Happy Assassination Day, everybody! 
Can you tell I’m tired of hearing about it every year?
'zakly what I was thinking on the way to work this morning. No news station can shut up about it and there is nothing new under the sun in years.
50 years later and he’s still dead, folks. Let JFK go already. He wasn’t that fucking special.
(You know, millions of Russians cried when Stalin died - granted, some of them cried in relief - and he was complete fucking bastard.)
The alternate thread title and OP were going to be:
This just in!
President Kennedy is still dead!
In all fairness to the idea of 50th anniversary nostalgia, I guess they figure that not many of us will be here for the 100th.
I’m toying with the idea of a poll on who all saw it as it was being covered on live TV. I spent that weekend glued to a B&W set and mourned along with everybody I knew.
I do recall a few cheers when the news broke over the radio the day JFK was shot, and there were plenty of people I ran into in the next few days who were not unhappy he was gone.
It’s always been a big mystery for people in my age group, and I guess many of us feel that “innocence died” that day. That’s kind of hard to grieve.
I didn’t. But there have been 50 years of reruns. I’m a fan of history. When I was younger, I watched the documentaries. But we’ve been presented the same information year after year. Data received and stored. Call me when something new comes up. Actually, the explanation of the ‘magic bullet’ – that the seat configuration was such that the bullet didn’t have to change trajectory to hit Connelly – was interesting. But that was years ago.
I didn’t know it was a formal holiday. We could have the kiddies hunt for little marzipan Harper Fragments like they were Easter eggs.
The kids could go door to door and ask for Kennedy halves, like the English children do (or did) on Guy Fawkes day (A penny for the Guy!)
Yeah, we got the same problem with the Fourth of July. Every year, it’s the same, read the same Declaration of Independence, play the same old John Phillip Sousa music (he’s still dead)…
And let’s not start on Christmas. Every year the same carols, over and over and over, for a month, in every store and restaurant. Every year the same tree. Every year the same church services*. And all the principal are still dead.**
- Well, I don’t actually do that, being Jewish, but I’m making a point.
** Open to disagreement, of course.
If you’re suggesting that JFK worship has reached near religious proportions, I agree. 
I was disappointed there wasn’t a Google Doodle.
One of their interactive ones? …
A month?! I’ve been hearing Christmas music since before Halloween this year!
This week was also the 35th anniversary of the Jonestown mass suicide/murder. It really didn’t get any press at all.
StG
I didn’t realize until a few days ago that the 50th anniversary would fall on the actual day of the week that JFK was assassinated. I suppose that’s enough to make me pause today & remember that long ago weekend when my six year old self caught a first glimpse of how crazy the world could be. I don’t always remember the date when it rolls around, but there’s always an autumn day, with the sky a particular shade of blue & a certain crispness in the air, that will remind me of the day.
Such a day was 9/11/2001.
On Assassination Day, kids visit neighborhood homes and collect dum dum bullets and 20 power sniperscopes.
This is kinda why I wish there were Upvote buttons on here. (Been on Reddit too long.)
We would build a Guy by stuffing straw into clothing and beg for our pennies on a street corner, you had to build a pretty good one to get money and then fight for it not to be tossed on the bonfire by rival Guy builders - you had to throw your own Guy.
So … Stuffed Kennedys? On wheels?
Some years back, I was at a meetup where I mentioned that I had just read one of Isaac Asimov’s autobiographies, and he told about going to one on 11/22/63 and everyone was joking around and having a good time. A woman who was new to our group curled her lip and shrugged her shoulders like a junior high Mean Girl would do and said, “So? People die every day. What was the big deal?” She had done this kind of thing to me before, but I was still stunned at her reaction to the point where I was rendered speechless. A few minutes later, I considered saying (but didn’t), “I have noticed that every time I express my opinion about something, you shrug your shoulders and make derogatory remarks. I think it is extremely degrading to be treated that way, especially because I have noticed that you don’t do this to other people.” Had she done this a couple years later, I could have violated one of the unwritten rules about getting along in the world and added, “And if this is how you treated your husband, it would go a long way towards explaining the demise of your marriage.”
Long story made short: I found out later that she had pissed off a lot of other people, and in time, her daughter moved in with her father and at the time I heard this, had absolutely nothing to do with her. :dubious:
There’s a fairly good chance (well, perhaps, maybe, possibly) that this year’s festivities will put the story to bed more-or-less once-and-for-all. 50th anniversaries seem to be a logical break-point for putting old stories to bed.
Example case in point: 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, in 1995. Every year for 50 years, there were major festivities and reminiscences about WWII, with the most major commemorations revolving around D-Day and VE-day, with somewhat lesser commotion about VJ-day.
We were living in a “Post-War” world, and never allowed to forget it! Of course, to be technically accurate, the world will be “Post-War (specifically, Post-WWII)” for the rest of eternity. But gradually over 50 years, as the war receded into history and other significant world events successively took the stage, the feeling of living in a “Post-War” world dissipated. Certainly, in the late 40’s and 50’s, it was very much a “Post-War” world and everybody felt it.
In 1994/1995, as the 50th anniversary festivities ensued, the was a massive outpouring of hubbub and reminiscences. There were major retrospective articles in all the papers. There was a bigger-than-usual re-enactment of D-Day. (That was in 1994, not 1995.) One of the last remaining Liberty Ships, the U. S. S. Jeremiah O’Brien, long a floating museum in San Francisco, steamed through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic to participate!
I made a prediction that proved spot-on: The 50th anniversary of D-Day would be the biggest festival of them all, with the end-of-war hubbub being somewhat less. And the VE-day celebrations would be significant, but by then, we’d all put it to bed, leading to much lesser fuss over VJ-day. And then, we’d put World War II to bed pretty much for good, and move on.
I would say, it all played out just as I suspected it would. 1995, I think, was the last greatest hurrah for WWII nostalgia celebrations, and it’s all been pretty much muted since. We finally fully became a “Post WWII” world.
It may be, that this 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination will play out much the same way.