Althouse: "Fifty years ago today, I awoke to a radio that was playing the famous recording from Mutual Broadcasting System reporter Andrew West, who was an eyewitness to Robert Kennedy’s assassination..."

June 5, 2018

"Fifty years ago today, I awoke to a radio that was playing the famous recording from Mutual Broadcasting System reporter Andrew West, who was an eyewitness to Robert Kennedy’s assassination..."

"... at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Terrible little political junkie that I was, I had been up late watching returns from the California primary that RFK had just won — but not late enough to learn of the assassination that West’s panic-stricken voice indelibly described: 'Senator Kennedy has been … Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible? It is possible, ladies and gentlemen! It is possible! He has … Not only Senator Kennedy! Oh my God! … I am right here, and Rafer Johnson has hold of the man who apparently fired the shot! He still has the gun! The gun is pointed at me right this moment! Get the gun! Get the gun! Get the gun! Stay away from the guy! Get his thumb! Get his thumb! Break it if you have to! Get the gun, Rafer [Johnson]! Hold him! We don’t want another Oswald!'"

Writes Ed Kilgore (at New York Magazine).

I too woke up that morning and turned on the radio — a red plastic radio — to hear the terrible news. Of all the assassinations of that era, it was the RFK assassination that had the deepest effect on me. It's hard for me to understand now why I projected so much youthful idealism onto Bobby (other than to remember the horror that was LBJ). With a couple friends, I impulsively took the bus into New York City to stand in line to file past the casket in St. Patrick's Cathedral. What a long somber line! We hadn't told our parents we were doing this, and the wait was so long and it got so late that our fear of upsetting our parents overwhelmed us and we left the line and rode the bus back home.

81 comments:

Bad Lieutenant said...: So, they didn't have phones where you grew up? Why would you just not call them and let them know your deal?; 6/5/18, 4:42 PM
zipity said...: The deification of the Kennedy's continues apace.

Bobby, JFK, and Teddy were terrible people. Unrepentant anti-Semites, unfaithful to their wives, and serial womanizers. He authorized the FBI to place bugs to listen in on Martin Luther King Jr. He was a lead investigator for Joseph McCarthy.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/06/carr_let_s_not_polish_saint_bobby_kennedy_s_halo_yet; 6/5/18, 4:44 PM
The Godfather said...: @Zipity may be too easy on the Kennedys -- he leaves out the pro-Nazi old man -- but that wasn't what mattered then. I was on the streets of Boston when JFK was assasinated, and will never forget it. These guys were part of America and American politics, even for those of us who rejected their policies and thought they were phonies. A murderous attack on them was an attack on us, on America. That's how we felt then. It's taken awhile to get to the point that it's now considered acceptable in many circles to wish for the death or destruction of a politician that you don't like.; 6/5/18, 4:54 PM
rhhardin said...: to hear the terrible news.

I believe the majority of the nation reacted with complete indifference. Certainly around me.; 6/5/18, 4:55 PM
rhhardin said...: I remember JFK being assassinated. They closed work because the mailgirls were crying. I went flying. Afternoon off.; 6/5/18, 4:57 PM
etbass said...: It was RFK and his blind determination to destroy the Castro regime that contributed to his brother's assassination. If the Cubans didn't directly commission Oswald to take out Kennedy, they most likely facilitated his deed and then stood him up at the last part of the plan to extricate him from Dallas.; 6/5/18, 5:06 PM
Wince said...: "When after all, it was you and me."; 6/5/18, 5:12 PM
Left Bank of the Charles said...: But was RFK assassinated? Or was he shot accidentally by a security guard?; 6/5/18, 5:12 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: A few days ago, I posted a series of comments in this blog's article about Cheryl Hines waiting in her car while her husband talked with Sirhan Sirhan in prison.

The series of comments was from a six-part series that I wrote for the Rantburg website in 2004. I could not simply link to those articles, because most of them are not accessible to unregistered readers of Rantburg.

Last weekend, I managed to post almost all of my series in a recent thread on the Unz website. There, everything is consolidated into one very long comment.

http://www.unz.com/article/did-israel-kill-the-kennedies/#comment-2356854

Click on MORE there to see it all.

