An American Grief That Lives On
I usually avoid the documentaries that relive 1968 and particularly the campaign and assassination of Robert Kennedy. Next June will be the 40th Anniversary and I am sure that I will want to say something about it at that point. But I got caught Sunday evening with a rerun of a 2004 American Experience show on PBS called RFK. It took only two minutes and I was hooked. I fought against it as I sat there knowing the inevitable last words- "It's on to Chicago and let's win there," the turn away from the mike and the searing scenes of hysteria and loss. Thankfully they didn't show him lying on the floor of the kitchen nor Ted's words at the service in New York.
Bobby Kennedy. Even almost 40 years later his name evokes an incredible grief. The last of the three- JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby. In Bobby I am convinced we lost the last great politician who understood the passion of the American soul. Reagan, even though I find it hard to say, came close, but you were never sure whether he was acting or not. Plus his understanding was based on some different conceptions of what the American soul is all about. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton had some understanding but had too many personal shortcomings or attitudes that got in the way.
Perhaps considering the current candidates of both parties drove me deeper into grief as I watched. No one. Absolutely no one has that passion for what America stands for and the courage to talk about it with such personal strength as Bobby. When you watched Bobby in those last months you knew there was something deep and hopeful that he was presenting to us. And you knew he believed and cared. His great moment was in Indianapolis the night King was killed as his words allowed for the true grief of the moment to surface like it did nowhere else. (Hear his words here.)
The grief I still feel when remembering that awful few months from January through the Chicago Convention riots in August is as much a grief for what was ultimately lost in our nation and has never been found again. We have not been able to come together. We only seem to be more and more deeply divided. Bobby remains the symbol for many of us of what could have been. Whether it would have or not is never the issue. It was the hope that was lost. We have yet to find it again.
1 comment:
It wasn't until I was older that I appreciated RFK, and what I appreciated was the great change he personally had gone through. I think it fair to say that up until JFK's death little brother Bobby was a spoiled rich kid intent on making his own reputation. He, like his big brother, was a cold warrior. All of that hard-headed bravado vanished after JFK's death and what replaced it was the qualities you point to. What a loss indeed! For RFK was an example of change and had experienced it personally, had changed his thinking and the course of his life; he embodied the possibilities that so frightened many of his contemporaries.
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