(I'm still posting light. That should change soon.)
Since the initials RFK have appeared several times in recnt weeks, I thought I would share this rememberance -- not of the man himself, but of someone else, someone I once knew. Call him X. He was one of the five other people wounded that terrible night in Los Angeles. It would be best, I think, not to tell you which one.
One Christmas, he and his wife invited me out for a fine holiday dinner; we were accompanied by a few other guests. We went to the Century Tower Hotel, a very ritzy establishment, where I ate beyond my means. (That was the only time I have ever had pheasant -- and very good it was, too.)
At one point, X pointed to a door and asked: "Is that the way to the restroom?"
"No," said his wife. "I think that's the way to the kitchen."
"Yes," said one of the other guests (NOT ME, I swear!), "and the last time you went through a hotel kitchen, things turned out rather awkward."
Frankly, I thought this was pretty funny. My sense of humor is usually pretty black. But then I looked at X's face...
He was nearly ready to cry. Just like that. In an instant.
The assassination had never ceased to haunt him. He was not a weak man, not by a long shot. But for ten years after it happened, he could not think of anything else. After that period, he tried never to think of it again.
I wonder if young people have any idea just what RFK meant to those of us who can remember those times...?
12 comments:
In hindsight it seems so obvious that a black op was in place then (as now) to keep political power in a selected channel.
Perhaps Bobby knew that then - he should have, being the AG and all, and I recall that he held off until the last minute to declare his candidacy. He was being pushed hard to take a mortal risk that few acknowledged at the time.
Perhaps your friend, confronted violently and personally with assassination, found himself suddenly up against something he couldn't see or touch or even define, that could kill him in an instant without warning. That would scare anybody, as it had to have scared Bobby when his brother was snuffed on the street.
As someone who is still relatively young, (28, if you must know) I think I have some idea, in the sense that someone who wasn't even extant at the time of his death can, anyway. I've never been able to get through a documentary about RFK's murder without blubbering. Which isn't really the same thing as "understanding" what he meant to those who lived during his day, of course, but maybe it's sort of/kind of close.
Can't claim to have met any other younger people who have the same reaction to the story, though, Joseph, and I'm usually the first to admit that I'm an odd duck within what passes for "my generation," so I don't know if my example says anything about the young and what they know of RFK.
And since you brought it up—uh, I would be curious to know what others who post here think about the discussions of RFK in the "news" of late. Why are media types "going there"? Are comparisons between RFK and any candidates for '08 valid?
I doubt it. I am barely old enough to remember and understand myself. I was 8 at the time - old enough to somehow formulate an opinion different from my parents' and support RFK for President, but too young to recognize the assassination for what it was. Watching the train carry his body was one of the searing moments of my childhood.
I have a picture book of the Lincoln Assassination aftermath that was published around the time of JFK's assassination. I think it was called "24 Days". The book was inspired by, and largely based on the recollections and emotions of the author's grandfather. A central theme was how modern Americans could not fathom the impact of the Lincoln Assassination on the emotions of the citizens of his day.
i remember rfk's assassination all too well. it hit all the harder because it followed jfk's and then mlk's. (hm, 3 k's there?)
it felt like our last hope was gone. no wonder all hell started to really break loose after that.
i'm just waiting for the next hit. on the one hand, it seems odd that it hasn't happened yet (tho paul wellstone fans feel it has).
on the other hand, i have too often wondered if they'll invert that crime and turn it on one of their own, to draw sympathy and divert attention, and give all manner of excuses for mischief and mayhem.
i swear, the blubberU makes such an obvious target, and with such bountiful likely results, doncha thin?
"I wonder if young people have any idea just what RFK meant to those of us who can remember those times...?"
I can probably speak for other young people here in addition to myself: no, we don't.
dr. elsewhere, we are on the same wavelength! In reading tonight that our dear leader is planning to visit Israel, I was gripped with fear for his welfare! "Iran" could be blamed for any threats or attacks against him on such a trip, and the president-in-waiting would be "justified" in any strong-armed response. Even with his credibility gone, our dear leader may yet be found to be a useful tool by the neocons. It is a scenario I hope and pray may never come to pass. The shocking events of the last 7 years have led me to expect anything from this crowd.
RFK's assassination was before my time, but it's always seemed to me that the forces responsible for his death are the same forces still controlling the show today.
We're battling an establishment here, a group of families who control far more than their share of the nation's wealth and who aren't afraid to fight to maintain their place in the socioeconomic pecking order.
