1:52 p.m.: Spent the last couple hours freezing my intellect off with Austin provocateur radio host Alex Jones and a gang of about 150 of his "InfoWars" followers who matched to Dealey Plaza chanting "No more lies." I called ahead to a foreign documentary crew inside the barricades to tell them Jones and his posse were on their way.
The documentarian was vey chagrined to be locked up inside Dealey Plaza when, as he said, "It sounds like the story is out there." He said he would try to re-position his people to be able to film Jones and his army approaching.
Ah, but those clever event planners had foreseen just such an eventuality. When the Joneses reached the barricades, they saw just ahead of them a banner the width of the street and four stories high hanging from a crane in the middle of the street, blocking view of them from people inside Dealey Plaza. Jones, who was broadcasting every inch of the way, dummied up and got polite when he reached the barricades.
I walked and listened to what he had to say. I have heard snatches of his show in the past, but I really am not familiar. He talked a lot about the stage-management of the event, the careful chhoreography and the complicity of the mainstream media in agreeing to stick to the script. By the way, I don't think I saw any other journalists with us until we got to the barricades.
I see from comments below that some readers view all of this as a question of who is telling the truth about the Kennedy assassination. I just don't see that as the most important question. In fact I don't care who killed JFK. More on that Monday.
For me the much more important question is exactly what Alex Jones says it is. Do you really want to turn over your own destiny and the destiny of the nation to a bunch of speech-suppressing message-shapers? I don't care what anybody's message is. I want to be able to hear them all. I don't want some weasel dreaming up four-story banners to hide the rest of the landscape from me. Don't need it, don't want it, don't think it's American.
You want to tell me maybe that Alex Jones is self-seeking. But the most self-seeking thing I saw out there today was that banner.
10:14 a.m.Dropped by the Meyerson Symphony Hall, staging area for the Kennedy Assassination Park Cities Partaaaay! this morning at 9:15 a.m. to check out security, make sure they're not letting in any riff-raff except for me. I scored a non-media ticket by means I cannot reveal because I wanted to have the real experience.
Smooth as silk, man! Showed my special VIP Park Cities parking pass, also scored by unorthodox means, drove on in, garage was full up but I found me a handicapped spot (it's a social issue). Walked into the opera house or whatever it is and showed my driver's license to a lady at a table. She gave me a darling turquoise wrist band with a very smart sewn black border, and I went upstairs.
They were all there, man. I am talking about the swells, the heavies, the movers and Quakers of our unfair city's cream, Della, cream. Wow it was something.
A very nice young businessman, friend of my son, approached me, a bit naively perhaps, to shake my hand. He said he had applied for a ticket, didn't get one, but, "Then I got a call [winky winky]."
Yeah, well, I got me one of those calls, too, and I got a ticket. I think a lot of folks sitting around drinking coffee and eating bon-bons in the lobby of the concert hall or whatever it is got those calls, too. I will say this about that: Any security porous enough to let me in is my kind of security.
So I have left now because I really do not want to get on their bus and be their prisoner for the day inside the concertina wire at Dealey Plaza. I am headed to Belo Gardens to witness the assassination of Alex Jones, then maybe get a hot dog on the street, wander on over to Dealey and see what the action is. Will keep you posted.