a natural byproduct of evolutionary psychological <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691618774270">mechanisms</a> that are sewn into our DNA to help us detect threats and protect ourselves from rival groups. Historians find that conspiracy theories have been a regular presence, used by <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/real-enemies-9780190908560?cc=us&lang=en&">leaders</a> and <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/81401/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics-by-richard-hofstadter-with-a-new-foreword-by-sean-wilentz/">fringe groups</a> alike to spread their message and build coalitions.</p>
<p>Despite their familiar tropes, COVID-19 conspiracy theories are new and disconcerting – and they are being spread on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. But, modern commentary engages in numerous errors of reasoning. It sees only particular conspiracy theories, rather than the basic building blocks shared by all such theories.</p>
<p>In the past, video games, rock music, television, the telephone, radio, and books were all methods of communication upon which the supposed newfound ills of society were blamed. In the 1980s, for example, the popular new board game Dungeons and Dragons was said to be corrupting the nation’s youth; the TV show <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFq5aci6CHA">60 Minutes</a> even ran a story with supposed experts attesting that the game could summon actual demons. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em>This article is part of a series tied to the Expert guide to conspiracy theories, a series by The Conversation’s The Anthill podcast. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-anthill-podcast-27460">Listen here</a>, on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g">Spotify</a>, or search for The Anthill wherever you get your podcasts.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Why people believe conspiracy theories</h2>
<p>Political science and psychology research shows that the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/what-can-coronavirus-tell-us-about-conspiracy-theories/610894/">motivations</a> to believe or disbelieve conspiracy theories are largely unrelated to particular methods of communication. </p>
<p>What researchers call <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajps.12234">“motivated reasoning”</a>, for example, leads people to accept conspiracy theories that are congruent with existing political and social motivations and reject those that are incongruent with such motivations. This explains why Trump supporters are <a href="https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/why-do-people-believe-covid-19-conspiracy-theories/">more likely</a> to believe the conspiracy theory that the threat of COVID-19 is being exaggerated to hurt Trump’s presidency than Trump’s opponents. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-conspiracy-theories-spread-online-its-not-just-down-to-algorithms-133891">How conspiracy theories spread online – it's not just down to algorithms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Likewise, many of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/05/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-pandemic/">psychological states</a> that make conspiracy theories attractive have little do with social media. Uncertainty, powerlessness and anxiety – feelings caused by a rising death toll, crumbling economy and social isolation – would be exacerbated by a pandemic irrespective of time spent on Facebook or Twitter.</p>
<p>In other words, people believe in conspiracy theories for a host of reasons, both conscious and unconscious. We are not merely blank slates, lemmings ready to believe any idea to which we are exposed. <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586?rss=1&fbclid=IwAR0AnmmBOuikMvGya9AUs3Zd0418CI4aeKLocjhhPfZIQJcgXbGyw3Ix-nE">Recent studies</a> even find evidence that young people who grew up with the internet are more discerning than those of past generations when it comes to the information they are exposed to online. They truly “don’t believe everything they read on the internet”.</p>
<p>Regardless of their long history, or their recent spread on social media, conspiracy theories do <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-dangerous-are-conspiracy-theories-listen-to-part-five-of-our-expert-guide-136070">pose a problem for society</a>. But, misattributing blame for conspiracy theories to social media ensures that the problems they pose will persist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138635/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The technology isn’t the problem – conspiracy theories were around long before the internet.Joseph E Uscinski, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of MiamiAdam M Enders, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of LouisvilleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1396232020-06-10T12:14:53Z2020-06-10T12:14:53ZHow the US government sold the Peace Corps to the American public<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/340381/original/file-20200608-176585-1bswhto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President John F. Kennnedy personally bid the first Peace Corps volunteers farewell.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-Columbi-/34a86766cee3da11af9f0014c2589dfb/443/0">AP Photo/William J. Smith</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/493037-peace-corps-faces-uncertain-future-with-no-volunteers-in-field">Peace Corps</a>, a service organization run by the U.S. government that dispatches volunteers to foreign countries, is on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic. For the first time in its nearly <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/peace-corps">60-year history</a>, none of its volunteers is stationed anywhere.</p>
<p>To many Americans, the Peace Corps represents the best of <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/all-you-need-is-love-the-peace-corps-and-the-spirit-of-the-1960s/oclc/37820037">American generosity abroad</a>. That’s <a href="https://www.peacecorps.gov/about/">in line with its stated mission</a> to promote world peace and friendship.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=tWFlecoAAAAJ">having researched</a> the Peace Corps’ backstory while studying the messages in its early advertising, I see this pause as a chance to learn more about how it came to symbolize U.S. goodwill abroad in many Americans’ minds. I’ve learned how American perceptions of the agency were shaped by ads promising heroic adventures to the volunteers who signed up.</p>
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<span class="caption">In 1968, the Ad Council cast Peace Corps volunteers as human care packages.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peace Corps</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>New frontiers</h2>
<p>In an academic article I wrote about the publicity campaign for the Peace Corps in the first decade of its existence, I explained that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2020.1724589">Peace Corps advertising</a> emphasized myths about heroes, adventure and the benefits of gaining worldly experience without ever mentioning the word communism. But fighting communism was among the agency’s <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/john-kennedy-and-foreign-policy">original foreign policy purposes</a>, according to many Peace Corps historians and other scholars. </p>
<p>Given the growing counterculture movement in the early 1960s, the government feared that few young Americans would be motivated to join the Peace Corps by a message that they’d be volunteering to help to fight communism. For that reason, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2020.1724589">the advertising strategy</a> focused on promoting heroism while promising adventure and career advancement to potential recruits.</p>
<p>At the time of its creation, two institutional forces shaped the Peace Corps advertising campaign – the foreign policy goals of John F. Kennedy’s administration and the <a href="https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/adcouncil/">Ad Council</a>, a nonprofit the advertising industry created during <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/30/marketing-moment-three-ad-council-sets-shop-america-enters-world-war-ii">World War II</a> to aid the U.S. government’s communications efforts. </p>
<p>Building on the image of Kennedy as a romantic superhero, as public intellectuals like the writer <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/">Norman Mailer</a> described him at the time, the JFK administration positioned the Peace Corps as an opportunity that would help lead America into an audacious future.</p>
<p>The Peace Corps advertising campaign helped attract more than 14,000 American volunteers who trained or worked overseas in 57 countries from the start of the program in 1961 to November 1968. It also artfully masked one of main Kennedy’s foreign policy objectives for the program: preventing <a href="https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/09/22/the-peace-corps-not-so-peaceful-roots/">developing countries from adopting communism</a>.</p>
<p>To date, <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=826873">more than 235,000 Peace Corps volunteers have served in 141 countries</a>.</p>
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<h2>Cold War roots</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare">Concerns about communism</a> dominated American culture and in the popular press and media throughout the 1950s and 1960s. America also needed to counter <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/the-cold-war-logic-of-the-peace-corps/309483/">growing Soviet efforts</a> to place young people from the USSR who were highly trained in local languages and customs in developing countries.</p>
<p>Kennedy worried that as the Third World gained independence from colonial empires, the developing countries would be vulnerable to communist influences. This posed a threat to American and European security.</p>
<p>As the historian <a href="http://elizabethcobbs.com/about">Elizabeth Cobbs</a> <a href="https://academic.oup.com/dh/article-abstract/20/1/79/438460?redirectedFrom=fulltext">put it</a>: “The Peace Corps owed its existence to the Cold War and to Kennedy’s belief that the United States had to do better in competing with Moscow for the allegiance of the newly independent countries of the Third World.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/peace-corps">The handbook</a> for Peace Corps volunteers instructed them to study communism “as an ideology and as an organizational weapon.” The handbook advised that “communists are against the Peace Corps and its program,” and that the communists considered volunteers to be “spies and agents of imperialism.”</p>
<p>The Peace Corps also encouraged its volunteers “to answer our detractors through hard work and accomplishment” instead of engaging with them in debates.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianbooks.com/store/history/how-mcgruff-and-crying-indian-changed-america-hist/">Ad Council</a> sponsored the Peace Corps campaign until 1991. Earlier, it had played a key role in shaping U.S. attitudes <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-socialism-became-un-american-through-the-ad-councils-propaganda-campaigns-132335">about communism, socialism and capitalism</a> through campaigns that promoted America’s economy as the cornerstone of American capitalism.</p>
<p>The council’s 1948 campaign to “Explain the American Economic System,” which ran until 1951, and its traveling exhibition called “The People’s Capitalism,” which explained the American economy to other countries, are a few examples. </p>
<h2>The ad campaign</h2>
<p>The Peace Corps’ earliest <a href="https://archives.library.illinois.edu/about-us/program-areas/association-archives/advertising-council-archives/">promotional materials</a> never overtly raised the specter of communism. Instead a series of ads and posters called on Americans to participate in a program that would make their life more meaningful by making a difference in the world.</p>
<p>Those early Peace Corps ads encouraged volunteers to embark on a grand adventure that sounded like a fun extended study abroad program.</p>
<p>“Do you have your future mapped out?” read the copy in one 1961 print ad launching the campaign. If not, have you considered America’s exciting new Peace Corps? It’s an exciting and stimulating life, and best of all, you will be helping your own country as you help the people of other countries.“</p>
<p>By the end of the 1960s, the messages embedded in the individual ads appealed to youthful idealism, patriotism, a desire to see the world and the hero myth without references to the struggle against communism being waged in the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>In a 1968 "Human Care Package” magazine ad, a young man crouches inside a wooden box stamped “made in the USA.” The copy reads: “There is a man somewhere who has nothing … Send him the one thing only you can give him. Send him you.” </p>
<p>Americans in the turbulent 1960s wanted to believe that their country played a morally good role in the world. The Peace Corps program and its advertising helped convince them that this was true.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139623/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Melillo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The agency’s earliest ad campaigns emphasized youthful idealism, patriotism and travel opportunities. That was an easier sell than urging Americans to enlist in an anti-communist operation.Wendy Melillo, Associate Professor, American University School of CommunicationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1386812020-05-27T13:35:25Z2020-05-27T13:35:25ZFive films that explore what it feels like to truly grieve<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337953/original/file-20200527-20241-vtgp1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C8%2C2945%2C2321&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jackie Kennedy leaving the US Capitol after viewing John F. Kennedy lying in state.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Kennedy_Onassis#/media/File:JFK's_family_leaves_Capitol_after_his_funeral,_1963.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Grief is a common theme in cinema, it provides emotional, character-focused situations that for many viewers are instantly familiar. Most of us know what the characters on screen are going through, we understand the disorientating swell of feelings and acute sense of loss that the actors articulate and perform because we are more than likely to have experienced them ourselves. </p>
<p>This familiarity leads many films to approach grief in purely narrative terms, to have bereavement as an inciting incident from which to begin the story. There are films, however, that seem more interested in exploring grief as a sensation often experimenting with film form in order to capture a sense of the lived experience of grief. </p>
<p>Here are five such films that to try to convey through empathetic aesthetics what it <em>feels</em> like to really grieve.</p>
<h2>1. Jackie (Pablo Larraín, 2016)</h2>
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<p>Jackie offers a highly subjective portrait of Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) in the moments and days following the assassination of her husband, John F Kennedy (Caspar Phillipson). While whispered and out-of-focus political manoeuvrings take place in the background, the camera rarely moves from a tight, handheld close-up on Portman’s face. </p>
<p>When it does, it tracks smoothly and at some distance as she moves through the cavernous and unpopulated rooms of the White House. A jarring juxtaposition is created by this interplay of shot types, conveying the sense of disorientation Portman’s character is experiencing. </p>
<p>The film contains very few “scenes” in the traditional sense. Instead, the majority of Jackie plays out as incomplete moments, frequently out of chronological order, that create a fragmented, almost cubist, picture of acute grief following a sudden and unexpected death. </p>
<h2>2. Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002)</h2>
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<p>The viewer establishes an intimate relationship with the eponymous Morvern (Samantha Morton), as no other characters in the film ever know she is grieving for her boyfriend – whose suicide Morvern covers up in order to live a new life. This privileged position forms an unspoken pact that invites us and only us to witness Morvern’s grief. </p>
<p>Morton’s performance is a study of near-silence and stillness, allowing the viewer to experience “silence as an individual, <a href="https://www.napier.ac.uk/%7E/media/worktribe/output-184554/being-inside-her-silence.pdf">personal state of being</a>”, according to the film academic Sarah Artt. No memories or feelings are articulated vocally, and director Lynne Ramsay eschews the flashback in favour of poetic imagery that resists clear meaning while inviting interpretation. </p>
<p>At different moments in the film, Morvern repeatedly appears and disappears, unable to be contained by the image. We see this at play as she is sat in her front room as Christmas tree lights flash on and off; when she is dancing at a house party and wandering through a Spanish nightclub. In these moments, and throughout, the film articulates the impermanent and deeply interior nature of identity when a person is grieving.</p>
<h2>3. Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2004)</h2>
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<p>Vital is not an easy watch because the film is so effective at creating an aesthetic that is empathetic to the painful sensations experienced by Hiroshi (Tadanobu Asano), the film’s central character. </p>
<p>Hiroshi awakens from a coma suffering amnesia, having been the driver in a car accident that killed his girlfriend Ryôko (Nami Tsukamoto). Memories of the crash and of Ryôko increasingly pierce his waking state, grief overwhelming both him and the audience. It does the latter by offering a “haptic” viewing experience – what film theorist Laura Marks describes as a visuality that functions like the senses by triggering physical memories of smell, touch, and taste – through its hyper-focus on different textures, loud discordant sounds and choppy editing.</p>
<p>As the philosopher Havi Carel writes, the film’s sensory focus “is mirrored in the viewer’s reactions to the film … it moves, touches, disgusts and awes the viewer in a <a href="https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/965318">process parallel to Hiroshi’s</a>”, portraying in an uncomfortably subjective way his grieving experience.</p>
<h2>4. The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)</h2>
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<p>Few films capture the physical toll and lasting trauma of grief in the manner that The Babadook does. While masquerading as a “creature feature” horror film – an incredibly effective one – The Babadook is in the main a character study that explores the visceral effect of grief trauma on Amelia (Essie Davies), as she becomes increasingly sunken-eyed, pallid-skinned and disconnected from reality.</p>
<p>The Babadook itself is a beast-like manifestation of her unrelenting grief that continues to dog her seven years after the death of her husband. She is still plagued by nightmares, visions and flashbacks of the car crash that killed him. These moments continually rupture her daily routine, as she relives the site of her grief as an ever-repeating cycle typical of trauma survivors, who experience “durational rather than chronological time” and so “continue to experience the horrors of the past through <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/3023">internal shifts in time and space</a>”.</p>
<h2>5. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)</h2>
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<p>Casey Affleck won the Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of Lee Chandler, a man reeling from a tragedy in his recent past. Affleck offers a restrained, emotionally distant performance that befits a character who exists but struggles to live, who has neither the ability nor the desire to “get over” his grief. </p>
<p>The film reflects its central character’s emotional stasis through a lack of tonal variation, an almost ubiquitous use of static long shots, and – with one notable exception – a lack of signposting for its flashbacks that captures realistically the subconscious, punctuating nature of memory. </p>
