A Word In Favor of J.F.K. Conspiracy Theories

I have an embarrassing confession to make: when it comes to the “grassy knoll” and all that, I tend to agree with John Kerry and disagree with my esteemed colleague Adam Gopnik. Even today, fifty years on, some aspects of the official version of the Kennedy assassination don’t stack up for me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I heartily concur with some of what Adam wrote in an erudite and enjoyable essay that appeared in the magazine a few weeks ago. And by that, I don’t just mean that we both have an affection for the final scene in “Double Indemnity,” in which the wounded murderer and tragi-hero, Walter (Fred McMurray), is confronted by his hardboiled boss, Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). Gopnik used the climactic scene as the leitmotif for his argument that the reason conspiracy theories survive is not because they contain any truth—he dismisses their promoters as “assassination obsessives”—but because the shooting itself still has enormous cultural resonance. In this telling, it marks a wrenching transition from a calmer age of trusted verities to our vortex of post-modern angst.

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