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==Legacy==
==Legacy==
[[Image:JFK bust.jpg|thumb|Bust of John F. Kennedy by Robert Berks.]]
[[Image:JFK bust.jpg|thumb|Bust of John F. Kennedy by Robert Berks.]]
Kennedy’s assassination in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans. Pierson (2007) argues that the liberal media turned Kennedy's death into a martyrdom against racism, ignoring Kennedy's weaker interest in race and his strong opposition to Communism. Lee Harvey Oswald's strong Communist ties were downplayed, and instead, the conservative city of [[Dallas]] was made the guilty party. Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the martyrdom theme to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].
Kennedy’s assassination by [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm self-proclaimed] "[[Marxist]]"<ref>FBI transcript: [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm Lee Oswald to the Socialist Party of America], Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, Vol. XXV, p. 140, October 3, 1956</ref>[[Lee Harvey Oswald]] in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans.
To distract from its ties to Oswald (who had defected to the USSR for several years), the [[Soviet Union]] fabricated disinformation blaming the assassination on the CIA. The [[KGB]]'s Section A for Disinformation and Active Measures forged a letter supposedly from Oswald to CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, asking for information "[https://books.google.com/books?id=wVndU5P4V-8C&pg=PT207#v=onepage&q&f=false before any steps are taken by me or anyone else]," according to secret documents smuggled out of [[Moscow]] by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, and published by him and Cambridge University's Christopher Andrew, [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. Agents passed the forged letter anonymously to unwitting US conspiracy theorists, it appeared in a self-published assassination book, and a Dallas newspaper even claimed that a handwriting expert [http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/12/world/kgb-told-tall-tales-about-dallas-book-says.html declared it to be genuine].
Pierson (2007) argues that the liberal media turned Kennedy's death into a martyrdom against racism, ignoring Kennedy's weaker interest in race and his strong opposition to Communism. Oswald's strong Communist ties were downplayed, and instead, the conservative city of [[Dallas]] was made the guilty party. Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the martyrdom theme to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].
The Catholic community took his assassination hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating the miracle that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots, nor from the disillusionment of his [[Vietnam War]] policy. With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory. Disclosures of JFK’s affairs, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if JFK had lived, his second term would be a story of political triumphs restoring people’s faith in government. The assassination was so incomprehensible that hundreds of conspiracy theories have sprung up with over 350 people and organizations have been named as guilty of the event.
The Catholic community took his assassination hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating the miracle that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots, nor from the disillusionment of his [[Vietnam War]] policy. With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory. Disclosures of JFK’s affairs, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if JFK had lived, his second term would be a story of political triumphs restoring people’s faith in government. The assassination was so incomprehensible that hundreds of conspiracy theories have sprung up with over 350 people and organizations have been named as guilty of the event.