My series of articles is based on Peter Evans' book Nemesis, which provides evidence that the RFK assassination was financed by Aristotle Onassis.

I intended to write a seventh part, which would have described the lawsuit trial initiated by William Joseph Bryan, a hypnotist who was involved with Sirhan Sirhan in the days preceding the assassination.; 6/5/18, 5:13 PM
Darrell said...: I fell out of my bed--the first and only time I ever did--at the exact moment (3:15 AM Chicago time) that RFK was killed.

I have yet to determine the significance.; 6/5/18, 5:18 PM
Fandor said...: I too, awoke to the news that morning of RFK having been shot. By this time, it seemed the world had gone mad with assassinations, anti-war protests and race riots in the street.
It was a tragedy, if only from the stand point of madmen interfering in our rights as citizens to freely involve ourselves and our voices in the political process to support the candidates of our choice.
It certainly is far worst today, the more the onion of the Deep State is peeled back.
I had the opportunity to see and hear RFK speak on his last day as Attorney General at the FBI building in DC. Afterwards, we were all given the opportunity to shake hands with Kennedy and wish him well. I was surprised how short he was. He had sad eyes.
Like you Ann, I am astonished about the myth we all swallowed concerning the Kennedys in view of how the years since have revealed so much about their sorted lives.
We were willing seduced.; 6/5/18, 5:19 PM
tcrosse said...: The RFK assassination didn't bother me too much at the time because I was for Gene McCarthy. Bobby had fallen in with some Bad Company, so it was no big surprise that somebody took him out.; 6/5/18, 5:20 PM
Mike Sylwester said...: I wrote my six-part series of articles about the RFK assassination in 2004.

Six years later was published the book Bobby and Jackie: A Love Affair, written by C. David Heymann. This book is an amazing journalistic achievement. Providing a great quantity and quality of evidence, Heymann proves -- beyond doubt, in my opinion -- that Robert Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy had a sexual affair for quite a long time after the JFK assassination.

Surely Aristotle Onassis became well informed about that affair by the time that he began to finance the assassination of Robert Kennedy in the late spring of 1968. By that time, Onassis had replaced Robert Kennedy as Jacqueline Kennedy's lover. This was a major part of Onassis's motive.; 6/5/18, 5:24 PM
etbass said...: I think DJT is at serious risk and have little confidence in our Secret Service, given the idiotic things they have been caught in during the past few years. Wonder if Trump has his own hired guards shadowing him and the SS?; 6/5/18, 5:24 PM
Eleanor said...: I was in high school. My dad was active in Democratic Party politics at the state and local level. He had done a good job educating me about why Hubert Humphrey would be the eventual nominee. He didn't discourage youthful idealism, but by June he was past giving it much creedence. My mom was apolitical, but she was into celebrity gossip. She believed the Kennedy brothers were behind Marilyn Monroe's death, and the mob had killed JFK. Later, Chappaquiddick would seal her opinion of the Kennedys. I'm pretty sure she voted for Democrats, but I know she voted for Romney when he ran against Ted. The thinking in our house was Bobby Kennedy's assassination was a family tragedy, but didn't alter the course of history. The elections of 1968 are why I've never joined a political party.; 6/5/18, 5:29 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Putting aside the politics (for now), and putting aside the emotional impact of the brazen murder of Sen. Robert Kennedy, I direct your focus to the autopsy report by LA Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi:

1. Fatal Gunshot Wound 1 - Right Mastoid Region (Behind the right ear)

2. Gunshot Wound 2 - Right Axillary Region and right infraclavicular region, back to front upward (shot upward near armpit, exit front upper chest near clavicle)

3. Gunshot Wound 3 - Right Axillary Region just below Gunshot 2, .22 caliber bullet retrieved from C6 vertebra (base of neck, upper back)

In English, RFK was shot 3 times from BEHIND, the kill shot was point blank behind his R ear.

Problem: Multiple witnesses placed Sirhan, waiting in the kitchen pantry, IN FRONT OF RFK, as RFK's entourage approached Sirhan.

Witnesses say Sirhan was 1-3 feet IN FRONT OF RFK firing away, hitting 5 other people in RFK's entourage.

And, yet, the RFK killshot was from the rear. And, a rent-a-cop security guard, Thane Caesar, was right behind RFK, and did draw his weapon (but claimed he didn't shoot).

