My Ambivalence About Bobby Kennedy


I first realized that I didn’t much like Robert F. Kennedy when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate from the state of New York in 1964. There were three overriding factors:
1. I had heard that the FBI was bugging Martin Luther King, Jr., and I felt that as U.S. Attorney General, he was responsible.
2. We had a perfectly good moderate Republican senator in Kenneth Keating, in the Jacob Javits tradition. I know some of you are too young to remember moderate Republicans. They existed. Really.
3. I had read a syndicated column in the morning newspaper in Binghamton, the Sun-Bulletin, where William F. Buckley compared RFK to a “carpetbagger”. Of course, his own brother, James, would move into New York, to run for and win a Senate seat in 1970; the tradition continued with Hillary Clinton in 2000.

BTW, I was 11 at the time. I was a political junkie, even then.

As it turned out, Bobby Kennedy won the Senate seat. Satirist Tom Lehrer quipped that Massachusetts then had three senators. Ken Keating ended up on the state Court of Appeals, which, despite its name, is New York’s highest court. (Whereas the Supreme Court is a trial court; go figure.) He then served as a US Ambassador, first to India, then to Israel.

Move to 1968. Eugene McCarthy runs against an incumbent President and gets 42% of the vote versus 49% for LBJ in the New Hampshire primary on March 12. It’s only then that Bobby Kennedy gets into the race. Commentators at the time declared that Kennedy used McCarthy as a “stalking horse” against Johnson, and I tended to agree. LBJ’s declaration that he would not run came at the end of March. This was followed on April 4 by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which ultimately had a profoundly moderating effect on my world view.

I stayed up to see the results of the California primary on June 5, only to see RFK’s shooting in Los Angeles; “seeing” would be overstating, since I heard the shots and chaos ensued. He died the next day. I knew many people who were deeply affected by his loss. I too was at a loss, though. While I certainly didn’t wish him ill, I wasn’t having the same sensation, and I was feeling pretty guilty about it. Yet, as I watched the days of coverage, seeing people lined the railroad tracks as the train carrying his body went by, somehow I started to emphasize with what those folks felt.

A few years later, Tom Clay, a radio disc jockey, born in Binghamton, but by then working out of Los Angeles’ KGBS, put together this very odd song, melding the Bacharach-David song “What the World Needs Now” with the Dion hit “Abraham, Martin and John.” I’ve written about this record before, even putting it on as the last song on a mixed CD. The song starts off rather cloyingly, with Clay asking children about prejudice and segregation, and them having no idea, then segues into soldiers preparing for the Viet Nam war. Next, reports of JFK’s and MLK’s death, with this comment by Bobby Kennedy about the latter: “No one can be certain who next will suffer, from some senseless act of bloodshed.”

Then the record uses what I believe to be the audio tape of reporter Andrew West of KRKD, a Mutual Broadcasting System radio affiliate in Los Angeles, who also provided a blow-by-blow account of the struggle with the shooter Sirhan Sirhan in the hotel kitchen pantry, shouting at Olympian Rafer Johnson to “Get the gun, Rafer, get the gun!” and telling others to “get a hold of his thumb and break it, if you have to! Get his thumb! We don’t want another Oswald!” (Not so incidentally, I was watching the television 4 1/2 years earlier when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.)

The next thing heard is Senator Edward Kennedy, eulogizing Bobby: “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.” Ted Kennedy’s voice cracks during that section, and my own pain, largely missing at the time, except as a supporter of others who mourned, came into fruition; it gets to me every time I hear it. The remaining Kennedy brother concluded his eulogy, by quoting George Bernard Shaw: “Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?'”

In retrospect, I think that Bobby Kennedy was transforming from a cool, calculating politician to a more truly compassionate man, and I mourn his death now far more than I did at the time.

Here are the lyrics to the song.

The YouTube video may not be historically accurate. I swear I hear David Brinkley’s voice when Walter Cronkite is on the screen.

Oh, and like so much in this campaign, I thought the Hillary Clinton “gaffe” re: RFK’s assassination was a non-issue.

Interconnectedness

I got one of those invitations to be LinkedIn to a social networking page. I recognized the person, so I said yes. Later that morning, that same guy, who is a sales rep for a database service we use at work called to see how we were doing with the service. (I had previously spoken to him and complained about the interface of the database.) This led me to ask him, “what’s the benefit of the social network?” I can if he can just call me up, I don’t need to be “connected” to him. He explained that people that one of us is linked to is vetted, in a way. I scratched my head, knowing some people with hundreds of MySpace “friends”,e.g., are no more connected than people one night see at a bus stop.

