CRYPTONECROLOGY: Dr. Cyril Wecht, R.I.P.

From the 5-13-24 AP NEWS obituary of pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht (1931-2024):

Dr. Cyril Wecht, a pathologist and attorney whose biting cynicism and controversial positions on high-profile deaths such as President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination caught the attention of prosecutors and TV viewers alike, died Monday. He was 93 [...].

Wecht’s almost meteoric rise to fame began in 1964, three years after he reentered civilian life after serving a brief stint at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. At the time, Wecht was serving as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County and a pathologist in a Pittsburgh hospital.

The request came from a group of forensic scientists: Review the Warren Commission’s report that concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated Kennedy. And Wecht, with his usual thoroughness, did just that — the beginning of what became a lifelong obsession to prove his theory that there was more than one shooter involved in the killing.

After reviewing the autopsy documents, discovering the president’s brain had gone missing, and viewing an amateur video of the assassination, Wecht concluded the commission’s findings that there was a single bullet involved in the attack that killed Kennedy and injured Texas Gov. John Connally was “absolute nonsense.”

Wecht’s lecture circuit demonstration detailing his theory that it was impossible for one bullet to cause the damage it did on that November day in Dallas made its way into Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK” after the director consulted with him. It became the famous courtroom scene showing the path of the “magic bullet.”

To read the entire obituary, click HERE.

Here's a ten-minute clip of Mae Brussell (author of THE ESSENTIAL MAE BRUSSELL: INVESTIGATIONS OF FASCISM IN AMERICA) talking about the work of Dr. Wecht during her September 8, 1978 broadcast...

Mae Brussell Project

George Conway on "The Trump Trials"

What follow are a couple of brief excerpts from the latest installment of George Conway's ongoing newsletter entitled "The Trump Trials" (courtesy of THE ATLANTIC): 

[A]s we have so often seen over the past nine years, Trump’s instinctive, narcissistic mendacity came into self-defeating play once again—this time by making [Stormy] Daniels’s testimony more significant than it had to be. It’s hard to imagine that many sentient, honest human beings could believe Trump’s denials of having congressed with Daniels. Yet Trump continues to insist on denying it—not only in public, but in court. And not only is sex not an element of the crime, but his strongest defense—the one he could actually skate on—will be to argue that there is insufficient evidence that he knew his people were falsifying business records. This defense faces many problems—including that Trump personally signed (on the Resolute desk!) some checks (made out to [Michael] Cohen) in packets with false backup attached. Still, Trump would have been best off having his lawyers focus their efforts on the question of his knowledge and intent regarding the payments.

As usual, though, this defendant just couldn’t help himself. The prosecution was entitled to put on evidence of the sex to establish Trump’s motive for the payoff and cover-up. The defendant could have had his lawyers not dispute the point, even stipulate to it. What’s the harm? His political supporters stand by him even though he’s already a civilly adjudicated sex offender, so why would they care one whit about what he did consensually for a couple of minutes with an adult-film actor once upon a time in Stateline, Nevada? Had he not insisted on contesting the point, Daniels might not have had to testify, or at least she might have been on and off the stand in a flash. Because, again, what ultimately matters in the case happened mostly in New York City in 2016.

Trump’s insistence on pointlessly contesting Daniels’s veracity entitled the prosecution to draw her account out even more than it otherwise could have—not only to establish a record on why Trump would have been motivated to hush Daniels up (because sex), but to bolster her credibility with detail of her recollection (about sex) [...].

The cross also forayed into archaic, even nonsensical, slut-shaming. Sure, the witness made a living engaging in sex on camera for money. But does that really mean she shouldn’t have been horrified to see Donald Trump suddenly take off his clothes? And was there any logic at all in seemingly trying to show that the sex the defense said didn’t occur was consensual because Daniels wanted it? The defense’s cross-examination made Daniels appear more sympathetic than any prosecutor’s direct questioning ever could.