I am not a conspiracy theorist. I'm just stating facts.; 6/5/18, 5:34 PM
William said...: Back then I had nothing but admiration for the Kennedys. I felt a profound sense of futility and nihilism after the murder of RFK. The way people went gaga for Obama: that's the kind of affection I felt for RFK. Maybe I was misinformed. I still feel JFK and Robert were worthy men in many areas, and I'm sure America would be a better place if they had been allowed to live out their days. Teddy was the one who got to survive. Ponder the cosmic unfairness of that fact.; 6/5/18, 5:36 PM
traditionalguy said...: Why did they shoot Bobby down? That is the question. The only answer is they feared his winning the Presidency. That would have made him the avenger of the slaughter of JFK which
could have easily been done easily.; 6/5/18, 5:38 PM
Anonymous said...: When Bobby Kennedy was shot I was about to rotate out of VN. I had watched the nuttiness in 1968 from afar by reading the Sunday NYT that my father in law forwarded to me. Bobby's assassination had zero impact on me; never liked the guy particularly - thought he was somewhat of a prick. The whole Kennedy gang thought they were a lot smarter than they really were. ( Of course, everyone in MA knew Teddy was stupid.) The most joyous news from the US for me was when LBJ had to suck it up and announce he was not going to run for office.; 6/5/18, 5:39 PM
Otto said...: Sh*t family - read "Kennedy Babylon".Book so bad I couldn't finish it, just crap and more crap, truly a dysfunctional family. Probably would be dumped on today ala recent dump on Bill Clinton.
Rosy Grier was my favorite Giants defensive lineman. That Giants defensive group started the tradition of the Giants being a defensive minded organization ( can't tell my recent performance). However he gained notoriety as part of the LA Rams "Fearsome Foursome".
Kilgore pulled an Alinsky. Took advantage of the anniversary to dump on Trump and make the clarion call for the quest of utopia. Permanent adolescence.
Boomers are the worse American generation of the 20th century.; 6/5/18, 5:40 PM
Darrell said...: "Kennedy turned to his left and shook hands with busboy Juan Romero—just as Sirhan Sirhan stepped down from a low tray-stacker beside the ice machine, rushed past Uecker, and repeatedly fired a .22 caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver"

--Wiki

Turned to his left--exposing his right ear and back of his neck.; 6/5/18, 5:41 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: The most joyous news from the US for me was when LBJ had to suck it up and announce he was not going to run for office.

LBJ and RFK absolutely hated each other. Great book on their blood feud by Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt.; 6/5/18, 5:43 PM
DKWalser said...: We lived in California when RFK was assassinated. I was too young to be much aware of politics, but the TV, radio, and other advertising made me aware of him. I remember being surprised when my father, going through the day's mail, tossed without opening something from RFK's campaign. He said to no one in particular, "He wasted money sending me this!" I asked him why, and he informed me that there was no way he'd be voting for RFK. (That's when I learned my parents weren't Democrats.)

A few nights later, RFK was shot and our parents gathered our family the next morning to pray for him. As we knelt, my father prayed that his life would be spared. He prayed for Kennedy's family, that they would be comforted and strengthened. He then went on to pray for our country. I've heard my father pray many times, but felt few prayers such as that one from him.

Our parents then encouraged us to pray privately for RFK and his family.; 6/5/18, 5:46 PM
zipity said...: Sirhan Sirhan was a Palestinian who hated Bobby for his support of Israel.

Basically he is patient zero in Islamic terrorism in the US.; 6/5/18, 5:49 PM
Fandor said...: Otto...Bommers ARE responsible for the COUNTER CULTURE which seems to be a major cause of our "cultural" problems, but the GREATEST GENERATION is also responsible because they DID NOT rein in the unrealistic utopian dreams of the young.
Where's buwaya or Tim in Vermont? I'd like to hear them weigh in.
Shouting Thomas, are you paying attention?; 6/5/18, 5:51 PM
rcocean said...: Like JFK I was too young to be affected, I only heard about the event from others as I got older. Everyone in my family hated LBJ and thought RFK was going to fix everything and get us back to "Camelot".