<p>Given that the classical three-act structure demands resolution, it is rare for a film about grief to resist the familiar arc of a character moving through stages to a place of relative contentment at the film’s close. The absence of emotional resolution for Lee Chandler is refreshing, because in truth grief rarely follows a neat and finite linear path.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jimmy Hay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The process of coming to terms with a loss is central to these films, which are aching and inventive renderings of complex feelings and moments.Jimmy Hay, Lecturer in Film and Television, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1350132020-04-02T12:32:49Z2020-04-02T12:32:49ZBob Dylan brings links between JFK assassination and coronavirus into stark relief<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324668/original/file-20200401-23090-sflu8z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C1493%2C1073&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Then – as now – Americans found themselves transfixed by the news.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.readingthepictures.org/files/2013/11/PB_JFK_6.jpg">International Center of Photography</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past few weeks, the coronavirus has turned the country’s cultural spigot off, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/sports/sports-canceled-coronavirus.html">sports suspended</a>, <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/museums-coronavirus-crisis-1815993">museums closed</a> and <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/movies-suspended-delayed-coronavirus/">movies postponed</a>. </p>
<p>But the virus hasn’t stopped Bob Dylan, who, on the evening of March 26, released “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18">Murder Most Foul</a>,” a 17-minute long song about the Kennedy assassination. </p>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/bob-dylan-s-murder-most-foul-17-minute-new-song-ncna1170766">have</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/27/bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-review-jfk-assassination-john-f-kennedy">pondered</a> the timing. So have I. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_y0Sp9kAAAAJ&hl=en">I’m a Kennedy scholar</a> writing a book about <a href="http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2013/11/15/the-assassination-of-john-f-kennedy-and-television-news/">how television handled coverage</a> of the Kennedy assassination over a traumatic four-day “black weekend,” as it was called. I’ve also <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/1527476412452801">explored</a> how Americans responded to the sudden upending of national life with the murder of a popular and uniquely telegenic president.</p>
<p>NBC News anchor David Brinkley, as he signed off that first night, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X_z6T9u-tw">called Kennedy’s death</a> “just too much, too ugly and too fast.” The coronavirus crisis may also seem too much and too ugly, though it’s unfolded much more slowly. While a global pandemic is certainly different from a political assassination, I wonder if Dylan sensed some resonance between the two events. </p>
<p>Inscrutable as always, he’s unlikely to ever explain. And yet it’s hard to ignore the poignant similarities in the ways Americans have responded to each tragedy. </p>
<h2>Stuck at home</h2>
<p>As Americans hunker down in their homes during the current crisis, they might assume that, during other crises, people took solace in gathering with others in shared public space. </p>
<p>But that didn’t really happen after Kennedy’s assassination. Most businesses and schools abruptly closed early Friday afternoon following news of the noontime shooting in Dallas. Monday was declared a day of mourning, with Kennedy’s state funeral in Washington. There wasn’t anything for most Americans to do over that long weekend.</p>
<p>So what did they do? They sat at home and watched nonstop television coverage. Over 90% of Americans parked themselves in front of their television sets for an average of eight to 10 hours a day, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/1527476412452801">according to A.C. Nielsen statistics</a>; one-sixth of households had their television sets on for even longer. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/kennedy-assassination-and-the-american-public-social-communication-in-crisis/oclc/475038">Social scientists</a> noted that television accommodated people who needed to grapple with the trauma alone, as well as those who wanted to be with family and friends.</p>
<h2>Glued to the news</h2>
<p>What did viewers get from their voluminous viewing? Besides occasional actual news, they mostly found comfort. Over and over, in the hundreds of letters sent to NBC in the wake of the assassination coverage, viewers described how emotionally connected they felt to the newsmen, whom they saw as companions in mourning.</p>
<p>“During this time of personal loss,” <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/CHPP">wrote one Lubbock, Texas man</a> to NBC anchor Chet Huntley, “I have come to you as an old friend looking for answers to questions, explanations, and even consolation. I have not been disappointed.” </p>
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<span class="caption">Many Americans felt a profound emotional connection to news anchors Chet Huntley (left) and David Brinkley.</span>
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<p>TV viewers today might not describe network anchors as “friendly neighbors who drop in to chat and discuss events in our fast changing world” – as <a href="https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS4017">a California letter writer</a> did on Nov. 24, 1963 – but in recent weeks, they’ve turned to NBC, CBS and ABC nightly news in record numbers. According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/business/media/coronavirus-evening-news.html">The New York Times</a>, amid the uncertainty of the moment, traditional nightly network news shows – not the 24/7 cable news – seem to be providing comfort. The paper quotes NBC anchor, Lester Holt, who compared the network nightly news to comfort food – “a broadcast that you remember growing up with as a kid that your parents watched.” </p>
<p>After JFK’s assassination, Americans spent their long days indoors in some of the same ways their contemporaries are doing today, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/style/bread-baking-coronavirus.html">like by baking bread</a>.</p>
<p>In 1963, a woman who described herself as “just a Kansas City housewife” <a href="https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS4017">wrote to David Brinkley and Chet Huntley</a> about her inability to tear herself away from the TV to go grocery shopping. So she ended up simply baking her own bread: “I took the task of baking rye bread rather than going out to the store, as I was in need of bread, but I really didn’t want to get out of the house.”</p>
<p>Others felt overwhelmed by the constant stream of news and updates. </p>
<p>“I walked around the block because I felt if I didn’t I was going to scream,” one Minneapolis man <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/kennedy-assassination-and-the-american-public-social-communication-in-crisis/oclc/475038">told two communication scholars</a>. “I thought I could get away from it for awhile, but [the TV] was like a magnet.”</p>
<p>Americans in 1963 also used television to do what people today have been doing with Zoom: participate virtually, from afar. <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/1527476412452801">Ninety-six percent</a> of Americans watched the networks’ ceremonial coverage of Kennedy’s state funeral, and letter writers marveled at their sense of “being there.”</p>
<p>“I, from my home in Cincinnati, was permitted to be there by way of television,” one high school student <a href="https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS4017">wrote to David Brinkley</a>. “I was present at the scene of his death. I walked to the cathedral with Mrs. Kennedy and the famous dignitaries.”</p>
<h2>Back to normal?</h2>
<p>In the weeks after the assassination, social scientists confidently asserted that the country would bounce back to stability and quick social recovery. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/kennedy-assassination-and-the-american-public-social-communication-in-crisis/oclc/475038">Wilbur Schramm</a>, one of the founders of the field of communication studies, declared, “This crisis was integrative rather than disintegrative.” </p>
<p>They were wrong, of course. </p>
<p>The “nightmare on Elm Street,” as Dylan calls the assassination – after the name of the street where Kennedy was shot – continues to haunt many baby boomers. Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w16bYZ-4nmE">JFK</a>” and Stephen King’s 2011 novel “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/11_22_63/MJNi0uU8kdoC?hl=en">11/22/63</a>” both portray it as a pivot point that spurred national disaster, decline and unfulfilled dreams.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to know the social, cultural and political legacy of our current crisis. <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/490042-mnuchin-us-will-bounce-back-after-we-kill-this-virus-and-reopen">Some officials</a>, including the <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/03/23/trump-wants-america-open-for-business-with-coronavirus-crisis/">current occupant of the White House</a>, suggest we’ll bounce back stronger than ever. Things, they say, will go back to normal – whatever that means in these already turbulent times. </p>
<p>But Dylan’s evocation of the Kennedy assassination at this moment suggests something more ominous. In the middle of the song, <a href="https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics">he declares</a>: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> The day that they killed him, someone said to me,
"Son, the age of the Antichrist has just only begun"
</code></pre>
<p>Let’s hope Dylan isn’t the oracle of this new age that’s unfolding.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3NbQkyvbw18?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Dylan’s ‘Murder Most Foul.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aniko Bodroghkozy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During our current bout of collective trauma, many of our coping strategies have mimicked the ways Americans responded to the Kennedy assassination.Aniko Bodroghkozy, Professor of Media Studies, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1132442019-03-15T10:42:55Z2019-03-15T10:42:55ZConsumer rights are worthless without enforcement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264015/original/file-20190314-28471-1kb98g4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John F. Kennedy's 1962 speech inspired the modern consumer rights movement.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-DC-USA-APHS418417-President-John-F-/bebb52dd0ea04966a5d03f275b49daeb/5/0">AP Photo/Bill Allen</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>57 years ago, President John F. Kennedy made an impassioned pitch for stronger consumer rights. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If consumers are offered inferior products, if prices are exorbitant, if drugs are unsafe or worthless, if the consumer is unable to choose on an informed basis, then his dollar is wasted, his health and safety may be threatened, and the national interest suffers.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kennedy <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-protecting-the-consumer-interest">offered these words of warning on March 15, 1962</a>, a date now celebrated as <a href="https://www.consumersinternational.org/what-we-do/world-consumer-rights-day/">World Consumer Rights Day</a>. He then called on Congress to enact legislation to protect four fundamental consumer rights: the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose and the right to be heard. </p>
<p>The address has become known as the “consumer bill of rights.” But Kennedy also discussed an equally important issue: how such rights would be enforced. After all, without enforcement, consumer rights are just empty promises.</p>
<h2>Consumer rights flourish</h2>
<p>The idea of consumer rights was nothing new in 1962.</p>
<p>As I describe in <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976238">my research on the history of consumer credit regulation</a>, the states took an early interest in protecting ordinary Americans against abuse by lenders and debt collectors, beginning in the earliest days of the republic. Most adopted usury laws limiting the price of credit in the colonial period, exemption laws shielding property from seizure by creditors in the 19th century and more tailored consumer credit regulations in the early and middle 20th century. </p>
<p>What was noteworthy about Kennedy’s address was not his push for more consumer rights, but rather his call for the federal government – “the highest spokesman for all the people” – to act on behalf of consumers instead of ceding the role of consumer protector to the states. </p>
<p>Congress heeded Kennedy’s call and passed a flurry of consumer legislation. </p>
<p>In the 1960s and ‘70s, it required lenders to clearly disclose loan terms through the <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=82&page=146">Truth in Lending Act</a>, mandated <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/91/508.pdf">fair credit reporting</a> and <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=91&page=874">debt collection practices</a>, created <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=80&page=718">safety standards for cars</a> and <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=86&page=1207">other consumer products</a>, and banned <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=82&page=81">discrimination in housing</a> and <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=88&page=1521">consumer lending</a>. More recently, in 2010, <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/statviewer.htm?volume=124&page=1376">Congress created</a> the <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/">Consumer Financial Protection Bureau</a> and tasked the agency with guarding consumers against unfair, deceptive or abusive acts and practices in financial services. </p>
<p>The states also reinforced their decades-old consumer laws in the 1960s and '70s <a href="https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1946&context=facpub">by banning unfair and deceptive acts and practices</a> under state “UDAP” laws.</p>
<p>Accordingly, consumer rights today are far more robust than they were when JFK gave his speech. To be sure, new business practices regularly require that <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151/text">existing laws be updated</a> to address unanticipated threats. </p>
<p>But the biggest challenge today is not the need for new consumer rights. Rather, it is ensuring that existing rights are enforced. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264016/original/file-20190314-28502-1hmef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264016/original/file-20190314-28502-1hmef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264016/original/file-20190314-28502-1hmef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264016/original/file-20190314-28502-1hmef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264016/original/file-20190314-28502-1hmef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264016/original/file-20190314-28502-1hmef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264016/original/file-20190314-28502-1hmef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been a strong advocate for consumer protection and helped establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0BXZSHDNUKTG&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=789&PN=3&POPUPPN=147&POPUPIID=2C0408WAOD1KD">Reuters/Joshua Roberts</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legal fee recovery and class actions</h2>
<p>There are basically two ways to enforce a consumer right: privately with a lawsuit or publicly via regulators. </p>
<p>The biggest barrier to effective private enforcement is financial. First of all, the harm to an individual consumer from a rights violation is often small, reducing the economic incentive to sue. Secondly, to sue in court, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9930.1984.tb00321.x">a consumer generally requires the assistance</a> of an attorney, who must be paid. Finally, even if the individual goes to court and wins, the damage award is frequently too insignificant to deter the violator from engaging in profitable but illegal practices in the future. </p>
<p>Fortunately, two legal innovations have helped consumers overcome some of these hurdles.</p>
<p>One, rules allowing prevailing plaintiffs to recover attorneys’ fees, expanded with the raft of consumer rights legislation of the late 1960s. These provisions gave consumers the right to recover the costs of their legal representation along with any actual damages for some rights violations. </p>
<p>The other was the <a href="https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6000&context=law_lawreview">birth of the modern class action lawsuit</a> in 1966, which allowed consumers who suffer similar monetary harms to aggregate their claims into a single large lawsuit, leading to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bank-of-america-overdrafts/bank-of-america-settles-overdraft-lawsuit-for-66-6-million-idUSKBN1D22ER">multimillion dollar settlements</a>.</p>
<h2>Public enforcement</h2>
<p>The other way to give consumer rights teeth is through public enforcement. And besides the potential for monetary awards, this method opens the door to other types of remedies for consumers. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/local/south-jersey/2019/03/07/nj-sues-kenneth-r-cohen-nu-2-u-auto-world-pine-valley-motors-predatory-loans-repossession-scam/3094508002/">the New Jersey attorney general recently sued two auto dealerships</a>, alleging that they sold damaged vehicles at unaffordable prices to “financially vulnerable” customers who were then left stranded when the dealers repossessed the cars without advance warning. The complaint seeks to ban the violators from selling car in the future, in addition to monetary relief. </p>
<p>Similarly, in 2018, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/five-charged-elder-fraud-schemes">U.S. Department of Justice brought criminal charges</a> against the perpetrators of a multimillion dollar scheme to defraud elderly and vulnerable consumers with the false promise of cash prizes. The violators could be subject to both fines and imprisonment.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ftc.gov/reports/annual-highlights-2017/enforcement#money">In 2017 alone</a>, the Federal Trade Commission directly returned almost $320 million to consumers through enforcement actions, not to mention its work overseeing the return by FTC defendants of over $6 billion to consumers. </p>
<h2>Enforcement shortfalls</h2>
<p>Recent developments, however, raise concerns about the future of consumer rights enforcement through both public and private channels.</p>
<p>The strength of public enforcement is subject to the whims of state and federal officials, who may reduce enforcement resources or refuse to bring enforcement actions. </p>
<p>A prime example is the weakening of the <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/">Consumer Financial Protection Bureau</a>, which from 2011 through 2017 helped millions of consumers <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-we-need-to-save-the-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-87573">receive nearly $12 billion</a> back from misbehaving financial institutions. A <a href="https://consumerfed.org/reports/dormant-the-consumer-financial-protection-bureaus-law-enforcement-program-in-decline/">recent study found</a> that CFPB enforcement activity has declined significantly since the end of 2017, when Richard Cordray, its first director, stepped down.</p>
<p>His temporary replacement, Mick Mulvaney, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/us/politics/cfpb-mick-mulvaney.html">froze all new enforcement actions</a>. He subsequently <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/cfpb-drops-probe-into-lender-that-gave-to-mulvaneys-campaigns">dropped one ongoing lawsuit</a> against a group of payday lenders and declined to file charges against another lender that had previously donated to Mulvaney’s political campaign. The head of its student loan office resigned last August, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/08/27/642199524/student-loan-watchdog-quits-blames-trump-administration">alleging that the current CFPB leadership</a> had “abandoned its duty to fairly and robustly enforce the law.” </p>
<p>In a similar vein, Kathy Kraninger, recently appointed as CFPB director, <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/list/takeaways-from-trump-budget-cfpb-reform-fha-fees-and-student-loans">has proposed reducing her own agency’s budget</a> by about 4 percent in 2019 and 9 percent in 2020. </p>
<p>As for private enforcement, the ability of consumers to aggregate their claims has been endangered by the spread of mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements. These contract terms, found in a variety of consumer agreements, <a href="https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol79/iss2/3/">prevent consumers from pursuing class relief in court</a>. </p>
<p>Each injured party must either bring an individual action, which may be economically unfeasible, or be left without a remedy. The U.S. Supreme Court’s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/09-893P.ZS">recent arbitration decisions</a> offer little hope that judges alone will keep the courthouse door open to consumer class actions. </p>
<p>Furthermore, <a href="https://www.americanbanker.com/news/senate-repeals-cfpb-arbitration-rule-in-win-for-financial-institutions">Congress narrowly voted in 2017 to repeal</a> a CFPB rule that would have prevented financial service providers from requiring consumers to waive their class action rights. </p>
<h2>Paper tigers</h2>
