CRYING LAUGHING — The Weekly Opine

The act running in Dallas is comedy club worthy. (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

Step right up

If you are like most people, you enjoy a good laugh. In my days, I’ve seen some memorable comedy. Venues like Chicago’s famed Second City and Zanies made my gut bust with laughter. As a kid I recall seeing Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, and Flip Wilson deliver sanitized versions of their sidesplitting stand-up routines on the Johnny Carson show.

Cable television comedy specials featuring the likes of the great Paul Mooney and the insightful comedy of Eddie Murphy have been hilarious. Funny TV shows like Carol Burnett, Sanford and Son, Martin, and The Andy Griffith Show are like comfort food for the funny bone in a world that has done gone mad.

Maybe the funniest of all was a one-man show by the brilliant John Leguizamo, performed decades ago at the Chicago Theatre. And there was the uproarious, innovative theater show titled Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind: 30 Plays in 60 Minutes.

Venerable Saturday Night Live, more than 45 years after premiering in October 1975, still delivers outstanding comedy. So did the White House Correspondents’ Dinner before it was neutered following the 2018 show. Apparently, comedian Michelle Wolf’s riotously funny act, taking apart the Trump administration and perpetual liar Sarah Huckebee-Sanders, was more than Washington, D.C. could handle.

If you have not heard the news, John F. Kennedy is dead. (Photo credit Dallas Morning News, The Weekly Opine)

Has anybody seen my friend?

Right now, that Dion song “Abraham, Martin and John,” from the late 1960s, is stuck in my head. Why? Because we keep hearing stories about hordes of misfits and losers roaming the streets of Dallas, in search of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This places the Big D at the center of a dark comedy that is part wacko, part funny.

Those of us familiar with American history know that JFK was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while campaigning in Dallas. Kennedy’s death in Dealey Plaza was vividly and explicitly captured on the most famous crime video in history. Among sane people, there is no debate about whether JFK is dead and gone. We know he is not coming back from his grave in Arlington National Cemetery.

But somehow, a segment of society has bought into the QAnon conspiracy that JFK, and his just-as-dead son, John, Jr., killed in a tragic small plane crash in July 1999, will soon make a triumphant return in Dallas. According to their misguided, psychiatric ward-worthy belief, JFK will take over as U.S. president and John, Jr. will become vice president. (This goes way beyond sentimental daydreaming; it is a result of people suffering from more than their share of loose marbles.)

It escapes these bozos that, if he were alive today, JFK, a liberal-leaning Boston Democrat, would have nothing to do with MAGAs, QAnon, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, or any other like-minded group.

Yet, the crazy Trump crowd, again proving they are undeniably and absolutely crazy, have convinced themselves JFK will reappear any day now, like an attractive magician’s assistant comes back after she’s been stuffed in a box and ‘sawed’ in half. (So happy I do not carry the demons of stupidity that reside inside the minds of the QAnon crowd.)

Hopefully, hoodwinked fools won’t morph into hoodlums and destroy Dealey Plaza including (clockwise from top left), the Texas School Book Depository Building, the grassy knoll, the triple underpass, and the location on Elm Street where JFK suffered the fatal gunshot blast. (Photos credit The Weekly Opine)

A significant place

As the JFK-is-coming-back weirdos roam the streets of Dallas, desecration of Dealey Plaza is a legitimate concern. These loose cannons – who respect very little except monuments glorifying the Confederate – are trampling all over a solemn place. They act-out with cult-like devotion, creating placards that insist JFK and John, Jr. will return any day.

These outcasts somewhat resemble the thug insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Will they, at some point, conclude their warped fantasy will not be realized? Will these failures then decide to trash sacred Dealey Plaza?

Having visited Dealey Plaza in November 2019, I can say from personal experience it is a special place that solemnly exudes historical significance. Dallas has done a magnificent job preserving and restoring the plaza, including the former Texas School Book Depository Building and the grassy knoll. History envelops you as you stroll along Elm Street, from the building where Lee Harvey Oswald hunkered down in his sniper’s nest to the well-known triple underpass. Dealey Plaza is devoid of glitter but steeped in calm reverence.

As I wrote in a blog post titled, “Where Time Stands Still,” Dealey Plaza is frozen in time, with not much changing nearly 60 years later, except trees that have matured. theweeklyopine.com/current-events/2019/11/21/where-time-stands-still

Go home crazy people. JFK is not coming back. (Photo credit D Magazine)

Today, the crowds clamoring for the return of JFK and John, Jr. apparently have had enough of My Pillow sideshow loser Mike Lindell. Lindell’s phony assertion that Trump would be reinstalled as president by the Supreme Court in August has come and gone. Lindell’s revised date of “before Thanksgiving” has faded like an old newspaper.

Meanwhile, the folks awaiting JFK cannot be bothered with truths, such as JFK’s standing (when he could stand) as a Democrat. Politics be damned, Kennedy is their man, no matter that his views – if he were alive – would be aligned with protecting voting rights, articulating a belief in science, and respect for civil rights. Considering he was the father of two precocious children, it’s hard to imagine JFK doing nothing while school shootings stack one upon another like Lego building blocks.

The dumb zealots hanging out in Dallas have nothing in common with the late-JFK. And he had nothing in common with them, except he breathed American air same as they do.

The human nutcases parading around Dealey Plaza do have something in common with the afore mentioned comedy clubs and comedians. The people pinning their hopes on a return of John F. Kennedy are putting on a comical show.