Reading The Pictures: Killing The Electricity

This has been on the newsstand for what, three weeks now? Well, it was never more timely than yesterday.

Besides the leadoff use of the word "hope" -- the Obama tag line, what ties Obama to Kennedy in '68 is Bobby's decision, as a first-term Senator, to challenge the incumbent power in his own party primarily through his opposition to an unpopular war.

Hillary's reference to Kennedy's assassination as justification for her staying in the race is not just because Kennedy died so late in the calendar. The youthful radiance of this portrait -- as it resonates with Hillary's various comments about Obama's rhetoric and charisma -- suggests that Clinton sees Obama more as a phenomenon. Painting that kind of picture, she seems to indulge the HOPE -- fed by a little racial tension, and the kind of enmity she and Bill can harbor -- that something, anything, could still kill the electricity.

For more of the visual, including this pictorial update from the front page of this morning's NYT, visit BAGnewsNotes.com.

Clinton Sorry For Remark About RFK Assassination (WAPO)
Why Clinton Says She Won't Quit: Just Look What Happened to RFK (Rolling Stone)
The Heartbreak Campaign slide show (Vanity Fair)
Article/book excerpt: The Last Good Campaign (Vanity Fair)

(image: Bill Eppridge)

Follow Michael Shaw on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bagnewsnotes

Comments

[keriheb]

HRC has jumped on and exploited every political gaffe Obama has made and extrapolated it to mean he is insufficiently experienced to be POTUS. Sure Obama has made mistakes during his campaign, and mistakes are to be expected. We also expect those mistakes to be exploited by their opponents. This is a political campaign - a competition.

HRC has engaged in boldface lies, in the promotion of McCain over her own party's candidate, all after she proclaimed she had found her voice.

Her voice has proved to reveal a sinister nature we don't need as our candidate. If she were capable of healing, she would have presented this nature to us.

HRC is now complaining she is the victim of Obama's exploitation of her misunderstood comments.

I believe the public understands HRC better than she understands herself, and because of that clarity, have rejected her campaign as not what is needed for the future of this country.

God bless her in her next endeavor.

[Faith101]

Democrats.­..........­..........­.........H­illary supporters. Please don't automatially assume that all of Obama's supporters are the ones bashing Hillary. We have some troll republicans on this site in disguise and a lot of them are using divisive measures and laughing at all of us. (Democrats). Let's keep our head about this. We all know that we need to come together to defeat McCain

[Canadiangeezer]

It all comes back to me now and I'm just as sick and heartbroken this moment as I was when I went to the newswire as a young broadcaster 40 years ago ---- You see I was on air as an announcer when Robert Kennedy was assassinated on that June evening so long ago.

There are some wounds that never heal and although I'm a Canadian and he was running for the nomination to be President of the USA I was of a generation who desperately wanted to see the Vietnam War ended and to see the move forward on Civil Rights and so much else.

But thrones were cast down and dreams were crushed on that ugly evening in Los Angeles and it never really corrected itself even these long years later. I still well up when certain things trigger the emotions like Hillary's reference to Kennedy's assassination and now this evening the cackle of an absolutely unfathomable person on Fox News who made a joke of the possible killing of another young man (Mr. Obama) who is trying to bring hope to another generation.

The approximation of the sounds of teletype bells still startle and galvanize me these long years later for I realise what was lost .... as well as what might have been. Quoting one of your senators "I weep for my (your) country"

Please America Please .... Have the courage to support the Audacity of Hope that the young Senator from Illinois presents to his

[abby4ever]

Let's face it, people are human---even Hillary and Bill. And in a race like this it would be human nature, if one is painfully honest, for the loser to hope, albeit subconsciously, that the winner would vanish--- by any means.
This is not to excuse Hillary's comment aboujt RFK's assassination or excuse her if she really is hoping that someone shoots Obama. It's just a point about human beings---especially ones we might say seem almost sick with ambition.

[alberich]

If she were an ordinary citizen, your comment would perhaps pass muster. However,as a can-
didate herself and therefore equally subject to breaches in security, her comments become
more absurd and inexcusable than ever.There are simply no excuses. Her insanity simply
boggles and becomes evermore apparent with each passing day of ever escalating desper-
ation on her part.

[SpaceCommand]

None of the current dominant candidates reflects the handle and the hat of Robert Kennedy, at least Ron Paul gets to the root of our problem, the monetary system and how its operations concentrate wealth through a shell game, and an unfair taxation system in which people find little or no representation. Better than any social safety net is allowing people to engage in commerce without massive red tape, taxes, and numerous bureaucratic hurdles. Just basic buying and selling even on a small scale is potentially destroyed by the economic system that favors larger businesses. When deregulation made its stand, only the extremely wealthy benefit from it.

