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# Columnist missed the mark
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/columnist-missed-the-mark-editor/
- Published: 2006-10-26T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T21:49:35.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By James Zeruk Santa Monica*

In regard to Carole Orlin’s piece of Oct. 23 (SMDP,“Entertaining current conspiracy theories on the events of 9/11”). While I agree with her on the 9/11 conspiracy angle, she dropped the ball as to what the most significant event of the 20th century was.

C’mon, Carole, how can you expect the readers to believe you have any intellectual honesty when you claim that the assassination of JFK is the most significant event during the 100 years of the 20th? African Americans might argue the most significant event to be the assassination of Martin Luther King; the Hindus, Gandhi; hippies and Beatle fans, John Lennon, and so on.

How much more has JFK’s death changed and shaped the world (or the nation, for that matter) than say... a little leap into the air at Kitty Hawk in 1903?

Gee, Carole, I guess you’re right, JFK’s murder has so many more ramifications and so much more significance than air flight, the Great Depression, walking on the moon, landing on Mars, curing polio and eradicating smallpox; discovering DNA, World Wars I and II, splitting the atom, the collapses of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, not to mention (but I will) the inventions of the transistor, laser, artificial heart, penicillin, plasma, silicon and the computer chip, and the Internet.

I could, of course, add much to the above list, but I think you get my point. But, in case you don’t, here it is — JFK’s death did little to affect mankind in any substantive fashion.You scare me when you call it “the most” and also call Oliver Stone’s JFK film “powerful.”

If twisting history (as Stone is fond of doing in order to get his politics to the paying public) is “powerful,” then indeed, you and Stone make quite the significantly powerful pair.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 26, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/102606.pdf?ref=smdp.com)