The only reason anything about JFK's death (I know we're talking about RFK, but the same interests are likely responsible for both deaths (make that all three deaths when you throw JFK Jr in)) is still classified is that the interests who perpetrated the crime are still profiting from it.
I think that a thorough examination of the Bush family would explain all three of the Kennedy killings.
Jamie in Boston
dr. elsewhere:
I read a blip yesterday about Bush planning a Mideast visit and I swear I thought that it would be the perfect time for them to have him offed. It just seemed weird that they would be giving so much advanced notice about Herr Bush heading to that particular region of the world...
Jamie in Boston
"I wonder if young people have any idea just what RFK meant to those of us who can remember those times...?"
I don't think those of us who can remember those times have any idea, either. You can't convey a past zeitgeist, you can't even find words for it, except for 'idealism' or "make love, not war". Countless idealists simply quit and moved west during the 1970s, most of them to Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Jim Morrison screamed his lyrical "We want the world, and we want it...NOW!" Whatever Jim had in mind, there's little reason for young people to complain today. I can tell you this, though: for two generations now, they're sooo tired of hearing that they're stupid, and don't have Kennedys, Beatles, Walter Cronkite, or honest food.
I was completing 9th grade at the time in a Los Angeles suburb, the site of the shooting. RFK lingered a day or overnight or something, and I remember we had hope he might survive. The Byrds had a tune out based on a text from Ecclesiastes, 'Turn, Turn, Turn,' and its mournful melody and lyrics had me in tears as I prayed for RFK to survive. The next day they announced he had died, and it was devastating.
My feeling at the time was based on almost nothing. I was apolitical at the age of 14 or 15, and didn't know much, although I knew of course that JFK had been murdered. I didn't especially know about the Vietnam War, who was fer it or agin it, and truth be told, RFK had been plenty fer it prior to changing his mind.
As much as I don't agree with Noam Chomsky that JFK was a power system apparatchik, regretfully, I judge that RFK was all that, although he was showing significant signs of maturing into a man of conscience and of the left (although that had not been his pattern to that point of change). How much he'd changed was a matter that needed proof, and likely, he would have approached his new set of positions with the same zeal that saw him violate the Constitutional rights of his Mafiosi targets, right and left.
And I might even have approved, if those violations were done in the spirit of things I supported. I would have been wrong out of naivete. RFK was ruthless, and therefore unlawful in his methods.
I think what he meant to us then was both more and less than was warranted. Less, because the real man's history was one of lawless ruthlessness. More, because his evolution beyond that was another archetype of hope for redemption.
....sofla
The summer of 1968 hadn't begun and already MJK Jr and RFK had been assassinated. Everywhere in the world broke out in riot, tanks took over. Just before had been the Summer of Love, and next year would be Woodstock, the Tate/LaBianca murders, and Chappaquiddick, Nixon and Agnew took their oaths. I watched a scene out of Patton on my campus, hundreds of troop carrier trucks being turned left and right at the intersection, two years before Patton was made.
Many important books were being circulated, many people in government and the military were turning and conducting free teach-ins, no one under 30 was trustworthy because they weren't credible. We heard rumors that Bobby had turned on.
The shock, the shocks all coming rapid fire, made fight or flight impossible.
It took a long time before something like Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" could be written because it had to dawn on someone in the first place. Her scholarship is the secular equivalent of a miracle, its genius beyond useful criticism, and again thanks to dr. elsewhere nearby here, a looksee is only a clinck away.
From my office window I looked out on the rear entrance to Good Sam hospital, where they had taken RFK. The press was milling around that area all day. Someone in our office knew one of the cops assigned to that duty and he came back with the story that RFK had died instantly, but the family had requested that the details not be released so quickly, fearing a riot. This was only 3 years after the Watts riots. I had no reason to doubt this at the time, but have not read it anywhere else.
We "knew" of course that it was not a lone gunman ala Oswald. In fact, when Ted Kennedy was in that lake 'accident' it was rumored that the people who killed his brothers were sending him a message that if he ran he'd be next. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but all the suspicious deaths seem to happen to democrats or progressives. Yeah, there was Reagan, but remember that Hinckley was the disturbed son of a family that worked for Bush pere, who thought he should have been president instead of Reagan.
I tend to think that when they (the right?) want to take out one of their own who has done their job then jumped the shark to an embarrassing degree, they are more subtle, as with the Nixon tapes being made public (by the CIA?) and the recent outing of the NIE. One could tell from his press conference that Bush fils was extremely angry. He did everything but stamp his feet in anger and frustration like a two year old whose goal seeking activity was frustrated.
fallinglady
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