Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Bobby?

Yesterday, unconscious of the fact that 38 years ago to the day my mother walked into my bedroom with tears streaming down her face to inform me that Bobby Kennedy had been shot, I changed my screensaver to an archive photo of him giving a speech. I imagine the impetus to do so was the email that I received yesterday morning from the RFK Memorial Foundation describing current projects (I am on their email list)--although I have no recollection of any mention being made in the email of the anniversary of the assassination. It may also have been triggered by my reading of RFK, Jr.'s piece in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone reporting his findings of the Republican party's theft of the 2004 presidential election...

Today, looking for a little sanity on Tom Tomorrow's website, I ran across the following from mikegerber.com:

Forty years on, Kennedy-King-Kennedy looks to me like the moment things started going bad, when control really clamped down from above, and apathy really took root below. Our country is headed in the wrong direction, and without a shred of romanticism, I think that direction was set by the assassinations of the 60s--not only by the loss of those people, their ideas and their ability to inspire, but also by our getting used to unsolved public murder as business as usual. That is a coarsening equal to any suffered by the Roman Republic. Is it merely coincidence that we've turned from a country of possibilities to one grinding out the same tragic, hoary imperial script? The country is traumatized, directionless, hurt; and a generation of politicians have risen who are experts at keeping us that way.

I could not have said it better myself. I particularly like the qualification "...and without a shred of romanticism," meaning, I take it, misty-eyed romantic nostalgia--the kind of "romanticism" that gives Romanticism a bad name. The full post may be read at mikegerber.com.

Thanks, man.