Bill O'Reilly and Gerald Blaine will NEVER sway the vast majority...but beware the cult of personality

Bill O'Reilly and Gerald Blaine will NEVER sway the vast majority...but beware the cult of personality

Bill O'Reilly's new book "Killing Kennedy" follows the same path dug previously by William Manchester, Jim Bishop, David Belin, Gerald Posner, Norman Mailer, and Vince Bugliosi, among others, before him: Oswald acted alone and there was no conspiracy. For his part, Gerald Blaine chose the very same route, but with a twist: JFK was to blame, as well, a despicable claim with no basis in fact and one Blaine should and DOES indeed know better (for clarification: Blaine not only states that Oswald acted alone and there was no conspiracy, he also shifts the blame for Kennedy's assassination from his fellow agents---who failed to protect the president---to the president himself, falsely claiming that JFK ordered the agents off his limo, a claim that is patently false, as proved by my research. For the uninitiated, please see: http://www.ctka.net/reviews/kennedydetailreview.html).

O'Reilly's book, from a major publishing house, is already a big best-seller, as was, to a lesser extent, Blaine's propaganda. What I find ironic is Blaine and his ilk are always claiming that the so-called "conspiracy cottage industry" make alot of money off the assassination, when, in actual fact, it is HIS ilk---Posner, Bugliosi, Mailer, O'Reilly, Manchester, Bishop, etc---who, by toting the official line, not only see their books come out via major publishing houses, but also see MASSIVE profits that we in this "industry" can only dream of, as well. In fact, the vast majority of those in this "industry" make little or NO money at all! It is HIS ilk that massively profits from their dubious tales. And, if that wasn't enough, Blaine has the temerity to not only have produced a television documentary on his book but now a full-fledged Hollywood movie, as well, slated for the 50th anniversary.

Blaine's goal (along with O'Reilly et al)? To convince the populace that Oswald acted alone and to move on.

They have failed and they will continue to fail.

The overwhelming opinion polls (and interest/ commentary on the internet) demonstrate the majority believes---knows---there WAS indeed a conspiracy. That will NEVER change, no matter how much fame and profit these men seek for themselves.

But I WILL give credit where credit is due. The "cult of personality" can be a powerful factor to overcome.

Slickly written and produced, these works CAN, albeit temporarily, cause one to ponder (and even, as was the case with Bugliosi's book, cause one to change his mind about the case!). I am on the record as stating (for about 6 months in 2007 only) that, although I STILL believed multiple conspiracies (PLURAL) were out to get Kennedy, Oswald beat them all to the punch; so powerful and persuasive was Bugliosi's tome at the time (apparently, ONLY to me at the time, but I digress!). WHY did Bugliosi sway me at the time? The reasons were varied- I was burned out on the case; I had personal life distractions; the powerful one-sided prosecutorial "brief" that wasn't (the book is massive- a cinder block, in fact); and, most of all, "the cult of personality": I was and still am a huge admirer of Vince Bugliosi- as a writer and former prosecutor. Henry Kissinger once famously said that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac" and the power of celebrity (Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, former JFK Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine, Bugliosi, etc) can cause normally rationale people to think twice after reading an author of such stature.

However, if someone as well-read and learned on this case---myself---can "return to normalcy" and see the light, one can see how the vast majority of the public, not assassination scholars attuned to all the nuts and bolts of the case, would be hard-pressed to be swayed from their original core beliefs no matter WHO is writing the book.

So, try as they might, O'Reilly, Blaine, and their ilk will line their pockets handsomely but, when the dust settles, life will go on and the vast majority of the public will CONTINUE to believe there was a conspiracy.

In other words, they might not buy it (believe it), but they sure will BUY it. At the end of the day, perhaps that is all they cared about in the first place.

Beware the cult of personality.

Vince Palamara