[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

She then told her mother, “He [JFK] didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for
civil rights…It’s-- it had to be some silly little Communist.” 127
The gallant Manchester, however, rescued the meaning of Kennedy’s death by
blaming the right-wing atmosphere in Dallas as the main cause of the President’s
assassination. Dallas was portrayed as Oswald’s double in ignominy. While the panoply
of Kennedy’s Roman Catholic funeral was being held in the nation’s capital on
November 24 th , 1963, Oswald was gunned down while being transferred to the Dallas
jail. “The pairing of Dallas and Washington,” according to Manchester, “like that of
John Kennedy and Lee Oswald, is an affront, yet all were irrevocably joined in American
history that weekend.” 128 In Manchester’s view, the right-wing enclave of Dallas, like
Oswald, was the worst that the nation had to offer, while Kennedy and Washington were
the best.
As the previous examples indicate, Manchester overstated through strained
rhetoric the cravenness of Oswald, the greatness of Kennedy, and the evil atmosphere of
Dallas. Deploying heavy doses of alliteration, Manchester described Kennedy’s
limousine nearing the site of the assassination as “the glittering blue convertible, its
fender flags fluttering, breasted the breakers of noise and moved steadily ahead past the
police barriers.” 129 Often, Manchester displayed stereotypical and elitist views, and
resorted to rhetorical excess, as in this novelistic description of the netherworld of police
departments and their habitués, like Jack Ruby:
127 Manchester, 407.
128 Manchester, 514.
129 Manchester, 151.
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