Brokaw Recalls a ‘Conservative’ Reaction to JFK Shooting: ‘About Time Somebody Shot That SOB’

[Cincinnatus]

Someone has yet to tell Tommy that the guy who shot St John was a COMMUNIST.

Joining the hosts of MSNBC’s The Cycle on Friday, legendary NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw previewed a special on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination that will air on MSNBC that night. Recounting his experiences from that day, he said that the reaction to JFK’s assassination, “mostly in conservative states,” was encapsulated by his interaction with one man who expressed satisfaction over the president’s killing.

“This was unusual but it was not unheard of,” Brokaw told the MSNBC hosts, prefacing a conservative’s reaction to JFK’s killing. “As I came running out of the announce booth, the chief engineer, with whom I didn’t get along very well – he’s a really curmudgeonly guy, old, kind of a gnarly guy – said ‘What happened?’”

“‘Kennedy was shot,’” Brokaw recalled telling the engineer. “He said, ‘About time somebody shot that SOB’”

“That was heard in other places, mostly in conservative states,” Brokaw concluded. “That was reflecting his real feeling for him and they had to peel me away from him.”

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/brokaw-recalls-a-conservative-reaction-to-jfk-shooting-about-time-somebody-shot-that-sob/ [video]

Note that Brokaw does not tell us the politics of this man. He only says he was "curmudgeonly" and infers he was a Conservative. Note also that he spins this tale on a forum on MSNBC. I point this out because Hannity is constantly asking where the "responsible" NBC news people are when it comes to the likes of Schultz or Bashir, etc. Isn't it obvious the Brokaws, the Lauers, the Williams' are right there with them and are only separated from them by having nicer suits?

[SouthTexas]

Brokaw Brokejaw Recalls a ‘Conservative’ Reaction to JFK Shooting: ‘About Time Somebody Shot That SOB’

Better

[happyg]

Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, West Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina are all considered ‘conservative states.’ But who did they vote for in 1960? They voted for JFK!

http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/

[rangerrebew]

He also fails to note Oswald was a hard leftist.

[musiclady]

I think he's making that 'memory' up just to slam conservatism.

My very conservative family was devastated when Kennedy was assassinated.

We love our country and the death of a President damages us, and that was the 'conservative' position at the time.

As far as I'm concerned all leftists are liars, and that clearly includes Tom Brokaw.

[mountaineer]

Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, West Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina are all considered ‘conservative states.’ But who did they vote for in 1960? They voted for JFK!

I don't know about the other states, but in W.Va., Joe Kennedy passed out $20 bills to buy his golden boy the votes he needed.

[rangerrebew]

I think he's making that 'memory' up just to slam conservatism.

My very conservative family was devastated when Kennedy was assassinated.

We love our country and the death of a President damages us, and that was the 'conservative' position at the time.

As far as I'm concerned all leftists are liars, and that clearly includes Tom Brokaw.

I have hear it said that Harry Reid, Nazi Pelosi, and Barack Obama are quite fond of lying, too.  That is hard to believe.

[rangerrebew]

I don't know about the other states, but in W.Va., Joe Kennedy passed out $20 bills to buy his golden boy the votes he needed.

Kennedy was also pushing for civil rights and getting support from the republicans;  the Dixiecrats weren't too particularly thrilled with Kennedy at that point.

[Rapunzel]

I don't know about the other states, but in W.Va., Joe Kennedy passed out $20 bills to buy his golden boy the votes he needed.

Something Democrats do all across the country to this day.  Republicans could never get away with doing it. 

[kevindavis007]

If I recall for a bit, the south voted for the Democrat for a long time.

[Rapunzel]

If I recall for a bit, the south voted for the Democrat for a long time.

Yep... look at Texas, it used to be a very Democrat state.

