Time for a little more media criticism. I'll start with a TV show I have a certain amount of respect for--the one about forensic investigators in Las Vegas. My regard for the program did lessen on the revelation of a melodramatically improbable back story. (The plots are overly convoluted, too.) Many viewers no doubt object to the graphic presentation, which I can understand. My current complaint, however, is related to what seems an unrealistic portrayal of a certain manner of death, namely throat-slashing. I'm no expert on this subject, not (yet) having needed to employ deadly force! Available info, though, suggests that it doesn't kill as immediately as the writers seem to think--especially when only the vessels on one side are severed. Failure to stop blood to the brain would obviously tend to prolong consciousness, and there are cases (like one just covered the other night on one network) of individuals' surviving substantial blood loss. At any rate, I don't suspect the victim would calmly hold his last pose.

Speaking of violence, Mr. Quincy Turpentine has another (stupid-looking) film out about idiots killing each other. Naturally the critics find it ever so awesome. Funny how the cultural left loves homicide. My opinion: Artistic dreck is still dreck.

Now for newsprint. As previously noted, our local paper presents columnists of different persuasions on its op-ed page. One whose views I don't share is a guy I'll call Crawl. His latest piece is an objection to the flap over that movie about the Reagans that See BS dumped. Where to start? With the exception of the _New York Times_'s editorial section, Mr. Crawl denies the alleged "liberal" tendency in the mainstream media. Well, I'm aware of copious documentation, and I'm not the only person here who's noticed such bias firsthand. Furthermore I keep hearing that the _Times_ itself has degenerated from what it used to be, having muddled its formerly separate reporting and editorial functions to the point where it's more of an advocacy organ than the respected news outlet of yore. It still leads, though; word is that the Big Three networks, at least, take their cues from the _Times_--which may explain why they sometimes seem to be covering the same stories at the same moment!

The cranky Mr. Crawl faults conservatives for opposing the Reagan project because it didn't sufficiently dramatize his presumed greatness. I don't think that was their *primary* beef. Let me just say this about that: I believe it was Bill O'Reilly who summed up the work's distortion by comparing it with a hypothetical movie about the Clintons--written by Rush Limbaugh and starring Dennis Miller and Ann Coulter! (Hey, there's an idea...)

Since I've been moved to post now, it seems fitting to comment on the 40th anniversary of The JFK Incident. It's always been a cultural reference point: people are said to recall exact circumstances of how the news found them. Well, I may have been a bit young for that, because I'm not sure how it happened in my case. What I guess is my earliest memory of it involves riding downtown in a car with my dad while annoyed about having to go to school--while someone on the radio said something about the President's wearing, or not wearing, a hat. The only part that makes sense now didn't then: the comment about hats. It was only later that I understood that JFK was blamed for the demise of mens' hats. I guess we've recovered from that trend, sort of.

Originally I was going to add more about my relevant memories but have decided not to, proceeding to what may count as my main point. In retrospect what people remember is less the "facts" than how they reacted to them. This seems to explain JFK's perceived greatness: it was the response he evoked in others. None of his epigones seems capable of the same, but then the culture's changed, too, as most of us know.