StevenWarRan

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

This 72-second CBS news clip televised on November 21, 1963, the day before President Kennedy's arrival in Dallas, is an "interview" with Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell, concerning the "rather unfortunate publicity" Dallas had received the month previous, when United States Ambassador to the UN, Adelai Stevenson when speaking at the Dallas' Memorial Auditorium Theater on the evening of Oct. 24, was badly jeered by a heckler with a bullhorn; then later, when leaving, he was struck on the head with a sign-placard carried by an upper-middleclass protestor, Cora Lacy Frederickson, the wife of an insurance executive, and a woman described as prominant in downtown lunch-club circles.

Cory Lacy Frederickson assaulted Adlai Stevenson at Dallas' Memorial Auditorium Theater, Oct 24 1963.

The key purpose of this news telecast seems clear enough eight seconds into the recording--when after the line, "This is Mayor Earle Cabell of Dallas, Texas, the town that's getting ready . . .", the young reporter pauses for a comical doubletake. Grimicing, as if he'd just tasted something horribly metalic in his mouth, his eyes dart off to someone unseen behind the camera, then he grins. licking his lips like a reptile, he corrects himself . . . "the city--that's getting ready for the visit very shortly of the president of the United States."

This was a signal to the apparently broad conspiracy tuned in that Dallas was indeed in preparation, with those who sharing in the anticipation further heightening the occult significance of the ritual murder plammed. The reporter could just as well mispronounced Mayor Cabell's name as "cabal" to get the same effect.

The reporter turns to address the mayor: "Your city encountered some rather unfortunate publicity here a month ago with the visit of Ambassador Stevenson...."

But the publicity was entirely the point--with the media planting this precursor worldwide--of a poisonous political atmosphere existing in Dallas. The city's reputation was subject to taking a neccessary hit, but so again, was the back of the president's skull.

All this while, the mayor looks as uncomfortable as a fox being hunted by hounds. I see him moving his mouth in mimic of the reporter's lines he'd also memorized. When the mayor does speak, after an interlude in which tape of the earlier incident is replayed, he sounds as scripted as foreknowledged hindsight would:

We undoubtedly will have a few pickets, as you have everywhere in the United States. There will probably be a few of the radical right wing. Possibly a few of the radical left wing. But, ah, sincerely, we anticipate no, ah, trouble.

A halting in the syntax is a hallmark of the spoken lie, even the micro-second pauses that can be picked out in the recording of the mayor. It would be odd, in any case, for the mayor to vouchsafe his "sincerity" in not anticipating any trouble, especially since his voice appears to crack an octave on the word "trouble" itself.

If not anticipating trouble, the mayor doesn't appear to be expecting any joy in the day, either. A visit from the sitting president would be a red-letter day in the civic life of any municipality under normal conditions. The absence of pride in the city, or local promotion or economic boosterism, which is the traditional role a mauor

recorded lies the syntax of lies and the mayor's strange vouchsafing of his"sincerity"

The earlier tape of Stevenson responding to audience jeers from the podium: "Surely, my dear friends, I don't have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas manners, do I?"

Tape of encounter with agitated crowds. Walter Cronkit reading news: "Outside the auditorium, one man spat at him, and a woman hit him with her placard."

0:25

Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry: Because of the unfortunate incident which occurred here during the visit of Ambassador Stevenson, people everywhere in the world will be hypercritical of our behavior...[film cuts off]