My friends from grad school have taken to referring to me as a Kennedy because my love of whiskey and women, the accidents of my birth (Boston Irish Catholic), and my ability to quote from numerous Kennedy speeches have made it seem as if I were a member of that family.
Some of Bobby’s best speeches were used last night in the film, which received a seven minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival and it’s highest award, the Golden Lion. The movie followed the lives of a number of different people in the Ambassador hotel the day that Bobby was shot and killed.
The only time we ever see Bobby is from actual clips of him from the fast few months he was in the presidential race and two or three shots of the back of his head with an out of focus camera. Televisions show news clips show him giving some of his most memorable speeches and his words. When Nick Cannon’s character talks about how, after the death of Martin Luther King there was no one left, no one except Bobby, we hear Bobby announcing the death of MLK in the Indianapolis ghetto. Its tough not to be moved, especially considering we all know how the movie is going to end.
We hear Bobby renouncing violence, renouncing discrimination, renouncing the war. His words echo back from the past and speak to us today. After seeing the effect Bobby had on an entire generation, an entire nation, it is tough not to have the same prayer as Ted did when he eulogized Bobby a few days later:
“That what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.”
Bobby
“need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, [but] 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.”
Let that be the legacy of Robert Francis Kennedy. Let Bobby further that legacy.
checking out The American Experience’s excellent film and background info on RFK. You’ll probably get more actual Bobby there than in the Hollywood version.
also check out The Kennedys. Lots of background on the who, what and why the family was so driven. Very interesting stuff.
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My 14 year old, who was with me at the Clinton rally said of Ted Kennedy, “No wonder he walks stooped over – imagine carrying that legacy around with you.”
…was the head of the Kennedy clan, but Bobby was the soul.
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I can’t imagine losing King and Bobby so close together…it’s a wonder there weren’t mass suicides.
I remember going to school the morning after the assassination. I hadn’t heard anything the night before because of the time-zone difference. I had gone to bed early.
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When my friends told me upon my arrival at the schoolyard that Bobby Kennedy had been shot, my reaction was, “That’s the sickest fucking joke in the world.” Then I saw the newspapers with the screaming headlines in their hands, and I thought I was going to vomit.
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In 1968, I was fifteen, was already politically aware, and had lived through JFK’s murder five years earlier and then King’s just months before. The Democratic Convention in Chicago and the October Moratorium against the Vietnam War were still to come.
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The mood in school that day was funereal. Those who didn’t know or care who Bobby Kennedy was (and they were few – we were all old enough to have caught the promise and devastated hopes of the New Frontier years earlier) took their cue from the teachers, many of whom went through the day listless and red-eyed.
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It was more than simply a “tragedy,” a word that nowadays is used lightly and casually. With both JFK and MLK gone within five years of each other we thought that whatever moved fate to kill off our heroes might finally have been satisfied.
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Instead, they killed RKF, too. A blow upon a bruise, as Evelyn Waugh put it.
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I learned how to be a cynic about the ways of the world that day. So did most of my friends. It seemed to be the final snuffing out of our unvoiced, barely formed wish that Bobby’s call to hope would halt what seemed an irrevocable slide toward anarchy, that our country could return somehow to the promise of the early Sixties, that we could still appeal to people’s better angels. Sirhan Sirhan’s act was the obscene, unanswerable response to those hopes.
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The violence of Chicago 1968 was a direct result of that act. With all the heroes gone, with the old men who wielded the creaky machinery of political business-as-usual taking up the reins, with an ill-begotten juggernaut of a war and a Great Society tottering under its weight, anger became the order of the day.
called herself a “Kennedy Democrat” and could never talk about Jack or Bobby without tearing up.
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I saw Bobby today — on accident. I was actually planning to see a different movie while my guys were at the “Pick of Destiny”, but the times didn’t match up so I ended up at Bobby.
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I’m as familar as the next political junkie with the story so I know how it ends, but it still made me sad for what might have been.
