On November 22, 1963, a disaffected young Marxist by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas. One shot missed the motorcade, but the other two hit the President, with the final shot fatally wounding him. Oswald was subsequently arrested for the murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, and was killed by a local night club owner by the name of Jack Ruby while being transported from the Dallas police station. True story, America. Case closed.
If this is reality, I want to get off. Not because it’s logically incoherent, but because it’s just so damned boring.
Now, I’m not the preeminent historical scholar of Ruthless Reviews, so my take on this topic may not contain the subtlety and nuance of those classic pieces. But I am interested enough in the history of the 20th Century and in conspiracy theories to watch a TV movie based on a book by none other than Bill O’Reilly. Killing Kennedy is O’Reilly’s take on Jack Kennedy: part pinhead, part patriot, all penis. The book was apparently preceded by Killing Lincoln and followed up by Killing Jesus. I haven’t read any of them, but I have to say that I can’t wait for Killing Tupac. I’d read the shit out of that book, Bill. Though given the modern GOP’s bizarre obsession with repositioning MLK Jr. as a right-wing icon, I think we all know what the next one is going to be. God help us all.
Anyway, if you want to see the safest and least offensive take on the Kennedy Assassination ever made: here it is. Killing Kennedy focuses on the lives of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald in the years leading up to that fateful day, beginning with Kennedy announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and Oswald defecting to the Soviet Union. Kennedy becomes the leader of the free world, rebounding from the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco by successfully facing down Kruschev in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Oswald becomes the consummate failureman, bailing from Minsk back to the United States after realizing that it snows in Russia, and then bouncing from one lame job to the next with long spells of unemployment in between. Meanwhile, Kennedy sleeps with countless women (including, at times, his own wife), hosts naked pool parties at the White House, and looks fucking good doing it. Oswald barely hangs on to Marina, his loserdom and craziness slowly driving her and their children away, and stumbles about his life desperately attempting to find an ideological cause that he can latch onto to make himself whole.
We’re all familiar with this official story, and the weakness of Killing Kennedy is that it doesn’t really add anything new to the topic. It’s also quite compressed, with a runtime of about 90 minutes, so many major events are reduced to the bare minimum of detail. Still, it does feature Rob Lowe as JFK, which almost makes the entire experience worthwhile. If only this wasn’t a TV movie. If only. Hell, we might have had some full frontal!
I have to say, though, that the GOP’s continued obsession with JFK’s infidelity speaks to some deep, deep problems in their bedrooms. Now, I realize that what I’m about to say may cause some to immediately close the tab, but I’m going to say it regardless: Can you imagine Bill O’Reilly having sex? I’m not asking if you want to think about it. I mean, who does? But is such an event even within the realm of the possible? I think answering this question would do more to explain this film than anything else we could accomplish here today. So let’s just dive right in!
In my mind’s eye, I can envision Bill sliding up behind one of the Fox News girls and making what passes for a sexual advance. I don’t see him going after Megyn Kelly or even Elizabeth Hasselbeck, but maybe Alisyn Camerota. He slides his hand down to her right cheek, giving it a slap that speaks equal parts dominance and self-loathing. He doesn’t grab the ass cheek, but slaps it with a flat hand, and as it pulls away, Alisyn senses a deep regret in Bill. At the same time, she understands that Bill is incapable of doing this any other way. The longing in Bill for a grab of the ass cheek hangs over the entirety of the experience to follow; never spoken of, it is simply understood. Bill wants something that he can have, but is too subservient to his personal hangups to take.
He takes her from behind, and at one point, he places his right hand on his hip while his left hand rests on her lower back. Thrusting as vigorously as he is able, he lifts his left hand until his arm is level with his shoulder, slowly bringing the hand to a fist. Alisyn hears him speak softly under his breath, “Clark Kent ain’t got shit on me.” Coming to climax, his mind racing with visions of subjugated minorities, I can see him (after much, much thought about this subject) pulling out and coming in her ass crack. Don’t ask me why I feel that this is the case. I can’t explain that (and neither can you!) Bill just strikes me as a “come in the ass crack” kind of guy.
