Drowned in noise and nonsense

I loved this, on Oliver Stone's film:

Stone’s film — one of the great cinematic achievements of the 1990s — has a grasp of history that’s about as loose as David Ferrie’s wig in a hurricane. It doesn’t merely twist New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s botched investigation; it hog-ties the truth and dumps it on Bourbon Street to get pancaked by a sousaphone section and a guy in a gator suit.

.... Who killed Kennedy? Stone’s answer: Who didn’t? The CIA, LBJ, the Mafia, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, right-wing wackjobs, crazy Cubans (my peeps), angry Texans, oil tycoons, “Tricky Dick” Nixon, and — why not? — even the Caddyshack gopher was spotted behind the picket fence, cheeky little rascal.

Mechanically, Stone’s three-hour Gish gallop mirrors how social media influencers lobotomize their audiences: it drowns you with a barrage of noise and nonsense that you can’t possibly untangle, so you surrender — and paranoia sets in. It’s one of the greatest movies ever made about conspiracy theories because it is a conspiracy theory....

By the time you realize that there’s no way Julia Ann Mercer could have seen Jack Ruby near Dealey Plaza, you’re already sitting across from Donald Sutherland’s “X” spinning a monologue for the ages. Next, you’re knee-deep in the debunked “magic bullet” theory — which rests entirely on the fallacy that Kennedy and Texas Governor Connally were seated at the same height (they weren’t) — right before Kevin Costner, channeling Jimmy Stewart, pleads, “It’s up to you.” ....

JFK was a warning, but, instead of heeding it, we turned it into a business model. Minutes after Tuesday’s JFK files dropped, Twitter lit up like one of Ruby’s neon signs outside his strip joint: we saw Ramparts clippings sold as fresh intel, antisemitic bile disguised as “just asking questions,” and even a forged JFK memo about UFOs. .... (more)

Giancarlo Sopo, "From Camelot to Clickbait: America’s Dealey Plaza Syndrome," National Review, March 20, 2025.