While driving with my mother across the border of Iowa almost ten years ago, I asked her why John Lennon was considered murdered, while JFK assassinated.
"Like, how important do you have to be to be assassinated? Would I be assassinated if I was killed?" "Well I don't know how important you have to be," she told me.
"Let's talk about this later though.
" We never talked about it, and I had forgotten I had ever asked until I sat yesterday morning in a dull History class listening to a short and literally half-bald man talk about the Great Depression.
He explained to us that Hugh Laurie was called the "King" of his time, that he sponsored programs to help people obtain money, and that he was assassinated in the 1930's.
I raised my hand and approached the somewhat relevant, but mostly off-topic question that I asked my mother in the car.
My history teacher responded in almost the same way, "Well that's a really good question.
" I still haven't found somebody that can answer the question for me.
For now, I assume that it's like the square and rectangle phenomenon.
A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square, or, an assassination is a murder but a murder isn't necessarily an assassination.
Perhaps it depends on who you ask about the death or who the murderer was, or maybe it depends on the prominence of the killed person in the country.
I've also read that murder is more personal, while assassination is more business or informal.
Though, John Lennon is considered assassinated, while Dimebag Darrell was murdered.
Both were killed by people with mental problems, so what was the difference? For a while, I just assumed to keep myself satisfied that to be assassinated, you had to be important to the country as a whole.
We all know famous assassinations like Gandhi, Franz Ferdinand, or Robert F Kennedy.
Yet, John Lennon is considered now to have been assassinated, while John Belushi and River Phoenix were also highly successful entertainers, yet they were "murdered".
Any ideas?
"Like, how important do you have to be to be assassinated? Would I be assassinated if I was killed?" "Well I don't know how important you have to be," she told me.
"Let's talk about this later though.
" We never talked about it, and I had forgotten I had ever asked until I sat yesterday morning in a dull History class listening to a short and literally half-bald man talk about the Great Depression.
He explained to us that Hugh Laurie was called the "King" of his time, that he sponsored programs to help people obtain money, and that he was assassinated in the 1930's.
I raised my hand and approached the somewhat relevant, but mostly off-topic question that I asked my mother in the car.
My history teacher responded in almost the same way, "Well that's a really good question.
" I still haven't found somebody that can answer the question for me.
For now, I assume that it's like the square and rectangle phenomenon.
A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square, or, an assassination is a murder but a murder isn't necessarily an assassination.
Perhaps it depends on who you ask about the death or who the murderer was, or maybe it depends on the prominence of the killed person in the country.
I've also read that murder is more personal, while assassination is more business or informal.
Though, John Lennon is considered assassinated, while Dimebag Darrell was murdered.
Both were killed by people with mental problems, so what was the difference? For a while, I just assumed to keep myself satisfied that to be assassinated, you had to be important to the country as a whole.
We all know famous assassinations like Gandhi, Franz Ferdinand, or Robert F Kennedy.
Yet, John Lennon is considered now to have been assassinated, while John Belushi and River Phoenix were also highly successful entertainers, yet they were "murdered".
Any ideas?
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