<p>Compared with 1962, when President Kennedy put consumer concerns on the national agenda, ordinary Americans now have far more robust rights to safety, to information, to choice and to a fair hearing. </p>
<p>But consumer rights do not enforce themselves. Public enforcement requires funding and willing leaders. Private enforcement requires legal devices that allow consumers to pay attorneys for their work. </p>
<p>Without an ongoing commitment to enforcement, consumer rights may become paper tigers, offering the appearance of protection without any teeth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113244/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Fleming does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>JFK pushed consumer rights to the top of the national agenda in 1962, leading to a raft of new laws offering new protections. But without enforcement, such rights are meaningless.Anne Fleming, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1091282019-01-29T11:46:01Z2019-01-29T11:46:01ZWhy women still earn a lot less than men<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255915/original/file-20190128-42594-1fww6zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women earn less than men in most occupations, including soccer. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Gender-Pay-Gap/9a24d93c03e3434a9890915aa632745b/27/0">AP Photo/Jessica Hill</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A decade ago, on Jan. 29, 2009, newly inaugurated President Barack Obama signed his first bill into law: the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/brochure-equal_pay_and_ledbetter_act.cfm">Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009</a>. </p>
<p>It was the latest legislative effort to close the persistently stubborn gap between how much women and men earn. At the time, <a href="https://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html">women made just 77 cents</a> of every dollar men earned – a level that hadn’t improved all that much since the 1990s, according to Census data. </p>
<p>While existing laws already prohibited gender-based wage discrimination, the Ledbetter Act gave workers more time to sue employers over the issue. And the hope was that it would make a big difference. </p>
<p>So did it? </p>
<p><a href="https://cjgl.cdrs.columbia.edu/article/en-gendering-economic-inequality/">My research</a> explores the legal hurdles that have prevented women from achieving pay equity with men. Now, 10 years after the act was passed, more work still needs to be done. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255917/original/file-20190128-108348-1vhrix7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255917/original/file-20190128-108348-1vhrix7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255917/original/file-20190128-108348-1vhrix7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255917/original/file-20190128-108348-1vhrix7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255917/original/file-20190128-108348-1vhrix7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255917/original/file-20190128-108348-1vhrix7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255917/original/file-20190128-108348-1vhrix7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Obama hands out pens after signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Obama-Equal-Pay/72e5bc86c220491b8120e49e51e34a6c/44/0">AP Photo/Ron Edmonds</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ledbetter’s complaint</h2>
<p>The Ledbetter Act overturned a <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2006/05-1074">Supreme Court case</a> that ruled against Lilly Ledbetter, who worked as an area manager at Goodyear Tire and Rubber for more than 19 years. Over time, her pay slipped until she was earning 15 percent to 40 percent less than her male counterparts.</p>
<p>When an <a href="https://www.self.com/story/lilly-ledbetter-equal-pay-interview">anonymous note tipped her</a> off about the extent of the disparity, Ledbetter filed a pay discrimination complaint under <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm">Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964</a>, a statute prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion. A jury found in her favor and awarded more than US$3.5 million in damages.</p>
<p>The case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 2007 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/washington/30scotuscnd.html">ruled 5-4</a> that employees must file a complaint within 180 days after their employer makes a pay decision. The fact that the discrimination was embedded in each paycheck and that Ledbetter didn’t know of the disparity for many years did not matter. Time had run out on her claim. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/550/618/#tab-opinion-1962369">vehement dissent</a> read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the ruling denied workplace realities. She pointed out that since employees often lack information about pay disparities, which can accumulate slowly over time, they shouldn’t be given such a narrow window in which to file a complaint. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the 111th Congress and President Obama agreed with Justice Ginsburg and nullified the decision. The <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/brochure-equal_pay_and_ledbetter_act.cfm">Ledbetter Act</a> makes clear that the statute of limitations for filing a wage discrimination claim resets with each discriminatory paycheck.</p>
<h2>A disappointing impact</h2>
<p>The law’s impact, however, has been disappointing. </p>
<p>The rate of new wage discrimination cases <a href="https://awl-ojs-tamu.tdl.org/awl/index.php/awl/article/view/11">hasn’t budged</a>, primarily because employees still <a href="http://jlsp.law.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2017/03/46-Lyons.pdf">lack information</a> about their co-workers’ pay. Salary discussions <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2015/05/05/why-is-it-still-so-taboo-to-talk-about-what-we-make/?utm_term=.56906df6b12d">are taboo</a> in most workplaces, and some employers, like Ledbetter’s, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/550/618/#tab-opinion-1962369">forbid it</a>. </p>
<p>Put simply, a woman can’t file a complaint if she doesn’t know she’s being shortchanged. </p>
<p>Title VII wage claims are hard to prove for other reasons too. Title VII generally requires proof that employers acted with discriminatory intent. However, much discrimination in today’s workplace is not intentional but fueled by <a href="http://theconversation.com/to-achieve-gender-equality-we-must-first-tackle-our-unconscious-biases-92848">unconscious gender stereotypes</a>. </p>
<p>For instance, studies show that <a href="https://georgetownlawjournal.org/articles/220/shifting-sands-of-employment">workers receive better performance evaluations</a> when they conform to gender stereotypes, such as dominance for men and passivity for women. In <a href="http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.543">one study</a>, participants were asked to award merit-based bonuses to fictional employees with identical personnel files. Men got higher bonuses than women.</p>
<p>The bottom line: Women today <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-259.html">earn about 80 cents</a> for every dollar men make earn, up just a few cents since 2009. </p>
<p>And for women of color, the <a href="https://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/">gap is even starker</a>. Latinas earn 52 cents to the dollar of white men, while African American women earn just 61 cents. Within racial groups, a <a href="https://www.aauw.org/app/uploads/2020/12/SimpleTruth_2.1.pdf">pay gap between men and women persists</a>, although it is narrower. </p>
<p><iframe id="h4yVt" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/h4yVt/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Narrow interpretations</h2>
<p>Of course, employees who believe they are being discriminated against based on gender can also turn to the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/epa.cfm">Equal Pay Act</a>. This act, signed into law in 1963 when women earned only 60 cents for every dollar men earned, does not require a showing of employer intent to discriminate. </p>
<p>The act was the first to <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/epa.cfm">prohibit employers</a> from paying men more than women who perform equal work. </p>
<p>The pay gap has since narrowed by about 20 cents, but not because of anti-discrimination laws. The <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/09/gender-pay-gap-facts/">main drivers</a> have been women’s increased educational attainment and entry into the workforce. </p>
<p>The Equal Pay Act hasn’t been effective because <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=3789&context=mlr">courts read the law narrowly</a>. They generally require that women plaintiffs identify a man with an identical job and resume for comparison. Given that men and women are tracked into different occupations, this can often be impossible.</p>
<p>Moreover, both Title VII and the Equal Pay Act allow employers to defend pay differentials on the basis of “any factor other than sex.” For example, <a href="https://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/FactorOtherThanSex.pdf">courts have permitted</a> a limitless array of employer excuses for paying women less that are themselves rooted in gender bias, such as women’s weaker salary bargaining skill, lesser management potential or lower prior salary history.</p>
<p>These statutory interpretations may sound technical, but they matter. <a href="https://www.aauw.org/resource/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/">They help explain why</a> the gap appears stuck at 80 cents and why <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/fairer-tech-industry-for-women-gillian-tans/">some estimate</a> it’ll be <a href="https://iwpr.org/new-census-data-shows-that-the-gender-wage-gap-is-not-closing/">at least until 2059</a> until pay equity in the United States is reached. </p>
<h2>Why it persists</h2>
<p>Another reason the gap is so stubborn is that men and women are steered into <a href="https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/1587/">different occupations</a>, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-pay-gap/?utm_term=.39c84976f2ff">male-dominated occupations pay more</a> for comparable work.</p>
<p>Even within a traditionally male field such as computer programming, women are paid less. And, as women move into a field, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html">entire occupation’s wages sink</a>. </p>
<p>Importantly, economists have found that <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w21913">discrimination feeds</a> as much as 38 percent of the gender gap. </p>
<p>Skeptics of the gender gap argue that it results from <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-into-the-gender-pay-gap-myth/#646a68e62596">women’s choices to work fewer hours</a> and stay home to raise children. </p>
<p>It’s true, women bear a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html">larger responsibility for child rearing</a> and thus may cut back their hours or take time off from the workplace – especially because the United States is the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/02/05/the-worlds-richest-countries-guarantee-mothers-more-than-a-year-of-paid-maternity-leave-the-u-s-guarantees-them-nothing/?utm_term=.a869fcb0e722">only developed country without paid maternity leave</a> and child care is <a href="https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/17091517/ChildCareCalculator-methodology.pdf">expensive</a>. </p>
<p>But while mothers face a “<a href="http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/getting-job-there-motherhood-penalty">motherhood penalty</a>” in opportunities and pay, fathers reap a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/upshot/a-child-helps-your-career-if-youre-a-man.html">fatherhood bonus</a>.” </p>
<p>And so-called “choices” cannot explain why female <a href="https://www.aauw.org/research/graduating-to-a-pay-gap/">recent college graduates</a> are paid 82 percent of their male counterparts or why the gap widens at the top. Professional women with advanced degrees who work full-time face a <a href="https://www.aauw.org/aauw_check/pdf_download/show_pdf.php?file=The_Simple_Truth">gender gap of 74 percent</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255920/original/file-20190128-39344-sc7l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255920/original/file-20190128-39344-sc7l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255920/original/file-20190128-39344-sc7l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255920/original/file-20190128-39344-sc7l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255920/original/file-20190128-39344-sc7l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255920/original/file-20190128-39344-sc7l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255920/original/file-20190128-39344-sc7l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The American Association of University Women meets with John F. Kennedy as he signs the Equal Pay Act into law.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_of_1963#/media/File:American_Association_of_University_Women_members_with_President_John_F._Kennedy_as_he_signs_the_Equal_Pay_Act_into_law.jpg">Abbie Rowe/JFK Presidential Library and Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Closing the gender gap</h2>
<p>Closing the gender pay gap is not rocket science – even though recently graduated female rocket scientists <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsf18304/data/tab48.pdf">earn 89 cents on the dollar</a> to their male peers. </p>
<p>Steps that would help include prohibiting employers from using salary history in setting wages, banning employer retaliation against employees who share wage information, providing greater transparency in pay, and revising Title VII and the Equal Pay Act to better address workplace realities.</p>
<p>The proposed <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/05/153829/what-is-the-paycheck-fairness-act-gender-wage-gap">Paycheck Fairness Act</a> – introduced repeatedly in Congress since 1997 but never passed – would codify many of these remedies at the federal level. And the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-killed-obama-s-equal-pay-rule-what-it-means-n797941">Trump administration suspended</a> an Obama-era requirement that employers report extensive pay data. </p>
<p>While federal efforts stall, several states, including California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey, <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/equal-pay-laws.aspx">have passed their own laws</a> to close the gap. </p>
<p>The economic gains from closing the gender pay gap are huge. Doing so <a href="https://iwpr.org/publications/impact-equal-pay-poverty-economy/">would add about $513 billion</a> to the economy because of the extra income generated, <a href="https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/C455.pdf">reduce poverty</a> and do a lot to support American families since mothers are the <a href="https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/wpallimport/files/iwpr-export/publications/Q054.pdf">sole or primary breadwinners</a> in about half of them.</p>
<p>Passing the Lilly Ledbetter Act was a start, and now we owe it to American workers to enact laws that close the gap once and for all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michele Gilman is affiliated with the ACLU of Maryland and the Women's Law Center of Maryland.</span></em></p>A decade ago, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the latest legislative effort to close the persistent gap between how much women and men earn. Here’s why it hasn’t made much of a difference.Michele Gilman, Venable Professor of Law, University of BaltimoreLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/942812018-04-25T10:50:01Z2018-04-25T10:50:01ZInvoking noble coal miners is a mainstay of American politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216213/original/file-20180424-57607-1uurfmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coal miner photographed on the job near Richlands, Virginia, in 1974.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/556397">Jack Corn/Environmental Protection Agency</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald <a href="http://wvmetronews.com/2018/04/02/trump-to-visit-west-virginia-on-thursday/">Trump recently visited West Virginia for the fourth time</a> since taking office. He’s <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/226454/trump-approval-highest-west-virginia-lowest-vermont.aspx">more popular there than in any other state</a>, partly because of his avowed passion for coal and coal miners. </p>
<p>As he put it at a <a href="https://youtu.be/RxzraR2R31g?t=5038">campaign rally in Charleston</a>, when he visited in May 2016, “I’ve just always been fascinated by the mines and the courage of the miners.” He also promised “to put the miners back to work.”</p>
<p>For decades, presidents, lobbyists and policymakers have invoked the image of coal miners. In <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EjHUH_kAAAAJ&hl=en">researching the history of West Virginia’s coalfield economy</a>, I have found many examples of coal miners being used as symbols of bravery, hard work and manliness to achieve political ends.</p>
<h2>Presidential politics</h2>
<p>And it’s been like that for at least 60 years. The 1960 West Virginia primary, for example, was a milestone in John F. Kennedy’s bid for the presidency. At the time, many Americans questioned whether a Catholic could win the overwhelmingly Protestant state. But he did.</p>
<p>There, JFK shook hands with miners covered in coal dust and witnessed the effects of a growing unemployment crisis while his Republican opponent, <a href="http://www.wvculture.org/history/1960presidentialcampaign/jfklibrary/19600418fairmontsp.html">Richard Nixon, touted the nation’s prosperity</a>. But, Kennedy said: “He hasn’t been to West Virginia. He hasn’t seen the thousands of miners who want to work and can’t find work.”</p>
<p>Having witnessed suffering in coal towns, Kennedy made fighting poverty a priority. His <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/27/jfk-west-virginia-coalfields/3235311/">first executive order</a> authorized a new <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-fdrs-food-stamps-to-trumps-harvest-boxes-the-history-of-helping-the-poor-get-enough-to-eat-91813">food stamp</a> program. The first American to receive this government benefit was an unemployed West Virginia coal miner.</p>
<p>In May 1961, Kennedy signed a law to <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-026-002.aspx">stimulate the economy in areas with high unemployment</a>. He said that the head of the new agency had already investigated “the problem in West Virginia and … in eastern Kentucky, southern Illinois, and parts of Ohio” – all coal-mining areas.</p>
<p>When Lyndon B. Johnson became president, he declared an “<a href="http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/selected-speeches/november-1963-1964/01-08-1964.html">unconditional war on poverty</a>,” which would include “a special effort in the chronically distressed areas of Appalachia.”</p>
<p>On a subsequent “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VyZ_vKuY-M">poverty tour</a>,” LBJ traveled to the “roots of Appalachian poverty in Martin County, Kentucky,” where people suffered, according to a White House film, because of the “losses in the coal mining industry.”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0VyZ_vKuY-M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">LBJ visited Kentucky and West Virginia on a ‘poverty tour.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Work ethics and whiteness</h2>
<p>Conservatives attacked the <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-we-lose-the-war-on-poverty-35313">war on poverty</a> before it even began. Attorney General <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293105729549;view=1up;seq=330">Robert Kennedy</a> had a tense exchange at congressional hearings with William H. Ayers, an Ohio Republican, who claimed that “any set of standards” for benefits eligibility would mean there would not “be any white people in it.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215669/original/file-20180419-163975-11lb1ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The West Virginia Coal Miner statue, located outside the state capitol in Charleston.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2015631767/">West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Conjuring up the image of noble unemployed coal miners helped protect these new policies. Robert Kennedy replied that if Ayers visited West Virginia, he would find many eligible white people.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293105729549;view=1up;seq=338">Rep. David Martin</a> expressed his belief that antipoverty programs would stifle “individual initiative,” the attorney general asked the Nebraska Republican, “Have you ever talked to the coal miners of West Virginia and told them what they needed was individual initiative?”</p>
<h2>The ‘war on coal’</h2>
<p>Lately, coal industry executives – like the poverty warriors of the 1960s – are harnessing the power of the out-of-work miner in the public’s imagination, but for different reasons. </p>