I’ve gone to parties, and because I tend to be the one who tends more to Lydia than her mother on those occasions, I’ll not have a substantial conversation with anyone. I’ve gone to these father/child breakfast things at Lydia’s day care, and except for a couple dads I’d talk with previously, I didn’t really get to know any of them. We are in the same room, but there’s no real connection.

So how does one get to “know” people? I’m on a couple listservs at work, and just by people asking questions and answering them, I get a feel for the way their minds work. Certainly, I’ve got a sense for people via their blogs, but especially when I’ve exchanged music with them. I was reorganizing my music over the weekend – using drawers I bought at a library auction – and the mixed CDs of Green and Dymowski and Burgas and Brown (come back, Kelly!) and Brown and Bacardi all show up in the same drawer. I’ve never met any of them (well, except for Green), but I feel that I know them better than people I’ve seen face to face recently. That’s both kinda weird and kinda nice.
***
I’m enjoying listening to discs from Thom (two discs) and Tosy.
ROG

Songs That Move Me, 100-91

100. As – Stevie Wonder.
This song is good until it gets to the “preach” segment; then it’s transcendent.
Feeling: as though I were at a revival meeting.

99. Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinead O’Connor.
Based pretty much on the strength of the vocal alone. That octave leap on “Nothing”, e.g.
Feeling: longing.

98. No More Tear-Stained Makeup – Martha and the Vandellas.
I wish I could find the lyrics to this Smokey Robinson-penned tune on the Internet, because there’s a lyric couplet in the second verse has a line that’s really a mouthful. On the Watchout LP.
No More Tear-Stained Makeup -Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
HERE.
Feeling: Like singing along.

97. I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow – Foggy Mountain Boys.
The hit from O Brother Where Art Thou. It’s the quality of Dan Tyminski’s vocal, along with the harmony vocals and the instruments, that work for me.
Feeling: what a hoot!

96. Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen – Santana.
The first part wouldn’t have made the list, but that the second half seals the deal. I may have become aware of Santana from the Woodstock movie, which I sat through twice.
Feeling: transcendent.

95. Papa Was a Rolling Stone – the Temptations.
It is that lengthy, luscious introduction that Dennis Edwards acknowledges added a bit of an edge to his voice when he finally got to sing “It was the third of September.”
Feeling: that I can finally exhale when the vocal comes on.

94. Losing My Religion – R.E.M.
Such a musically delicate song for such moving lyrics.
Feeling: doubt.

93. Cannonball – the Breeders.
It was loud and infectious. But what made it is the modulation of key early on. On a 4-song CD.
Feeling: I’m alive.

92. Takin’ It To the Streets-the Doobie Brothers.
The first song I heard with the Michael McDonald vocal. It became a more predictable sound eventually, but when I first experienced it, it felt fresh. From the first greatest hits LP.
Feeling: as the title says.
HERE.
Also, this version from No Nukes.

91. What’s That You’re Doin’- Paul McCartney with Stevie Wonder.
It came out at a point in the early ‘80s that Stevie started getting squishy (I Just Called to Say I Love You), so this was more to form. Much better than the OTHER Wonder/Macca song on the Tug of War album, Ebony and Ivory.
Feeling: Stevie’s back!

ROG

100 Things That Bug Me

Not only do I show my lack of imagination by doing another meme, I cop it from guy I copped it from LAST week. I even stole some of his answers, in italics, as well as some of the answers of the person HE swiped the meme from; those answers are marked with **.

It’s one hundred things that bug me, annoy me, or fill me with rage, no particular order, except I didn’t move Jaquandor’s responses.

1. The notion that we need a whole new format for home video already. DVD is fine!

2. “Common courtesy” gone uncommon. “Excuse me”, “please”, “thank you”.

3. People who seem to be oblivious to how much space they take up in a limited area, such as a supermarket aisle, with the cart and the person positioned so no one can pass from either direction.

4. “Right on red” means stop, yield, go.

5. People driving with cell phones. It’s not that it’s illegal in NYS that bothers me; it’s the fact that almost everyone who has almost hit me going right on red had a cellphone in his or her hand.

6. Bicyclists who bike badly, riding on the wrong side of the street, or wildly on the sidewalk, barely missing pedestrians. Makes it harder for the responsible bicyclists.

7. The Religious Wrong, I mean Right, for too many reasons.

8. Poor signage, especially accompanied by a snippy sales clerk who doesn’t know why one can’t magically discern where the bathroom is.

9. Disgusting public bathrooms.

10. Cigarette butts. On the very first earth day, I picked up over 1000 cigarette butts from my high school lawn, and they’ve been the bane of my existence ever since.

