Our Uber driver from DFW to the Hotel ZaZa was named Alan, and he punctuated almost every sentence with a drawn out, eloquently drawled, “Yeahhhhhhhhhhhs.”
My uncle and I asked him what kind of weather we should expect in our two days in Dallas, and he was ready with his answer. “Boys, it’s going to be about 97, but don’t worry, it’s going to feel like a hundred seven. But, hey, that’s Dallas.” Then, a beat. “Yeahhhhhhhhhhhs.”
Strange though it may sound, it had been a dream of mine to see Dealey Plaza since I first saw Oliver Stone’s JFK in the fall of 1992 at ten years old. The film had remained a favorite of mine for thirty years but this fall, taking a course called Visual Historiographies, I reconnected with it, now academically. (If you’re interested in my thoughts on the film’s historical relevance, you can read my piece, Ask the Question_The Historiographic Project of JFK.) It turns out my uncle had also found himself down an “Oswald didn’t act alone” rabbit hole, and the trip materialized over some late-night Guinness on Memorial Day weekend.
It did not disappoint.
Before moving on to some broader thoughts, a few striking observations from the scene of the crime.
- One need not be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that if Oswald were the lone gunman, it is illogical for him to pass on shooting Kennedy when the motorcade was directly in front of him on Houston Street, and instead waiting for the turn onto Elm and the FAR more difficult shot(s). As far as I’m concerned, the multiple shooters theory begins there.
- Dealey Plaza is a remarkably condensed space; it is a small plot of land. The picket fence at the grassy knoll, where many believe the kill shot emanated from, is no more than 100 feet from where the president was killed. It is also ideally positioned for that shot.
- We spent a few hours in the plaza on our first day and decided that evening to return for a few hours the second day. It was the right decision. There is an immense power to the place but it’s less an emotional power (Auschwitz, the Normandy beaches), than an intellectual one. Dealey Plaza makes your mind race. It makes you question everything.
- If you’re planning to visit, skip the touring trolleys. Experience the Sixth Floor Museum at the Book Depository and map the remainder of your journey alone. Stand behind the picket fence and above the street on the overpass. Have a car drive you to Oswald’s boarding house, and then take the short walk to the site of the Tippit shooting. Then get a car to the Texas Theatre, where Oswald was arrested. Go inside. Have a drink at the bar. See the physical theater where Oswald was arrested. There’s more value to doing these things on your own because it allows you to properly discuss each stop.
The weekend was horrifically (and bizarrely) punctuated by the assassination attempt on a former president. When you’ve just spent about 48 hours thinking of very little other than an assassination it is very difficult to process a new assassination attempt. That evening in Dallas I heard a young man say, “The country has never been so divided.” How much recency bias does one require to make that statement…in Dallas?!?! The country’s divisions in the 1960s were so extreme they led to the assassinations of two Kennedy’s, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, etc. The difference today, and it should not be understated, is the existence of social media. Every person, no matter how crazy or extreme, has an outlet and audience for their voice. What used to be the domain of the guy everybody avoids at the end of the bar is now the domain name Twitter.com.
In the 1960s, one needed to watch Cronkite on the CBS Evening News or read the newspaper to understand the breadth of our social, racial, political divisions. Now, those divisions are constantly streaming in every American pocket. Want to express your hate for trans people? You’re one click away! (And the billionaire author of the Harry Potter books will join you.) Want to call a mildly conservative congressman a Nazi? Just open the app and off you go! The divisions are not any more extreme than they were 60 years ago. They are simply more accessible.
Sport is not immune. Social media rage, adults behaving like undisciplined children, has seamlessly transitioned from the political landscape to the athletic one. Now it’s not enough to disagree with someone regarding the struggles of an offensive line. You must also attack those you disagree with personally, questioning their right to even hold a contrary opinion to your own. If that’s not effective, you can always resort to some old-fashioned name calling. If I did a search for the word “asshole” in my Gmail, I reckon there would be pages upon pages of results.
We’re not going to agree. There is no more poorly named country than the “United States.” But there is a nuance and art to disagreement. While in Dallas, I probably had serious political conversations with a dozen Texans, most of them conservatives. We didn’t argue. We didn’t bicker. Things didn’t get personal. We talked about the world we want to see and discussed our different approaches to achieving that world. Fanatical devotion to a particular worldview leads to Dealey Plaza and Butler, PA.
This space can’t alter the tone of political discourse. But it can, and will continue to, refrain from the pettiness and vulgarity that has permeated sports conversation in the social media age. Sports, to me, are a cultural bonding agent. They’re a chance for people from different worlds to come together. I’ve talked about the short track ability of Denny Hamlin in Mobile, Alabama, and curve ball physics at the Wiffle Ball World Series in Trenton, NJ. I’ve talked GAA hurling at Tigh Neachtain in Galway City and Six Nations with a Brit at the Pig N’ Whistle on 36th Street in Manhattan. Am I an expert on any of these subjects? Of course not. But life is often about setting aside your own beliefs and trying to understand what stirs the passion of the person sitting beside you.
Sports are an escape from the serious. New York radio legend Mike Francesa used to refer to sports talk as working in “the toy department.” But the manner in which we address them can be a template for the more important subjects. When standing in Dealey Plaza, reflecting on the murderous geometry of one of America’s worst days, it was impossible not to wonder how a nation comes to that moment. Hearing the news Saturday evening made me wonder if we’ve ever left it.
But whatever the subject, how we behave, how we communicate, has never seemed more important to the survival of this fragile union because of the immense quantity of communication available.