<p>By the 1990s, companies increasingly used <a href="http://wvupressonline.com/burns_bringing_down_the_mountains_9781933202174">mountaintop removal mining</a>, a method of surface mining that uses high explosives and massive 20-story-tall draglines. Mechanization like this decreased <a href="http://www.wvminesafety.org/historicprod.htm">coal employment in West Virginia</a> from a post-World War II high of more than 120,000 to about 14,000 by 2000. </p>
<p>Furthermore, a growing number of people living near surface mines complained about the dust clouds, water pollution and flooding and demanded new regulations.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-coal-mining-declines-community-mental-health-problems-linger-60094">Studies of Appalachian mining</a> areas have found elevated levels of toxic pollutants near mine sites as well as higher rates of mortality and lower health-related quality of life.</p>
<p>Sociologists <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1549-0831.2009.00004.x">Shannon Elizabeth Bell and Richard York argue</a> that as coal employment decreased and protests against ecologically destructive practices increased, the industry intensified its public relations campaigns. In 2002, the West Virginia Coal Association created a group called Friends of Coal. The group held rallies in Charleston and Washington, D.C., to make miners and their families more visible to lawmakers. The organization framed regulations as threats, according to Bell and York, to “men’s status as the sole breadwinners.”</p>
<p>After Barack Obama’s 2008 election, the West Virginia Coal Association said that by imposing environmental regulations on the industry, his administration was waging a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-coal-industrys-rhetorical-playbook-66260">war on coal</a>,” rhetoric that conservative politicians soon adopted. While the War on Poverty promised government programs to help miners through temporary unemployment, the “war on coal” framing cast government as the cause of their joblessness.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yr5vmjsrXlo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">One of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s ‘war on coal’-themed campaign ads.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Trump administration</h2>
<p>By 2014, <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/473895061747695616?lang=en">Trump was pushing the myth</a> that the Obama administration’s regulations, rather than automation and competition from other energy options like <a href="https://siepr.stanford.edu/research/publications/what-killing-us-coal-industry">cheap natural gas</a> were solely responsible for coal industry job losses.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"473895061747695616"}"></div></p>
<p>Two years later, Trump’s transition team vowed to end this supposed war on coal by slashing regulations. Less than a month after he took office, he signed a House resolution that reversed an Obama administration rule designed to protect streams near mining operations. The next month, when Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2017/03/29/trumps-interior-department-says-the-war-on-coal-is-officially-over/#eda97d63d270">ended Obama’s moratorium on coal-leasing on public lands</a>, he said it was a “signal that the war on coal is over.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-track-record/index.html">Scott Pruitt</a>, Trump’s EPA chief, had repeatedly sued the EPA during his time as Oklahoma’s attorney general for what he called “overreach.” As EPA administrator, Pruitt has publicly questioned the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/epa-chief-scott-pruitt.html">the extent to which humans contribute</a> to climate change, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/revoking-clean-power-plan-means-sides">echoing industry executives</a>. He has also loosened regulations on coal ash disposal and said he wants to revoke <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/coal-industry-supporters-celebrate-epa-repeal-clean-power/story?id=50389885">the Clean Power Plan</a>, Obama’s attempt to limit greenhouse gases – steps the coal industry had urged.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.register-herald.com/news/officials-voice-support-of-repealing-clean-power-plan-in-west/article_53241beb-3fcc-5cdb-80cf-7f258c1d5ea8.html">Coal executives are praising</a> what the National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich calls a “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-coal-jobs/exclusive-trumps-coal-job-push-stumbles-in-most-states-data-idUSKBN1F81AK">regulatory reset</a>,” but their industry has <a href="https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES1021210001">gained at most 1,400 jobs</a> since Trump took office.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the administration has proposed cutting programs to help coalfield communities <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-policies-will-harm-coal-dependent-communities-instead-of-helping-them-82632">diversify local economies and clean up abandoned mine lands</a>, failed to address the <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-lung-disease-on-the-rise-5-questions-answered-91637">growing black lung crisis</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-confirms-trump-s-controversial-pick-lead-mine-safety-n821081">appointed a coal CEO</a> with a poor safety record to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration and ignored the government’s promise to <a href="https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/gazette_opinion/columnists/john-david-promises-for-tomorrow-still-overlooked-gazette/article_271f3cd4-f6fb-5dcd-9a8d-895d01ba70ce.html">fund miners’ pensions</a>. </p>
<p>While I do believe that miners are brave and hard-working, I am concerned that the White House appears to be taking advantage of Americans’ sympathy for out-of-work miners to justify rolling back regulations. And despite the American obsession with this idealized image, coal miners still face an uncertain future in real life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lou Martin is affiliated with the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum and is an honorary member of United Mine Workers of America, Local 1440. He has also done some advocacy work in opposition to mountaintop removal.</span></em></p>In the abstract, this near-mythic figure represents bravery, hard work and manliness.Lou Martin, Associate Professor of History, Chatham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882242017-12-07T11:09:59Z2017-12-07T11:09:59ZWhat better forensic science can reveal about the JFK assassination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197009/original/file-20171129-12069-12zia6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The immediate aftermath of the shooting of President Kennedy in November 1963.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Texas-United-Sta-/9ca283d2f3efda11af9f0014c2589dfb/58/0">AP Photo/Mary Ann Moorman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Popular television shows such as the “Law & Order,” “CSI” and “NCIS” franchises glorify forensic science as a magical, near-flawless tool for identifying criminals. Not surprisingly, Hollywood’s depiction of forensic science needs a reality makeover.</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/02/06/133497696/is-the-csi-effect-influencing-courtrooms">CSI effect</a>” is well-documented. As long ago as 2009, scientists with the National Research Council noted that <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12589/strengthening-forensic-science-in-the-united-states-a-path-forward">no forensic method</a> (except for nuclear DNA analysis) can reliably and consistently connect evidence to a specific individual or source. More recently, President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported that <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/09/20/pcast-releases-report-forensic-science-criminal-courts">pattern-matching forensic procedures are unreliable</a>. The <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/">Innocence Project</a> has exonerated many hundreds of wrongfully convicted people, and bad forensic science was found to be a contributing factor <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/misapplication-forensic-science/">in about half of the original cases</a>.</p>
<p>These problems are not new. Six years before the National Research Council’s 2009 report, I was on a panel of the council that <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/10924/forensic-analysis-weighing-bullet-lead-evidence">looked at a particular forensic technique</a> used to match bullets found at crime scenes (typically murders) to bullets found in a suspect’s possession. That procedure, called comparative bullet lead analysis, was first used in the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/10924/forensic-analysis-weighing-bullet-lead-evidence">What the panel found</a> 40 years after the event contradicted the FBI’s analysis of the evidence at the time, and caused the bureau to <a href="https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-laboratory-announces-discontinuation-of-bullet-lead-examinations">stop using the technique altogether</a>.</p>
<h2>How many shooters were there?</h2>
<p>One of the main questions around the Kennedy assassination was whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the only person shooting at the president in Dallas that November day in 1963. Investigators had <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/28/truth-behind-jfks-assassination-285653.html">found three bullet casings</a> on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald had been shooting from. Audio evidence found <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html">there had been another shooter</a> who had fired once.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1a.html">official congressional investigation</a> found that <a href="https://www.acsr.org/journal-archives/a-technical-investigation-pertaining-to-the-first-shot-fired-in-the-jfk-assassination">Oswald’s first shot had missed</a>, the second had hit Kennedy and the third had <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1a.html">hit and killed him</a>. The other shooter had missed, the investigation concluded.</p>
<p>These findings were based on the testimony of noted University of California-Irvine chemist Dr. Vincent C. Guinn. <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report">He claimed</a> that each individual bullet was chemically unique. By looking at the fragments of bullets that were recovered from Kennedy’s body and from Texas Governor John Connally, who was also shot that day (and survived), Guinn determined that there were <a href="http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscaguin.htm">two and only two bullets</a>, fired by Oswald, that struck Kennedy and Connally.</p>
<p>Guinn’s testimony may have been as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS0379-0738%2802%2900118-4">accurate as was possible</a> in the 1970s, but by the 1980s FBI agents were <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/10924/chapter/6#91">routinely testifying in court</a> that “bullets from the same manufacturing batch were chemically indistinguishable.”</p>
<h2>Investigating more deeply</h2>
<p>In late 2004, Stuart Wexler, a high school social studies teacher in Hightstown, New Jersey, was examining this very contradiction. He approached me about helping with a study of the brand of bullets thought to have been used by Oswald to kill the president. Wexler and a chemist friend of his had bought a group of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052401563.html">Western-Winchester Cartridge Co. Mannlicher-Carcano</a> bullets to verify Guinn’s assumption that bullets were individually chemically distinct. He wanted to analyze the bullet fragments using science-based techniques not available to investigators decades earlier.</p>
<p>I put together a team including Wexler, two chemists, a metallurgist and two statisticians. We used neutron activation analysis to measure the chemical composition of the bullets. This process irradiates the bullets and then <a href="http://nmi3.eu/neutron-research/techniques-for-/chemical-analysis.html">measures the gamma rays</a> the radioactive bullets emit, to reveal their chemical compositions. </p>
<p>Specifically, we wanted to test Guinn’s claim that each bullet was chemically distinguishable from each other. If that wasn’t true, we also hoped to identify whether any of our bullets matched any of the bullet fragments from the Kennedy assassination investigation.</p>
<p>We analyzed 30 bullets, and found that all but one matched at least one of the other bullets in the batch. The one that didn’t match any others we tested did actually match with fragments taken from Kennedy’s head. This meant that Guinn was incorrect: Individual bullets did not have uniquely identifiable chemical components. In fact, the number of bullets involved could have been as few as the two Guinn claimed, or <a href="http://doi.org/10.1214/07-AOAS119">as many as five</a>. Given the congressional conclusion that there had been four shots, it remains possible that Oswald was not the only shooter who hit the president – and that Oswald may not have fired the fatal shot.</p>
<p>Flawed forensic science had misled not only the congressional committee investigating the assassination, but also the entire nation. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1743490620070517">Our demonstration</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051601967.html?hpid=topnews">captured a lot of public attention</a>. But more importantly, it suggests that a deeper understanding of truth can come from improving forensic science. This is useful as <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-withering-public-trust-in-government-be-traced-back-to-the-jfk-assassination-87719">scholars examine newly released John F. Kennedy assassination documents</a>, and as criminal trials around the country seek justice for victims and accused alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88224/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clifford Spiegelman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Applying actual science to forensic investigations can yield substantially different results from the findings of standard methods in the field.Clifford Spiegelman, Distinguished Professor of Statistics, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/877192017-11-22T01:56:42Z2017-11-22T01:56:42ZCan withering public trust in government be traced back to the JFK assassination?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195657/original/file-20171121-6055-iyt855.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What was lost, other than a life, on Nov. 22, 1963?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/akrockefeller/11855209644">AK Rockefeller</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent release of the JFK files led to a surge of media coverage about the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. </p>
<p>But it’s not like public interest has ever really abated. On any day of the week, visit Dealey Plaza, the downtown Dallas site of the assassination. You’ll see curious tourists, sleuths trying to figure out what really happened and others who don’t agree about how it happened.</p>
<p>In some ways, it’s still Nov. 22, 1963. </p>
<p>In the days after the tragedy, the public was at a loss over how to interpret the events. People distrusted the government’s explanation – a suspicion that continues to this day. </p>
<p>Even so, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any lessons to be learned from the assassination. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s time for a different conversation about the Kennedy assassination – not one about who pulled the trigger, but about the lasting legacy of an unresolved event, and how it’s influenced what Americans do (and don’t) believe in today.</p>
<h2>A cottage industry of conspiracies</h2>
<p>On Oct. 28, President Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/924382919845666816?lang=en">tweeted</a> that he was going to release all the remaining JFK files in order to “put any and all conspiracies to rest.”</p>
<p>Good luck, Mr. President.</p>
<p>The journalists, conspiracy theorists and scholars who have sorted through the 31,334 documents <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/2017-release">disclosed this year</a> by the National Archives didn’t find anything that changes our previous understanding of the assassination or the events surrounding it. </p>
<p>But even if there were new revelations, would public opinion change?</p>
<p>For more than half a century, Americans have been exposed to a cottage industry of material about the Kennedy assassination. Over 1,000 books have been written, from “Crossfire” and “On the Trail of Assassins” to “They Killed Our President” and “CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys.”</p>
<p>It’s estimated that <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3175233&page=1">95 percent</a> of these books are pro-conspiracy and reject the Warren Commission conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy. Most point out discrepancies and unanswered questions. Many confuse innuendo and rumor with logic and evidence. </p>
<p>Then there are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy_in_popular_culture">fictional accounts of the assassination</a> – fantasy novels, comic books, comedies, a Broadway musical and even a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_Reloaded">video game</a> – that make no pretense of telling the truth. </p>
<h2>Rush to judgment</h2>
<p>Mark Lane’s 1966 book, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_to_Judgment">Rush to Judgment</a>,” was one of the first commercially successful books to criticize the methods and conclusions of the Warren Report. However, even before Lane’s book and the Warren Commission began its report, there’s evidence that a different rush to judgment had already occurred. </p>
<p>Belief in a criminal conspiracy took hold within days of the assassination. A <a href="http://news.gallup.com/vault/221048/gallup-vault-few-1963-thought-oswald-acted-alone.aspx">Gallup poll</a> taken the week of the assassination found that 52 percent of Americans already believed that the man who shot Kennedy didn’t act on his own and that others were involved. </p>
<p>In the minds of many Americans, a lack of a coherent narrative seems to have created a void that was filled by doubt and apprehension. <a href="http://news.gallup.com/file/poll/221069/1963_12_06%20JFK%20Assassination.pdf?g_source=link_newsv9&g_campaign=item_221048&g_medium=copy">The original Gallup news release</a> noted the “widespread fear” that Oswald didn’t act on his own.</p>
<p>Since 1963, <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx">Gallup has continued</a> to ask Americans whether they believe in the “lone gunman” theory or in a criminal conspiracy, and has consistently found that a majority believes it was a criminal conspiracy. (In 1966, the number dipped to 50 percent. By December 1976 it spiked to 81 percent.) The polls also show there has never been consensus as to who other than Oswald may have been involved.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester attends a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in November 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/JFK-Anniversary/3d0b5b7425b6418b99cef4ab81f4242f/133/0">Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not like JFK conspiracy theories haven’t been thoroughly debunked. Gerald Posner’s 1993 book “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vV29AAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=case%20closed&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Case Closed</a>” effectively refutes all the major conspiracy theories. Vincent Bugliosi’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7jrKTKDhvfkC&lpg=PP1&dq=reclaiming%20history&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Reclaiming History</a>” (2007) – a more in-depth version of “Case Closed” – fastidiously explains the evidence establishing Oswald’s guilt and that he acted alone. </p>
<p>Was the proliferation of conspiracy books – which exploited deficiencies in the government’s handling of the case – a major reason <a href="http://www.history.com/news/why-the-public-stopped-believing-the-government-about-jfks-murder">the public stopped believing</a> the government account of President Kennedy’s murder?</p>
<p>Social scientists have been able to show how people don’t necessarily wait for the facts, that they instead <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-we-worry-that-half-of-americans-trust-their-gut-to-tell-them-whats-true-84259">trust their gut to tell them what is true</a>. <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/24/study-finds-that-we-still-believe-untruths-even-after-instant-online-corrections/">Study</a> after <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868309352251">study</a> has shown that the presentation of facts and contradictory evidence often doesn’t change beliefs. In fact, <a href="http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_backfire_effect.php">it can sometimes make preexisting beliefs stronger</a>. </p>
<p>We also see how conflicting information about the assassination can sow confusion – to the point where people either aren’t sure what to believe or pick and choose what they want to believe. The JFK assassination is a case study for <a href="https://theconversation.com/confirmation-bias-a-psychological-phenomenon-that-helps-explain-why-pundits-got-it-wrong-68781">confirmation bias</a>, which is the tendency to search, interpret and favor information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs. </p>
