CBS: In Memory Of Bobby (RFK)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/01/sunday/main4142910.shtml

Forty Years Later, Jeff Greenfield Recalls The Remarkable Life And Tragic Death Of A Political Icon

June 1, 2008

(CBS) Robert Francis Kennedy … RFK … was assassinated 40 years ago this coming week. Few Americans will ever forget the shock of that night, and what it would mean. Among those working in Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign was Jeff Greenfield, now our Senior Political Correspondent. He offers a very personal recollection of a man who spoke to so many in so many different ways.
He has been gone almost as long as he was alive, and from a distance of four decades, Robert Kennedy is often seen as a player in a pageant: heir to a murdered President from America's most famous political family … a tumultuous presidential campaign in a tumultuous political year that ended on the floor of a hotel kitchen in Los Angeles.

But why, so many years later, are the memories still so sharp, the loss still so painful?


Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, seen here in March 1967, came from a family of wealth and privilege with a reputation for toughness, even ruthlessness, but emerged during his shortened life as a moral voice against injustice, poverty and war. (AP Photo)


Photographer Bill Eppridge said, "I don't know of a single person who affected me the way he did."

Veteran CBS News correspondent Roger Mudd said, "There was about Robert Kennedy a perpetual sense of outrage. As a reporter, it was something to behold."

"He had the ability to speak out of his soul, out of his gut," said Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga., "and people believed in him."

… including a 24-year-old speechwriter fresh out of law school.

FULL story at link.

[Paladin]

1. Did You See The Clip Of RFK's Mea Culpa On Viet Nam?

He publicly took full responsibility for his grievous error in having supported the Viet Nam conflict at its inception. He admitted it and got rid of it as an issue. I hope to hell some of Hillary Clinton's people were watching it this morning.....

[Democrat 4 Ever]

2. RFK was shot on June 5, 1969, the day after my 18th birthday.

Some welcoming to adulthood, huh? Martin Luther King, RFK, JFK, I don't think anyone who wasn't born or at least old enough to remember those days have any idea how completely devastated the country was during those years. We finally got it, it wouldn't end with JFK - we were now in an era of our county where there was politics by assassination on a wide scale. Of course, there were other assassinations in our history but nothing like the rapid gunning down of major leaders in such a short time span.

If RFK had been president we would see a completely different country today. History would have taken a huge u-turn on some of the events we are left to deal with today - like corrupt republicans, war-mongering corporate shills, and we might have had that Great Society we were all promised.

[Omaha Steve]

3. 2 replies

How fast we forget.