I'm watching the RFK documentary--and my heart is breaking once again

[DerekG]

Early in the year, I found myself perplexed to see so many of my college peers enamored with Howard Dean--he was a bit too moderate for taste--but then I realized that he might have been the first politician in whom they saw sincerity. I myself was a supporter of Dennis Kucinich, for I saw in him the spirit of Robert Francis Kennedy. Although Kennedy was murdered 14 years before I was born, I nevertheless feel drawn to him somehow; I could never imagine that there was a presidential candidate who recited Camus and Greek poetry, who wept as he saw the squalor people lived in, and one who actually sought to end poverty AND war.

Now, like any other time I recall his legacy, my heart breaks.

It is because of RFK that I denounce the efforts of the Clintons and the DLC in throwing the party of social justice to the corporate dogs; conversely, it is because of Bobby's murder that I accept Kerry, for I know that visionaries like the slain Paul Wellstone and Dennis Kucinich would never be allowed to ascend to the presidency.

What are your thoughts of Bobby?

[On the Road]

1. I Was Young and Unaware in 1968

and only knew Bobby as a face and a reputation.

I caught the last 45 minutes of it and was very moved.

[bleedingheart]

2. It should have been on all the channels, both inspiring and heartbreaking

I was born in 1969 but my family cherished the memory of both John and Robert.

It may be me but the Democrats have been grieving over the loss of those two men for years...and I think that this election is helping to bring out the spirit of RFK and JFK in all of us!

[serryjw]

3. I was at the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968

Where else would a liberal be at 18 when her hero was going all the way. ONE of the worst days in my life.

I often wonder what this country be like if we had 8 years of Jack and 8 years of Bobby..........
I also was a DK state delegate......BOTH he and Wellstone's PICS are staring at me as I type. I have 2 DK posters on my wall and the Wellstone memorial edition of the MN (Daily) newspaper framed in my ofice.

[bleedingheart]

5. I have an original RFK bumpersticker and a handbill with his picture

I cherish them both and will have them placed in frames when I get time after this election.

[NEOBuckeye]

22. If we had 16 years of the Kennedys, we would have had ZERO years of Bushes

The United States today would have been so progressive that the corporate-elitist structure which enabled the Bush regimes' rise to power would have likely been drowned in the bathtub -- to borrow from Grover Norquist. I don't even think Reagan would've had a chance.

It's all pure speculation, but it doesn't hurt to dream. Better still, it doesn't hurt to imagine and work towards the better future that Bobby Kennedy and Paul Wellstone were fighting for. That is the best way we can honor their spirits.

[serryjw]

26. How many lost in Vietnam would still be here?

I honor JFK,RFK & Wellstone by supporting DK in his bid for the WH..Now he needs to run as an Independent in 2008 and I will work again for him

[DerekG]

34. I'm not so optimistic

Kucinich would never make it to the inaugural alive.

[serryjw]

40. Unfortunately, I agree with you.....

I have said that before.

[liberalmuse]

4. I loved the guy, though I never knew him.

I was 5 when he was murdered, but I didn't understand until many years later what a tragic loss RFK's death was. I cry whenever I see documentaries about him.

I don't know how people who were old enough to understand what was going on survived the 1960's. JFK, RFK, MLK, the Viet Nam war (just saw 'Going Upriver'). My god. It was like some evil force, the same evil force that drives Bush and his cabal was trying to destroy any chance of a peaceful and loving planet by savagely ripping away every last vestige of hope from people. My heart still lives in the 1960's. I was born 10 years too late.

[Reverend_Smitty]

6. I love Bobby...

I was born almost 20 years after RFK's death, but I consider him my political idol. I love him for his shyness but also for his ability to stand up and take a hard and unpopular position (anti-war in Cuban missile crisis, Civil Rights, anti-mafia, anti-war). I also love his intelligence, like you said about quoting Greek poetry and Camus. He just had a certain air about him that gave people hope. and in death he still gives me hope, because I know that there were and still can be politicians that can hold all the principals that I hold dear.

btw what documentary are you watching?

