Kennedy was killed not by communist Oswald, but by climate of hate created by Dallas' sick, right-wing bigots

Now even the Wall Street Journal is repeating the outrageous slander that the city of Dallas was somehow responsible for President Kennedy's assassination. An article, written by Ann Zimmerman and appearing in today's WSJ, states:

After John F. Kennedy was assassinated here on Nov. 22, 1963, it took years for this metropolis to shake its stigma as the "City of Hate," with many people blaming its virulent anti-Kennedy sentiment as the cause. ... Dallas's image had taken a hit even before the killing, according to historians. An ultraconservative strain in the city, led by Edwin Walker, a former Army major general with anticommunist and segregationist views, had criticized the Democrat Kennedy as soft on Communism.

Of course, Ms Zimmerman is forced to acknowledge the inconvenient fact that Lee Harvey Oswald, the person who actually killed Kennedy, was a "left-wing extremist" (actually, a communist; see below):

In the end, the Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy met his fate at the hands of a left-wing extremist, Lee Harvey Oswald. Nonetheless, many blamed Dallas for the combustible climate that led to the assassination.

George Will has already pointed out the sheer stupidity of this departure from fact:

The transformation of a murder by a marginal man into a killing by a sick culture began instantly — before Kennedy was buried. The afternoon of the assassination, Chief Justice Earl Warren ascribed Kennedy’s “martyrdom” to “the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.” The next day, James Reston, the New York Times luminary, wrote in a front-page story that Kennedy was a victim of a “streak of violence in the American character,” noting especially “the violence of the extremists on the right.” Never mind that adjacent to Reston’s article was a Times report on Oswald’s Communist convictions and associations.

Wikipedia's biography of Oswald details his well-known communist sympathies and his attempt to renounce his US citizenship and defect to the Soviet Union.

In October 1959, just before turning 20, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union. ... Almost immediately after arriving, Oswald told his Intourist guide of his desire to become a Soviet citizen. When asked why by the various Soviet officials he encountered—all of whom, by Oswald's account, found his wish incomprehensible—he said that he was a communist. ... According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials ..., who asked if he wanted to return to the United States; he insisted to them that he wanted to live in the Soviet Union as a Soviet national. ... On October 31, Oswald appeared at the United States embassy in Moscow, declaring a desire to renounce his U.S. citizenship. "I have made up my mind," he said; "I'm through." ... The Associated Press story of the defection of a U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported on the front pages of some newspapers in 1959.

The Warren Commission concluded that on April 10, 1963 [after returning from the Soviet Union], Oswald attempted to kill retired U.S. Major General Edwin Walker, firing his rifle at Walker through a window, from less than 100 feet (30 m) away, as Walker sat at a desk in his home; the bullet struck the window-frame and Walker's only injury was bullet fragments to the forearm. General Walker was an outspoken anti-communist, segregationist, and member of the John Birch Society. ...Marina Oswald testified that her husband told her that he traveled by bus to General Walker's house and shot at Walker with his rifle. She said that Oswald considered Walker to be the leader of a "fascist organization."

Yes, this is the same Edwin Walker that Ms Zimmerman suggests was responsible for stirring up the "ultraconservative strain" in Dallas that led to Kennedy's assassination.

So, let's examine Ms Zimmerman's twisted logic. Lee Oswald was a communist attempting to kill anti-communists. John Kennedy can certainly be described in some respects as ardently anti-communist (remember the Cuban missile crisis). These right-wing, anti-communists were responsible for stirring up the climate of hate that led to the assassination of Kennedy. So, President Kennedy, an ardent anti-communist, was responsible for stirring up the climate of hate that resulted in his own assassination. Absurd!

Ms Zimmerman's article is simply the latest example of how the liberal left and the mainstream media always attempt to pin the blame for all acts of violence on the supposedly sick souls of right-wing extremists, clinging to their guns and religion. Up until now, the best example of this genre was Paul Krugman's insane column blaming the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords not on the actions of a demented lunatic, but on the climate of political hatred fomented by right-wing extremists. But now, I fear that Ms Zimmerman has surpassed even Mr Krugman's ravings.