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The other thing I thought of while I watched was how powerful inspiration is. People supported Bobby Kennedy because they were touched and inspired by him, and his words.
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The soundtrack rocked.
My mother, who is now painfully right-wing (she’s become a big Sean Hannity fan, which just makes me sad and angry on so many levels, got to hear Bobby Kennedy speak in Bedford, Indiana (my hometown) in 1968.
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To this day, my mother still tears up speaking of that day. It gives me some hope that buried under the layers of theocracy and near-fascist beliefs is the woman who was hopeful on that late spring day in southern Indiana.
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When I met RFK’s grandson early in 2006, I told him that story and thanked him.
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WF
Many of you may remember RFK’s Tiny Ripple of Hope speech,
That is one of the things that has been so important to me about the Lamont campaign in Connecticut and the Patrick campaing in Massachusetts, the many ripples of hope that emanated from it. Hopefully, we will find a presidential candidate like RFK in 2008 that will further these ripples of hope.
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As an aside, a friend of mine has been making a documentary about RFK’s famous Ripple of Hope speech. You can find out about this, listen to the speech and get involved at http://community.rfksa.org.
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and can be listened to here. I’m also particularly fond of his opening:
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Seriously though, what an amazing and courageous speech that was! He stood in the land of apartheid and denounced discrimination based on race. He could have done it in Hyannisport, and could have gotten every news agency in the country to cover the speech regardless. He didn’t, though. He went straight into the lions den and told them exactly what they did not want to hear. If they would have let him into Moscow I imagine he would have stood outside the Kremlin and praised the virtues of the free market and human rights and liberties.
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There are SO many great quotes that could be culled from this speech, but my favorite part, however, and perhaps this is because I am a young man, is:
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Perhaps it is vanity that causes me to post on BMG, or write to my local newspaper. Perhaps it is simply the thought that my words may have some deep eloquence and unarticulated thought that will bend the minds of men to see things the way I do. It may be that it is self-aggrandizement that cuases me to do this things. I hope, however, that my goals are closer to the spirit of this speech, in that I may change small things, create my own tiny little ripple of hope, and have it written in the history of my generation.
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My favorite quote from Bobby of all time came from this speech. He said it in 1966, and I believe it to be, sadly, even more true today.
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I have nothing more to add.
While it would be interesting to speculate if RFK could have won the primary and election in 1968 – and remember – he got in late, don’t forget that he was one of the 1960s greatest opportunists.
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He was a cheerleader for Joe McCarthy and helped create the Blacklists. He bugged Martin Luther King’s telephone, and he always did what was best for Bobby.
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It’s certainly true that Nixon derailed the Great Society and, although loathsome, was not a right winger in the sense that Ford was, or that Reagan or the Bushes were and are. The great tragedy of 1968 was Election Day – and Hubert Humphrey, a man of immense integrity and progressive vision, could have led the country just as well.
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Ellery
That’s pretty much a fact. And he liked to shit on the little guy, believe it or not. By that I mean he was an asshole to the help.
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As for your quote Kai,
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“When Nick Cannon’s character talks about how, after the death of Martin Luther King there was no one left, no one except Bobby, we hear Bobby announcing the death of MLK in the Indianapolis ghetto.Its tough not to be moved, especially considering we all know how the movie is going to end.”
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I goofed on that in this blog here a before the election
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“Just think. If Deval wins, in 30 years there will way too many pretentious, self-indulgent, old guys with pony tails reminiscing about the glory days of Deval’s first campaign. Instant credibility because they were here. Sort of like that Bobby Kennedy shit. Claiming to at the Last Supper and reminding people of it every day.(‘I ran Marlboro for Deval. We had such hope.’)”
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I don’t mean to be so harsh, it is just that every hero is a myth and many many old Boston old timers no the truth behind this myth first hand.