Strangely, everyone ended up rooting for Nixon either in '68 or '72. No one liked "Whining Willie" (McGovern) or "The Hump" who was LBJ with a Minnesota accent.; 6/5/18, 6:00 PM
David Begley said...: So how can this second shooter theory appear after 50 years?; 6/5/18, 6:03 PM
rcocean said...: Weirdly, peeps now have a conspiracy theory that Sirhan Sirhan didn't do it. Despite the fact, we saw him Kill RFK on TV!

And its funny that no one cares about a "conspiracy" to kill Reagan. Nope, it was just a nut, and what about those Warriors?; 6/5/18, 6:03 PM
Howard said...: I was in the third grade, the rumor on the playground was he would survive, but he was going to be a vegetable. First time hearing that term, the first thing I thought of was broccoli.

I'm sure Doc Mike has some good stories from those days.; 6/5/18, 6:10 PM
rcocean said...: Bobby, JFK, and Teddy were terrible people. Unrepentant anti-Semites, unfaithful to their wives, and serial womanizers

If every leader/Pol was "Terrible" because he was unfaithful to his wife, you can pretty much strike off 75% of the great men in history.

The antisemite insult is just BS, because no one knows what it means. You mean Bobby was just like Hitler? No, you mean....[insert 500 words of blah,blah]; 6/5/18, 6:11 PM
Howard said...: David B: The second shooter theory was going around from the jump. At least what filtered down to the playground.; 6/5/18, 6:12 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/5/18, 6:12 PM
rcocean said...: Teddy was the last and least of the Kennedy boys. He was "Terrible". I don't believe Joe Jnr, JFK, or RFK would've left a woman to drown. They weren't craven cowards.; 6/5/18, 6:13 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: I don't think anyone thinks Sirhan is innocent. I think he's guilty as hell. Clearly, he shot 5 guys/gals. But the question is whether there was another shooter from behind, since that's where RFK's wounds were.

Lincoln's murder -- definitely a conspiracy.

Reagan's attempted murder - no evidence of conspiracy.; 6/5/18, 6:13 PM
rcocean said...: So, the 2nd shooter used *exactly* the same kind of gun.

Do you realize you can analyze the audio tape and prove their were only Five shots?

Or did the 2nd shooter, shoot at PRECISELY the same time?; 6/5/18, 6:14 PM
rcocean said...: "Reagan's attempted murder - no evidence of conspiracy."

Only because no cares to look for one.; 6/5/18, 6:16 PM
Fandor said...: rcocean has no idea who Hubert Humprey was. He was the ORIGINAL LIBERAL candidate. No, he wasn't LBJ who was a ruthless politician and wanted the presidency at any price. He got what he wanted, pushed through his programs to compliment Roosevelt's New Deal, you heard of it, The Great Society, thought he could "make a deal" with Ho Chi Ming, by offering him a TENNESSEE VALLEY DAM project to feed his people, but failed miserably on all fronts. RFK despised LBJ and ran against his administration "to propose new policies". God knows what Kennedy had in mind. Humphrey wanted to give everybody a free college education. McGovern, in '72. proposed confiscating the wealth of everyone making over $12,000 a year. Nixon, in '68, said he would end the war in Vietnam "with honor". George Wallace ran too, but few were going to join his bandwagon. McCarthy was a Liberal flake and RFK co-opted most of his platform, then beat Eugene in the primaries, California being the most famous and we all know what happen after that. The night ended tragically with Kennedy being shot.
"Now it's on to Chicago and let's win there."
And we all witnessed Mayor Daley's police riot at the Democratic Convention that summer.
Who would you vote for?
Nixon's the one!; 6/5/18, 6:23 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: Althouse writes:

With a couple friends, I impulsively took the bus into New York City to stand in line to file past the casket in St. Patrick's Cathedral. What a long somber line! We hadn't told our parents we were doing this, and the wait was so long and it got so late that our fear of upsetting our parents overwhelmed us and we left the line and rode the bus back home.