Really, though, I feel that a more likely scenario involves a O’Reilly/Hannity double team. I’m not sure Bill has it in him to initiate such an experience on his own. So what probably happens involves Alisyn being Chinese fingertrapped by Hannity and O’Reilly, with Sean taking her from behind while Bill stands motionless before her; Sean’s enthusiastic performance does half of the work for Alisyn’s fellations. As Sean reaches his peak, he forgoes his customary “Boom goes the dynamite!” for the more esoteric “Fuck Obamacare!”, spiking a nerf football off of the back of her head as he does so. The football connects, and Alisyn inadvertently deepthroats O’Reilly. He loses it instantly. Bill looks at Hannity with admiration; Sean’s always been the only one who could send it right through the goalposts like that. He can taste the celebratory Applebee’s already.
Why did I write any of that? It’s ridiculous. Bill O’Reilly can’t have sex. I think he’s a guy who, at this point, just likes to watch. He’s a watcher. So when some right-wing megafox minx like S.E. Cupp comes strutting in, it isn’t O’Reilly she sleeps with. But he is the guy who pays $100 to sit in the corner and try not to breathe too hard. Not that I’d know anything about that.
Anyway, who does S.E. Cupp sleep with? Well, I’m sure there are all sorts of Young Republicans and the like on the roster, but I prefer to think of her sleeping with someone like Shep Smith. I know what you’re going to say: Why would she do that? Shepard Smith? Really? Well, what can I say? The girl needs dick like a fish needs a jet ski.
So when Shep Smith sleeps with S.E. Cupp, he’s more along for the ride than anything else. S.E. Cupp is definitely wearing the pants here, even if they’re around her ankles. She doesn’t just bend over and wait for Shep to come to her; no, she backs it right up, right down to the base, and just starts grinding like a woman possessed. She wants all of it in her, right now. Shep is somewhat taken aback at first, unable to move, but S.E. looks back over her shoulder and coyly asks him, “What are you? A liberal?” It was all Shep needed to hear, and like the starting gun at Santa Anita, it makes him take off like a trained thoroughbred.
Then, as they say in the Seinfeld episode, “Yadda yadda yadda.”
A curious thing happens during their climax, though. S.E. Cupp female ejaculates with such force that it pushes Shep back, and he ends up coming into the air. His semen arcs across the copy room, approaching a second wave of female ejaculate that is slowly wrapping around it. S.E. Cupp’s feminine juices end up forming a hollow sphere suspended in midair; its rapid spinning allows it to hover by the same principles that allow the flying saucers at Groom Lake to take flight. Shep’s semen is now trapped within S.E. Cupp’s sphere, spinning about like Ecco the Dolphin in the City of Forever.
But S.E. Cupp truly is a goddess, and the tangential velocity on any equatorial point of her sphere begins to exceed the speed of light. Trapped within this relativistic Polar Vortex, Shep’s ejaculate eventually finds itself travelling backwards in time. Before 9/11, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, before Jimmy Carter’s sweaters, before the Civil Rights Act, it phase shifts back into our plane of existence behind a nondescript picket fence at Dealey Plaza on the date of November 22, 1963.
As the temperatures during its journey approached absolute zero, the semen is now frozen into an sharp icicle. The pussy juice dissipates, and the ejaculate finds itself approaching Elm at supersonic speeds. Before it even happens, it is finished. Jack Kennedy catches Shep’s manchowder in the face and passes into history. In the aftermath, the ejaculate melts like those ice bullets from every DTV conspiracy thriller ever made, if it didn’t shatter on impact first. The Warren Commission desperately attempts to make sense of these events, to no avail. And 50 years later, there are few who know the truth.
Perhaps this is why Bill O’Reilly found himself compelled to write (with the “help” of another author) the book Killing Kennedy. Like James Hosty before him, he found himself in a position to stop the assassination, but instead just stood mute. He remained in the corner that fateful day, more concerned about his $100 than anything else. I find it difficult to condemn him, though. His weakness is our weakness as a nation.
Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, this movie. Well, it was kind of boring, honestly. I’ve got a better idea:
The Ten Most Ridiculous JFK Assassination Theories
10) It was the mob, bro.
