CHATTER AFTER TRAGEDIES – AT 11:42 A.M. ET:  We have a long history of immediate, sometimes irresponsible speculation after tragedies.

I was discharged from active Army service the hour President Kennedy was assassinated. A fellow trooper, also just discharged, was driving from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to New York City, and offered me a ride. We heard about the assassination just after leaving the Fort Dix gates.

It took only hours for the speculation to start, and become rampant.  Dallas, Texas, we were told – and I heard it right on the radio during that car ride – was a center of right-wing political activity, and, indeed, there had been some incidents.  Adlai Stevenson, our UN ambassador, had been spat at by some crazy when visiting the city.  There was a retired major general named Edwin Walker, who struck just about everyone as unbalanced, who had become a symbol of far-right activity in Dallas.

A large, anti-Kennedy ad had been positioned in the Dallas Morning News the day of the killing.

Dan Rather, then a CBS correspondent, reported that some Dallas school children had applauded news of Kennedy's being shot.  (That story later turned out to be completely false.) 

And so, the idea was planted in our heads that the assassination had to be the work of the right, even though Dallas had given the president the warmest of receptions.

Later, of course, we learned that Lee Harvey Oswald was in fact a leftist.  But the damage to press credibility was already done.

After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton speculated that conservative talk radio might have been a factor in influencing the bombers.  While the speculation was wild and grossly unfair, it took hold in some circles. 

It's interesting that there was little political speculation after the attempt on President Reagan's life in 1981.  After all, the right could not be blamed.

Now we have a flood of internet speculation that Sarah Palin may be in some weird way partly to blame for yesterday's shooting.  Outrageous.  As the chap said, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.   

January 9, 2011