Very nice recollection. I was too young to feel the anguish at the time, but looking back historically, it must have been deep. Imagine if in a span of 5 years, Reagan, Nixon and Billy Graham had all been shot -- each by a separate lone nut. It woulda been highly traumatic for the Right and the country.; 6/5/18, 6:23 PM
Gordon Scott said...: As with JFK, the Koch brothers shot RFK from their sniper's nest atop the grassy steam table.; 6/5/18, 6:23 PM
Fandor said...: But, you know, in the final analysis, RFK, JFK...yesterday's news and who gives a sh*t?; 6/5/18, 6:32 PM
dreams said...: Yeah, I was still living in the country and was listening to the car radio on the way to catch my ride to my job in Louisville when I heard the news. It's was very early in the morning, shocking news and he was still alive but it looked bad because he was shot in the head.; 6/5/18, 6:34 PM
TwoAndAHalfCents said...: Nice one, EDH!; 6/5/18, 6:39 PM
Comanche Voter said...: 55 years ago (almost) I was starting my junior year in college in Southern California. I left my morning job (teacher's aid at a middle school) and wondered why the flag was at half staff. Turned on the radio and learned that JFK had been shot and was being taken to the hospital. Later that afternoon at the fraternity house girlfriends were showing up at the door to see their friends and there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The sorrow at the time was genuine among many.

Go forward five years, and I'm in my third year of law school and its finals time. My conflict of laws exam was scheduled for the morning after RFK was shot. Well that was a tragedy (of sorts) but exams are exams, and I was in my seat, bluebook in hand and ready to write at 0900--the scheduled hour. The teacher, a good liberal in a day when "liberal" wasn't a pejorative term, walked in and said, "Those of you who are too upset don't have to take the final exam." WTH--we're getting a pass, we don't have to show what we know? (I was always a competitive little fellow). About half the class took the opportunity to avoid the exam. I dunno---I knew I'd have reverses sometime in my legal career, and clients would want you to power on through. I took the exam.

I didn't think LBJ was terrible at the time--he got handed an involvement in Viet Nam initiated by both Eisenhower and JFK--his mistake was that he escalated it.

But looking at the aftermath of his success in pushing the Great Society program, I do think his work there had some terrible effects upon the country.; 6/5/18, 6:57 PM
traditionalguy said...: With what we see theses days, the
Real surprise is that anyone still believes that
Perfectly executed hits are done on key leaders by mentally ill
People caught at the scene with no apparent motive except wild political motives to make them the patsy.

And the FBI then takes and fakes the evidence, And it is over forever, or else.

And JFK Jr was next.; 6/5/18, 7:01 PM
Etienne said...: I was at a church camp, and we were playing touch football in the park. The coach called us all over and told us to huddle.

He said Robert Kennedy was assassinated and we should kneel and pray. To which we did. We could tell the coach was pretty sad about it.

Then my brother Antoine asked the coach who Robert Kennedy was.

The coach asked us if anyone could answer that, to which we all shrugged.

It doesn't matter he said. We were too young to understand.

I still remember that day, because Billy Brown broke his leg falling out of a tree.; 6/5/18, 7:02 PM
Paco Wové said...: "Teddy was the last and least of the Kennedy boys."

Oh, I don't know. You could argue he did far more damage to the country than the others.; 6/5/18, 7:05 PM
Big Mike said...: Robert Kennedy was killed by a .22 caliber bullet fired from a distance of one (1) inch behind his right ear. People saw this shot being fired.

There was no exit wound. What this means is that the bullet lost enough energy entering his skull that instead of leaving his skull when it hit the other side it ricocheted around inside his braincase. Between that and the fragments of bone thrown into his brain by the entry of the bullet this wound was not survivable with fifty years ago medical technology (I'll leave it for Michael K. to tell us whether today's technology would have made this wound survivable, but I rather doubt it). The issue of whether there was a second gunman is a waste -- Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan.