[Minstrel Boy]

7. His death was my political awakening.

I was eight-year old in a small southern Ontario when Robert Kennedy was shot. I remember tuning in early to the CBS Morning News and watching the live coverage from Los Angeles. That day, my Grade 3 teacher wrote his name on the chalkboard and had us copy it, then left to sob uncontrollably in the hallway.

RFK's journey seems the reverse of many politicians. Rather than simplifying and playing to the centre, he became more complex and progressive. He's someone you could see think.

Here's an RFK quote that speaks his greatness:

"I urge you to learn the harsh facts that lurk behind the mask of official illusion with which we have concealed our true circumstances, even from ourselves. Our country is in danger: Not just from foreign enemies; but above all, from our own misguided policies, and what they can do to this country. There is a contest, not for the rule of America, but for the heart of America."



"Now I realized what makes our generation unique, what defines us apart from those who came before the hopeful winter of 1961, and those who came after the murderous spring of 1968. We are the first generation that learned from experience that things were not getting better, that we shall not overcome. We felt, by the time we reached thirty, that we had already glimpsed the most compassionate leaders our nation could produce, and they had all been assassinated. And from this time forward, things would get worse: our best political leaders were part of memory now, not hope. The stone was at the bottom of the hill and we were alone."
- Jack Newfield, Robert F Kennedy: A Memoir

[Kanary]

9. Minstrel Boy, can we please take the beautiful quote you used,

and use it as a banner to DEMAND our party live up to it's heritage??

I haven't seen those words for so long, and have been dragged so far down by the hopelessness from the centrist turn of the party, that it's almost impossible for me to even remember we used to have leaders like this.

We *USED* to have Vision and Integrity.

We must, for our children and the world, find a way to regain that spirit!!

We must.

Thank you.

Kanary

[bleedingheart]

12. I just put that quote on our county Democratic web site...

[Kanary]

8. Beautiful post, Derek! The opening of your last paragraph is stunning!

It brings tears to my eyes to know that there are still those with VISION. Please, guard and keep that vision. Not only our Party, but our NATION is in desperate need of that integrity.

I was in high school when JFK was shot, and in college at that dark time when RFK was shot, and Martin Luther King. My generation was never to recover from the shock of those deaths, and the carnage of Vietnam.

I still have my idealism, and refuse, yet, to consider that Kucinich will not one day be my president.

Thank you, from the depths, for intense words that I so much needed to hear!

:hi:

Kanary

[Lancer]

10. I was seven when he was murdered.

But I had followed the campaign along with my parents. I was captivated by Bobby.

My father was the editorial page editor of our local paper at the time, and my mother was also a writer. Both were and are political junkies, and passed the gene on to all their children.

Mom and Dad were so excited by Bobby and the vibrancy of his campaign, their enthusiam was contagious.

I remember vividly watching him make his remarks to the crowd in Indianapolis the night Dr. King was killed.

Two months later it was too, too much to bear. My mother and I grieved all summer. We went to Washington only a few weeks after Bobby's death to visit his and his brother's graves. Bobby's was still fresh and temporary. It still smelled strongly of newly-turned earth.

I have been back to Arlington many times since, and Bobby's final resting place is so beautiful and fitting. Cool water runs over a lengthy bed of smooth marble. Bobby quoted this passage often, but I cannot recall if it is inscribed on his tombstone.

Though much is taken, much abides: and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are --
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

[VOX]

11. With RFK's death, we were plunged into a darkness that we never...

really climbed out of. After JFK and MLK, Jr., were murdered, many hopes were pinned on Bobby as the torch-bearer. When he, too, was murdered, there was no one of stature to step in. It was a loss of incalculable proportions to the progressive antiwar movement, and all hell broke loose. Vietnam raged on, the cities in America boiled over, and Chicago was a war zone. As we see today, these very wounds have still not healed.

It can be argued that the right wing had been in power since the close of WWII. IMO, the death of Bobby Kennedy sealed it.

Since Bobby's death, right-wing Republicans have held the nation's top office for 24 years, Democrats for only half that.

[Minstrel Boy]

14. Imagine if, at the height of the "Reagan Revolution," Reagan, Bush Sr,

Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich were all gunned down in the space of five years.

That's what happened with JFK, Malcolm, MLK and RFK.

