11/22/2013
From the front of NYTimes.com, this exercise in shamelessness:
Dallas Mourns a Day It Cannot Escape
By MANNY FERNANDEZ 2:14 PM ET
Thousands joined to honor President John F. Kennedy in a tribute leaders hoped would also help heal a city long stigmatized by his death.
DALLAS — This Texas city, long scarred by the guilt and shame of being the place President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, stood in silent tribute on Friday. …
It is a day that has forever haunted Dallas, and Friday’s ceremony was as much about moving on as it was about remembering. Never before has Dallas marked the assassination with such a large, costly event.
John Angle, 23, a senior at Southern Methodist University, who was at the plaza Friday, said the city — though a far different place now — was still seeking redemption.
“I think this is Dallas’s day to try to redeem itself to the world,” Mr. Angle said. …
Few cities in the United States have lived under the kind of stigma that has marked Dallas for half a century. Labeled the City of Hate after the assassination, Dallas had been a hub of right-wing, anti-Kennedy extremists who attacked visiting public figures before the president’s visit.
Next up: three articles in the NYT on how Manhattan murdered John Lennon.* Oh, wait, no, that’s not going to happen …
P.S., the Washington Post has been less hallucinatory, but today it follows the NYT’s lead, too:
In 1963, the roots of a political extremism
Bill Minutaglio
ESSAY | A University of Texas professor describes a Dallas that was seething with hostility and suspicion toward the president.
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* Now that I think about it, a man inspired to kill by Holden Caulfield did have a fair amount to do with Manhattan’s culture, as did the next big assassination attempt two months later by a man inspired to try to kill by Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.