11. People who pass me on the road while I’m riding the bike, then make a quick right turn so I can nearly plow into the passenger-side door.

12. Yielding to pedestrians at crosswalks just isn’t SOP in Albany, NY.

13. New CDs or LPs that skip.

14. When I buy a favorite food item…and then forget about it until it’s gone moldy and nasty. That bugs me.

15. Plastic “clamshell” packaging. Not only is it environmentally unfriendly, but it’s a strain to open.

16. The largest Wal-Mart in the company is in Albany County, NY.

17. Movie trailers that give away too much.

18. The current President of the United States.

19. The current Congress that, until recently, showed few cojones in dealing with the POTUS.

20. That there is almost certainly enough food and medicine in the world, but that distribution and money allow so many to die of hunger and treatable diseases.

21. The Supreme Court’s recent decision on the death penalty.

22. The number of people released on DNA evidence after sometimes decades in prison, 17 of them in Dallas County, TX alone. I should be happy they were finally exonerated, but their lives are all but ruined.

23. Drunk drivers.

24. Most canned vegetables.

25. Marshmallow Peeps. Oh, how horrible.

26. Those smokers hanging outside their buildings forcing me to run through.

27. Redesigned web sites that are more difficult to use than it used to be. NYS DOT, this means YOU.

28. John McCain. He’s no more a “straight-talker” than anyone else, he thinks that the problems the world faces right now are to maintain the same policies from the previous eight years that enabled, exacerbated, or outright created those problems, and it strikes me as odd that people whose distaste for Hillary Clinton includes the notion that she’s essentially been running for President since 2000 don’t notice that McCain’s been at it even longer.

29. Revisionist history.

30. Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part 1. A bunch of pissing jokes.

31. Dirty movie theaters, especially sticky floors.

32. The international conspiracy to get people to buy the same thing more than once; e.g., releasing individual seasons of a TV show, THEN the box set with “extras”.

33. Global warming and our seeming inability to do anything about it.

34. People who are upset with something a person does, but they don’t tell that person. Almost inevitably, it leads to a larger confrontation later.

35. One-party rule. Does not matter which party.

36. Oh, and thanks a lot, you Homeland Security nitwits, for making it more annoying for us to go to Canada. I’m sure that tons of stuff that would have been blown up by terrorists otherwise is still standing because you’re all vigilantly giving people like me the skunk-eye when we try to come home.

37. Continuing with that theme, thanks a lot, you Homeland Security nitwits, for making flying even more of a complete pain in the ass than it already is, because there [will] be some flying in my future at some point.

38. Political pundits and talk show show hosts who seem to think if they can talk louder and/or more frequently than the other person, they are somehow factually correct. A special award to Nancy Grace, who does it even when no one else on the set.

39. People who act like a bad movie adaptation of a book or comic or TV show or something somehow destroys the original.

40. Guys who give me a weak handshake.

41. All those prescription drug ads that are driving up the cost of medicine.

42. People who are excessively proud of themselves for not owning a TV.

43. Internet scammers, credit card skimmers, identity thieves, and other people I have to take extra security measures for.

44. People who insist that having my daughter attend public school in Albany is tantamount to child abuse.

45. People who complain about someone’s harmless (at worse) or useful (at best) mission that they don’t get and complain that he should be doing something else. Example: a guy goes around correcting signs that have bad grammar and a bunch of folks say, “Get a life!” That IS his life; why does it bug you so?

46. Bad grammar.

47. People who think that the mere act of saying the words “Excuse me” confers upon them the right to just barrel through wherever they happen to be, without waiting for response or acknowledgment or for the people in front of them to just plain move.

**48. Internet “celebrities.”

49. Waiters/waitresses who just don’t listen.

50. People who ask for “honest feedback” but don’t really want it.

51. The elevators in my office building that close, then open again for no reason, then close again, making a whiny noise.

52. People who call at work who launch into what they want without even identifying themselves.

53. My armoire. I never asked for it, but we got it when the child was born. I like putting my socks and underwear in drawers, not this monstrosity that doesn’t keep them in right.

54. “Permanent press” shirts that aren’t permanent press.

55. I hate it when I’m leaving the house with my backpack, come back to the house to get something I forgot, then lock the door, leaving the backpack inside.

56. Paper cuts.

57. Mail-in rebates.

58. Loud cell phone calls on public conveyances.

59. Sunburn. Especially now.

60. People who don’t curb their dogs, the results of which show up on my lawn, my shoes…

61. Most meetings, especially the top down ones, where they say, “Does anyone have anything else to say?” Of course they don’t; the leadership’s droned on for 90 minutes, and your fellow minions just want to get out of there.

