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CTKA formerly published Probe Magazine. Most of the articles on this site first appeared in Probe. We will occasionally add new articles as appropriate. 

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Update: Shermer Takes the Message Wide

by Frank Cassano

I hope you didn’t blink … or you would have missed it.

On December 14, 2010, an article appeared in the Huffington Post, titled “My Day in Dealey Plaza: Why JFK Was Killed by a Lone Assassin.” It was supplied by Michael Shermer. I say “supplied” because I hesitate to use the word “written.” “Written” would imply that it was a creative and original endeavor.

But there is nothing about this article by Shermer that is different from anything you ever saw Max Holland provide for the New York Times, and other publications, pertaining to the violent death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas.

It pretty much begins and ends with “Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy.” (There, I just saved you some time. You don’t need to read the article anymore.) Shermer does do Holland one take better in that he doesn’t even make it out of the first paragraph before he’s already smeared those who give tours down in Dealey Plaza as being interested only in procuring your money. (As if the people who give tours at the Sixth Floor Museum are not? You can be sure that any information you get from the people in Dealey Plaza is bound to be infinitely closer to reality than anything you could ever receive on the Sixth Floor.)

And make no mistake, Shermer wants no alternative thinking about anything. In this same article, he uses the date he was in Dealey Plaza—December 7^th—to take a swipe at anyone who thinks the USA deliberately let its guard down to allow the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. He then extends that into this: “There is no more to the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory than there is that President Bush helped orchestrate 9/11 or knew about the pending attack and allowed it to happen in order to unite the American public into supporting his wars of aggression in the Middle East.”

But it is paragraph four that is my overall favorite. Second sentence in particular:

This was certainly the case for me when I interviewed several conspiracy theorists hanging around Dealey Plaza that day. Their eye light up and they grow ever more animated (and even agitated) as their story grows in complexity about all the different people, elements, and events that almost miraculously (it would be a miracle in most re-tellings) came together to assassinate JFK. One fellow had so many people involved in the assassination that they would have needed a small sports arena to meet to plan out the day. This improbability seems to bother conspiracy theorists not one tiny bit, as they spin out their narratives, drawing you down their causal pathway that resulted in the end of Camelot.

“Their eye light up…”?

Was Mr. Shermer speaking with a Cyclops that day in Dealey Plaza?

I’m surprised Shermer didn’t seize the opportunity to build up that angle. It would have added immensely to the ridiculous picture he always strives to paint about the JFK assassination, Dealey Plaza, and conspiracy theorists. (Plus, a Cyclops roaming around Dealey Plaza would have fit perfectly into Shermer’s cute little puppet show/slide presentations.)

But of course, this is another canard. Shermer never delineates between what the actual conspiracy consisted of and what the cover up consisted of. Since the cover up was ratified by J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, President Johnson, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, then yes, many people were involved with it. Since it was clear there was no downside or consequences to cooperating with a lie.

Shermer then follows with another hackneyed canard: that Dealey Plaza is much smaller than he thought therefore, it would have been easy for Oswald to pull off his “three shots, with two direct hits in six seconds.” Shermer fails to bring up the fact the Warren Commission could not duplicate this feat using marksmen who were worlds above Oswald in shooting skill.

I’d say that the most interesting part of the article was not Shermer’s parroting of the Warren Commission hocus-pocus—that’s par for the course in everything Shermer does. Rather, it was the posts which were included in the “comments” section underneath the story.

The posts demonstrate beyond any doubt that there are enough people present out there who remain skeptical about the “official story.” So much so that “they” would need to go out and hire another 20 Michael Shermers if they hoped to ever change that. True, plenty are still woefully misinformed … but the vast majority can see past all the blatant bull crap, voodoo, snake oil, and smoke.

One last word on the sorcery of Shermer. Prior to his cover up of the JFK case for Huffington Post, he did a review for them of the excellent film Inside Job. This is clearly the finest documentary on the Wall Street crash of 2007. In the entire review, Shermer could not bring himself to type the word "derivative." Which, of course, was the main cause of the crash.

That fact tells you all you need to know about who Shermer is and what he is about.

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CTKA Recommends:
 Dissenting Views by Joseph E. Green

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