Jim DiEugenio, in his afterword to The Assassinations, floats this hypothetical.

"Would the Republicans and the media not suspect something more than coincidence or happenstance? Would their party and their causes be able to sustain the loss? Would Dan Quayle and Bob Dole have been able to pick up the baton? Would history not have been quite different? Certainly, the Democrats were not able to sustain the loss. Nothing comparable filled the gap, nothing even came close. So the constellation fell from the sky and without any pressure from the left, our public debate shifted slowly, inexorably to the right."

[jdj]

29. Not to hijack, but precisely what was the Reagan revolution

aside from supply side economics and bad movies, this legacy is an empty meme.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

31. The "Reagan revolution" also included:

1. the demonization of liberals
2. active anti-unionism
3. taxes on the rich cut to historically low levels
4. massive military buildup beyond all imaginable necessity (every community over 15,000 population in the Soviet Union was targeted for nukes, and they had us similarly targeted)
5. twenty years and billions of dollars spent on the Star Wars boondoggle
6. the idea that high unemployment is "natural" and "necessary to prevent inflation" (where earlier economics textbooks said that a 2% rate was ideal)
7. the demonization of the poor (and racialization of the poverty issue).
8. intervention in any country that showed the least bit of leftist leanings (Nicaragua, Grenada), while propping up far more brutal right-wing regimes (Guatemala, Argentina).
9. use of fundamentalist/authoritarian religion to recruit new Republicans
10. the president as smiling, empty-headed front man for the crooks who really run the country

That, jdjkkse, is the legacy of the Reagan revolution.

[jdj]

35. I was being sarcastic, and legacy is a telling word.

They have since taken all the ways that he fucked up this country, but a positive spin on them, and NOW they call it the "Reagan Revolution".

But honestly I have not heard this terminology in the vernacular until very recently. Reagan fucked up my financial aid my sophomore year of college, and I didn't have a stereo to sell to make up for it, but no one was calling it a "Revolution" back then, not even raygun himself.

But thanks for the synopsis, very succinct.

That dead bastard is getting way too much credit.

[Minstrel Boy]

36. Note the quotation marks with which I quarantined the term.

It was a hateful period, but it changed America. Calling it an "empty meme" won't change it back.

[VOX]

32. I'm not big on conspiracy theories, but when I think of these three...

all gunned down in the span of less than 5 years, I shake my head and wonder.

[DenverDem]

33. ghw bush was in on all of them.

we are suffering through his payoff now.

and now we have al CIAda. It was ever thus.

[Minstrel Boy]

37. There are theories, and there are facts.

That each of these murders was a conspiracy rises well above theory.

For one instance: In 1999, King's murder was found, in a court of law, to have been the result of a conspiracy involving agencies of the federal government. The King family sought and received payment for damages of only $100, because it hoped to establish the truth. It did, but who knows it? That should have been the trial of the century, and the media buried it.

[SharonAnn]

16. And then we endured Wellstone's death two years ago.

What an awful, awful heartbreak.

I've lived through too many of these tragic deaths of the leaders with vision, hope, and inspiration.

[CBHagman]

42. We need to build up their political heirs.

Having seen the "American Experience" promotion for the RFK bio, I was left again with that heartsick feeling about what his death meant for the country. Had RFK not died, ould we ever have invaded Cambodia, backed a coup in Chile, seen the corruption of the Watergate years?

We must have people following in RFK's footsteps and Wellstone's footsteps. We must. No one must divide us, no one must take away our votes, no one must demagogue us into submission with their crass and cynical exploitation of national tragedies.

Let there be new Wellstones and RFKs. I don't care what color skin they have or what their last names are or whether they use a wheelchair or bound about through the crowds.

But we must begin anew. The work is only beginning.

[Kanary]

50. Must not be divided?

Would that was true.

Were you here during the primaries....... and, indeed, it still continues......?

Dennis Kucinich is constantly slimed here, and his supporters attacked. Many have left because of it. So, while I totaly agree with your sentiments, I don't have much hope of it coming true. Too many people enjoying trashing others, and belittling those very politicians of which you speak.

There will have to be much growing up before we reach the goals you've set.

