Do they have no idea at all whom they are dealing with? The people they are excluding believe that the Mafia conspired with the Soviet Union and an old man in New Orleans to assassinate JFK so LBJ and the world's homeliest mistress could move into the White House and kill Marilyn Monroe. And these people are going to gather meekly at the Jumbotron and watch the rich people try to look sad?
The same day the city held its event I saw Mimi Swartz's witty and insightful piece in Texas Monthly under the headline "Can Dallas survive the assassination again?" She describes how John Judge, the head of COPA, tried to gain admission to the mayor's 50th Mmm-Mmm Committee and was told flat no. He couldn't be on it. The committee is a tight little circle of old power and money in Dallas. This was their party. He wasn't invited.
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What the committee apparently did not understand was that Judge asked to be on the committee because he was going through a legal exercise preparatory to suit. I called him right after the event last week at his offices in Washington.
"We are doing what they call legally exhausting our remedies," he said. "Once our remedies are exhausted, then we have the right to go and add somebody to the picture."
That means sue.
"We certainly tried to get on their stupid committee. If this does have to go to court, I'm trying to exhaust the remedies and make clear to everybody where we're at."
Judge said his people can do it. "We have attorneys there [in Dallas]. It's a First Amendment issue, and it's a pretty clear one for parks. Public parks have pretty clear law and precedent for First Amendment questions."
And a lawsuit is probably the least of what the city has to worry about. They probably figure they have a building full of lawyers on the payroll and can home-fry a bunch of troublemaking outsiders in any Dallas court.
Yeah. But the outsiders know all that too. This isn't their first hog auction. Judge told me about another cause he's involved in. The other side held a big parade in Washington. His people were banned from marching.
So they held their placards against their chests to hide their sentiments, infiltrated the parade, then raised their placards and marched backwards into the parade disrupting the whole thing but also getting lots of on-air exposure for their placards.
"We will have to be imaginative," he said speaking of preparations for Dallas on November 22.
Many months ago when he and I spoke, he mentioned the idea of entering the storm sewers a few blocks away from Dealey Plaza and popping out at just the right moment. He's still mulling that one, but he's also thinking in terms of very large visible displays that could be staged just outside the security perimeter of the event.
And that brings us to the last piece of this grisly puzzle. Altshuler told the very small group at last week's event that a wealthy Dallas man had contributed half a million dollars for security for the event. That's one heck of a lot of scary head-crackers in helmets with big ugly visors.
Did nobody here study the civil rights movement? Gandhi? South Africa? Oh, wait, I forgot. This is the hometown of the man who invented Shock and Awe. No, probably none of the people I'm talking about ever did study any of that stuff, so none of them understand that sending a bunch of baton-wielding, helmeted jackboots out to pepper spray and beat the shit out of American citizens trying to exercise their First Amendment rights plays straight into the other side's hands. The jackboots lose. Always.
None of it will make Dallas look good. It won't put anything behind us. In fact this will dredge up all the specters and wraiths of the past and dance them around the graveyard like corpses on puppet strings.
What does it really say, after all, this mania for control and suppression? Does it sound like an expression of grief? Since when is the hand of grief clenched in a fist? Why does grief need half a million bucks worth of security? I don't hear any grief in it, really. I hear fear and wrath.
That will be the big takeaway, the story, if somebody doesn't find a way to soften this thing up. Dallas needs to throw open the gates, throw open its arms, throw those stupid tickets in a manhole, and let everybody and his dog in for a good old messy snot-blowing cry together. But Dallas doesn't do that. That is the point that will not be missed.
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