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While in ths day and age we’ve come to know and expect the full picture of public figures, it is important to note and understand why Robert Kennedy touched such a broad range of people in his time. The evolution of RFK after the death of his brother is a fascinating topic. That he was able to take the spotlight that fell on him and focus it on issues such as hunger, civil rights, apartheid is sorely lacking today. Robert Kennedy went to South Africa, went to Bedford-Stuyvesant, went to hills of West Virgina and the poor in Mississippi. What leader do we have now that does that?
made sure they used the best of new mediums. LBJ did more for civil rights than all the Kennedy’s combined.
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With the Kennedy’s, it was all about p.r.
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What balls. Naming your little brother attorney general.
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Suire I say thank god for Ted, now. Because he has been a lone voice on many occassions during the last decade.
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But that is maturity.
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The Kennedy’s morals, narcisism, and long standing public relations image machine helps widen the gap between what people like Steve thinks and reality.
Again, I focus on the years of ’64 through ’68. I don’t dispute that RFK was a different kind of senator than what Ted became. To merely toss off his impact on that era as p.r. is short sighted. And at least part, at least part, of LBJ’s ability to get the Civil Rights Act passed was as a legacy to JFK. That it came from a Southern POTUS surely helped also.
It strips away a lot of glamor.
to nominate your brother for AG. He didn’t have the credentials, and it was clearly nepotism. To make such a bold move, without any apologies, took guts. If he lost that vote, his whole presidency would have gotten off to a rocky start.
If he did, he would have had told his father NO, when dad “ordered” him to appoint his brother AG. You know, the brother that was Sen. Joe MCcarthy’s lap dog right behind Roy Cohn when they needlessly ruined thousands of lives in persuit of their own selfish interests.
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It has been said millions of times in this state during the last 60 years, “The Kennedys don’t care about anyone or do anything for anyone but the Kennedy’s”
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He didn’t lose that vote. Just like he didn’t lose Illinois and West VA.
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The president knew how to arm twist and use his new presidency good will to get that nomination. There is alot of quid pro quo you know? Especially when the senate was democratic and LBJ WAS VP
The issue of should he have or shouldn’t he have appointed RFK as Atty General conveniently ignores the question as to whether he was an effective AG and as we know, counsel to the President. Naming RFK could well have blown up in his face, if RFK had failed in the role.
Literally.
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There is a theory that the actions of this ingrate Bobby Kennedy is what put the bullet in his brother’s head in Dallas. Going after the same crooks that his father, a crook, paid off to rig the election cause many to be pissed off. Remembe, the Kennedys only care about the Kennedys. And they paid the price for pushing it.
like Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy, and Presaident Kennedy.
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He shit on underlings. But as far as he being a grewat ag, he did what he was told. You sound like he was Jesus Christ and no one else could have done the job.
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You have bought into this Kennedy sainthood crap.
Saying that he should be evaluated in the context of his times and in his performance as AG is not deifying anyone, it’s an attempt to bring some reality to what I perceive as largely unsubstantiated anti-Kennedy fervor. A fair criticism to make of RFK is that he waited too long to criticize the war, too long to jump in the race in ’68. Providing balance to your skewered remarks seems more than appropriate.
This great man was the only person who could do the job according to you.
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OK, he went after organized crime – teamsters, mafia etal.
Not good when your family conspired with the very same mobsters to steal the elction and years before were business partners in illegal bootlegging operations. (Once you are in, you are in)
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Then he supervised the US Marshalls enforcing federal court decisions. That is sort of a being there type thing, don’t you think. That is in the job description. Enforce the laws. When local governments not obeying the law then the US Marshalls turn out. (Nice touch having the film cameras there during this. Especially the part where you use your daughter Kerry to show your “family” side. I like when you put her on the phone to talk to Katzenburg or whatever his name is, when he is checking in. You had cameras filming him too. How perfect.
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Like you said, he waited before he came out against the Vietnam War. Finger in the wind perhaps? Seems more John Kerry than the Kennedy myth.
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Tell me what exactly he did diring those AG years that deserves sainthood.