When I Watched Bobby Kennedy Die

Any references to the assassination of Robert Kennedy are especially chilling for those of us who were, so to speak, "there."

When Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, I must have been one of the few people on the East Coast -- or practically anywhere in the U.S. -- still awake to watch it unfold. I was such a diehard Eugene McCarthy supporter (head of my campus Clean for Gene outfit) that I simply had to stay up until the last votes were counted in the tight California primary, even though all of the TV anchors had assured us that Kennedy was headed for a crucial victory.

I was still watching, unhappily, when Kennedy gave his victory speech past 3 a.m. in New York.

Kennedy was my senator but I had backed McCarthy early on and was one of the millions who resented RFK for horning in on the antiwar crusade only after Lyndon Johnson announced he would not stand for re-election. The word "opportunist" to describe Kennedy gained wide currency (even some of his supporters admitted it was deserved). However, many of the McCarthyites also came to admire his appeal to blacks, Chicanos and the poor and recognized that he would be a far stronger candidate in the fall -- if he (in tandem with McCarthy) could deny Hubert Humphrey the nomination, still an uphill battle.

In any event, I was watching the vote count to the bitter end -- and what happened in the wee hours of the morning remains vivid even after 40 years.

You've all seen the footage of RFK beaming and waving to the crowd at the Ambassador ballroom and saying, "On to Chicago," and then disappearing from the stage. Nearly everyone beyond the West Coast (and even most people out there) still watching clicked off their sets then, no doubt. CBS and NBC had already ended coverage, and ABC was about to sign off.

But I stayed tuned, and I'll never forget the first suggestions of something amiss.

As I recall, the evidence wasn't a news flash but simply a visual image of an injured body on a table and people standing around in distress, some sobbing, others with eyes in wide-eyed shock. I recall sitting straight up on the couch and pressing closer to the TV. What the hell was this? Then came word of a shooting, and with a Kennedy nearby, there could be little doubt of the target.

More confusion on TV, with the visuals telling the story and still little word about what had happened. Then we heard: RFK had been shot, so had others in wrestling the gun from the would-be assassin (that would explain the stray shot of a wounded man on a table), and Kennedy had been rushed to the hospital.

You had to "be there" to understand the disgust and shock -- just weeks after the Martin Luther King killing (and the riots that followed) and less than five years after Dallas.

I stayed up for a couple more hours, debating whether to go upstairs and wake my parents. Did not do that. Lights were out all up and down the street. I had the utterly bizarre sensation of feeling that I was alone in the world in knowing this utterly horrific news. This was false, of course, but it was easy to feel that way, at 4 a.m., in a pre-Web world..

After a couple of hours, I finally went to bed. When I got up about noon, Frank Mankiewicz was on TV offering a grim report on the senator's condition. About fifteen hours later, Kennedy was dead.

As much as I loved McCarthy, I knew the best hope for beating Humphrey and stopping the war had ended. More than that, one could (and did) feel at the time that nothing good could come of anything in America, amid a never-ending war and the Kings and Kennedys getting shot down when they reached a dangerous level of influence.

That's why, especially for us geezers, the Hillary Clinton remark, even if not intended the way it came off, was especially evocative, and disturbing.
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Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. It features a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joe Galloway. Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher.

Comments

[Sallybird]

Hillary DID NOT use the event of Bobby Kennedy's death to justify her continuing campaign. This "justify" her continued campaign language is erroneous, and is copy-catting: Newsweek said it; NPR said it, this post says it. She was merely citing a historical fact that people my age do remember with intense feeling. It was a June day, the primaries were on, and we remember it was June because we mourn, still, the death of RFK. Stop using RFK's death to justify dumping on Senator Clinton, the candidate who is most like RFK in substance, strength, policy, and style.

[StillAmused]

"That's why, especially for us geezers, the Hillary Clinton remark, even if not intended quite the way it came off, was especially evocative, and disturbing."

Not ALL of us 'geezers'... my sadness, melancholy, even heartache is for the EVENT that I watched unfold all those years ago, not 'disturbance' every time some mortal dares to mention it in historical terms.

On MLK's birthday, TV screens are choked with painful images and grinding commentary. Likewise, on November 22 of every year. All the talking heads, press stenographers and newsmodels, now so sanctimoniousy trashing Clinton for her innocuous historical reference, are the same organ-grinders who will, with impunity, churn out hours of somber commentary, voiceovers and column-inches this coming November, replaying every grim detail right down to Jackie's blood-stained dress.

"Not intended the way it came off"?

Not intended the way a slathering, controversy-obsessed press -- and a sea of thin-skinned, nouveau-aware, stadium-event-enthused "activists" -- calculatingly and transparently CHOSE to interpret it.

The hypocrisy in some quarters is oppressive.

