Robert F. Kennedy, 1925-1968

I really wish I could have lived to see him. More importantly, I wish I'd be living in a country where Robert Francis Kennedy had served two terms as President of the United States.

Richard Nixon's 6+ years were so disastrous for the country - many of the effects of Watergate are still being felt today in many ways - it's hard to even comprehend how different our country would be were it not for a madman named Sirhan Sirhan.

I'm only 36 years old, born during Nixon's first term in September 1971, but in my lifetime, I've never had the pleasure and inspiration of knowing a politician like Robert Kennedy. Barack Obama is probably the closest thing we've had in my lifetime.

I watch and read a great deal about Kennedy, and it seems as if my fascination isn't going to wane anytime soon. It's not that I'm in love with the Kennedy surname per se, it's that I have a tremendous amount of respect for what all three Kennedy brothers did and have done for our country in their political lives. Both President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy ultimately gave the ultimate sacrifice for trying to make a difference.

Specifically with RFK, after his brother was murdered in so public a manner, he easily could have said, "To hell with it, and to hell with this country." It's not like his family didn't have tens of millions of dollars for him to live off of, and really, who could have faulted him? He was crushed over his brother's death, and it was clear that the 1960s were a pretty risky time to be a politician. It's important to remember that at the time RFK was shot, 40 years ago today, his brother, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had already been murdered in the decade. Kennedy clearly knew the risks, yet he pushed on, determined to try and make a difference.

As Attytood noted today, perhaps Kennedy's most shining and courageous moment came on April 4, 1968, when he was due for an appearance in Indianapolis on the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. When he arrived, he was told that his predominately African-American audience was not aware that King had been murdered just hours before. He courageously went on stage anyway, speaking off-the-cuff and from-the-heart about his own experience with losing a family member, and what American needed to do to move forward. Without a speech writer, teleprompter, or polls to figure out the most popular thing to say, here is a part of what he said to the audience that night:

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

[Interrupted by applause]

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

Below is audio of his speech - take a few minutes and listen to the words, emotion and raw power (and the audience's reaction) to his speech...

Many people, mostly Republicans and conservative blowhards on right-wing radio, love to vilify the youngest Kennedy brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who won't be with us much longer even with the best prognosis after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer. It was Ted who eulogized his brother RFK in June of 1968 with these words:

My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, 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.

I cannot imagine what it's been like for Ted, seeing his three older brothers die (Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. in World War II), two of them murdered, yet he still has soldiered on, making many mistakes and even a tragic one, yet he has endured to become one of the most successful U.S. Senators in U.S. history. RFK's and JFK's legacies are alive with Ted Kennedy.

It's my hope that Barack Obama can deliver the sort of hope to generations of Americans that Robert did to America during the spring of 1968 before the tragic events at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Kennedy as he uttered the last public words of his life: "Thank you, now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there."

Rest in peace, RFK. You are gone, but not forgotten, and you never will be.

Olbermann doesn't always get it right

Lots to get to this morning, but before I do, it's worth taking a minute to mention one of Keith Olbermann's Special Comments last week. It's no secret that I feel Olbermann is one of the best liberal commentators on television, but that doesn't mean I always agree with him. For instance, last week, in light of Hillary Clinton's RFK gaffe, Olbermann took some pretty harsh liberties with Clinton, and by saying that, I'm being kind. My personal lowlight from his 10-minute tirade (transcript Here):

And certainly to invoke [RFK's assassination], three days after the awful diagnosis, and heart-breaking prognosis, for Senator Ted Kennedy, is just as insensitive, and just as heartless. And both actions, open a door wide into the soul of somebody who seeks the highest office in this country, and through that door shows something not merely troubling, but frightening. And politically inexplicable.

Sweet Jesus. I've vehemently and sometimes obnoxiously defended Olbermann countless times over the last 3-4 years against the charge that he's becoming the left's Bill O'Reilly. While I'm certainly not on that train yet, a few more Special Comments like these, and I may just get in line for a ticket. Olbermann has done so much good, and has been such a powerful, refreshing voice in the wilderness during Bush's second term, he does himself and his listeners a tremendous disservice by slamming Clinton over her RFK gaffe. To say that her comment "opened the door wide into her soul..." is simply absurd.

