On November 22, 1963, Mummy picked me up early from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Driving home to Hickory Hill in northern Virginia, I noticed that all the District flags were at half staff. Mummy told us that a bad man had shot Uncle Jack and that he was in heaven. Daddy's friend and former football teammate, Dean Markham, a Justice Department Rackets Division Attorney picked up my little brother David at Our Lady of Victory. "Why did they kill Uncle Jack?" David asked him. Dean, an ex-marine, combat veteran, known as the toughest linesmen on the "GI-Bill Squad," -- the toughest football team in Harvard University's history -- wasn't tough enough to field that question. He wept silently all the way to our driveway. When I got home, Daddy was walking in the yard with Brumus, our giant black Newfoundland and Rusty, the Irish Setter. We ran and hugged him. We were all crying. He told us, "He had the most wonderful life, and he never had a sad day."
Neither Beck, Hannity nor Savage nor the hate merchants at Fox News and talk radio can claim to have invented their genre. Toxic right-wing vitriol so dominated the public airwaves from the McCarthy era until 1963 that President Kennedy, that year, launched a citizen's campaign to enforce the Fairness Doctrine, which required accuracy and balance in the broadcast media. Students, civic and religious groups filed more than 500 complaints against right-wing extremists and hate-mongering commentators before the FCC.
The Dallas, Texas, airwaves were particularly radioactive; preachers and political leaders and local businessmen spewed extremist vitriol on the city's radio and TV stations, inflaming the passions of the city's legions of unhinged fanatics. There was something about the city -- a rage or craziness, that, whether sensible or not, seemed to have set the stage for Jack's murder. The Voice of America, half an hour after the assassination, described Dallas as "the center of extreme right wing." The Texas town was such a seething cauldron of right-wing depravity that historian William Manchester portrayed it as recalling the final days of the Weimar Republic. "Mad things happened," reported Manchester. "Huge billboards screamed 'Impeach Earl Warren.'" Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas. Fanatical young matrons swayed in public to the chant "Stevenson's going to die -- his heart will stop stop stop and he will burn burn burn!" The mercantile elite that ruled the city carefully cultivated the seeds of hate. Radical-right broadsides were distributed in public schools; the Kennedy name was booed in classrooms; junior executives who refused to attend radical seminars were blackballed and fired. Manchester continued:
Dallas had become the mecca for medicine show evangelists of the National Independence Convention, the Christian Crusades, the Minutemen, the John Birch Society and Patrick Henry Societies and the headquarters of right wing oil man H.L. Hunt and his dubious activities... The city's mayor, Earl Carroll, a right wing co-founder of the John Birch Society, was known as 'the socialist mayor of Dallas' because he maintained his affiliation with the Democratic Party.
Dallas's oil and gas barons who routinely denounced JFK as a "comsymp" had unbottled the genie of populist rage and harnessed it to the cause of radical ideology, anti-government fervor and corporate dominion.
Uncle Jack's speech in Dallas was to have been an explosive broadside against the right wing. He found Dallas' streets packed five deep with Kennedy Democrats, but among them were the familiar ornaments of presidential hatred; high-flying confederate flags and hundreds of posters adorning the walls and streets of Dallas showing Jack's picture inscribed with "Wanted for Treason." One man held a posterboard saying, "you a traitor [sic]." Other placards accused him of being a communist. When public school P.A. systems announced Jack's assassination, Dallas school children as young as the fourth grade applauded. A Birmingham radio caller declared that "any white man who did what he did for niggers should be shot." As my siblings and I visited the White House to console my cousins John and Caroline, a picket paraded out front with a sign, "God punished JFK."
Jack had received myriad warnings against visiting the right-wing Texas city. Indeed, there had been a sense of foreboding even within our family as he and Aunt Jackie prepared for the trip. Jack made an unscheduled trip to Cape Cod to say goodbye to my ailing grandfather. The night before the trip, Mummy found Jack distant and brooding at a dinner for the Supreme Court Justices. He was very fond of Mummy, but for the first time ever, he looked right through her.
Jack's death forced a national bout of self-examination. In 1964, Americans repudiated the forces of right-wing hatred and violence with an historic landslide in the presidential election between LBJ and Goldwater. For a while, the advocates of right-wing extremism receded from the public forum. Now they have returned with a vengeance -- to the broadcast media and to prominent positions in the political landscape.
Gabrielle Giffords lies in a hospital room fighting for her life, and a precious nine-year-old girl is dead along with five others. Let's pray for them and for our country and hope this tragedy prompts another round of examination of conscience.
Tavis Smiley: My Conversation With Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Harry Shearer: Who's Illegitimate? The Presidents. Who Says?
With sincere gratitude,
Jeanie
The quotes from Manchester's book are devastating in their extremism, "young matrons swaying to Stevenson's going to die," swastikas etc., though I was aware of the poisonous atmosphere in Dallas. The photo of the President calling him a traitor, and I remember one that said "Wanted For Treason" that had a black border around it.
As I was talking with a male supervisor at the VA Center where I worked weeks after JFK's death, the proper, jovial 58 yr old veteran's widow who trained me, who knew my father, who was so nice to me, who knew how I loved the President, said... "I think Oswald did the country a favor." I got dizzy and grabbed corner of Wally's desk. He looked up at me and shook his head gently to tell me to not respond.
Like others that have commented, I too (I was 18) experienced the national optimism of your uncle's presidency and because of his assassination, was distressed to the point I began losing hope in the "justice" of our country. With the subsequent assassinations of Bobby and Martin, I lost all hope for a just America.