Was there a second person with a gun? Yes, but incredible as it seems none of Kennedy's bodyguards was armed. One was a former FBI agent. (Why not a retired Secret Service agent? We will never know.) The other two bodyguards were former Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson and retired All-Pro defensive lineman Roosevelt Grier. The sole other armed person was a hotel security guard walking on Kennedy's right and so close that Kennedy pulled off the guard's clip-on tie when he fell -- depending on how it is cropped, in some of the pictures of the stricken hotel bus boy Juan Romero kneeling over the senator you can see the clip-on tie on the floor. The guard was knocked over when Kennedy fell down but came up with his gun in his hand -- as it should be! The guard claimed he was carrying his company-issued .38, and there is no way to confuse the wound of a .38 with the wound of a .22 LR. Conspiracy theorists claim that the guy owned a .22, as he did (many people who own guns have a .22 in their gun safe) but no one saw him shoot the gun in his hand. The LAPD should have confiscated that gun and tested it anyway, but did not -- gross incompetence, but nothing a pair of conspirators could have counted on.; 6/5/18, 7:29 PM
Big Mike said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/5/18, 7:37 PM
Big Mike said...: @rcocean, there is an audio tape that contains the sound of 13 gun shots, but five have have a different frequency from the other eight. Since we are talking about a narrow, enclosed, area the most likely source of the "extra five" shots is acoustic echoes.; 6/5/18, 7:39 PM
Drago said...: RFK was murdered by one of those guys that Inga tells us is better than any Trump voter.; 6/5/18, 7:42 PM
Drago said...: We are literally only weeks away from LLR Chuck accusing Trump of the killing.; 6/5/18, 7:43 PM
Anonymous said...: My mother was no big fan of the Kennedys, but always had a good word to say about Joe Jr. who was killed in Europe in WWII.; 6/5/18, 7:52 PM
narciso said...: gary byrne head of the secret service protective detail, says the ambassador hotel walk through was perhaps the most dangerous scenario he could imagine, now maybe they couldn't tell that sirhan worked for doumareas, or that it was owned by g david schine, an adversary from his McCarthy staff days,; 6/5/18, 8:02 PM
Sebastian said...: As no lefty remembrance will make clear, RFK was the first American victim of Palestinian terror.

"It's hard for me to understand now why I projected so much youthful idealism onto Bobby (other than to remember the horror that was LBJ)." Yeah, the Kennedys were so much less horrible than LBJ, so suave, so smart, so decent, so not #MeToo, so much more concerned about the lives of women and soldiers, so much like smooth and "pragmatic" Obama.; 6/5/18, 8:10 PM
narciso said...: there is bathos, to what Robert kennedy jr, is shoveling out, to make a tragedy more significant, he's delving into the soupcon, of crazy conspiracism that bureau defector
William turner used to pedal, which dan moldea mostly debunked some years ago,; 6/5/18, 8:14 PM
buwaya said...: Its interesting that the Palestinian cause was not blamed for this.

It was certainly committed for political reasons, a genuine "propaganda of the deed" in the old tradition, by a Palestinian in retaliation for US support for Israel.

He was an inspiration for Palestinian international terrorism, indeed he may have given a start to the idea. At the time Arab/Palestinian terrorism was limited to the Middle East and targeted Israel and Arab states. This high-profile killing, in their eyes a huge success, made the targets global.

The Palestinian international terror campaign became official, and organized, and became ever-cooler to the liberal left. For a while there the lot of them were wearing Palestinian pattern scarves, and many still do.

All of these, PFLP, Black September, the PLO, Fatah, Hamas and all that lot, in their international guises, were all his heirs, as also the international intra-terrorist cooperation - the German Red Cells participation in the Entebbe business, the Japanese Red Army attack on Tel Aviv, the whole career of Carlos the Jackal, and etc. and etc. Sirhan Sirhan kicked off an enormous global problem.

If it had been a conservative (a Republican) political opponent of the Kennedys that had shot him, a similarly deranged lone wolf, the left would still be waving the bloody shirt.

But international terrorists that espouse the Palestinian cause are still cool.; 6/5/18, 8:25 PM
narciso said...: it is curious, wannabe guerillas like the weatherman dedicated their prairie fire, to sirhan sirhan, I think the black septembrists wanted his release, if memory serves, yes we know how Fabian ver, and by extension marcos was weakened by the Aquino shooting

then again the Palestinians shot two American diplomats, noel and moore in khartroum, their most promising hire, iliych sanchez Ramirez, terrorized much of London and paris, one of his lieutenants, was a player in the iran deal,; 6/5/18, 8:30 PM
narciso said...: they recently did an Entebbe film, from the perspective of the baader participants, as you can imagine if they cast rosamonde pike, it's still a horror,; 6/5/18, 8:39 PM
eddie willers said...: At least we got Abraham, Martin & John out of it.; 6/5/18, 8:42 PM
narciso said...: now, in a similar way that his brother's perishing as a member of people's will shaped young Vladimir illyitch, the murder of both brothers, likely had an alienating effect on ted kennedy, and that is the most charitable I will be with him, as he was the sponsor of the Cuban adjustment act,; 6/5/18, 8:46 PM
stevew said...: I would turn 11 years old a couple of months later. All I knew at the time was that the sisters at my Catholic elementary school were very upset.

