I am not quite sure how to understand Baudrillard's interpretations on the failed assassination attempts on President Nixon, Ford, etc. He says, "The Kennedys were murdered because they still had a political dimension. The others, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, only had the right to phantom attempts, to simulated murders. But this aura of an artificial menace was still necessary" (19). I assume that B does not mean to imply that these assassinations were orchestrated events. B seems to treat these events as isolated from their true objective historical context.

Earlier, JB posits that all explanations for a political event are now simultaneously true. B write, "the search for proof, indeed the objectivity of facts does not put an end to this vertigo of interpretation" (16). Is he taking this approach when reading the failed assassination attempts as indicative of the simulated power of Johnson, Nixon, and Ford? I find it a bit disconcerting to explain these verifiable historic events with unconnected theoretical extrapolations.