This is the funniest spin on this... from an interview w /the satirist who published
The Realist:
From an Interview with Paul Krassner
in ReSearch: Pranks...
AJ: One of the most outragous pranks in the Realist was
that article about Lyndon B. Jobnson fucking the wound in
JFK's head as he lay in state in the airplane.
PX: Yes-that was in 1967. That was my favorite rumor I
published in 16 years, partly because it blew so many minds.
I still get reacrions now-I8 years later. It's the thing that
people remember best. That had the most impact on people.
AJ: Please describe-
PK: I have to describe the context. It only worked because
it grew organically out of the situation. William Manchester
had written a book, Death of a President, about the assassi-
nation of John F Kennedy. Jackie Kennedy tried to have
certain parts of it suppressed and nobody knew what. I tried
to obtain those parts so I could publish them, and when I
couldn't, I decided to "publish" them anyway
The way it was written was: the article started out with
statements that were totally true, and then, like peeling an
onion layer by layer, got to the rumor stage and from there
to "facts that reporters knew were true but could never have
reported" (iust because there was so much reverence for the
office). So the article built dramatically and psychologically
to this scene where Jackie Kennedy was on Air Force One
bringing her husband's body back to Washington from
Bethesda, Maryland. Jackie Kennedy had actually told Gore
Vidal that she saw Lyndon Johnson leaning over the casket
laughing.
AJ: That was in print?
PK: That was in print in London but not in the States. So
taking that as a premise, I extrapolated that he was actually
having intercourse with the throat wound (but this was not
to be mistaken for just casual necrophilia, this was functional
necrophilia, the purpose of which was to enlarge the entry
wound from the grassy knoll in order to make it look like an
exit wound from the book depository, to fool the Warren
Commission into believing that Lee Harvey Oswald was
solely responsible for the assassination).
A lot of people believed this to be true-ACLU lawyers,
Dick Gregory, Daniel Ellsberg (who told me, "I believed it
because I wanted to believe it"). A lot of people were embar-
rassed to have believed it, and I had to reassure them that
they were in very good company.
― Dr Morbius, Friday, 4 May 2007 13:25 (sixteen years ago) link
ten years pass...