Evidently, I'm not alone. In this week's Time, James Poniewozik gives KO a gangsta slap for his Hillary Special Comment. A lengthy excerpt (and trust me, it's worth the read):

...Olbermann is edging ever-closer to self-parody, or, worse, predictability. (As soon as the Clinton gaffe broke, blog commenters were wondering how ballistic he would go, and he obliged, and how.) Even if we concede his argument—that Clinton was at best callously and at worst intentionally suggesting she should stay in the race because Obama might be killed—every time he turns up the volume to 11 like this lately, he sounds like just another of the cable gasbags he used to be a corrective to.

But mostly his outburst reminds me of how the long Democratic primary has divided the left-of-center media (or at least, the media outlets with a left-of-center audience) into camps, like a bad divorce. Personalities and institutions that were once universally beloved by people who were sick of the Bush administration have either taken sides, or have been perceived to, splintering what used to be a unified and largely uncritical amen chorus.

Most of the perceived side-takers have been on the Obama side, as we've seen—it's not just Olbermann, Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, but even some viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (as sanctified as any center of anti-Bush comedy can be) have gotten alienated by the shows' attacks on Hillary Clinton. (I haven't sat down with a stopwatch to see if they mock her more than Obama, but they certainly mock her better.) There are fewer pro-Clinton equivalents, but Saturday Night Live, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and my old employer Salon.com have all taken criticism for carrying water for Hillary, from the same sorts of people who loved them when they were knocking Bush and Cheney.

[...]

It's probably asking too much, but maybe the experience of being annoyed by someone you used to constantly agree with could teach political audiences something about how they have appeared all along to their adversaries. Think about it: if you've found yourself suddenly irritated by any of the people or outlets I mentioned above this election, is it really they who've changed? Or are they simply less charming when they're not confirming your comfortable beliefs?

Sometimes, maybe, the only way to really understand how your idols sound from the other side is to actually find yourself on the other side of them.

I'm not ashamed to say that Poniewozik's piece this week is as poignant and spot on as any of Olbermann's Special Comments I'd heard in 2008.

Olbermann really does need to ratchet down the rhetoric and save those "volume 11" rants, as Poniewozik calls them, for the true outrages of the Bush administration.

Countdown is still a can't-miss show, and most nights (or the next morning) I watch it, but the last thing the left needs is a blowhard like Bill O'Reilly, making every little indiscretion or gaffe sound like it's the worst political miscalculation ever. What's more, there are plenty of outrages out there being committed by this administration he should be focusing his attention on.

Hillary's "smear" about RFK a total crock

So the right-wing blogosphere is all aflutter of a comment that Hillary Clinton made earlier today about staying in the race. During a conversation with newspaper editors, she mentioned that her husband, President Clinton, locked up the nomination in June 1992. She then mentioned that Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968. Certainly it was a misstep and a gaffe, but only a moron (see Matt Drudge's screen capture from earlier today, above) would try to distort what she meant. It's obvious that if you take her remark in CONTEXT (a word that most of the press, and virtually all political pundits [esp. on the right] seem to have forgotten during this election), she was talking about her reasons for not withdrawing from the race.

Anyway, her comments are below - take a look and you be the judge.

Frankly, I don't even want to waste any more time on this, because it's such a non-story, but of course it will bounce around newscasts all weekend, with the implication that Hillary Clinton was somehow making light of RFK's assassination. Of course, right away she issued an apology to the Kennedy family, but few rational people, including I'm guessing anyone in the Kennedy family, probably thought that it was even necessary. But, Hillary is in the non-offending business right now, because she so desperately needs any support she can get in her fading campaign for the presidency.

What a difference a few days makes - just days ago, some on the far right were revisiting the Chappaquiddick incident and other misdeeds by Sen. Ted Kennedy in light of his brain cancer diagnosis. Now, all of a sudden, right-wing blowhards like Drudge are raking Hillary over the coals for allegedly making light of RFK's assassination. What a joke.

It's just another example of the scathingly critical, unspeakably moronic press that this woman has had to endure since she declared her candidacy about 18 months ago. There's no doubt that a portion of it has been self inflicted, but it certainly is a small percentage compared to the mindlessly stupid stories, name calling and slanders that have been run against her. I didn't vote for her in the Pennsylvania Primary, but someday I just might get the chance to proudly cast my vote for her in a national election, press coverage be damned.