[Sukee]

I have to say I'm enjoying reading these recollections. Hillary is old enough to have lived through it all and should know better than saying this 3 times.

I want to point out a small error. Bobby Kennedy did not enter the race after LBJ withdrew; Bobby entered the race in 1968 on March 16th, LBJ withdrew on March 31st. Bobby announced after the New Hampshire primary.

[BurtR]

I totally agree. yesterday I had to xplain to youger people why this was so upsetting to me becauseI am old enough to remember the assassinations of the 60's.
I am a counselor to violent offenders. I tell them when you vebalize something, it becomes a reality, a possibilty. Also, an expression of a will to violence is a widow to one's true thoughts. Hillary is a frightening person. Remember "obliterate Iraq?"

[trollsbwild]

One of the saddest moments in our history. RFK represented the possibility of what America could be. Apparently, scary enough for some (no need to get into who now) to assinate him.
HRC did not shoot herself in the foot with this comment. Nah. She ripped it off with a chainsaw!
Do the right thing, Hillary. Say your goodbyes.

[johnwinner]

I do believe that Clinton was trying to say that she should stay in the race because something might happen to Obama; I have been trying to piece together the whole argument she is trying to make, and it isn't pretty; one central premise she wants deperately to argue, but dare not, comes out in bits and pieces, most of them glaring and embarassing: "A black man can not ever get elected president; many black politicians are corrupt, and when they are honest and visionary, they get killed. Black people need a white president to look out for their interests." This is what really saddens and disturbs me about Clinton. She has religious faith that "this is simply the way it is," despite all the indicators tha Obama can actually win the elect, and is not corrupt, and will survive. She has lost touch with political and historical reality. Frankly, I think this one argument of hers makes her unfit to be president under any circumstances, since she is incapable of representing all of the American people.

[lovethesinner]

I just now realized why I was so deeply offended by Hillary's assasination comment.

Hillary wasn't a real Democrat when it happened. It was only a little over three years after Goldwater lost to L.B.J. when Bobby Kennedy was killed. She couln't have turned around that quick. She was probably going through the motions of trying to fit in with the in crowd, but she couldn't have been a part of the Kennedy thing, really. And her being a Goldwater girl proves she wasn't a part of it since JFK.

That's why she said it. She doesn't know what Kennedy's death feels like for us.

That's why this is so offensive. It reminds us that Bill and Hillary aren't really part of that Democratic party tradition. They're just faking it. And this all just goes to prove something we've been suspicious of all along.

It's like finding out your parents are criminals.

[CAPTAINSKIPPY]

Will not soon forget the grief and sorrows of 1968, either. At the time, tho, thought it might be LBJ's fault, not Hillary's.

[garcohsf]

I was 13, living in NYC. I remember touching Bobby's hand during his campaign for the Senate. It is difficult to explain what we felt in those days, how deeply divided the country was, how much anger there was, but at the same time how much hope. I told my daughter tonight, "we hated Nixon even more than you hate Bush." This hard to believe. I said, "we hated Nixon the way you would hate Cheney if he were the President." "Ok, I get that."

Sen Clinton and her campaign thinks of these things to say that they think are clever, that make their point--but they don't stop to think whether they are true, whether someone will be able to demonstrate that they aren't true (like sniper fire in Bosnia--I wonder whether she knew that there was videotape of her landing there when she claimed to have been shot at?).

I don't believe that she meant to say that she is staying in because "something might happen" to Obama, as it did to RFK. But how could she not realize that her comment could be interpreted that way? And what was the point, since the part about Bill Clinton not wrapping up the nomination until June 1992 is demonstrably untrue? She has been saying that she is going to stay in until all the votes have been cast, Obama has said she's entitled to do that--what more needed to be said?

[guntotinganglion]

Part 1

I was watching the coverage that night. I was 14 at the time. I remember waiting up to see RFK's acceptance speech. I was watching when they announced he'd been shot. It literally was like having the oxygen drawn out of the room when they announced it. It was something that couldn't happen, that did. I think I was the only one watching, the rest of my family having gone to bed...and my waking my father. We all cried.

I remember the impact of Bobby being shot, and then later dying, was far worse a shock than JFK was. To have such terrible lightning strike twice was beyond comprehension. It was almost surreal...in a deeply tragic way. I remembered the JFK assassination from when I was in 5th grade, and to now have the same thing happen to RFK, it was unimaginable up to then. The only murder I can recall that was more shocking than RFK was John Lennon in 1980. They both brought tears to my eyes.