<p>Is it possible that the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination helped lay the groundwork for today’s <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/uw-professor-the-information-war-is-real-and-were-losing-it/">alternative media ecosystem</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-origins-of-post-truth-and-how-it-was-spawned-by-the-liberal-left-68929">fake news peddlers</a>? Did it show how easily cultural fissures could be created and exploited, and how difficult it is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-princess-diana-conspiracies-refuse-to-die-82363">lay a conspiracy theory to rest</a>?</p>
<p>We do know that in 1964 – within a month of the Warren Commission’s official finding that Oswald was the lone assassin – public trust in federal government began a steady 54-year decline. </p>
<p>Today, it’s at a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/">near-historic low.</a></p>
<h2>A case never closed</h2>
<p>An important but often overlooked aspect of the Kennedy assassination has to do with the sociological importance of due process, and the consequences of when a trial is interrupted.</p>
<p>Within 48 hours of Oswald’s arrest, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby murdered him on national television. </p>
<p>This upended the American criminal justice process. Oswald’s death not only denied him his day in court, but it also denied Americans the sense of closure that can accompany a public trial. The presentation of evidence, the examination of witnesses, the deliberation of a jury, the rendering of verdict and the exhaustion of post-conviction remedies are all important elements of closure. Principles and process matter. </p>
<p>Not that there won’t be critics of courtroom-based outcomes, or that there won’t be differences between a legal verdict and popular opinion. </p>
<p>But a poignant lesson of the Kennedy assassination is that when the legal process is not allowed to run its course, it can have major, longlasting influences on what some believe – <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-endless-whodunnit-why-conspiracy-theorists-will-never-accept-who-shot-jfk-49465">and what others never will</a>.</p>
<p>Every day someone new learns about the Kennedy assassination. Interest in the government’s release of all remaining documents suggests that many still believe there are new things to learn. </p>
<p>But it doesn’t mean Americans are going to learn something that’s going to change what we believe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Kellus Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the minds of many, the assassination remains a tragedy cloaked in mystery. How does this lack of closure – and the general distrust it fomented – resonate in American culture and politics today?Ryan Kellus Turner, Adjunct Professor of Criminal Justice, St. Edward's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/840822017-10-09T14:52:25Z2017-10-09T14:52:25ZFinal JFK assassination files due for release – it will be a bumper year for conspiracy theorists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189426/original/file-20171009-6990-1hg3jr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Will the files show who was really behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy?</span> </figcaption></figure><p>It’s 2017, and conspiracy theorists around the world are eagerly awaiting the release of thousands of never seen before government documents related to the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. Due out in late October, the new material will no doubt reignite interest in the <a href="http://time.com/4606082/jfk-assassination-secrets/">JFK assassination</a> and it is likely that a host of new conspiracy theories will come to light as a result.</p>
<p>Ironically, author <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=kjim+marrs&oq=kjim+marrs&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2616j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Jim Marrs</a>, who wrote the bestselling book Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, sadly passed in August, and will be unable to add to this discussion. But of course like all good conspiracy theorists, Marrs is now at the centre of one. His death is one of several recent <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/691414/Claims-UFO-investigators-are-being-killed-by-men-in-black-after-latest-mystery-death">prominent conspiracy theorists</a>, who are now the subject of intrigue, machination and conspiracy. </p>
<p>Marr consistently backed the theory that there wasn’t just <a href="https://www.livescience.com/1560-jfk-lone-gunman-theory-flawed.html">a lone gunman</a> involved in the shooting and claimed that Kennedy was murdered by high ranking officials and businessmen – who all wanted to see the president dead because they didn’t like his policies. </p>
<h2>Seeing is believing</h2>
<p>Conspiracies also frequently emerge during times of fear and uncertainty – such as disasters, financial crisis, deaths. This suggests that <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/half-americans-believe-least-one-conspiracy-theory-78613">conspiracy theories provide a sense of individual control</a> by enabling people to make sense of the world.</p>
<p>Although belief in conspiracy theories is often criticised, <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/half-americans-believe-least-one-conspiracy-theory-78613">many are widely endorsed</a>, and even accepted by the general population. These theories can then go on to influence perceptions of important contemporary and historical events – as seen with the moon landings and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>The persistence and generation of conspiracy theories demonstrates their individual and social significance, and people endorse conspiracies for a variety of reasons. This is usually, when either no definitive explanation for an event exists, or the official account appears inadequate. </p>
<h2>The year of conspiracy?</h2>
<p>But the JFK files aren’t the only thing to get conspiracy theorists excited in 2017. A number of other landmarks in conspiracy theories have also happened this year – August 16 was the 40th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, and August 30 marked 20 years since the tragic passing of <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4160097/princess-diana-death-conspiracy-theories-paris-1997/">Diana Princess of Wales</a>. Both deaths over the years have similarly <a href="http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/weirdest-elvis-presley-sightings-conspiracy-2125270-2125270">developed their own folklore and debates</a>. Some Elvis Presley conspiracies claim the singer faked his own death to escape the pressures of fame, while others have suggested Elvis was a government informant, under threat from the mob. And there have been numerous reported sightings of Elvis alive and well. The most common theory about Diana is that she did not die accidentally, but was murdered. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188832/original/file-20171004-31791-1hdkvtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188832/original/file-20171004-31791-1hdkvtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188832/original/file-20171004-31791-1hdkvtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188832/original/file-20171004-31791-1hdkvtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188832/original/file-20171004-31791-1hdkvtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188832/original/file-20171004-31791-1hdkvtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188832/original/file-20171004-31791-1hdkvtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The king is alive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But as a celebrity, you don’t have to be dead to be caught up in a conspiracy – as the singer Avril Lavigne has discovered. May marked 15 years since the “<a href="https://www.indy100.com/article/avril-lavigne-dead-conspiracy-theory-back-twitter-viral-melissa-vandella-7736211">Avril is dead story</a>” first came to light. This 2003 conspiracy theory proposed that the singer died that year – aged 18 – and a doppelganger took her place. The anniversary, of course, caused the story to return. Other celebrities, such as Paul McCartney and Eminem have also been the focus of similar conspiracies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188834/original/file-20171004-13096-1wf246w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188834/original/file-20171004-13096-1wf246w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188834/original/file-20171004-13096-1wf246w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188834/original/file-20171004-13096-1wf246w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188834/original/file-20171004-13096-1wf246w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188834/original/file-20171004-13096-1wf246w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188834/original/file-20171004-13096-1wf246w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fans think Avril Lavigne died and was replaced by a clone named Melissa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New conspiracies have also emerged this year. The <a href="http://elitedaily.com/life/5-solar-eclipse-conspiracy-theories-will-seriously-freak/2049789/">solar-eclipse</a> was said to be the start of the end of the world, while the Charlottesville riots were purportedly orchestrated by the American liberal left to discredit <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/23/politics/trump-focus-group/index.html">President Donald Trump</a>. Then there was the <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/tv/oscars-2017-conspiracy-theories-abound-on-best-picture-mix-up/">Oscar mix-up</a> – when Warren Beatty wrongly announced La La Land rather than Moonlight as the winner of the best picture. This generated an array of conspiracy theories, the best of which was that it was calculated revenge by a previously overlooked actor. </p>
<h2>No possible explanation</h2>
<p>Sometimes though, conspiracy theories on occasion do turn out to be true. For instance, in the 1950s and 1960s the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covertly conducted studies using mind control techniques. This was known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra">Project MK- Ultra</a> and because of its theme and the destruction of records that was part of it, continues to be at the centre of many conspiracy theories. But it’s existence proves that sometimes fact can be stranger than fiction.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7ff24-xGrSI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Michael Shermer, the US science writer and founder of <a href="https://michaelshermer.com/">The Sceptics Society</a> argues that the brain acts as a belief generator, which is continually attempting to provide explanations to account for events. This explains why <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories-and-how-to-change-their-minds-82514">conspiracy theories draw causal connections</a> between seemingly unrelated phenomena. </p>
<p>In this way, simple solutions appear implausible. For instance, in the case of the Oscar mix-up the idea that the envelopes were accidentally swapped seems incredibly simple and improbable. Frequently though, conspiracy theories tend to act as nothing more than a form of gossip and rumour. </p>
<p>Ultimately, people have always shared these theories because they are interesting – truthfulness and accuracy are less important and often incidental. So whatever the outcome of the soon to be released JFK files, as is most likely the case with many longstanding conspiracies, they won’t get in the way of what is already <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/26/secret-success-equations-give-calculations-for-keeping-conspiracies-quiet">a good story</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84082/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s been a good year for conspiracy theorists, so they say.Ken Drinkwater, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Cognitive and Parapsychology, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityNeil Dagnall, Reader in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/844032017-09-22T00:37:32Z2017-09-22T00:37:32ZHow an economic theory helped mire the United States in Vietnam<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187128/original/file-20170921-21037-1o4ru9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rostow, front right, visited Vietnam in 1961.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Fred Waters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Questions of how the U.S. got mired in the Vietnam War and whether it was ultimately winnable have <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/vietnam-war-documentary-43367">fascinated historians</a> for half a century – most recently in <a href="http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/watch/">Ken Burns’ new 18-hour documentary</a>. </p>
<p>A little-remembered aspect of the debacle is the important role played by a prominent economic historian named <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/1591985">Walt Whitman Rostow</a>, whose theories on economic development helped persuade Americans – and two presidents – that the fight in Vietnam was right and that we must prevail.</p>
<p>The Burns documentary, from what I have seen, does not dwell much on economics, my area of expertise. But this was an important part of why Americans were there. </p>
<h2>Rostow’s rise</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187075/original/file-20170921-20964-rah2xq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rostow, left, looks over a map with Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor in 1961 ahead of their trip to Vietnam to observe and evaluate the political and military situation there and report back to President Kennedy. From his earliest days at the White House, Rostow urged more involvement in the Vietnam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bill Allen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rostow came to prominence in the 1960s after his theories on economic development <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/1591985">caught the eye</a> of the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy, who was campaigning for president. </p>
<p>In 1960, Rostow, then a professor at MIT, published an influential book called “<a href="http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=1107710529">The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto</a>.” The book describes how an economy transitions through five distinct stages of development, from basic (little use of technology, like much of central Africa and South Asia in the mid 20th century) to advanced (characterized by high levels of mass consumption, such as the U.S. or France). </p>
<p>Rostow believed economic development was a universal process that would generally occur in all countries albeit with unique national characteristics – that is, except under communism, where he believed the process would be much inhibited. He described communism as a “cancer” of economic development.</p>
<p>Communism, therefore, had to be forcefully resisted to protect a given country’s economic prosperity and freedoms and, ultimately, American national security and well-being as well. </p>
<p>Rostow’s view that economic development could be used to resist the spread of communism attracted Kennedy, who brought the professor to the White House as an adviser on national security. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Gale McGee shows President Johnson, Press Secretary Bill Moyers and Rostow (second from left) the route he took on his recent trip to Vietnam, in 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout his time in government, Rostow was one of both Kennedy’s and then Johnson’s most hawkish advisers. From the start he urged a prominent American role in Vietnam to thwart the spread of communism, and he remained steadfast even as others, such as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, increasingly saw the war as unwinnable. </p>
<p>Rostow, who left the White House in 1969 after serving three years as national security adviser, viewed the American loss in Vietnam as a military failure rather than one of political judgment. Even many years after the war, he believed the U.S. could have prevailed in South Vietnam with just a little more determination.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Johnson poses with members of his staff, including Rostow, front right, during his final weeks in office in 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Johnson_posing_with_staff_1969.jpg">LBJ Library/Yoichi R. Okamoto</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Communist Asia prospers</h2>
<p>I met Rostow some years after the war, in the early 1980s, when he was one of my dissertation advisers at the University of Texas at Austin. We’d sometimes discuss the war and his economic theories. </p>
<p>Rostow believed that communism meant unyielding one-party control of key pillars of an economy, which would surely stifle freedom and prosperity. It would also impede transitioning to more advanced stages of development. He argued faster growth would help stave off the threat, which is why he ensured economic aid was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Aid-War-Economic-Development/dp/0521021316">part of the White House strategy</a> to win the war. </p>
<p>When I knew him, the rise of Asia’s communist countries including <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html">China</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2017/03/23/east-asias-5-fastest-growing-countries-in-2017/#7a4041805ac6">Vietnam</a> had not yet occurred, and he saw little evidence that would have refuted his beliefs about communism and the “Stages of Growth.” Their economies didn’t begin their sharp rise until China led the way in the mid- to late 1980s. </p>
<p>He assured me, however, that South Vietnam would have prospered much earlier had communism been successfully repelled, just as <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/29/chung.koreas/index.html">South Korea began to flourish</a> after its war. </p>
<p>Perhaps, but the <a href="http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2016/09/why-did-china-grow-so-fast.html">recent success</a> of Asia’s communist economies does show that one-party rule can succeed in bringing about prosperity, at least more than we once thought. And as a result, the global economy’s center of gravity is shifting toward Asia. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rostow died in 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walt_Rostow_1968.jpg">LBJ Library photo by Yoichi R. Okamoto</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The consummate hawk</h2>
<p>In the end, however, Walt Rostow was unrepentant. </p>
<p>Rostow was of the generation that boasted its willingness to <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Inaugural-Address.aspx">“pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship”</a> in the defense of liberty. And he was one of those who really believed it. </p>
<p>This always struck me as peculiar not simply because it is extreme, but because economists are trained to think in terms of optimization or balance, not maximization at the extreme. </p>
<p>His “Stages of Economic Growth” is not widely studied in the United States these days, although some of the terms he coined, such as economic takeoff, are still used to refer to the rapid and catalyzing acceleration of economic growth. American economists today tend to avoid such grandiose socioeconomic theories, preferring instead to appreciate the complexity of forces at work in economic development and pursue more rigorous mathematical methodology. </p>
<p>To me, a significant problem with “Stages” was the subtitle, which <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216686961_Stages_of_Growth_Revisited">I took issue with in a paper I wrote in 1993</a> on South African economic development. Particularly in light of the success of countries like China and later Vietnam, “A Non-Communist Manifesto” became ideological dead weight, inseparable from the economic theories he forged supported by data. </p>
<p>Despite its weaknesses, “Stages of Growth” had strengths, such as its multidisciplinary nature and embrace of technology, which is <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2015/june/what-drives-long-run-economic-growth">what really drives development</a> in the long run. Unfortunately, the weight of his focus on communism ultimately was too much of a liability and undermined its legitimacy. This is true in politics more broadly as well as health care (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447380/">my speciality</a>), where ideologically driven special interests polarize and paralyze. </p>
<p>Rostow, who died in 2003, would have been better served without the ideological baggage. And this goes for the rest of us. We all too often fail to come together for pragmatic ends because of ideological conflict.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hilsenrath receives funding from the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa.