-sw; 6/5/18, 8:54 PM
Michael K said...: I woke up the next morning and heard it too.

I had taken my son to Disneyland and saw Kennedy walking out of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ahead of us. I held him upon my shoulders so he could see.

I was not a Kennedy fan but I wanted him to see.

I listened to the speech at the Ambassador and turned the radio off when he finished.; 6/5/18, 9:12 PM
Michael K said...: go said...
RFK was murdered by one of those guys that Inga tells us is better than any Trump voter.

Yes.; 6/5/18, 9:14 PM
gspencer said...: Bobby would have been a credible candidate against Nixon. Say he won. Then, given the white-hot fever for everything Kennedy at the time ("keep the spirit of JFK alive"), he'd go for 8 years. Then it would have been Fat Boy Ted's time to enter the WH and go for another 8 years, to the mid-1980s. Gasp, how screwed up this country would have been. Then the third generation of Kennedys would take over; Jack's kids, Bobby's kids, then Ted kids. Yikes!

I know, I know, what about Ted's behavior with Mary Jo that night. Answer: it wouldn't have happened. Had Bobby been in the WH in July 1969 Ted would likely have had other responsibilities; he might even have resigned the Senate seat to be in the WH too. And Mary Jo, one of Bobby's boiler room girls, might herself been given a job in DC as a reward. My point is that is more than likely that the two of them would not have been together that weekend, meaning her death would not have occurred.; 6/5/18, 9:25 PM
Otto said...: @Khesanh 0802 - Thank you for your service to our country.We live in a wonderful country thanks to you. My sincerest best wishes and God bless to you and your family.; 6/5/18, 9:35 PM
Ken B said...: I remember it but I was too young for it to make much impact on me, especially as I was in Canada. Memory is odd though. I remember JFK's funeral but not his assassination.; 6/5/18, 9:38 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Sirhan was a Rosicrucian, and he was tackled by Rosie Grier. Coincidence? I'll let the conspiracy nuts run with it.; 6/5/18, 9:51 PM
Otto said...: "youthful idealism" Oh there is so much to parse there but i will only be blocked if i go off on a tirade. That statement gives a hint at why the 60s group was the worse generation of the 20th century.
And someone earlier said why didn't we grownups slap them silly.He has a valid point. Very concisely: Dr benjamin spock, wimpy Christians under the onslaught of hollywood deconstrctionalist screen writers, materialist society and the final reason was feeling guilty that we were home worrying about the world series while putting many of our youth in harms way in Vietnam. I am certain I left out other reasons why we let the brats( youthful idealism my arse) at home get away with plain horsesh*t. At least one brat knew her parents would be pissed and scurried home.; 6/5/18, 11:28 PM
Openidname said...: I remember where I was when I learned that JFK had been shot.

I have no idea where I was when I learned that RFK had been shot. It kinda blended into the assassination of MLK two months earlier, as well as the resulting race riots.; 6/5/18, 11:40 PM
Openidname said...: "Fandor said...

"But, you know, in the final analysis, RFK, JFK...yesterday's news and who gives a sh*t?"

Yeah, all that history junk. Who needs it? Not you and me and the millennials.; 6/5/18, 11:45 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I was too young to remember the RFK and MLK assassinations. I was just now going through the list of political assassinations I do remember, and the two biggest I remember were Anwar Sadat and Indira Ghandi (also remember her son's assassination, too). In short, there are no political assassinations for which I had any emotional reaction. I didn't even have a strong reaction to John Lennon's murder (I was 14 at the time).; 6/6/18, 12:11 AM
tim in vermont said...: I remember when he ran for Senator in New York State and he rode through town in a convertible and threw shiny new pennies in little cardboard sleeves in the street. This was 1964, so I was pretty young. My mom went to see him give a speech at the airport. She loved any Kennedy. Anyway, I later read that he said he detested these campaign visits to these podunk burgs in Upstate New York, so my instinct about him was right.; 6/6/18, 12:12 AM
eddie willers said...: Sirhan was a Rosicrucian, and he was tackled by Rosie Grier. Coincidence?