So more pertinent to the topic here, Hillary mentioned the June date and Robert Kennedy campaign as a very poignant memory when an attorney Hillary may have often had to parse fine distinctions to make legal points, so it is not an intended factor in calling attention to precedent for the sad events that accompanied that precedent.

[SpaceCommand]

I remember Robert Kennedy more than most people did at the time of his campaign because I read his book "To Seek a Newer World," intently. I had not read a book by any political figure in the United States that was more pertinent to existing current events, not then and not to this day with exception of an even more pertinent position of Ron Paul.

While social concepts contingent upon personality have offered more divide and conquer rhetoric, and even the gist of what has become a false left versus right paradigm, it seems Robert Kennedy and Ron Paul have offered the most pertinent explanations of our concurrent cumulative reality.

On the one hand an examination of social distinctions from the hopes of working people have opened a concept of a more generous social structure, where people feel more welcome in their general reality, the interests of a less than cogent propaganda apparatus has dominated our country for more than a century.

[ObamaCanada]

Hillary is pissed at the Kennedys. The comment is out of the pure anger that Obama has stepped in Teddy Kennedy place at the Wesleyan University commencement and still she and the Clintons are smarting from the Kennedy family endoresements. There is even a sighting of an Obama sticker on the back of the Guvernator's car in California Go Maria! So as i heard on a CBS news story this evening the Clinton supporters are pissed that this nomination was taken away from them by a skinny guy with all the momentum, a strong grassroots movement and a wad full of cash and the support of one of the truly great families in American history.

[mrBlue1]

I am so relieved to have escaped the FEEDING FRENZY that is the main thread. Obama 08

[rudyinbama]

Well, now they’ve all had their feet in their mouths at least once big-time:
McCain: I don’t care if we’re in Iraq a hundred years.
Bill: So? Jesse Jackson won South Carolina, too – didn’t he?
Michelle: For the first time in my adult life I’m proud to be an American.
Obama: Poor whites cling to guns and religion because they are bitter.
Cindy: Enjoy these heirloom recipes from my family.
Hillary: I have to continue running in case he’s assassinated.
Bizarre how the media takes a statement – even after the speaker has called it an error and apologized – and beats them over the head with it endlessly.
This is one helluva way to elect a president.

[BubbaC33]

You have misquoted Ms. Clinton, she neither meant what you have claimed nor did she say those words.

[mistlesuede]

She didn't say those exact words, but those are her exact thoughts. She's said it a number of times, just like the sniper fire bs story. IT'S WHAT SHE'S HOPING FOR!

[ckdogs]

None of the "gaffes" is in the same league as wishing your opponent to be assassinated, and saying it in public. (this is a democracy, isn't it?) It was a Freudian slip - she wishes Obama would "go away", and she's pissed at the Kennedys. Politicians can't let themselves go to that degree, and those that do should be soundly denounced and defeated.

[The5thW]

The lesson I've gotten is: living in the White House is so intoxicating that one will sell one's soul to get back. Perhaps we need to take a look at what has become of the office of President of a Democratic Republic to make the intrigues of Roman Emperors or English monarchs applicable to the office.

[StephenJK]

And what better person to remember at this tumultuous time in our countries history. Which is now. We can have the wisdom to kiss, make up and join forces to defeat the republicans and McCain. so that we may ensure we tack in the right direction. Don't let your impulses rule. Make the RIGHT choice.

[BARRISTER]

Stephen; wiser words are yet to be spoken.

[Meah]

Your logic is slightly flawed. Bobby Kennedy challenged the incumbent President of the United States. Hillary may still think she lives in the White House, and they are just renting out to the Bushs, but she is not she is not the incumbent of anything. The rightful heir has actually been Al Gore for eight years now. He could have had the power if he wanted it. Were Obama to challenge him had he run, then you would have a more logical argument. The latter part of your thought? It is too horrible to even contemplate. Hillary's HOPE has apparently hoist her on her own petard.

[longislandlol]

No excusing this time..

[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." 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 can be cited, in an disturbingly macabre way. But why "ASSASSINATION?"

After living through the horror of June 6, the idea of using THAT word, in the context she used it, is unthinkable. I worked the Clinton's 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.

[magnitude]

Hillary has become the soul-less candidate.