Reclaiming History

As a conspiracy-theory-ologist I have been meaning to read Vincent Bugliosi's book Reclaiming History, on the JFK conspiracy theories, for some time, but haven't had the time myself. Thus I was rather glad to pick up a copy on audio CD, even at 15 CDs, seriously abridged from the 1600+ pages of the written version.

I must say I was not disappointed. Bugliosi lays out the errors, misrepresentations and outright lies of the JFK conspiracy theorists in much the same way as Deborah Lipstadt does to the Holocaust deniers. As I have long maintained, conspiracy theorists all operate in much the same way, the only difference is the subject that they choose to discuss.

There is even an overlap there though, in that Bugliosi selects out for a well-deserved mocking, none other than 9/11 conspiracy guru Jim Fetzer, for his idiotic "Fake Zapruder Film" theories, showing that the no-plane theories are not the first wild leaps of logic for our side-burned friend. In many ways though he points out that the JFK conspiracy theorists managed to succeed well beyond their 9/11 counterparts, with at least a majority of Americans tacitly accepting their viewpoints. Also they actually managed to bring at least one of their theories to trial, with the ill-fated Jim Garrison prosecution, memorialized in the Oliver Stone movie JFK, which essentially ended up being Loose Change with a budget and directorial talent.

All in all an excellent book, someday, perhaps when I am retired or on a long vacation, I will have to digest the print version.