(This is a somewhat rewritten version of a post I originally wrote back in January. I'm revisiting this subject because today is the 50th anniversary of Bobby Kennedy's shooting.)
This man is your man
This man is our man
From California
To the New York island
From the redwood forests
To the Gulf Stream waters
This man is Robert Kennedy.
You can hear the raw passion in their voices on this audio, recorded on the night of June 5, 1968. (The audio is from the Pacifica Radio Archives and is posted on David Von Pein's YouTube channel. DVP has hundreds of hours of JFK and RFK-era video and audio posted; I recommend him highly.)
They are exuberant and idealistic.
Their man, Robert Kennedy, is ahead in the California primary, a "winner-take-all" state as far as delegates are concerned. Later, ABC newscaster Frank Reynolds would comment, there's nothing like an election night when everything is going your way.
The audio goes from singing to the chant of, "Sock it to 'em, Bobby!"
Eight minutes and thirty-one seconds into the audio, their hero enters to an ovation of shouting and the rousing cheers of, "We want Kennedy! We want Kennedy!"
The first person he mentions is Don Drysdale, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who'd pitched his sixth straight shutout that evening; Kennedy hoped they'd have as good fortune in their campaign.
From California
To the New York island
From the redwood forests
To the Gulf Stream waters
This man is Robert Kennedy.
You can hear the raw passion in their voices on this audio, recorded on the night of June 5, 1968. (The audio is from the Pacifica Radio Archives and is posted on David Von Pein's YouTube channel. DVP has hundreds of hours of JFK and RFK-era video and audio posted; I recommend him highly.)
They are exuberant and idealistic.
Their man, Robert Kennedy, is ahead in the California primary, a "winner-take-all" state as far as delegates are concerned. Later, ABC newscaster Frank Reynolds would comment, there's nothing like an election night when everything is going your way.
The audio goes from singing to the chant of, "Sock it to 'em, Bobby!"
Eight minutes and thirty-one seconds into the audio, their hero enters to an ovation of shouting and the rousing cheers of, "We want Kennedy! We want Kennedy!"
The first person he mentions is Don Drysdale, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who'd pitched his sixth straight shutout that evening; Kennedy hoped they'd have as good fortune in their campaign.
He ran through a list of people he wanted to thank, including his dog, Freckles . . . and right afterwards -- after explaining that it wasn't in order of important -- his wife, Ethel.
At one point, while thanking the people who worked on the campaign, a young woman's voice yells back, "It was worth it!"
Tapping into the frustration people felt over rising violence and the war in Vietnam, he stressed that people wanted a change. (Forty years later, another candidate would tap into similar frustration within the United States.)
He finished his speech declaring that yes, Americans could work together; that we were a great country, an unselfish country, a compassionate country.
The speech ends with the triumphant words, "and now it's on to Chicago and let's win there." Then, with a thumbs-up to the crowd and a flash of the two-fingered peace sign, he turns away from the podium while the crowd chants, "We want Bobby!"
The speech ends with the triumphant words, "and now it's on to Chicago and let's win there." Then, with a thumbs-up to the crowd and a flash of the two-fingered peace sign, he turns away from the podium while the crowd chants, "We want Bobby!"
Less than five minutes later, the screaming starts.
It's not the ovation the crowd gave a victorious candidate. Rather, it's the screams of terror, panic, and confusion.
A second audio recording, of Andrew West from the Mutual Broadcasting System, also captures the moment: "Senator Kennedy has been shot, is that possible?" "He still has the gun, the gun is pointed at me right at this moment," "Get the gun, Rafer . . . get his thumb, break it if you have to!"
And of the video coverage from the three major networks, perhaps two clips best illustrate the raw confusion: 1. A bewildered Terry Drinkwater, CBS reporter, trying to figure out what had just happened (around 15:31 on the clip), and 2. the NBC coverage, about 40 seconds into the tape, showing one of Sirhan Sirhan's shooting victims being carried out of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen. The NBC reporter speaking insists -- incorrectly -- that Stephen Smith, Robert Kennedy's brother-in-law, had also been shot.
In the first 24 minutes of the CBS video, there were no fewer than 28 pleas for a doctor and no fewer than 36 pleas, requests, and orders to "please clear the room", leave the room, or variations thereof.
These were the moments when panic took over, when terror took over and the raw jubilation of only a few minutes ago turned with fierce suddenness to raw fear.
John Kennedy's assassination also showed how quickly events can turn. He'd received a warm welcome in Dallas, Texas only to be gunned down by an assassin who took six seconds to fire three shots. (Oswald acted alone. Deal with it.) We saw the panic and terror of the crowds only after the film was developed; we heard the confusion as technicians in master control frantically flipped switches and yelled instructions into headsets offstage.