Any ideas how to get started on it?

Kanary

[Wind Dancer]

18. "loss of incalculable proportions to the anti-war movement!"

Exactly, our hopes and dreams faded - there are those in the shadows and at the top who do not want peace, equality or progress. The very people who have stood up and fought against the MIC, are destroyed.

[lgardengate]

13. I was to young to remember JFK or RFK and

I still don't understand it all.I lived just outside Chicago for 28+ years and have heard TONS of gossip about the Kennedys (they say old Joe Kennedy bought the election for JFK by paying old Mayer Daily to bribe the mob/unions into fixing the election).This is just one of the rumors. I don't know what to believe...espec since i do believe Daily was a big crook.

[Reverend_Smitty]

15. I don't know if any of that Mayor Daily stuff was true or not...

Although I'm sure some monkey business occurred, however when anyone brings it up I always say to them...Just imagine what the world would be like if Nixon was in charge during the Cuban Missile Crisis, chances are none of us would be around to discuss it today...:nuke:

[Lancer]

17. Bobby was different.

As tonight's documentary mentioned several times, he had a very strong moral compass.

Minstrel Boy said it so well; Bobby grew more and more complex as he grew older, but Jesus, who can call 42 old?

He symbolized so many things that seem so absent and removed from politics then and now -- compassion, vitality, genuine altruism through good works. He inspired populists like Howard Dean, Paul Wellstone and Dennis Kucinich, who have or had Bobby's passion but not his magnetism, IMO.

If you are interest in learning more about him, I recommend Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. It is lengthy but completely absorbing, and is not a hagiography, but a balanced account of an extraordinary man, taken away from this world by an act of insanity from which many of us haven't ever truly recovered.

[lgardengate]

24. I agree,The JFK and RFK murders were acts of extreem

violence that lead made many americans confused and shaken.I would say it was insane, but that lets the killers off.It was brutal murder,by people (i believe) who stood to gain or get revenge.I will always believe Jack Ruby was mob.

[serryjw]

28. Jackie was 34 when Jack died!

She really had the world's problem on her shoulders. She was trying to raise 2 kids and *someone* wanted Kennedy's dead. A lot to handle for a young woman at 34.

[Bridget Burke]

39. You have a lot to learn. For example, how to spell "Daley"....

Since your hobbies include the internet & reading, I suggest Google & the nearest public library (or bookstore). There may have been some funny stuff under Daley but there was Republican crookedness elsewhere in Illinois.

Did you watch the show about RFK that inspired this thread? Do you know anything at all about Bobby Kennedy?

[lgardengate]

49. I suggest you not bother with my spelling

There are others on DU who spell bad or who don't even use the write words at all.

And Yes, i have seen many shows about JFK and RFK. Why are you so Sarcastic?

Next time critize someone who givs a crap.

[lgardengate]

51. P.S. You are wrong. Daley was a huge crook

My cousin worked at city hall and saw it first hand. Both partys can be crooked, but you know that,Don't you?

[Bridget Burke]

52. Spelling is less important than reading comprehension.

I wrote: There may have been some funny stuff under Daley but there was Republican crookedness elsewhere in Illinois.

The whole "Kennedy stole it" meme was revived by Republicans during the Florida "recount". There was some fraud in Cook County--Daley's bailiwick--but there was fraud elsewhere in the state that benefited Nixon. Read about it here:

http://slate.msn.com/id/91350/

[lgardengate]

53. Was posting abot stuff i heard for 20+ years and i ....

I comprehend quite well, thank you very much.
I can allso comunicate without sarcasm (and if that's spelled wrong..Oh Well)

I did not critize JFK or RFK. Just said what i heard from my Democratic cousin, and others in Chicago about JOE Kennedy and old mayer Daley.


oh, well. getting bored now.

[bleedingheart]

19. One thing I liked about the LBJ footage

was him talking about electing a "good liberal"..or something to that effect and the resounding cheers!!!!

[LibDemAlways]

20. I'll never forget Ted Kennedy's heartbreaking

eulogy to his brother that included these words:

"To be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it...

...As he said many times in many parts of this nation to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

'Some men see things as they are and ask, Why?
I dream things that never were and ask, Why not?'"