I received funding from the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa in 1984. It helped fund some research referred to in this piece.</span></em></p>Walt Rostow argued communism was incompatible with economic development and was influential in persuading Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to get more involved in Vietnam.Peter Hilsenrath, Joseph M. Long Chair in Healthcare Management & Professor of Economics, University of the PacificLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/832582017-09-14T01:13:14Z2017-09-14T01:13:14ZVietnam War: Who was right about what went wrong – and why it matters in Afghanistan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184764/original/file-20170905-32174-1gr1zho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Secretary of State Dean Rusk, President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dean_Rusk,_Lyndon_B._Johnson_and_Robert_McNamara_in_Cabinet_Room_meeting_February_1968.jpg">Yoichi Robert Okamoto/Wikipedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ghosts of the Vietnam War no doubt hovered over a recently assembled conclave of President Donald Trump’s advisers as they deliberated over the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. </p>
<p>In the Vietnam era, as today, the United States found itself engulfed in a seemingly never-ending war with mounting costs, unclear goals and few signs of success. In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, successive presidents faced much the same options: Withdraw, decisively escalate or do just enough to avoid losing. Like his predecessors in both wars, Trump chose the middle path – incremental escalation with no clear exit plan. Although Trump called it a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/08/21/remarks-president-trump-strategy-afghanistan-and-south-asia">“plan for victory,”</a> Secretary of State Rex Tillerson candidly admitted that the additional American troops will likely do little more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/22/rex-tillerson-totally-undercut-trumps-we-will-win-rhetoric-on-afghanistan/?utm_term=.4e30f11622f6">“stabilize the situation.”</a></p>
<p>How can we to explain the seeming preference of U.S. presidents for muddling through – whether in Afghanistan or, 50 years ago, in Vietnam? This has been a central question in a course on the Vietnam War that I have offered for the past 30 years. In it, we look for answers in a fascinating debate among former officials that emerged in the late stages of the war.</p>
<h2>Down a slippery slope</h2>
<p>Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger offered one point of view in his 1967 book <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/bitter-harvest-vietnam-american-democracy/author/schlesinger-arthur/">“The Bitter Harvest</a>.” A onetime adviser to John F. Kennedy, Schlesinger compared Vietnam to a quagmire: The first step into a quagmire inexorably draws one down a slippery slope. Schlesinger argued that officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations stumbled blindly into Vietnam without understanding where the U.S. commitment would lead. Escalation proceeded through a series of small steps, none of which seemed terribly consequential. Each succeeding step was taken in the optimistic belief that a little more effort – a bit more aid, a few more troops, a slight intensification of the bombing – would turn things around by signaling American resolve to stay the course. Faced with this prospect, the reasoning went, the North Vietnamese communists would sue for peace on American terms.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185906/original/file-20170913-20310-1p25wif.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1951.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Schlesinger,_Jr._NBC-TV_program_1951.JPG">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These flawed expectations, Schlesinger argued, arose from a decision-making system characterized by <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/10/21/eyeless-in-indochina/">“ignorance, misjudgment and muddle.”</a> A dysfunctional bureaucracy fed presidents misleading and overly rosy intelligence. The Vietnam War debacle, in other words, arose from <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inadvertence">inadvertence</a> and folly.</p>
<h2>Just don’t lose</h2>
<p>In separate pieces, this interpretation of what went wrong was challenged by <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/727316184">Daniel Ellsberg</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1147838">Leslie Gelb</a>. Both Gelb and Ellsberg had formerly served as Defense Department officials during the 1960s, and both helped to compile the famous <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers">“Pentagon Papers.”</a> </p>
<p>Gelb and Ellsberg reached similar conclusions about the sources of U.S. policy toward Vietnam. Ellsberg argued that policymakers during the Kennedy and early Johnson administrations followed two rules: </p>
<ol>
<li>Do not lose South Vietnam to communism, and </li>
<li>Do not involve the U.S. in a large-scale ground war in Asia. </li>
</ol>
<p>Each rule drew upon recent precedent. The “loss” of China to communism in 1949 led to charges that Democrats were “soft on communism” and a wave of <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6698.html">McCarthyite</a> hysteria at home. On the other hand, the public would also not tolerate another ground war similar to the unpopular Korean engagement.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185901/original/file-20170913-20276-1wh4v8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dan Ellsberg in 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The perceived domestic political costs of either extreme – withdrawal or unrestrained escalation – steered Kennedy and Johnson toward the middle. As long as feasible, each president did enough to avoid losing South Vietnam but shunned the direct commitment of U.S. troops that military advisers insisted would be necessary to bring victory.</p>
<p>By 1965, the deteriorating political and military situation in South Vietnam cut this middle ground from beneath Johnson’s feet. The minimum necessary to stave off defeat now required the commitment of American combat troops. Even once this line had been crossed, however, troops were introduced in a gradual manner and Johnson balked at imposing higher taxes to pay for the war. </p>
<p>As Kennedy and Johnson anticipated, public support for the war waned as <a href="http://www.gallup.com/vault/191828/gallup-vault-hawks-doves-vietnam.aspx">U.S. casualties mounted</a>. Richard Nixon responded to these domestic pressures by undertaking “<a href="http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/richard-milhous-nixon/vietnamization-speech-1969.php">Vietnamization</a>,” which gradually reduced American troop levels even while prolonging U.S. efforts to stave off a communist victory.</p>
<p>Ellsberg refers to this as a “stalemate machine.” Policymakers acted in a calculated manner to avoid losing for as long as possible, but understood that their policies could not bring victory. Stalemate was a conscious choice rather than a product of overoptimism or miscalculation. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185903/original/file-20170913-29701-dvsflh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leslie Gelb at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on July 24, 1971.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jim Palmer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While echoing Ellsberg’s account of the domestic constraints on U.S. policy, Gelb added two sets of international constraints. Withdrawal was ruled out because policymakers believed in the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/domino-theory">domino theory</a>, which predicted that the loss of South Vietnam would set off a cascade of communist victories throughout Southeast Asia. They also feared that the U.S. would lose credibility with its allies if we failed to put up a fight in South Vietnam. For these reasons, as well as fears of a right-wing backlash, Kennedy and Johnson were unwilling to walk away from Vietnam.</p>
<p>Yet Kennedy and Johnson also feared the international risks of major escalation, Gelb argued. An invasion of North Vietnam raised the possibility that either China or the Soviet Union would intervene more directly or retaliate against U.S. interests elsewhere in the world. In an age of nuclear weapons, the U.S. preferred to keep the Vietnam conflict limited and to minimize the risks of superpower war. </p>
<h2>From Vietnam to Afghanistan</h2>
<p>Gelb and Ellsberg rejected Schlesinger’s argument that policymakers were overly optimistic and lacking in foresight. Rather, they saw policymakers as generally pessimistic, recognizing that the next step along the ladder of escalation would not be sufficient and that future steps would be necessary just to maintain a stalemate. With victory viewed as infeasible, presidents chose stalemate as the least bad among a set of terrible options. Presidents had no clear exit strategy, other than the hope that the enemy would weary of the conflict or that the problem could be passed along to the next president.</p>
<p>Instead of blaming bureaucratic bumbling, Gelb argues that “the system worked.” The bureaucrats did exactly what top policymakers asked them to do: Avoid losing Vietnam for more than a decade. The problem lay rather in the underlying assumption – never questioned - that Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States.</p>
<h2>Who was right?</h2>
<p>I’d contend that Gelb and Ellsberg make a more convincing case than Schlesinger. Muddling through offered presidents a politically safer short-run alternative to withdrawal or major escalation. </p>
<p>A similar dynamic appears at work in the U.S. approach to Afghanistan, where Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump have each accepted stalemate over the riskier options of retreat or decisive escalation. Against an entrenched Taliban insurgency, U.S. policy has been driven by the need to stave off the collapse of weak local partners rather than the pursuit or expectation of military victory. Even <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/world/asia/06reconstruct.html">President Barack Obama’s surge</a> in Afghanistan provided fewer than half the troops requested by the military. On the other hand, Obama later retreated from his own stated deadline for total withdrawal, opting to leave <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/world/asia/obama-afghanistan-troops.html">11,000 troops in place</a>. Now Trump has also reneged from previous pledges to disengage from Afghanistan, instead sending additional troops. </p>
<p>It may be that the logic of the stalemate machine is built into the very concept of limited war. Or that it is a predictable consequence of how presidents manage the constraints posed by American politics. In any case, the histories of U.S. military involvements in Vietnam and Afghanistan should serve as warnings to future presidents who might be tempted to again jump onto the treadmill of perpetual war.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Skidmore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Was Vietnam ‘a quagmire’ or a ‘stalemate machine’? Understanding this 50-year-old debate can shed light on why the US is currently locked into a ‘forever war.’David Skidmore, Professor of Political Science, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/788962017-06-08T02:36:53Z2017-06-08T02:36:53ZJ Edgar Hoover’s oversteps: Why FBI directors are forbidden from getting cozy with presidents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172825/original/file-20170607-29563-t1c9ub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How are U.S. presidents and FBI directors supposed to communicate?</p>
<p>A new FBI director has recently been nominated, former Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray. He will certainly be thinking carefully about this question as he awaits confirmation.</p>
<p>Former FBI Director James Comey’s relationship with President Donald Trump was strained at best. Comey was concerned that Trump had approached him on <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-jcomey-060817.pdf">nine different occasions</a> in two months. In his testimony to Congress, Comey stated that under President Barack Obama, he had spoken with the president only twice in three years.</p>
<p>Comey expressed concern about this to colleagues, and tried to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/politics/comey-sessions-trump.html">distance himself</a> from the president. He tried to tell Trump the proper procedures for communicating with the FBI. These policies have been enmeshed in <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/white-house-interference-justice-department-investigations-2009-holder-memo">Justice Department guidelines</a>. And for good reason.</p>
<p>FBI historians <a href="http://greaterallegheny.psu.edu/person/douglas-m-charles-phd">like myself</a> know that, since the 1970s, bureau directors try to maintain a discrete distance from the president. This tradition grew out of reforms that followed the often questionable behavior of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who served from 1924 to 1972.</p>
<p>Over this long period, Hoover’s relationships with six different presidents often became dangerously close, crossing ethical and legal lines. This history can help us understand Comey’s concerns about Trump and help put his testimony into larger context.</p>
<p>As the nation’s chief law enforcement arm, the FBI today is tasked with three main responsibilities: investigating violations of federal law, pursuing counterterrorism cases and disrupting the work of foreign intelligence operatives. Anything beyond these raises serious ethical questions.</p>
<h2>From FDR to Nixon</h2>
<p>When Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, <a href="https://ohiostatepress.org/books/Book%20Pages/Charles%20Edgar.html">Hoover worked hard</a> to develop a close working relationship with the president. Roosevelt helped promote Hoover’s crime control program and expand FBI authority. Hoover grew the FBI from a small, relatively limited agency into a large and influential one. He then provided the president with information on his critics, and even some <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684520500133836">foreign intelligence</a>, all while <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/Hoover%20FDR.JPG">ingratiating himself</a> with FDR to retain his job.</p>
<p>President Harry Truman <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,879566-3,00.html">didn’t much like Hoover</a>, and thought his FBI was a potential “<a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Truman/David-McCullough/9780671869205">citizen spy system</a>.” </p>
<p>Hoover found President Dwight Eisenhower to be an ideological ally with an interest in expanding FBI surveillance. This <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1345-8.html">led to increased FBI use</a> of illegal microphones and wiretaps. The president looked the other way as the FBI carried out its sometimes questionable investigations. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Director of FBI J. Edgar Hoover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Visit_of_Attorney_General_and_Director_of_FBI._President_Kennedy%2C_J.Edgar_Hoover%2C_Robert_F._Kennedy._White_House..._-_NARA_-_194173.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/Abbie Rowe</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But when John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/572_reg.html">Hoover’s relationship with the president faced a challenge</a>. JFK’s brother, Robert Kennedy, was made attorney general. Given JFK’s close relationship with his brother, Hoover could no longer bypass his boss and deal directly with the president, as he so often did in the past. Not seeing eye to eye with the Kennedys, Hoover cut back on volunteering political intelligence reports to the White House. Instead, he only responded to requests, while collecting information on JFK’s extramarital affairs.</p>
<p>By contrast, President Lyndon Johnson had a voracious appetite for FBI political intelligence reports. Under his presidency, the FBI became a direct vehicle for servicing the president’s political interests. LBJ issued <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/IMG_0249.jpg">an executive order</a> exempting Hoover from mandatory retirement at the time, when the FBI director reached age 70. Owing his job to LBJ, Hoover designated a top FBI official, FBI Assistant Director <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4390370/cartha-deloach">Cartha “Deke” DeLoach</a>, as the official FBI liaison to the president.</p>
<p>The FBI monitored the Democratic National Convention at LBJ’s request. When Johnson’s aide, Walter Jenkins, was caught soliciting gay sex in a YMCA, <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/Oct%2014,%201964%20Deloach%205884.mp3">Deke DeLoach worked directly</a> with the president in dealing with the backlash. </p>
<p>One might think that when Richard Nixon ascended to the presidency in 1968, he would have found an ally in Hoover, given their shared anti-Communism. <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1345-8.html">Hoover continued</a> to provide a wealth of political intelligence to Nixon through a formal program called INLET. However, <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/572_reg.html">Hoover also felt vulnerable</a> given intensified public protest due to the Vietnam War and public focus on his actions at the FBI. </p>
<p>Hoover held back in using intrusive surveillance such as wiretaps, microphones and break-ins as he had in the past. He resisted Nixon’s attempts to centralize intelligence coordination in the White House, especially when Nixon asked that the FBI use intrusive surveillance to find White House leaks. Not satisfied, the Nixon administration created its own leak-stopping unit: the White House plumbers – which ended in the Watergate scandal.</p>
<p>Not until after Hoover’s death did Americans learn of his <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94intelligence_activities_VI.pdf">abuses of authority</a>. Reform followed. </p>
<p>In 1976, Congress <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/directors">mandated a 10-year term</a> for FBI directors. The Justice Department later issued <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/01/17/guidelines-are-civilettis-monument/9034b608-b761-4f8b-9fe0-49dc007dda9e/?utm_term=.1402e4ec7a01">guidelines</a> on how the FBI director was to deal with the White House and the president, and how to conduct investigations. These guidelines have been reaffirmed, revised and reissued by subsequent attorneys general, <a href="https://lawfare.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/staging/2017/2009%20Eric%20Holder%20memo.pdf">most recently in 2009</a>. The guidelines state, for example: “Initial communications between the Department and the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal investigations or cases will involve only the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General.”</p>