Worse yet, it emboldened Daniels. She’s a smart woman—and she’s clearly strong-willed, with a sharp, quick-witted tongue. Normally it’s not a good idea for witnesses, even smart and tough ones—perhaps especially smart and tough ones—to fence with lawyers too much on cross-examination; witnesses tend to lose credibility when they do. But the belabored and argumentative nature of this cross-examination gave Daniels some running room. And she took every inch of it.

At one point, for example, Necheles asked a question about Daniels’s history of writing porn scripts containing “phony stories about sex [that] appear to be real”—obviously implying that Daniels’s story about Trump in the hotel room was fake, like the scripts. Daniels’s devastating retort: “The sex in the films, it’s very much real. Just like what happened in that room.”

At another point, Necheles attacked Daniels for selling merchandise about Trump’s indictment.

Necheles: Again, you’re celebrating the indictment by selling things from your store, right

Daniels: Not unlike Mr. Trump.

To read Conway's entire article, click HERE.

"The Opening" in HORROR SLEAZE TRASH!

To read my latest short story, "The Opening," check out Arthur Graham's inimitable art/lit zine HORROR SLEAZE TRASH.

Art/lit zine that has always been and will always be for the misfits.

Est. 2010

CRYPTONECROLOGY: Peggy Mellon Hitchcock, R.I.P.

From Benjamin M. Adams' 5-6-24 HIGH TIMES article entitled "Psychedelic Pioneer Peggy Mellon Hitchcock Dies at 90":

Margaret “Peggy” Mellon Hitchcock, an ultra-wealthy heiress who grew up in the Andrew Mellon estate and its fortunes, funded LSD-fueled adventures for Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr. Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert, passed away on April 9 and an elaborate obituary was written by Penelope Green for the New York Times on May 3.

“Pretty Peggy Hitchcock was an international jet-setter, renowned as the colorful patroness of the livelier arts and confidante of jazz musicians, racecar drivers, writers, movie stars. Stylish, and with a wry sense of humor, Peggy was considered the most innovative and artistic of the Andrew Mellon family,” Leary wrote in his 1983 autobiography, Flashbacks. The debut 1974 issue of High Times and April 1978 issue contained excerpts from Leary’s writings.

Both psychedelic gurus were kicked out of Harvard: Leary was kicked out of Harvard for allegedly missing teaching responsibilities (but more likely for advocating for LSD), and Alpert was kicked out of Harvard for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate student. In Leary and Alpert’s experiments, including the Harvard Psilocybin Project, graduate students from Harvard and other schools in Boston were given psilocybin and asked to write a report about their trips. In another experiment, they offered psilocybin to prison inmates in the hope it would diminish recidivism. Both LSD and psilocybin were legal at the time, however.

They both benefited from Hitchcock’s money and ability to host psychedelic activities, where they continued for about five years. Hitchcock was remembered for being nurturing, but also being a force of nature in the fields she chose to entertain [...].

Hitchcock married Walter Bowart, a counterculture journalist, who was a founder of The East Village Other counterculture newspaper. In 1966, Bowart testified before the Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and urged the committee members to try LSD for themselves. High Times reprinted several East Village Other articles, such as a reprint of Leary’s 1968 article, “Deal for Real.”

Hitchcock bankrolled a publishing house for her husband called Omen Press, which published books on metaphysics and spirituality. They divorced in 1980.

Without Hitchcock’s involvement, it’s unlikely Leary and Ram Dass would’ve become the household names they are today.

To read Adams' entire article, click HERE. 

A historical footnote: It's interesting to note that my late friend and colleague, Walter Bowart, once told me that he originally wrote his groundbreaking 1978 nonfiction book, Operation Mind Control, with the intention of publishing it through the above mentioned Omen Press before deciding to allow a mainstream New York publisher (Dell Books) to release it instead. Walter thanks Peggy Mellon Hitchcock for her "patience and support" in the Author's Note to the first edition of the book. 