[raml]

I was only 18 at the time of his death and belonged to one of the few Catholic families who voted for Nixon not Kennedy but I remember quite well where I was on that horrible day. I was in my dorm room at Michigan State and couldn't believe what I heard on the radio. I ran over to my best friends dorm which was next door and told her what I had heard and she accused me of lying so we went down to the lounge to watch TV and we both ended up in tears when we found it to be true I never would have wanted him dead I still respected the presidents office. I never hated Kennedy not like I hate Obama or even disliked him like I did Clinton. I hadn't liked how much of a hypocrite he was because I had heard about all the affairs he had indulged in and how his wife was paid one million dollars to stay with him by his father and he acting like a devout Catholic. My parents were quite upset too they may not have voted for him but they still had respect for the office and would have never wanted him dead. Politics wasn't  quite as polarizing as it is now and it was more like conservatives against moderate conservatives not like the liberal and conservatives of today. Brokaw is lying communists may have been happy but not 99% of the citizens back then because a president was respected back then no matter what party they belonged to. I doubt very much I would shed a tear over Obama but I would have Clinton or Carter or Johnson I didn't hate any of them just didn't like their politics.

[kevindavis007]

I wasn't born when Kennedy was shot, but I do remember hearing my parents and my grand parents telling me where they where when he was shot.

[alicewonders]

I don't know about the other states, but in W.Va., Joe Kennedy passed out $20 bills to buy his golden boy the votes he needed.

 Wasn't West Virginia a crucial state for Kennedy to win?

[happyg]

Back then, there wasn't an obsession about republicans and democrats. Most agreed that we all wanted the same things for America, but had different ways of achieving it. LBJ and the Great Society changed that, and the extremists came out of the woodwork, particularly concerning Vietnam. The division widened ever since.

Of course, people like Pelosi and Reid took the division to an all new level. They are extremists who should never be in leadership positions, but can look you in the eye, and lie their arses off. That is not differences, but pure evil.

[musiclady]

Fascinating map that I don't recall seeing.....



Red is Kennedy, and Green is another Dem named Byrd.  (NOT Robert).

The south clearly went for Kennedy, as did West Virginia.

Was Harry Byrd a Dixiecrat bigot opposed to Catholicism?

[Rapunzel]

This is interesting about Byrd - he received his votes without being an actual candidate......  seems he was a rather independent Democrat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_F._Byrd#National_politics

snip......

In 1933 Byrd was appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate; he won reelection as a Democrat in 1933, 1934, 1940, 1946, 1952, 1958, and 1964. Byrd and his colleague Carter Glass invoked senatorial courtesy to stop Roosevelt's nomination of Floyd H. Roberts to a federal judgeship in Virginia in 1939. Byrd broke with Roosevelt and became an opponent of the New Deal, but he was an internationalist and strongly supported Roosevelt's foreign policy. As war loomed in 1941 Congress approved his proposal for a joint House-Senate committee to look into ways of eliminating nonessential expenditures. By late September, the Joint Committee on Reduction of Non-essential Federal Expenditures was in operation with Senator Byrd as Chairman; it built his national reputation as an economizer.

By the 1950s Byrd was one of the most influential senators, serving on the Armed Services Committee, and later as chairman of the Finance Committee. He often broke with the Democratic Party line, going so far as to refuse to endorse Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman in 1948. He also refused to endorse Adlai Stevenson in 1952. He voted against public works bills, including the Interstate Highway System.

Although Byrd was never a candidate in a presidential election, he nevertheless received 116,248 votes in the 1956 election. In the 1960 election, he received 15 electoral votes from unpledged electors: all eight from Mississippi, six of Alabama's 11 (the rest going to John F. Kennedy), and 1 from Oklahoma (the rest going to Richard Nixon).

Byrd retired from the Senate for health reasons in November 1965. His son, Harry F. Byrd, Jr., was appointed his successor.

[collins]

I'd always heard JFK's gangster connections helped him and that Dailey helped deliver the EVs of IL to him. Of course, Brokaw is going to ignore that too, par for the course for that rat-eyed DNC tool. I think it was his buddy Dan Rather that reported Dallas schoolchildren cheered when they heard of the news of the assassination, when really they were just told school was dismissed.

[evadR]

.. Dailey helped deliver the EVs of IL to him...

That's a fact

[musiclady]

.. Dailey helped deliver the EVs of IL to him...

That's a fact

Absolutely.

And without the Chicago mobster factor, Richard Nixon would have been President in 1961.