<p>These rules were intended to ensure the integrity of criminal investigations, avoid political influence and protect both the Justice Department and president. If Trump attempted to bypass these guidelines and woo Comey, that would represent a potentially dangerous return to the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas M. Charles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hoover abused his power as FBI director to serve presidents’ interests. The reforms that followed were set up to prevent it from happening again.Douglas M. Charles, Associate Professor of History, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778802017-05-26T12:27:50Z2017-05-26T12:27:50ZHappy 100th birthday, Mr President: how JFK’s image and legacy have endured<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171113/original/file-20170526-23260-yjeh85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">JFK remains among the most charismatic presidents in US history.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Florida Memory, State Library of Florida</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>John F Kennedy was born 100 years ago on May 29, 1917. While the achievements of his presidency and the content of his character have been subjects of contestation among historians and political commentators since the 1970s, there is little question regarding the enduring power of his image. As the youngest man to win election to the presidency, entering the White House with a beautiful wife and young children in tow, he projected the promise of a new era in American politics and society.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/">Norman Mailer’s sprawling, seminal essay</a> about Kennedy, published in Esquire in November 1960, Kennedy was the embodiment of what America wanted to be: young, idealistic, affluent and cosmopolitan. When America was faced with the choice between Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, Mailer posed the question: “Would the nation be brave enough to enlist the romantic dream of itself, would it vote for the image in the mirror of its unconscious” – or would it opt for “the stability of the mediocre”?</p>
<p>Kennedy knew the importance of his image, which is why he placed so much emphasis on his performances in the televised debates. His success in this arena arguably tipped the very close election in his favour. <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-President-Perennial-Political-Classics/dp/0061900605">According to journalist Theodore White</a>, television transmogrified Nixon into a “glowering”, “heavy” figure; by contrast, Kennedy appeared glamorous, sophisticated – almost beautiful.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kennedy and Nixon TV debate, Associated Press, Creative Commons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Master of the medium</h2>
<p>Carrying this success into his presidency, Kennedy used television to communicate with the people to great effect through broadcast press conferences and interviews. As demonstrated by the miniseries Kennedy (1983), where Kennedy was played by perennial screen politician Martin Sheen, JFK’s presidency can be reduced to a series of televised moments: his oft-quoted inaugural address (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”); his tours of France and West Germany (“Ich bin ein Berliner”); and his calm, assured broadcasts to the nation during the civil rights demonstrations and the Cuban Missile Crisis.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674001855">As American historian Alan Brinkley wrote in 1998</a>: “Even many of those who have become disillusioned with Kennedy over the years are still struck, when they see him on film [or on television], by how smooth, polished and spontaneously eloquent he was, how impressive a presence, how elegant a speaker.” </p>
<p>Most of the Kennedy miniseries is in colour. But in its reconstruction of monochrome images of Kennedy on television, it employs the medium as a means of memorialising him, infatuated with his image in its nostalgic reverie for a more stable and prosperous time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kennedy (1983), DVD, Carlton International Media Ltd.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kennedy’s image on television (and in newsreel footage) is so seductive it is unsurprising Oliver Stone used it in the opening sequence to his controversial debunking of the official theories behind the president’s assassination in the film JFK (1991). <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kennedy-Obsession-American-Myth-JFK/dp/0231107994">As John Hellmann suggested</a>, this footage establishes Kennedy “as the incarnation of the ideal America in the body of the beautiful man”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OB1uUNx2Nfs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The moving image played a fundamental role in establishing Kennedy as the image-ideal president. <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/power_of_image/">As I have argued elsewhere</a>, other presidents have sought to establish their own images in relation to Kennedy’s, from Bill Clinton in 1992 to Barack Obama in 2008 and beyond. Kennedy is a seductive figure – not because of what he did or achieved, but because he cultivated the notion that he reflected the best the United States could be if it dared to dream.</p>
<p>Towards the conclusion of Oliver Stone’s Nixon, the eponymous president, played by Anthony Hopkins, stumbles drunkenly around the White House on the verge of resignation. He looks up to the portrait of Kennedy and says, rather forlornly: “When they [the people] look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.” </p>
<p>Stone is here acknowledging Nixon’s frail humanity as the “ego” to Kennedy’s “ego-ideal”. Where Nixon is deficient and ordinary, Kennedy’s image retains the illusion of perfection in the collective memory.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170311/original/file-20170522-24998-2j5awh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170311/original/file-20170522-24998-2j5awh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170311/original/file-20170522-24998-2j5awh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170311/original/file-20170522-24998-2j5awh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170311/original/file-20170522-24998-2j5awh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170311/original/file-20170522-24998-2j5awh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170311/original/file-20170522-24998-2j5awh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nixon (1995), Buena Vista Pictures Ltd.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Film International</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politics as reality TV</h2>
<p>The 100th anniversary of Kennedy’s birth allows us to reflect upon this legacy. If Kennedy was the superhero and Nixon the flawed human, then Donald Trump is a compendium of some of the worst qualities a politician can have: impulsive, arrogant, narcissistic. In a chaotic, ephemeral and often trivial media environment, Trump, a man with an insatiable appetite for the spotlight and no discernible ideological convictions, has thrived. He believes – and he has not been disabused of this notion – that he can perform the presidency as he performed on reality television in The Apprentice, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/comey-fired-trump-found-out-tv-screens-while-talking-fbi-la-a7727346.html">most recently firing the director of the FBI on television</a>.</p>
<p>We may bemoan the idea that politics has become a television show, but it has. Is that Kennedy’s fault? Yes and no. His polished performances on television hid many questionable tactics and character flaws beneath the surface, but it is often said that we get the politicians we deserve, and in allowing politics to become messily intertwined with the discourses of celebrity and, subsequently, the values of reality television, human beings fostered the conditions that created Kennedy and Trump. </p>
<p>If Kennedy was alive today would he be horrified by what politics has become? No, he’d be on Snapchat.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Frame does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A century after his birth, John F Kennedy’s celebrity shines as brightly as ever.Gregory Frame, Lecturer in Film Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/780732017-05-26T01:33:57Z2017-05-26T01:33:57ZWhen image trumps ideology: How JFK created the template for the modern presidency<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171006/original/file-20170525-23279-1d42o23.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President John F. Kennedy watches as planes conduct anti-sub operations during maneuvers off the North Carolina coast in April 1962.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-NC-USA-APHS434187-JFK-Watches-Maneuvers/e10c09be3f4e4eafbcc308baff6b64ec/312/0">Associated Press</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>John F. Kennedy remains an enigma. </p>
<p>We still struggle to come to a clear consensus about a leader frozen in time – a man who, in our mind’s eye, is forever young and vigorous, cool and witty. </p>
<p>While historians have portrayed him as everything from a <a href="http://www.jeffgreenfield.net/if-kennedy-lived.html">nascent social justice warrior</a> to a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Conservative-Ira-Stoll/dp/054433454X/">proto-Reaganite</a>, his political record actually offers little insight into his legacy. A standard “Cold War liberal,” he endorsed the basic tenets of the New Deal at home and projected a stern, anti-Communist foreign policy. In fact, from an ideological standpoint, he differed little from countless other elected officials in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party or the liberal wing of the Republican Party. </p>
<p>Much greater understanding comes from adopting an altogether different strategy: approaching Kennedy as a cultural figure. From the beginning of his career, JFK’s appeal was always more about image than ideology, the emotions he channeled than the policies he advanced. </p>
<p>Generating an enthusiasm more akin to that of a popular entertainer than a candidate for national office, he was arguably America’s first “modern” president. Many subsequent presidents would follow the template he created, from Republicans Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump to Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.</p>
<h2>A cultural icon</h2>
<p>JFK pioneered the modern notion of the president as celebrity. The scion of a wealthy family, he became a national figure as a young congressman for his good looks, high-society diversions and status as an “eligible bachelor.” </p>
<p>He hobnobbed with Hollywood actors such as Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis, hung out with models and befriended singers. He became a fixture in the big national magazines – <a href="http://res.cloudinary.com/thedailybeast/image/upload/v1492458821/articles/2013/11/24/death-of-jfk-spawned-an-industry-that-thrived-for-decades/131122-woodward-jfk-tease_nmozw4.jpg">Life</a>, <a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/20/cf/1a/20cf1aa0d977ac5927fa99c18d978610.jpg">Look</a>, <a href="http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1957/1101571202_400.jpg">Time</a>, <a href="http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/9601029_72dpi_nocallout.jpg">The Saturday Evening Post</a> – which were more interested in his personal life than his political positions. </p>
<p>Later, Ronald Reagan, the movie actor turned politician, and Donald Trump, the tabloid fixture and star of “The Apprentice,” would translate their celebrity impulses into electoral success. Meanwhile, the saxophone-playing Bill Clinton and the smooth, “no drama” Obama – <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/11/04/obama-comedy-late-night-shows/">ever at ease on the talk show circuit</a> – teased out variations of the celebrity role on the Democratic stage. </p>
<p>After Kennedy, it was the candidate with the most celebrity appeal who often triumphed in the presidential sweepstakes.</p>
<h2>A master of the media</h2>
<p>Kennedy also forged a new path with his skillful utilization of media technology. With his movie-star good looks, understated wit and graceful demeanor, he was a perfect fit for the new medium of television. </p>
<p>He was applauded for his televised speeches at the 1956 Democratic convention, and he later prevailed <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/29/politics/jfk-nixon-debate/index.html">in the famous television debates of the 1960 presidential election</a>. His televised presidential press conferences became media works of art as he deftly answered complex questions, handled reporters with aplomb and laced his responses with wit, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=uFhNxX5lrNEC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=JFK+Madame+de+Sta%C3%ABl&source=bl&ots=0PP37-g1Oz&sig=uatoFf2BX8q-rySXD7vy-NpyMnA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx5LqAr4vUAhUH5YMKHdnNAxIQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=JFK%20Madame%20de%20Sta%C3%ABl&f=false">quoting literary figures</a> like the Frenchwoman Madame de Staël.</p>
<p>Two decades later, Reagan proved equally adept with television, using his acting skills to convey an earnest patriotism, while the lip-biting Clinton projected the natural empathy and communication skills of a born politician. Obama’s eloquence before the cameras became legendary, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/did-america-need-a-social-media-president/512405/">while he also became an early adopter of social media</a> to reach and organize his followers. </p>
<p>Trump, of course, emerged from a background in reality television and adroitly <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/daily_videos/trump-uses-twitter-to-bypass-media/">employed Twitter to circumvent a hostile media establishment</a>, generate attention and reach his followers. </p>
<h2>The vigorous male</h2>
<p>Finally, JFK reshaped public leadership by exuding a powerful, masculine ideal. As I explore in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Masculine-Mystique-Power-Frontier/dp/1250049989">my book,</a> “JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier,” he emerged in a postwar era colored by <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/decline-of-the-american-male/oclc/1574984">mounting concern over the degeneration of the American male</a>. Some blamed the shifting labor market for turning men from independent, manual laborers into corpulent, desk-bound drones within sprawling bureaucracies. Others pointed to suburban abundance for transforming men into diaper-changing denizens of the easy chair and backyard barbecue. And many thought that the advancement of women in the workplace would emasculate their male coworkers.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170874/original/file-20170524-31317-1atv4nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John F. Kennedy smokes a cigar and reads The New York Times on his boat off the coast of Hyannisport.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyannisport_Weekend._President_Kennedy_with_cigar_and_New_York_Times._Hyannisport,_MA,_aboard_the_%22Honey_Fitz%22._-_NARA_-_194268.jpg">U.S. National Archives and Records Administration</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Enter Jack Kennedy, who promised a bracing revival of American manhood as youthful and vigorous, cool and sophisticated. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/AS08q5oYz0SFUZg9uOi4iw.aspx">In his famous “New Frontier” speech</a>, he announced that “young men are coming to power – men who are not bound by the traditions of the past – young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Physical-Fitness.aspx">In a Sports Illustrated article</a> titled “The Soft American,” he advocated a national physical fitness crusade. He endorsed a tough-minded realism to shape the counterinsurgency strategies that were deployed to combat Communism, and he embraced the buccaneering style of the CIA and the Green Berets. <a href="https://history.nasa.gov/moondec.html">He championed the Mercury Seven astronauts</a> as sturdy, courageous males who ventured out to conquer the new frontier of space.</p>
<p>JFK’s successors adopted many of these same masculine themes. Reagan positioned himself as a manly, tough-minded alternative to a weak, vacillating Jimmy Carter. Clinton presented himself as a pragmatic, assertive, virile young man whose hardscrabble road to success contrasted with the privileged, preppy George H.W. Bush. Obama impressed voters as a vigorous, athletic young man <a href="http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/news/story?id=3374067">who scrimmaged with college basketball teams</a> – a contrast to the cranky, geriatric John McCain and a stiff, pampered Mitt Romney. </p>
<p>More recently, of course, Trump’s outlandish masculinity appealed to many traditionalists unsettled by a wave of gender confusion, women in combat, weeping millennial “snowflakes” and declining numbers of physically challenging manufacturing jobs in the country’s post-industrial economy. No matter how crudely, the theatrically male businessman promised a remedy. </p>
<p>So as we look back at John F. Kennedy a century after his birth, it seems ever clearer that he ascended the national stage as our first modern president. Removed from an American political tradition of grassroots electioneering, sober-minded experience and bourgeois morality, this youthful, charismatic leader reflected a new political atmosphere that favored celebrity appeal, media savvy and masculine vigor. He was the first American president whose place in the cultural imagination dwarfed his political positions and policies.</p>
<p>Just as style made the man with Kennedy, it also remade the American presidency. It continues to do so today.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on May 25, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Watts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Reagan, Clinton, Obama and Trump would all pull from the Kennedy playbook, from mastering the media to exuding masculine vitality.Steven Watts, Professor of History, University of Missouri-ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/782402017-05-26T01:30:10Z2017-05-26T01:30:10ZJFK at 100: Why we still cherish his memory<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170812/original/file-20170524-31346-owe1o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C97%2C937%2C636&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy on Dec. 15, 1961.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHP-1961-12-15-B.aspx">White House Photographs</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On May 29, the nation commemorates the 100th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s birth. It’s worth noting on this occasion that even now, more than 50 years after his death, Kennedy is widely regarded as one of the country’s best presidents. Although historians may feel differently, <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/165902/americans-rate-jfk-top-modern-president.aspx?g_source=Greatest+U.S.+President&g_medium=search&g_campaign=tiles">the public</a> consistently ranks him at or near the top among American leaders. </p>
<p>Why does Kennedy remains so popular – indeed, nearly as popular in public memory as he was during his presidency? This is the question I explore in my new book, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316911945">“The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Biography.</a>”</p>
<h2>The Kennedy brand</h2>
<p>To begin with, President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy worked hard to construct a positive image of themselves, what I call the Kennedy brand. And because history is as much about forgetting as remembering, they made every effort to filter out information at odds with that image. </p>
<p>As I note in my book, Americans knew little of the first lady’s nicotine habit, her lavish spending or her use of amphetamines. Nor did they know of the president’s drug dependencies, medical problems or marital infidelities.</p>
<p>On the contrary, in their <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/The-White-House-Restoration.aspx">restoration of the White House</a>, famous state dinners, elegant costumes and skillful management of the media, the Kennedys represented themselves as idealized versions of the president and first lady. </p>
<p>Together with the president’s image as a progressive politician in the tradition of the New Deal, they were seen as the happy couple and loving parents who communicated a message of hope and progress, charm and intelligence, youth, vitality and beauty. If not always true to who they were behind the scenes, their public persona was enormously popular with their fellow Americans. Indeed, over the course of his administration, the president’s approval rating <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx">averaged about 70 percent</a> – a remarkably high figure by today’s standards.</p>