By the way, if you'd like to hear Walter discussing the updated and revised edition of Operation Mind Control, check out Ned Potter's 1994 interview with him directly below:

Walter Bowart with Ned Potter - Operation Mind Control

Censorship Corner: Salman Rushdie on 60 MINUTES

Salman Rushdie on Censorship in America Today (4-14-24):

From Salman Rushdie's 5-11-12 NEW YORKER essay entitled "On Censorship":

The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free.

And, even worse than that, when censorship intrudes on art, it becomes the subject; the art becomes “censored art,” and that is how the world sees and understands it. The censor labels the work immoral, or blasphemous, or pornographic, or controversial, and those words are forever hung like albatrosses around the necks of those cursed mariners, the censored works. The attack on the work does more than define the work; in a sense, for the general public, it becomes the work. For every reader of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” or “Tropic of Capricorn,” every viewer of “Last Tango in Paris” or “A Clockwork Orange,” there will be ten, a hundred, a thousand people who “know” those works as excessively filthy, or excessively violent, or both.

The assumption of guilt replaces the assumption of innocence. Why did that Indian Muslim artist have to paint that Hindu goddess in the nude? Couldn’t he have respected her modesty? Why did that Russian writer have his hero fall in love with a nymphet? Couldn’t he have chosen a legally acceptable age? Why did that British playwright depict a sexual assault in a Sikh temple, a gurdwara? Couldn’t the same assault have been removed from holy ground? Why are artists so troublesome? Can’t they just offer us beauty, morality, and a damn good story? Why do artists think, if they behave in this way, that we should be on their side? “And the people all said sit down, sit down you’re rocking the boat / And the devil will drag you under, with a soul so heavy you’ll never float / Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down / You’re rocking the boat.”

At its most effective, the censor’s lie actually succeeds in replacing the artist’s truth. That which is censored is thought to have deserved censorship.

To read Rushdie's entire article, click HERE.

Jen Silverman: "Righteousness Over Complexity"

From Jen Silverman's 4-28-24 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable":

As someone who was born in the States but partially raised in a series of other countries, I’ve always found the sheer uncompromising force of American morality to be mesmerizing and terrifying. Despite our plurality of influences and beliefs, our national character seems inescapably informed by an Old Testament relationship to the notions of good and evil. This powerful construct infuses everything from our advertising campaigns to our political ones — and has now filtered into, and shifted, the function of our artistic works [...].

When I work with younger writers, I am frequently amazed by how quickly peer feedback sessions turn into a process of identifying which characters did or said insensitive things. Sometimes the writers rush to defend the character, but often they apologize shamefacedly for their own blind spot, and the discussion swerves into how to fix the morals of the piece. The suggestion that the values of a character can be neither the values of the writer, nor the entire point of the piece, seems more and more surprising — and apt to trigger discomfort.

While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold. The result is that, in a moment in which our world has never felt so fast-changing and bewildering, our stories are getting simpler, less nuanced and less able to engage with the realities through which we’re living.

To read Silverman's entire article, click HERE. 

 

"A sanitized culture always on its good behavior & bleached of provocation is no culture at all. It’s a garden party where no one talks of anything but the weather, and these days even the weather is controversial. In America, culture defines politics rather than the other way around, and it remains to be seen whether the culture wrests back from our times the courage of disquieting provocations…."

--Steve Erickson, AMERICAN STUTTER, 2021

OPERATION MINDFUCK on Austrian Radio!

On Friday morning I appeared on Tarek Al-Ubaidi's popular Austrian podcast, CROPfm, and over the course of three-plus hours discussed OPERATION MINDFUCK, CHAMELEO, my NEXUS MAGAZINE article "Invisible Predators," and my EVERGREEN REVIEW article "The Silent Civil War." Most of Al-Ubaidi's shows are in German; however, he also does an occasional English interview from time to time. This is one of those occasions. Click HERE to listen to the entire episode (the interview begins about six minutes into the show).