A Grim Little Anniversary

In between your Turkey and Dressing, do remember this silent anniversary.



EDIT:

A few interpretations.

1. In Dealey Plaza where JFK was assassinated, they have a museum set up in the book depository where the supposed shot was fired from. The window where Oswald was supposed to have fired from is set up to look exactly like it did on that day. It's called the Sniper's Nest, and the museum is called the Assassination Museum.

The Sniper's Nest is a very accurate reconstruction.

One of the main reasons it is so accurate is because Oswald isn't in it.

-Bill Hicks

2. JFK's death 44 years later and the big 'what if?'

by Frank James

Today is not only Thanksgiving but also Nov. 22, 2007, the 44th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Like 9/11 or Dec. 7, today is one of those anniversaries in American history that, for those old enough to remember the tragedy itself, still delivers a certain chill and a sadness. Even for many born afterwards there is a sense of loss, like what we feel for Abraham Lincoln.

Nov. 22 is a day for private remembering. Evidently, the Kennedy family has never wanted large public remembrances of the assassination. Better to remember the president's life than the way he died.

As Dallas Morning News columnist Jacqielynn Ford noted this week, it's also a day for conspiracy theorists to again get ginned up, with something of a spectacle occurring at the site of the assassination.

But for those of old enough to remember, the Kennedy assassination marked the start of the time of tumult that the 1960s were to become. Vietnam. Riots. Anti-war and civil-rights protests. More assassinations.

It is said that America lost its innocence that day 44 years ago. In truth, America was never innocent, could never be innocent.

What America really lost was a chance to see how the Kennedy story, allowed to play out naturally, would've ended. Would he be as highly regarded a president as he is today by so many? Or would his have been another failed presidency?

What would he have done about Vietnam? Would he have done as much for civil rights as his successor, Lyndon Johnson? Would Medicare exist? With his Addison's Disease resulting from adrenal insufficiency, would he have even survived a second term?

Perhaps more than any other event in modern American history, what happened in Dallas forty-four years ago today left us with one of the greatest collective "what if" questions of our time.