Elder Gays: Did the 2 failed assassination attempts on Gerald Ford seem completely ridiculous at the time?

Was Ford that disliked? He seemed like such a benign President to deserve 2 assassination attempts within a month.

Comedians had fun with them.

The good ole days when crazies shot people in power and not school kids.

I was pretty young at the time, but for years afterward it did seem really kind of silly. Yes, Ford was pretty innocuous, especially after all the real hatred directed at LBJ and Nixon, justifiably many times. But then Ford? Really, it does seem odd and yes ridiculous that these two stupid bitches decided that killing him was the thing to do.

The two attempts were appalling but also somewhat dismissed because of the character of the assassins. Fromme didn't know how to operate the gun and there wasn't a bullet in the chamber, although she had a nearly point-blank proximity. And as a Manson chick, she was considered crazy, dangerous but a flake.

Moore was about 40-feet away, and she missed Ford's head by inches. She was knocked out of getting a decent second shot off, hit a man in the groin, and also looked like a crazy person.

After the events of the 1960s, the civil rights movement and violence, JFK's horrible death, Vietnam and the horrors of that, the divisions in the country (the same ones we see now - in spades), MLK, RFK, Wallace's shooting, Nixon's horrors and resignation and Ford's pardon of him, and the sense of a deep, baffling corruption in the air, the Ford assassination attempts felt like absurdity in a fever dream.

And Americans always have been quick to get over shootings in which the famous target escapes. Americans in the 1970s were painfully aware that survival was not inevitable.

[quote]felt like absurdity in a fever dream.

That's what watching Jan. 6 felt like to me. I was so discombobulated from everything from 2016 onward, Trump, Covid, etc. it didn't really register how serious it was.

There was an SNL sketch with Squeaky Fromme but I can't find it.