[stevedeshazer]

21. Met him

Just days before he was murdered. I've been angry and cynical and full of mistrust ever since.

[Kanary]

23. There's fear --- and then there's fear.

What a meditation this biography leaves us with.

Today, we have been purposefully inundated with FEAR from this misadministration. Using it to their advantage to gain more and more power.

Bobby Kennedy was torn apart by his brother's death. If *ANYONE* had reason to live in fear, it was Bobby. Even Jackie said "they" would do the same thing to him they did to Jack. I'm sure he knew what he was up against. Yet, he forged on, and got ever more involved with the people on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Same with Ted....... even *more* reason to let fear stop him. Yet, next to Byrd, he is probably the most outspoken Senator.

Much to ponder.......... what fear does or doesn't do.

Kanary

[bobbieinok]

25. I was in grad school in CA from 61-68

I voted for Gene McCarthy in the CA primary.

I have to admit I never quite 'got with' RFK. It's probably partly because a lot of academics were very suspicious of him.

Also, I cannot forget that I was very frustrated with JFK. My primary interest was civil rights for blacks, and he just couldn't seem to get the congress to move on this.

I had been fascinated by Kennedy since 56 when he was nominated for dem candidate for veep at the convention; good so bapt sen Robert Kerr from OK led the fight against him.

Yet before Nov 63 I had begun to consider voting republican in 64 if they put up any reasonable candidate.

I try to be honest with myself. I watch the retrospectives and can get lost in the what ifs, but I can't forget how I felt at the time (before Nov 63).

[Yupster]

27. I thought RFK was a rare gem also

I thought he would have made a wonderful president, and I have no doubt he would have won.

I don't have a lick of use for Ted Kennedy though.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. I was a relatively clueless high school senior in 1968

While I was disturbed by the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy coming only two months apart, they did not touch me personally at the time.

It was not until I saw the second series of the PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize, viewing the political events of my teen years as a forty-year-old who was living in the midst of 12 years of Republican presidents, that the significance of their deaths really hit me.

Both men were killed after they turned their attention to economic justice and anti-war activism. I had never really thought of the assassinations in those terms before, and I sobbed in front of the TV as I imagined what this country could have been like if they had been allowed to live out their natural lives and achieve their full potential.

Despite my cluelessness as a teenager, I vividly recall the spirit of optimism during the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s. Everything seemed to be getting better all the time: the economy, science, a desire for peace, social consciousness about the disadvantaged and disenfranchized, more opportunities for women, the last vestiges of Victorianism falling away. We all felt that there was nowhere to go but up. I wonder if it's possible for today's high schoolers to feel that way.

John Kennedy's assassination was a blow, of course, but it felt like an isolated incident. Except for the escalation of the Vietnam War, little changed, and relations with the Soviet Union actually improved.

But now I know that 1968 is the year that the American Dream of liberty and justice for all veered off course. What would the U.S. look like today if Robert Kennedy had become president and Martin Luther King had continued organizing people for economic justice?

It's almost too heartbreaking to think about.

[Piperay]

38. I watched the documentary too

and the end of it literally brought me to tears. :cry:

I was in high school when Bobby was killed and I was watching the TV when it happened. At the time I was not that personally touched but since then it really bothers me and all I can think of is 'what might have been'. :cry:

[EndElectoral]

41. RFK flip flopped on 'Nam, and he was right..,sometimes you have to admit

when you're going in the wrong direction...

By the end of his life he was incredible....

Sirhan Sirhan was 24....I've always found it amazing that we've never got to the root of why this 24 year old killed him.

[Minstrel Boy]

47. about Sirhan Sirhan

Sirhan is still suffering hypnotic blocks on the night, and can't remember what happened. The prosecution admitted he had been hypnotized, but argued that he had hypnotized himself.

Sirhan's last memory of that evening is of having coffee with a woman in a polka dot dress. He was seen in her company, with another man, entering the Ambassador hotel. After the shooting, a number of witnesses saw a woman in a polka dot dress flee with a man, and separate accounts have the woman saying "We shot him! We shot Kennedy!"