<p>Kennedy’s assassination and the profound cultural trauma it induced transformed the constructed image of the president, now glossed in the glory of a fallen hero, into a flashbulb memory that transcended his death. The Kennedy brand now became a sacred symbol of all that was good in American life, his virtues those of the nation itself. Jacqueline Kennedy wanted her husband remembered as the stuff of legend rather than political science. She wanted him remembered for what he represented, <a href="https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/jfk-epilogue.jpg">she told journalist Theodore H. White</a>, not alone for what he did. She wanted him remembered as a man of style, a peacemaker, a crusader for social justice and a gifted orator who inspired hope in the future and confidence in government.</p>
<p>What is more, she set out to accomplish that goal from the moment of JFK’s death. She transformed her husband’s funeral into a dramatic reproduction of his life as she wanted it remembered. She missed no opportunity to draw a connection between her husband and both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, two of the great reform presidents, or to recall his love of family, wartime heroism, devotion to service and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170909/original/file-20170525-31814-z47lm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacqueline Kennedy walks to the grave of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 28, 1963, three days after his funeral. The gravesite overlooks the Lincoln Memorial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bob Schutz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the same goal, she selected Arlington National Cemetery as his final resting place. There, her husband’s grave would share visual space with the monuments honoring Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, reminding everyone that he was among the great American presidents. Situated below the Custis-Lee Mansion and above the Lincoln Memorial, his gravesite would also recall his commitment to civil rights and his role as a peacemaker who tried to calm a nation racked by racial and regional strife. Finally, located with other veterans in the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery, it would remind visitors once again of his wartime heroism and his belief in public service and sacrifice.</p>
<h2>Monuments of paper and stone</h2>
<p>Jacqueline Kennedy also made efforts to embed the Kennedy brand in American memory. She oversaw the design of the Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston and persuaded President Johnson to push forward with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. </p>
<p>The performing arts center recalled the president’s support of the arts as a token of free expression in a democratic society. The space center memorialized his commitment to the space program and his sense of adventure, faith in the future and confidence that no dream was too grand, no goal beyond reach. The Kennedy Library and Museum brought to mind his life as a man of letters, his love of learning and his sense of history. </p>
<p>Through the Kennedy Library, as I argue in my book, Jacqueline Kennedy managed her husband’s records to safeguard his reputation. She gave privileged access to those who would write the president’s biography as she wanted it recorded, denying similar access to those who might cast a more critical eye on his life. The skillfully contrived museum reproduced his presidency by revealing some aspects of his life while slighting or erasing others.</p>
<p>Through these efforts, Jacqueline Kennedy embedded her husband’s identity, as she defined it, so deeply in the collective memory of the American people that even the most aggressive critics could not fully dislodge it.</p>
<p>Reinforcing her efforts was a wave of nostalgia that swept the country beginning in the 1970s. As the historian Robert Dallek reportedly said, <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/203428265/">Kennedy looked so good because what came later looked so bad</a>. After Kennedy’s death came more assassinations, the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, racial strife and urban riots. Added to the mix was a full-scale assault on traditional values evident in the feminist movement, the sexual revolution, the drug culture and the campaigns to legalize abortion and protect gay rights. </p>
<p>It was in this context that Americans looked back nostalgically on the early 1960s and Kennedy in particular, especially the traditional values he supposedly represented. </p>
<p>In death Kennedy became a more polished version of the already idealized image he had presented in his news conferences, campaign speeches, TV specials and ubiquitous photographs. He became the ideal American, and following his death, his countrymen wanted to preserve that memory of him, however constructed, and perhaps of themselves and their country when he was in office.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Hogan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>John Fitzgerald Kennedy consistently ranks as one of America’s most popular leaders. A presidential historian argues that didn’t just happen – it was the result of an effort to create an image.Michael Hogan, Professor of History, University of Illinois at SpringfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/695732016-12-01T01:57:24Z2016-12-01T01:57:24ZTrump’s Carrier coup reveals credibility gap between Twitter rhetoric and economic reality<p>In a political coup, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/business/trump-to-announce-carrier-plant-will-keep-jobs-in-us.html?_r=0">President-elect Donald Trump says</a> that his transition team has struck a deal with Carrier’s Indianapolis plant to keep 1,000 jobs in the state. </p>
<p></p><blockquote><p>Big day on Thursday for Indiana and the great workers of that wonderful state.We will keep our companies and jobs in the U.S. Thanks Carrier</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803808454620094465">November 30, 2016</a></blockquote> <p></p>
<p>This builds on Trump’s recent tweets directed at the air-conditioner maker and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/18/the-real-story-behind-that-exaggerated-tweet-from-donald-trump-about-ford/">Ford</a>, as he sought to deliver on a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/29/donald-trump-has-reached-a-deal-with-a-manufacturer-to-keep-jobs-from-going-to-mexico/">campaign promise</a> and reverse what his populist predecessor Ross Perot termed a NAFTA-spawned “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ7kn2-GEmM&feature=youtu.be&t=113">giant sucking sound</a>” of jobs leaving the Rust Belt. </p>
<p>To some degree, Carrier’s retreat may reflect its own concern for public opinion. Reports also suggest that Trump wielded sticks and carrots. Carrier depends on the government for approximately <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/29/trump_and_carrier_agree_to_save_half_of_the_2_000_jobs_set_to_move_from.html">US$5.6 billion in military sales</a> – a figure that dwarfs the $65 million in savings from moving the Indianapolis plant to Mexico, and executives may have had some fears of retaliation. Trump also could offer inducements – <a href="http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/307517-pence-handling-carrier-negotiations-that-trump-bragged-about-on-twitter">in the form of state tax breaks</a> (as Vice President-elect Mike Pence is still the governor of Indiana) and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/business/trump-to-announce-carrier-plant-will-keep-jobs-in-us.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">pledges of an easier line</a> on potential tax and tariff policies. </p>
<p>Yet, while likely to result in praise, these moves raise a number of questions. How legitimate is presidential “jawboning” of businesses? When are such measures effective in containing market abuses or achieving legitimate broader economic ends – as opposed to ineffective acts of political theater? When do they represent abuses of political power or authority? And what are the implications for the Trump administration’s broader economic policy? </p>
<p>Trump wouldn’t be the first occupant of the White House to try to bend individual companies to his will. Fortunately, economic history – and specifically an incident in 1962 I recount in a <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/political-economy/economic-ideas-political-time-rise-and-fall-economic-orders-progressive-era-global-financial-crisis?format=PB&isbn=9781316604571">just-released book</a> – offers some insights into these questions and their implications if this is to be Trump’s style going forward.</p>
<h2>JFK squares off against US steel</h2>
<p>Speaking to the issue of legitimacy, one might ask whether Trump’s stance represents a new power grab or a revival of a forgotten tradition.</p>
<p>In fact, there exists a long tradition marked by the use of presidential rhetoric to highlight public or “macro” interests in ostensibly private or “micro” corporate choices. Over the past century, such public interests have found expression across Theodore Roosevelt’s appeals for <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uT1yDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA25&dq=Theodore+Roosevelt+Economic+Ideas+in+political+time&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNzMG9ztHQAhXKppQKHQaXDT8Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=hepburn%20act&f=false">rail price controls</a>, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s support for <a href="http://millercenter.org/president/fdroosevelt/speeches/speech-3300">New Deal-era price codes</a> and World War II-era <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16252&st=sacrifice&st1=">“General Max”</a> price guidelines. </p>
<p>This view reached its peak in the 1960s when President John F. Kennedy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzRg--jhO8g">urged Americans</a> to “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” This exhortation voiced a then-prevailing sentiment that a common good existed, one that “trumped” individual choices. </p>
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<p>To advance such macro interests, presidents accordingly engaged in “jawboning” of labor and business leaders. For example, they often stressed their shared interests in wage-price restraint, and issued threats to both companies and unions, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=buihYlwXhuwC&q=spiral#v=snippet&q=spiral&f=false">lest wages chase prices</a> in an inflationary spiral that produced no real gains for anyone. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most famous such initiative revolved around a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=q6G96iX0xW8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=sorensen+kennedy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiV3I7J4dDQAhULpZQKHX5rBf0Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=sorensen%20kennedy&f=false">1962 struggle between Kennedy and major steel producers</a>. Given fears that steel price increases might spark renewed inflation, <a href="https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/meltzer/heller_interviewII_19711221.pdf">Kennedy put pressure</a> on the steel companies, arguing – as one adviser put it – that “if you play ball on this, I’ll help get labor into a more receptive mood on a reasonable settlement in 1962.” </p>
<p>Indeed, Kennedy would deliver, as unions swore off wage increases. When steel negotiations concluded on March 31, 1962, the United Steelworkers union agreed to no wage hike, accepting only a 2.5 percent increase in fringe benefits. </p>
<p>Yet, peace would not last. As I recount in my book “Economic Ideas in Political Time,” U.S. Steel President Roger Blough <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uT1yDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=After+reading+the+announcement,+Kennedy+accused+Blough+of+having+deceived+him,+while&source=bl&ots=fmBFE8ssAF&sig=_XL3u4bC5yc9fXO8TmmXIM1Vun4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv4sDs4tDQAhVCI5QKHdDCAKsQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=After%20reading%20the%20announcement%2C%20Kennedy%20accused%20Blough%20of%20having%20deceived%20him%2C%20while&f=false">visited the White House</a> less than two weeks later to inform Kennedy that his company would hike steel prices by 3.5 percent. Kennedy exploded, accusing Blough of deceiving him. </p>
<p>The administration more broadly responded on a number of fronts, deploying antitrust threats, diverting contracts and most importantly using presidential rhetoric. Kennedy publicly condemned “<a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/Press-Conferences/News-Conference-30.aspx">a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility</a>” and noted that the identical price moves of large steel firms wasn’t “<a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/Press-Conferences/News-Conference-30.aspx">the way we expect the competitive private enterprise system to always work</a>.” </p>
<p>Given national outrage, the steel companies rescinded the increase within days. Kennedy had won.</p>
<h2>So does it work?</h2>
<p>How effective are such measures over time? </p>
<p>One thing worth noting is that such measures must be part of a sustained effort to promote self-reinforcing expectations. If people think they will work, they will work. If people think they will fail, they will fail. The political context matters.</p>
<p>In this light, it should be emphasized that after the steel confrontation, business more broadly moved to oppose Kennedy, suggesting that his measures posed threats to economic efficiency and political liberties. Chamber of Commerce President Richard Wagner <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Z_A0nBxjGiQC&pg=PA177&lpg=PA177&dq=dictators+in+other+lands+usually+come+to+power+under+accepted+constitutional+procedures&source=bl&ots=bcQ3WpJ-FR&sig=B8zWoTiXQQvPGmpSIe-2TOyxKQE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirnIrZ49DQAhWMq5QKHePhD3AQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=dictators%20in%20other%20lands%20usually%20come%20to%20power%20under%20accepted%20constitutional%20procedures&f=false">noted</a>, following the confrontation, that “dictators in other lands usually come to power under accepted constitutional procedures.” </p>
<p>While Kennedy was initially able to use his bully pulpit to get businesses to toe the line, steel companies eventually became adept at playing the expectations game. They would often announce excessive price increases and then quickly accept sham “compromises.” Or they would simply stagger announcements of price hikes or job cuts, revealing them in dribs and drabs or waiting until the holidays when even presidential denunciations might go unheard. </p>
<p>In terms of economic criticisms, free market economist Milton Friedman denounced Kennedy’s “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zHSv4OyuY1EC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=the+price+of+steel+is+a+public+decision,+as+the+doctrine+of+social+responsibility+declares,+then+it+cannot+be+permitted+to+be+made+privately&source=bl&ots=nJVkFg3h71&sig=Gp_W3sB6mdiioJPN3oF6HIfEGVg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2u6fY29DQAhXMpJQKHfVPAfIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=subversive&f=false">fundamentally subversive doctrine</a>,” noting that the steel crisis <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zHSv4OyuY1EC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=the+price+of+steel+is+a+public+decision,+as+the+doctrine+of+social+responsibility+declares,+then+it+cannot+be+permitted+to+be+made+privately&source=bl&ots=nJVkFg3h71&sig=Gp_W3sB6mdiioJPN3oF6HIfEGVg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2u6fY29DQAhXMpJQKHfVPAfIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=the%20price%20of%20steel%20is%20a%20public%20decision%2C%20as%20the%20doctrine%20of%20social%20responsibility%20declares%2C%20then%20it%20cannot%20be%20permitted%20to%20be%20made%20privately&f=false">had demonstrated</a> “how much of the power needed for a police state was already available.” Rather than highlight the notion of a uniquely public interest, Friedman <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zHSv4OyuY1EC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=the+price+of+steel+is+a+public+decision,+as+the+doctrine+of+social+responsibility+declares,+then+it+cannot+be+permitted+to+be+made+privately&source=bl&ots=nJVkFg3h71&sig=Gp_W3sB6mdiioJPN3oF6HIfEGVg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2u6fY29DQAhXMpJQKHfVPAfIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=the%20price%20of%20steel%20is%20a%20public%20decision%2C%20as%20the%20doctrine%20of%20social%20responsibility%20declares%2C%20then%20it%20cannot%20be%20permitted%20to%20be%20made%20privately&f=false">warned</a> that the steel crisis had shown that “if the price of steel is a public decision, as the doctrine of social responsibility declares, then it cannot be permitted to be made privately.” </p>
<p>In this way, at the height of the Keynesian era, one can see the reaction against appeals to limit private abuses of the public good that foreshadowed today’s neoliberalism, which sees private choices as largely equating with the public good. Friedman’s counterargument marked the acceleration of a shift to a belief that – as <a href="http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3276/no_such_thing_as_society">Margaret Thatcher put it</a> – “there is no such thing as society,” but only “individual men and women.” Expressing a classically liberal suspicion of public power, Ronald Reagan put it best in 1981 when he said that “<a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=43130">government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem</a>.” </p>
<h2>What it means for Trump</h2>
<p>These historical parallels therefore offer grounds for a skeptical view of the efficacy of Trump’s exhortation – and highlight the possible difficulties a Trump administration might find as it pursues Carrier-styled interventions.</p>
<p>First, Trump’s <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/regulations">ideology</a> – if not the wider culture – is marked less by a Keynesian-Kennedy commitment to regulation in the “macro” interest than to a Friedman-Reagan styled aversion to regulations that distort “private” choices. This increases the difficulty for Trump of enabling any self-reinforcing shift in business attitudes away from cost-cutting and in support of higher wages – even if this were his goal. And it’s more likely to encourage other companies to threaten to move employees in order to get more benefits – even if they have no intention of leaving. </p>
<p>Moreover, even if Trump’s sentiments had not been in accord with a neoliberal stress on liberating private choices, he would face opposition from a Republican Congress in any effort at reshaping business attitudes. <a href="http://abetterway.speaker.gov/_assets/pdf/ABetterWay-Economy-PolicyPaper.pdf">House Speaker Paul Ryan has himself stressed</a> the need to deregulate industry further. </p>
<p>Theoretically, Trump’s rhetoric might be married to a policy agenda like that of Bernie Sanders – who has proposed an “<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/finance/economy/307579-sanders-pressures-trump-with-anti-outsourcing-legislation">Outsourcing Prevention Act</a>” to limit access to federal contracts, tax benefits, and grants or loans to companies found to have been engaged in outsourcing. </p>
<p>Given these tensions, Trump’s act in saving the Carrier jobs might foreshadow a revived Keynesian stress on raising wages - or be revealed as a rhetorical diversion that obscures a reinforced neoliberal stress on profits. </p>
<p>If Trump is serious about working class concerns, he must offer appeals that go beyond tweets and promote regulatory initiatives resistant to corporate “gaming.” Put differently, as impressive as this early rhetorical success may be, observers should wait to see how it accords with Trump’s policy “reality.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wesley Widmaier receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Trump wouldn’t be the first occupant of the Oval Office to try to bend companies to his will to achieve an objective, be it economic or merely political. JFK tried it with U.S. Steel in 1962.Wesley Widmaier, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.