The mob stuffed the ballot boxes to get JFK elected in 1960, and then RFK starts going after them as Attorney General. This is actually touched on slightly in Killing Kennedy, when RFK admonishes JFK for sleeping with a woman connected to the mob. Still, it’s hard to imagine the mob having the resources or expertise to perform the assassination and subsequent cover-up. It sounds a bit heavy for them, and I honestly don’t see what the benefit for them would be. Maybe they were infiltrated by the Lizardmen?
9) Castro was pissed about the exploding cigar.
Castro’s beard is too awesome for him to pull a stunt like this. I refuse to believe it. Besides, why would Castro be upset about the Bay of Pigs? Didn’t it fail? Why would he care?
8) Anti-Castro Cubans did it because Kennedy blew the Bay of Pigs.
You don’t leave men on the beach! Even if they went there without your consent or knowledge, you still need to send in the air support! Yeah, the Bay of Pigs was a clusterfuck, and I can see some disaffected Cuban nationals being involved with some conspiracy, but I can’t see them being the driving force of any such conspiracy. As with the mob, they didn’t have the resources or support to pull it off on their own. Also, the Lizardmen.
7) Lyndon B. Johnson.
He was a complete douchebag, but no self-respecting conspiracy would involve the Vice President of the United States, or anyone in the line of succession for that matter. There’s way too much danger of being discovered. Even though it was released 40 years later, I’m sure everyone involved had seen xXx: State of the Union. They weren’t going to make the same mistake for the first time.
6) Did you know that George H.W. Bush and Dick Nixon were in Dallas that day?
George H.W. Bush couldn’t even vomit properly, and Nixon was just biding his time. Hell, he’d officially quit after the 1962 election, and had absolutely nothing to gain at that point. Besides, he may not have been above suggesting retaliatory firebombing, but assassination is a whole other level of crazy. Nixon was too smart for such things, and would definitely pass on all of that noise. Also, Nixon was awesome, and I have problems.
5) Jack Ruby killed Kennedy, then shot Oswald to cover it up.
When another guy is already going down for your crimes, it’s always best to thrust yourself into the limelight by murdering him. It’s genius! Still, it’s about as plausible as the official explanation for Ruby’s actions: He loved JFK so much that he had to take vengeance into his own hands. Whatever happened to just being a failureman?
4) There were two Oswalds, and Lee was framed by his twin brother.
My favorite part of this theory is that Lee Harvey Oswald’s twin brother is named Harvey Lee Oswald. I think this is done to resolve some apparent problem where Oswald is listed as “Harvey Lee Oswald” in some records somewhere. At any rate, the doppleganger explanation of the otherwise baffling trip to Mexico City (which is included in Killing Kennedy) is a nice idea, but I think there’s a reason Oliver Stone kind of glossed over it in JFK. There’s through the looking glass, and then there’s through the Jabberwocky’s cloaca. Does the Jabberwocky have a cloaca? I must do some more research, I’m afraid…
3) The driver of the car JFK was riding in turned around and fired the fatal shot.
The best way to pull off a Presidential assassination and have Oswald be the fall guy is to have the guy driving the car turn around in broad daylight and fire shots at the target. No one will ever see that coming, because like the Vanilla Ice album, it’s mind-blowin’. There are countless YouTube clips of the Zapruder film being stepped through frame by frame, complete with MS Paint circles on the driver’s gun-toting hand. Therefore, it’s true. Just draw the little filled-in box next to this paragraph. We’re done here.
2) They swapped John F. Kennedy and J.D. Tippit’s bodies on the way to Bethesda.
Yes, apparently they made sure to shoot Tippit in just the right way so that his wounds appeared to all come from the book depository. Then, they switched the two bodies after Parkland, which explains the discrepancies between the reports of the doctors at Parkland versus at Bethesda. This theory runs into one major problem, though: Could J.D. Tippit have fucked Marilyn Monroe? If not, then there’s no believable scenario where anyone would confuse them posthumously. Hell, JFK probably could have fucked Marilyn after death if he wanted. But perhaps we shall leave that discussion for another time.
1) Elements within the intelligence apparatus arranged the assassination at the behest of our financial overlords.
Oh wait, this is what actually happened.
Nothing to see here folks, move along…
