Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Robert Kennedy



I had forgotten that June 5, 1968 was the day Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Here is one man's remembrance:
It was still dark outside when I felt my mom’s hand shaking my shoulder. “You need to get up,” she said and started out of my room.
“What’s going on?”
My mother hung her head. “Bobby Kennedy’s been shot,” she said softly and walked out.
I was out of bed at warp speed and parked in front of the TV in the den. There the flickering pictures proved my mom’s information true. Another Kennedy assassinated. Another senseless act of violence on a man who asked only for peace and justice for those less fortunate than himself.
For me, the “last, best hope” gone.
I became a cynic in my political thinking, indifferent to a system that killed its best. I devoted my energies to rock and roll and wretched excess in the ensuing years. Except for a spite vote for McGovern in 1972 to piss off my Nixon loving father, I took no interest in politics, especially Presidential politics, until 1992 when an Xer friend shamed me into finally standing up again. I voted for Clinton because he reminded me a little of that hero of my youth - Bobby Kennedy.
And every June 5th I stop for a few moments and remember how I believed in what America could be once - try to get some of that belief back - and, to use an old Boomer chestnut, “keep on keeping on.”
And I ask Bobby to forgive me - and my generation - for failing to pick up his torch.

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