62. A whole bunch of people, including Paris Hilton and Perez Hilton, whose purpose in life is beyond me.

63. Most movie cliches that Roger Ebert has pointed out, e.g., you can just tell from the music that the buddy of the lead character is going to die.or be seriously hurt.

64. People who complain about the “war on Christmas”. Don’t worry; Christmas has won.

65. People who can’t take a compliment well.

66. Trying to find a parking space around Washington Park in Albany when an event (Tulip Festival, Corporate Challenge run) takes place there.

67. Lewis Black did a piece on this on the Emmys – the tease for another show DURING the show you are watching. Do you want me to watch the show I’m watching NOW or not.

68. People in cars that make right turns from an extreme left lane. (Atlanta, at least in 1995, was notorious for this, as is Boston every time I’ve been there.)

69. Not enough places offer free WiFi.

70. When the price of something doesn’t include some obvious things. You get a quote for getting a tire changed for $50, but then there is a disposal fee, balancing fee,
etc. and ends up costing $90.

71. Businesses that charge sales tax on items that don’t require sales tax.

72. My old phone bill. I never DID understand what the heck half those charges were, and it turned out to be far more expensive than the original quote.

73. People who boast about how stupid they are.

74. Open casket funerals.

75. Yard work. Just because I mow the lawn twice a week – and I have to, if I don’t want to borrow a power mower – doesn’t mean I like it.

76. Wet socks.

77. Insert my usual rant about people who refuse to use their local library here. Reading! For free! Why wouldn’t you do this?!

78. Corporate officers who make 200 times the average worker and the business isn’t even making money.

79. Micromanagers.

80. Haggling.

81. People who play the one-up game. They always have to be busier, more tired, and more stressed than you are.

82. People who think what they see on TV must be true and accurate, even when they are watching FOX News.

83. Bill O’Reilly.

84. Littering, especially when the garbage can is FIVE FEET AWAY.

85. Iceberg lettuce. Why do we still cultivate this stuff? It serves no useful purpose whatsoever. It’s not particularly vitamin-filled, it’s lacking in flavor, it’s just plain icky.

86. People who honk in traffic. OK for the toot to wake up the driver asleep at the wheel, but the laying on of the horn just aggravates the other drivers, making me (on the bike) VERY nervous.

87. Countries that still insist on whaling.

88. Non-instinctive Internet shopping carts. And they wonder why they have so many abandoned carts?

89. Most automated phone systems.

90. Allergy season.

91. Forwarded e-mails that direct me to send it on to three, five, ten people. Sorry, I’ve already deleted it.

92. Misplacing my glasses, mostly because I need my glasses to FIND my glasses.

93. Waking up in the morning, stumbling to the kitchen, turning on the light… – and only then discovering that I’d never put the previous night’s leftovers away. Even when food was a lot cheaper than it is now, I hated having to throw out half a tuna noodle casserole because I forgot to put the thing in the fridge.

94. Sports programming that offer unrealistic running times. The World Series games in three hours, including a 30-minute pregame? Dream on. The Masters golf tournament always ends past 7 pm ET, as do the 4 pm ET NFL games.

95. Bullies.

96. People who tell me my life’s an empty void without some technology (blackberry, iPhone). Maybe it is; I’ll let you know if I get one (an iPhone, not a life.)

97. Government entities who were designed to protect the people but end up helping the entities they were supposed to be regulating (FCC, FDA: guilty as charged).

98. Wine snobs.

99. Forgetting the good dreams.

100. My ability to be drawn to the negative.

OK, so there are one hundred things that annoy me. No tagging, here. If you’re inclined, have at it. ROG

Deadly

Weird. There have been lots of famous or semi-famous people who’ve died recently that have been in some way significant to me. In addition to the ones I’ve mentioned, there was Dick Martin, who not only hosted Laugh In but directed a number of fine shows, notahbly the Bob Newhart Show. then there was the guy who wrote the Star Trk theme, Alexander Courage.

Then yesterday, Bo Diddley with that rectangular guitar;

Even if you didn’t know the musician, maybe you remember this commercial:

Also dying yesterday, Yves St. Laurent, who was paired in an ABC News story yesterday. Fashion just isn’t my thing, but even I surely knew the name.

But the recent death that touched me most was not famous at all. it was the death
of Kathina Thomas
, a 10-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet not two miles from my house. It made me sad and angry and a tad bit nervous. My condolences to the family.

ROG

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