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

Kennedy and his wife as a “Nice couple with no scandal running their marriage into the
ground.” 136
In describing the assassination itself, Bishop contended Oswald crouched on the
sixth floor of the Book Depository building with his rifle “about to make history. Never
again would he be regarded as a human cipher…the silent, sullen, psychotic.” 137
Afterward, stunned people around the world could not believe “a meteor, racing across
the heavens, could be brought down by an idiot with a cork gun.” 138 Bishop spent little
time trying to decipher the motive of the cipher, other than to say Oswald had gunned
down the great leader in the street “without motive except for the notoriety involved.” 139
This made Oswald even more of a “lone nut” than the Warren Commission had described
in its report.
The fact that the alleged murderer was a left-wing nut, and not a right-wing nut in
a conspiracy, absolved the city of Dallas – and the nation itself -- of guilt in the
assassination – even as Mrs. Kennedy fretted that a communist assassin deprived her
husband’s death of meaning. Bishop noted the nation’s extreme sorrow and sense of
guilt over the assassination, but concluded, “These sorrows are not the symptom of a sick
society. To the contrary, the health of the community is displayed by the increasing
amount of mass shock which follows each assassination…The country feels that it is
‘above’ violence. Not culture, no country is.” Any loser with a weapon willing to give
136 Bishop, 143.
137 Bishop, 162.
138 Bishop, 335.
139 Bishop, 419.
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