The technical advisor to the original Manchurian Candidate, Dr William Joseph Bryan Jr, liked to brag about famous jobs he'd taken on for police departments and the CIA. For instance, he boasted to prostitutes about having hypnotized Albert Di Salvo, the convicted Boston Strangler, while Di Salvo was in custody. He also spoke about having worked with Sirhan. It didn't mean anything to the hookers, but the thing is, he never had access to Sirhan in custody. And here's a funny thing: in Sirhan's notebook of "automatic writing," the name "Di Salvo" is scribbled, though Sirhan claims to not recognize it. Perhaps Bryan couldn't keep from boasting of his past accomplishments, even with Sirhan under hypnosis.

RFK was shot from behind at an upwards trajectory, the gun nozzle no more than an inch from his skin. Sirhan was standing a foot to a foot and a half in front of Kennedy. Multiple witnesses saw only flashes and paper residue flying from Sirhan's gun, suggesting he was firing blanks. Many present who had heard many gunshots in their lifetimes said Sirhan's gun sounded more like a cap pistol.

In photos of RFK lying wounded on the floor, there's a clip-on tie by his outstretched hand. It's the tie of security guard Thane Eugene Caesar, who was contracted to work that night, had CIA links, and was standing at precisely the spot from where, according to the coroner, RFK's killer must have fired. Kennedy grabbed his tie and pulled it off as he fell. Caesar lied about his possession of a gun which matched the murder weapon.

Photos of the crime scene show many more bullet holes than can be accounted for by Sirhan’s gun. (The LAPD subsequently removed the wood panels and ceiling tiles and destroyed them.) Five people were shot, one twice, besides Kennedy, who himself was shot four times. To account for Sirhan hitting them all, requires several "magic" bullets with astonishing trajectories.

In his book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, John Marks writes of the CIA's efforts to create a programmed killer via MKULTRA. He quotes a CIA veteran who says the program was unnecessary, as a mercenary can be found to kill anyone for a price. What is more useful is a programmed patsy. Marks writes further of a "programmed patsy":

"The purpose of this exercise is to leave a circumstantial trail that will make the authorities think the patsy committed a particular crime. The weakness might well be that the amnesia would not hold up under police interrogation, but that would not matter if the police did not believe his preposterous story about being hypnotized or if he were shot resisting arrest."

I recommend reading DiEugenio and Pease's anthology The Assassinations, and William Turner's The Assassination of Robert F Kennedy.

[RetroLounge]

43. The last time I watched an RFK Documentary, I cried

my eyes out. Not just for him and his family, but for what might have been. The country that I grew up in would have been vastly different than the one we now find ourselves living in.

(I have an early memory of a my teachers crying and hugging. We had close circuit TV's and they turned on ther news and the teachers all watched it. I could be wrong, but it was either RFK or MLK.)

RL

[stringerbell]

44. Remember what Bobby said on the night MLK was killed

Bobby Kennedy was in Indianapolis I believe and he quoted a Greek poet and said this:

"In our dreams, pain which we cannot forget fall drop by drop
against our hearts, until, against our will and by the awful grace of God, it becomes wisdom."

These last three years have shown us how to fight back. And their memories guide us even now.

[Kushlash]

45. That was sweet

[robertpaulsen]

46. Wow, what an amazing & inspiring documentary!

I wasn't expecting to watch any TV last night, but I started watching and it was absolutely hypnotic. I really got a sense of what made him so special.

The two moments that really stood out for me was when he confronted that pig bigot arresting Mexicans legally assembling because they "might" start a riot by asking him to read the Constitution during the next break, and seeing that legion of screaming supporters in "Kansas! F***ing Kansas!" In fact, every moment RFK spent campaigning in 1968 was absolutely breathtaking. I was born five years after he died, and I've never seen such adulation for a political figure in my lifetime. I've never seen anything close to that. People tore his clothes off, for Christ's sake! I had to see it to believe it.

I went to pbs.org because they said they had a link on there hypothesising what if Kennedy had lived. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the link there. How sad, that all our country has been left with after 1968 is "what if". I'm sure about 20,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese would still be alive today if RFK had lived.

[apnu]

48. RFK was long gone when I was born ('73) and even I get misty over him n/t