When the role model of hate and corruption Nixon was run out of office, a dim spark of hope reentered my preception of our country but remained dim because most of the Nixonites remained in control of America and America stayed on the same "anti poor and middle class" course that Republicans continue to support.
My hope brightened a bit when Carter was elected but dimmed again with Reagan's and Bush's elections.
My hope brightened again when Clinton was elected and grew during his presidency only to be somewhat dimmed again by "W". I never dreamed "W" and the Republicans could mess up America so much.
My hope has begun to brighten again (thanks President Obama) but my optimism wanes with every hate filled word and action of people that oppose his efforts to make America better.
I will always be loyal to our government, the United States of America and our Constitution. I want our country to be the best government in the world so I can be a proud American filled with hope for our future generations.
The hate speech against JFK, and against moderates in general, is now being repeated against Obama. The difference now is that it is nationwide, and saturates the media 24/7 on FOX, and through the talkback stations, and the papers.
It is worth fighting hard against this hate speech, and making sure that if things can be improved, they are never allowed to get so bad again.
The hatred in the 1960's was the beginning of the decline of America. The very best American public figures and politicians were lost due to right wing violence. The country would have been so much better now if the forces promoting extremist violence were able to be defeated back then. The media is worse now, but the power of organisations like the CIA and the FBI is less. Hopefully this means that the battle for decency and truth can be won.
Yours is among the better comments I've read for some time.
If anyone has more credibility than Bobby Jr.
to speak plainly and honestly about the obvious link between
a public climate of racism and violence and the violent actions of unhinged individuals
....I can't think who it would be.
That the Assassinations of President and Sen. Kennedy, and of Martin Luther King were DIRECTLY related to that climate is quite simply an historical fact...known to all...and beyond dispute.
The always decourus Robert Kennedy Jr. refers to this climate as "populist rage".....but I am glad he is able to draw the parallel between the rhetoric of Dallas in 1963... and the current climate...which so closely resembles it.
Mike Webster succinctly and correctly refers to the current version as "hate speech"......and equally correctly identifies the historical link between then and now, as well as the current purveyors of such.
I too hope the battle for truth and decency can be won.
But drawing a false equivilancy between left and right regarding hate speech....
Or even EXCUSING it by suggesting "everybody does it"...
Bears no relation to the truth....(In MY neghborhood we call these "lies")
It is the right...and ONLY the right that is using the language of racism, gunplay, and assassination to further their political agenda.
Prof. Kennedy and Mike Webster are both correct:
We've seen this before
You have another "fan" Mike
Regards
TM
#300
May God Bless Gaby Giffords and those like her for not backing down in the face of threats, hate and violence. May God bless and keep her, her family and those like her safe. Those that are not afraid to fight and eaven die for what is right and true. Those that put freedom, jsutice, and the good of ALL Americans and their country ahead of their personal and financial best interest.
Those who speak on behalf of their own greed and the unsachurated greed of others, who incite violence in the name of proffit, are not Americans, they are cowards who hide behind wealth and evil intent, and call themselves Representatives for the people, and by the people. They are walking, talking lies, on legs.Living lies, lies incarnate.
http://www.e-tabitha.com/
While I agree 100% with DPG1976, his sentiments are certainly correct, I would place a great deal of the blame on the media who deal with each side as equals. A media establishment that is predicated on telling lies, spreading hatred and incouraging violence should be taken to task every single day by, not just liberal minded cable media, but more importantly, the mainstream outlets such as NBC, CBS, and ABC. They do virtually nothing and therefore silently encourage the notion that each outlet is equal with the others. They should be ashamed.
With literally scores of theses incidents over the past several generations,it may be time to realize that we do not have a collective concience in these matters.And with the dismal state of education and political discourse in America today, we are not likely to develop one any time soon.
The atmosphere you describe, Robert, is very much what I feel around me these days, and as the Right tries desperately and angrily to maintain the lie that they bear no responsibility for the violence that killed Doctor Tiller and the people in Tucson this month, there is the opportunity to push back, engage those among us that we can reach out to and push those who still believe in violence to the margins. We have to rely on the only strengths we have as a democracy, ourselves. If we can show the courage of a nine-year-old girl that went out to participate in her society, we might just have a chance. When the crazies talk of watering the tree of liberty, they think it means bathing it in the blood of those who disagree with them, rather than laying their own lives on the line for their country. The tree of liberty is us, it is each other, in the best of times it is community.
That's what all this 24-7 venom and vitriol and demonizing of other LOYAL Americans does to this fringe element, TW. It turns them into snarling animals, ready to attack somebody in authority.
But at seven I did understand the significance of the man I whose name I would frequently hear of 'Predent Kendee' or that 'Predent' wasn't his first name.
I just remember that all of the cartoons and normal kid stuff was pre-empted on all THREE channels of our black-n-white TV.... so the only thing really to watch was the coverage....
I recall being being mezmerized by the funeral pagentry ( i think you can call it that ) and the beauty of the tune being played by the military band.
And how sad and solemn my parents were.. how all grownUps were actually....
There was a certain hush over everything where ever you went for a week or so.
But even then.....
I could feel how Life, the Feel of things in general was much different Before it happen and Afterward.
The bruises and lacerations our national conscience has endured since the assasinations of JFK as well as that of the author's father continue to defy healing. The enormity of those tragedies has enough gravity for anyone both aware and American, much less for someone who carries the added burden of having those tragedies impact them and their families directly.
RFK, Jr. -- your observations are of a particularly great value at this moment. And I must confess a profound admiration and respect for you and your uncles, but especially for your father. His legacy and example remain a touchstone for all who wish to look beyond mere partisan considerations among our elected leaders.