[guntotinganglion]

Part 2

That was a deeply sad day for America. To even begin to wonder what the world would be like today if Bobby had become President, is emotionally wrenching. Nixon would never have been President, and the pantheon of psychopaths that followed would likely never have taken place. Reagan would have tried, but the likelihood of his succeeding, without the crass cynicism learned from Nixon, would have been far lower. Bobby Kennedy was no saint, but trying to imagine the promise he represented, in those years especially, is heartbreaking for this country. Things today would be quite different had those years potential been realized. When RFK died, so did that potential.

[irishgawdess]

Thanks Greg for your poignant story. Reading many of these replies brings it all back; the despair, the anger, the tears.

I was 12 while watching RFK's speech on TV, probably with my mother, the rabid democrat in our house. It was horrifying. I've seen that news clip so many times it's etched into my brain. "If only..."

We're all still looking for that inspiration, and believe we've found it in Obama; we're so protective because we just can't bear the thought of losing our hope again. Here we are again, on the verge of something awesome after eight years of pure hell. It's as if we're holding our collective breaths...

If you saw those pictures of Obama on the Portland Waterfront, you saw the sense of hope he inspires in so many people. 75,000 people counted in the crowds that day didn't include all the people still on the road trying to get down there from all directions. He's an amazing, inspirational person, and that picture reflects it all.

I'm sending positive thoughts out to the universe for the Obamas.

[DinOhio]

I too was up late watching. Bobby was, and remains, my political hero. I was a senior in high school, getting ready to graduate. The shock and turmoil was nearly unbearable. I am so glad that our youth has the opportunity to feel the excitement and hope that a good man in politics can bring. That the promise that anything can happen and the call to a higher level of citizenship is available. When I heard Clinton's use of this tragedy to explain herself, I was sickened. The fact that her using such an event to justify her continued presence in the race can only be interpreted as directed at Obama. That is just so crass and insensitive it leaves me nearly speechless. It just leaves me saddened. And all the memories of those sad days of 40 years ago have rushed back. The last time I experienced this sadness was upon learning the deaths of Jackie Kennedy, and then JFK, Jr. Clinton should be ashamed of herself - and the real issue is she knows better. She owes Obama an apology. She owes all of us that have suffered all these years from the angst after 1968 for her pitiful campaign that divides us instead of unites us. Bobby Kennedy would have been appalled at the Clinton campaign.

[Oldbuck]

I would like to address the super delegates its time to put this contest to a quick end, If this is what the already completed nomination has come to. Lets stick a fork in it and end it. What a unfortunate thing to be brought up. This was a sad time in our nation. I hope Hillary and Bill both realize that this will not be forgotten surly they understand the gravity of this. If not maybe the super delegates do and will put a end to this madness.

[Knute]

I walked precincts for Bobby Kennedy when I was 8 years old. I shook his hand in late May, 1968 at Dari-Delish in St. Helens, OR. I went to bed on June 5 delighting in the fact that he had just won the California primary, only to get up on June 6, the morning of my 9th birthday, to find out that he had been shot.

It creeps me out to even type the word "assassination." And I can't figure out what Bobby Kennedy's assassination has to do with why Hillary should stay in this race. Maybe the fact that the 1968 race went into June could be cited, in an disturbingly morbid way. But why "ASSASSINATION?"

After the horror of June 6, the idea of using THAT word, in the context she used it, is unthinkable. I worked their 1992 campaign. I've been a fan for 20 years. But this is too much. Whether this was a deliberate effort to plant a seed, a freudian slip of something she's been contemplating in the desperation of a losing campaign, or the poor choice of an ugly example of politics in June, I DON'T CARE. This is simply not something that's discused the way she did. Period.

And the fact that she didn't immediately recognize the inappropriateness of what she had said and apologize (except in a typical Clintonian, parsed, non-apology apology) says more about her than the original comment. Enough already. Please. Just. Stop.

[lostnacfgop]

HuffPost's Pick

I din't walk the precinct at 8, though I wish I had followed my 3 older brothers' footsteps and done so (I paid my dues 4 years later and walked and stuffed envelopes for McGovern). Your memory of waking up to the horror struck a chord. The eagerness of a 7 year old gave into fatigue at 11:45 pm on June 4, 1968, before RFK's victory speech, and woke up the next morning to find my brother, sitting on the end of his bed, staring off into space, looking 4 times his 19 years and seeming as though he'd been sitting their for days . . . he flatly said, "he has a bullet in his head" in response to my gleeful "Kennedy really won it, didn't he?" Two of my brothers had been in the Ambassador ballroom, celebrating the night and all things possible, when the shots were fired and halted all of it. At almost 60, he's a conservative Republican now, as though the part of him that believed in all things being better died that night as well. I think it did for a lot of people. Its a tragically sacred, painfully poignant memory for so many of us, that the current Senator from New York owes an apology - one in which she actually utters the words "I'm sorry" to so many other Americans.