Five years later, broadcast technology developed to the point where we could see the raw panic, terror and confusion the moment it started happening.
This is life, at it rawest, unedited and unscripted, but captured on film and on audio.
And while the men in the anchor chairs -- Walter Cronkite, Frank Reynolds, Howard K. Smith, Frank McGee, and others -- may have been more polished in their delivery, you can catch their controlled, barely suppressed anger over the event; specifically, the failure of the Congress to pass gun control.
Twenty-six hours later, at 1:44 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time, Robert F. Kennedy died. About 15 minutes later, his press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, stepped up to a microphone and made the terse announcement of Kennedy's death.
Perhaps this was the moment that hope in our political system really began to fray, wither, and die.
It's not the ovation the crowd gave a victorious candidate. Rather, it's the screams of terror, panic, and confusion.
A second audio recording, of Andrew West from the Mutual Broadcasting System, also captures the moment: "Senator Kennedy has been shot, is that possible?" "He still has the gun, the gun is pointed at me right at this moment," "Get the gun, Rafer . . . get his thumb, break it if you have to!"
And of the video coverage from the three major networks, perhaps two clips best illustrate the raw confusion: 1. A bewildered Terry Drinkwater, CBS reporter, trying to figure out what had just happened (around 15:31 on the clip), and 2. the NBC coverage, about 40 seconds into the tape, showing one of Sirhan Sirhan's shooting victims being carried out of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen. The NBC reporter speaking insists -- incorrectly -- that Stephen Smith, Robert Kennedy's brother-in-law, had also been shot.
In the first 24 minutes of the CBS video, there were no fewer than 28 pleas for a doctor and no fewer than 36 pleas, requests, and orders to "please clear the room", leave the room, or variations thereof.
These were the moments when panic took over, when terror took over and the raw jubilation of only a few minutes ago turned with fierce suddenness to raw fear.
John Kennedy's assassination also showed how quickly events can turn. He'd received a warm welcome in Dallas, Texas only to be gunned down by an assassin who took six seconds to fire three shots. (Oswald acted alone. Deal with it.) We saw the panic and terror of the crowds only after the film was developed; we heard the confusion as technicians in master control frantically flipped switches and yelled instructions into headsets offstage.
Five years later, broadcast technology developed to the point where we could see the raw panic, terror and confusion the moment it started happening.
This is life, at it rawest, unedited and unscripted, but captured on film and on audio.
And while the men in the anchor chairs -- Walter Cronkite, Frank Reynolds, Howard K. Smith, Frank McGee, and others -- may have been more polished in their delivery, you can catch their controlled, barely suppressed anger over the event; specifically, the failure of the Congress to pass gun control.
Twenty-six hours later, at 1:44 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time, Robert F. Kennedy died. About 15 minutes later, his press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, stepped up to a microphone and made the terse announcement of Kennedy's death.
Perhaps this was the moment that hope in our political system really began to fray, wither, and die.
Jack Newfield, in his 1969 book Robert Kennedy: A Memoir, ends his book with these words:
Now I realized what makes our generation unique, what defines us apart from those who came before the hopeful winter of 1961, and those who came after the murderous spring of 1968. We are the first generation that learned from experience, in our innocent twenties, that things were not really getting better, that we shall not overcome. We felt, by the time we reached thirty, that we had already glimpsed the most compassionate leaders our nation could produce, and they had all been assassinated. And from this time forward, things would get worse: our best political leaders were part of memory now, not hope.
The stone was at the bottom of the hill and we were alone.
Fifty years later, how much has really changed? Has the raw passion and terror heard and seen that night in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles morphed into a fatalistic depression about the future?
Now I realized what makes our generation unique, what defines us apart from those who came before the hopeful winter of 1961, and those who came after the murderous spring of 1968. We are the first generation that learned from experience, in our innocent twenties, that things were not really getting better, that we shall not overcome. We felt, by the time we reached thirty, that we had already glimpsed the most compassionate leaders our nation could produce, and they had all been assassinated. And from this time forward, things would get worse: our best political leaders were part of memory now, not hope.
The stone was at the bottom of the hill and we were alone.
Fifty years later, how much has really changed? Has the raw passion and terror heard and seen that night in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles morphed into a fatalistic depression about the future?
When Henry Jackson, U.S. Senator from Washington (who later ran for President in 1976), learned of Kennedy's shooting, stated, "The world has gone mad."
The world went mad in the early morning of June 5, 1968, there in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, and fifty years later -- fifty years of violence, of mass shootings, of the murder of school children, fifty years of anger and hate later -- we have yet to regain any semblance of sanity.
The world went mad in the early morning of June 5, 1968, there in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, and fifty years later -- fifty years of violence, of mass shootings, of the murder of school children, fifty years of anger and hate later -- we have yet to regain any semblance of sanity.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
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