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Marilyn Monroe.; 6/6/18, 12:12 AM
Bilwick said...: I saw a segment of CBS SUNDAY MORNING about the RFK shooting, and a reporter was asking Pete Hamill what we lost when Bobby K. was killed. Hamill said, "Hope." Really? I was around at the time, and can't say RFK's death ever deprived me of hope. I guess you had to be a "liberal." Of course even back then, having read Bastiat's THE LAW and Leonard Read's ANYTHING THAT'S PEACEFUL, I was a budding libertarian; so my hope was for a free society, which RFK and his acolytes seemed uninterested in.; 6/6/18, 12:29 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: The recent "Chappaquidick" movie about Teddy Kennedy was real good. If made 40+ years ago (a la "All The President's Men"), Teddy's political career is sunk - just like his Buick.

On the other hand, Bobby was a real tiger. Look at the mortal enemies he made: Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, Aristotle Onassis and Roy Cohn.

Heck, he ordered the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro (see Operation Mongoose). He punched way above his weight class.; 6/6/18, 12:34 AM
Darkisland said...: Joe jr wad not killed over Europe. That many people believe that is the work of the Kennedy fog machine.

He was killed over England. He never heard a shot fired in anger. He died on an incredibly stupid mission that was supposed to crash an explosive filled b17 into the sub pens in lorient.

He was supposed to bail out after takeoff and the plane would fly by remote control. It blew up before he could bail out.

His previous service had been flying anti submarine patrols.

Both required bravery, but he never flew in combat.

John Henry; 6/6/18, 3:59 AM
Darkisland said...: And remember why jfk was in the South pacific.

It was the only way to stop his affair with Inga Arvad.

Wife of a suspected German spy.

John Henry; 6/6/18, 4:42 AM
Lost My Cookies said...: Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while on the campaign trail too. A former,possibly corrupt (almost certainly corrupt), Prime Minister of Pakistan, and a woman, she was refused visas for foreign security contractors (Blackwater) and was killed by the Taliban who murdered about 200 people trying to get to her. Kind of a #metoo moment, if any of those people were actually serious about it.; 6/6/18, 7:18 AM
Roger Zimmerman said...: Today is the anniversary of D-Day. Truly a great and terrible anniversary.; 6/6/18, 8:06 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Coming from a Republican family, I never understood the allure of the Kennedys. A couple years ago, we found the "First Family" record that my mother had insisted we put away with the assassination of JFK. We thought it hilarious at the time. Still funny 50 years later. His older brother died trying to outshine him in the bravery department with that stupid suicide mission. Next came Bobby, who had shared his older brother's many female conquests at the White House, with a dozen kids at home, and no doubt also helped him get us into Vietnam, all of a sudden become the anti war candidate. Then came Teddy, who might have been President, except that he killed Mary Jo in his drunken extramarital womanizing. The four sons of whisky running Joe Kennedy somehow all were considered the best and brightest hopes for the country. The guy who had one of his daughters labotomzed and institutionalized to protect his family from embarrassment. And not a one of those sons ever had a real job, outside short military careers for the oldest two, and political (or appointed in Bobby's case) office. Somehow, being Joe Kennedy's sons was all it took for half the country to consider these flawed men the obvious choices for President.

So, no, I wasn't broken up at the time that Bobby was killed. Instead of seeing him as some sort of white knight, I saw him as an entitled spoiled brat, whose brother had helped start the war that was being so badly fought (by his brother's pick for SecDef, Robert McNamera), that was splitting the country so much, and had caused nearing 50,000 American lives by then. A senseless war that I was facing fighting and dying in. I was much more affected by the assassination of MLK. I don't mean to speak ill of the dead here, but rather, to point out my feelings of the time, as I was getting ready for college, just having, a week or so earlier, graduated from high school. Blame it on my callous youth, if you must.; 6/6/18, 10:04 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: I think we generally consider England part of Europe, the way we think of Japan as part of Asia.; 6/6/18, 11:24 AM