rfk

Given the upcoming anniversary of the JFK assassination, last night I caught the last part of the PBS special "The Kennedys", focusing on the Presidential primary race and assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It was a moving piece that painted RFK in a very inspiring light, as a last ray of hope after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. And then he was shot, right after carrying the primaries here in the Golden State. What shocked me was that the documentary made just about no mention of who was responsible or why they did it.

So of course I went digging for the requisite conspiracies and was not disappointed. One of the better sites turned up by some quick googling is this piece of work from Court TV, of all places: Robert Kennedy Assassination: Revisions and Rewrites. So officially the story is that a Palestinian Arab, Sirhan Sirhan, still in prison to this day, was a lone gunmen... for reasons not made exactly clear... but who knows for sure.

All I know is that if I was alive in that day I'd have been angry beyond words at the level of unchecked political violence. MLK, RFK... people with moral bearing and momentum cut short. People you could believe in? Perhaps it's just nostalgia for a time I never knew, but it feels like a far cry from today's i-did-not-have-relations we're-going-to-smoke-them-out-of-their-holes era.

"We've had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder."
  -Robert F. Kennedy, April 3rd 1968