I'm reading this nice book. It's rather postmodernist and the theories are not very strong but it has several good observations. This is one:
AWFUL ARCHIVES
CONSPIRACY THEORY, RHETORIC, AND ACTS OF EVIDENCE
JENNY RICE
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=JNCnCYRNzG&rank=1
As an example of this kind of tension, the author points to a television interview that Gore Vidal gave in London sometime after Kennedy’s death. During the interview, Vidal explained the reason why Jacqueline Kennedy would always have a strong resistance to Johnson:
“During that tense journey from Dallas to Washington after the assassination, she inadvertently walked in on him as he was standing over the casket of his predecessor and chuckling. This disclosure was the talk of London but not a word was mentioned here” (“Parts” 18).
Yet, continues the author, this seemingly heartless scene is not the most outlandish detail of that moment. Jacqueline Kennedy later confirmed
Vidal’s story to Manchester and added one very important detail. Quoting Mrs. Kennedy, the author writes:
That man was crouching over the corpse, no longer chuckling but breathing hard and moving his body rhythmically. At first I thought he must be performing some mysterious symbolic rite he’d learned from Mexicans or Indians as a boy. And then I realized—there is only one way to say this—he was literally fucking my husband in the throat. The bullet wound in front of his throat. He reached a climax and dismounted. I froze. The next thing I remember, he was being sworn in as the new President. (“Parts” 18)
This shocking quote is then followed by an editor’s note that shares Manchester’s handwritten marginal note: “1. Check with Rankin—did secret autopsy show semen in throat wound? 2. Is this simply necrophilia or was LBJ trying to change entry wound into exit wound by enlarging?” (“Parts” 18).
And with this disturbing series of images, the outtakes from Manchester’s otherwise well-respected book come to a conclusion. Not surprisingly, the morbid outtakes from Manchester’s book began to circulate with a fiery intensity. ...
... Unsurprisingly, the excerpts were indeed a hoax. Years later, Krassner himself would admit to being the author of the story and the excerpts. This admission might seem to have put to rest any further speculation about either LBJ’s necrophiliac tendencies or any other unseemly actions with JFK’s corpse in the hours following the assassination. Yet, the life of this strange faux-journalism did not end with Krassner’s admission. Decades later, online conspiracy forums feature comments that cite “The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book” as a legitimate source.
