KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND: Robert F. Kennedy, my father

[babylonsister]

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/05/18/2008-05-18_robert_f_kennedy_my_father.html

Robert F. Kennedy, my father

BY KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND

Sunday, May 18th 2008, 4:00 AM
Robert Kennedy and daughter Kathleen in 1964 RFK Collection


snip//

My father often cited the graffiti on the walls of the pyramids: "And no one was angry enough to speak out." His frustration impelled him to attack corruption in the labor unions - and then impelled him to get Congress to outlaw organized crime. He insisted that the Greyhound bus company, which had resisted transporting the Freedom Riders, find a driver who would. He suggested to American diplomats who would defend South American oligarchs and North American business interests that those who make a peaceful revolution impossible make a violent revolution inevitable.

And yet, when the injustice attached to him most directly, he did not react in anger. When my uncle John Kennedy died, he wrote me a letter from the White House (I was 12 at the time):

"Dear Kathleen, You seem to understand that Jack died and was buried today. As the oldest of the grandchildren, you have a special responsibility. Be kind to others and work hard for our country. Love, Daddy."

At that moment, he could have been bitter, he could have been resentful, even vengeful - at the very least exasperated. And, yet by writing, he told me that he was thinking of me, caring about me, and wanting me to be responsible, decent and loving.

That understanding heart embraced people all around the world - not ones who were easy to love, but those who were difficult. He reached his hand to children living in unheated shacks in Appalachia, to students angered by U.S. foreign policy in Japan and South America. He broke bread with Cesar Chavez after his month-long fast. His love impelled him to drive into the inner city when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and say, "My brother was also killed by a white man," and ask that there be peace, not violence and revenge.

It is hard to dance between anger and love, and harder still to combine the two. In this world that is unfair and unjust, it is so much easier to fall victim to anger's righteousness.

My father had reason to curse the fates. But he resisted that course. He chose a path that found wisdom in pain. And, in doing so, he demonstrated that empathy for those who hailed from different nations, social class, ethnicities or faiths.

Now as then, there is much that could make us fearful and revengeful. He reminds me, and reminds us all, of a different way.


Kennedy Townsend is Robert and Ethel Kennedy's oldest child and author of "Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way."

[Faygo Kid]

1. Beautiful. A great day to remember RFK.

Thank God EMK is going to pull through. We need him.

All the best to Kathleen, even though, as a Marylander, I regret the incompetent campaign she ran for governor.

She's a good egg, though.

[pretzel4gore]

2. the ms media seems to want to forget who did it

years ago, i read 'Babbit' and was struck by this:

" 'The drift of our commercial culture in the forty years since ‘Babbitt’ appeared suggests that Lewis did little to alter it, perhaps, but he was the first novelist to tell us explicitly into what stupid, and finally devastating social damnation we were drifting. Have we landed?'
Mark Schorer, University of California 1961 afterword to ‘Babbitt’ "

It hardly matters WHY Sirhan shot RFK, or Oswald, JFK, or chapman, Lennon, or why 'the Order' shot Denver dj Alan Berg, or the goofys who shot Huey Long, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Hunter S thompson, Gary Webb or Jim hatfield etc...IT DOESN"T MATTER. What matters is that the bias that Lewis wrote about in 'Babbit', the psychosis that makes rush limbah a big fucking deal, and makes foxnews/cnn and the rest of the belly cracker press almost criminal in their pursuit of their vile utopia, remains with us to this day and its biggest faux pas in history is the youngster bush; and they will murder anything to hide the fact bush is THE RESULT of the very thing Sinclair Lewis was warning the US ruling elite about- do not, under any circumstances, lose control of the reactionary right, no matter how much fun that might promise to be! Well, they did it, on purpose.
>I just read 'The Day John Died' by christopher anderson, a contributer at time mag and senior editor at 'People' who also wrote 21 other books, the most famous being 'the day Diana died'... on page 333, anderson writes "...blah blah did not prevent John flying to Havana on Oct23/97 for a historic meeting with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. There, 30 years after the Cuban missile crisis, John interviewed his father's bearded nemesis... blah blah blah... John was surprised when Castro professed to be a great admirer of JFK, and when he seemed to apologise for refusing Lee Harvey Oswald an entry visa into Cuba in October 1963 - an act that almost certainly would have prevented Oswald from being in Dallas one month later."
This is what killed RFK etc. The dishonesty, whether intended or not, leaves impression the bushit warren comm. version of the JFK murder was right. Anderson gaily then goes on with his story, very well done in most regards, but HELPING the fraudulent revising of history in a little, probably unnoticed statement in a knock off book written to exploit the fame of JFK's son, his beloved son, is typical rightwing piggery. Oswald WORKED a fulltime job in Oct 63-he had spent 2 years as US government agent(?) in the USSR, a little episode never explained by same pig media anderson 'goes to bat' for in his book on John jr...vast numbers of 'People' magazine type readers will read that, and....:shrug:

[DeepModem Mom]

3. K&R