Kennedy’s Voice Draws Attention to Rare Disorder

RFK Jr.’s Public Speeches Piqued Curiousity about His Vocal Cords

By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit

When Robert Kennedy Jr. appeared on “Larry King Live” Monday, he hoped to gain attention for energy conservation. But as the public listened to his stilted, strained voice, he also drew attention to another cause.

Following the broadcast, Internet forum questions about his health multiplied. Was it a cold, or was it something serious like lung cancer? What made him sound as if he was choking up?

In truth, Kennedy has a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, a specific form of an involuntary movement disorder called dystonia that affects only the voice box.

Requests for comment and calls to Kennedy’s press representative at his Pace Environmental Clinic office were not returned.

Although the condition is by no means life-threatening, it is life-changing for the few who have it. Spasmodic dysphonia experts estimate the condition affects only .02 percent of the population. It often strikes in midlife between ages 20 and 50, and it appears in women twice as often as in men.

Patients say losing your voice hits people in their primary, intimate connection to the outside world and affects nearly every aspect of their lives.

For the few doctors who study the rare disorder, it is an uphill battle to get it diagnosed, understand its causes and train doctors across America to treat it.

You can hear audio of people with adductor spasmodic dysphonia and the less-common abductor spasmodic dysphonia at the National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association Web site

 

Hear It Coming

Lorraine Rappaport started noticing her voice changing back in the early 1980s when she was working as a school counselor in California.

“It came on gradually; it isn’t like anything that happens overnight,” said Rappaport. “My voice got very hoarse, and there were certain letters of the alphabet at the beginning of words that I could not say easily.”

Slowly, her condition started to interfere with her job and her communication with others.

“There were times where I had to stop and think, because I wanted to avoid a word because I couldn’t say it clearly.”

Rappaport started avoiding words that began with “h,” “ch,” “k” or “c” — a difficult task in English. She had never heard of spasmodic dysphonia at the time, and physicians kept telling her the problem was psychological, especially since she was getting a divorce.

“Good heavens, I went to a total of 22 different people,” Rappaport said. “I was told to go to a psychiatrist, and my husband at the time was a psychiatrist — he recognized immediately this was not a psychological condition”

Although emotional stress didn’t cause the problem, Rappaport quickly discovered that the problem caused emotional stress. Everywhere she goes her breathy, stilted voice draws attention. She now holds support groups for people with general dystonia — some of whom can’t control their vocal cords and have uncontrolled spasms in their head, neck, eyes, or leg spasms.

“It’s really, really bad when you first deal with it,” Rappaport said. “If you stop and think about it you realize your personality, your life is a result of what you can say, of what you can speak.”

Rappaport eventually left her job because of the spasmodic dysphonia. Once she started the support group she realized social isolation was a common problem.

“Speaking with them, we all did the same thing; we just let go of any social life at all because you couldn’t talk,” she said.

Rappaport gets worried when she thinks others are going undiagnosed as well.

“I have heard certain people both on television and in my social life that I guessed had a problem and probably didn’t know,” she said.

“I’ve thought of dropping [Kennedy] a note,” said Rappaport, who happens to live 20 minutes away from the Kennedy home on Cape Cod.

But Kennedy does know about spasmodic dysphonia. According to a spokesman for the NSDA, he’s an honorary board member.

 

Telling Others

“It’s a very rare disorder, and there is really very little known about it — especially back in the ’80s and ’90s,” said Dr. Phillip Song, a laryngologist at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. “The NSDA has gotten well organized, so you don’t see people go undiagnosed for years as much.”

People with spasmodic dysphonia in the media, such as Kennedy or National Public Radio talk show host Diane Rhem, have helped bring spasmodic dysphonia to national attention. Kennedy and Rhem both serve as honorary board members of NSDA, and Rhem wrote about her experience in her 2002 book, “Finding My Voice.”

Still, Song and other experts warn there are only a few hotbeds of treatment in Boston, New York, Chicago and California. Everywhere in between, especially outside of metropolitan areas, people with spasmodic dysphonia may be suffering and unaware, just like Rappaport first was.

 

Treatment Past and Present

By the early 1990s, Rappaport found treatment for her condition in a National Institutes of Health clinical trial using Botox injections. The NIH flew her to Maryland from California to receive the low-dose injections, and she started to see an improvement.

Only years before, in 1986, Dr. Andrew Blitzer in New York City and others discovered Botox as a nonsurgical treatment for spasmodic dysphonia. Previously, doctors tried to crush or cut the nerve leading to the vocal folds and could only provide a few years of relief before the symptoms returned.

“If you do anything surgical, the dystonia tries to win. It tries to figure out a way around its obstruction,” said Dr. Robert Bastian, spokesman for the NSDA and a Chicago-based specialist in treating spasmodic dysphonia.

Song and Bastian say doctors don’t know what exactly causes spasmodic dysphonia, but they do know that treating the nerves at the vocal cords can only help, not cure the problem.

The best guess spasmodic dysphonia experts have for now is that root of the neurological disorder lies in the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia is often called the “processing area” of the brain and it sits between the cortex — the “upper management” part of the brain as Song calls it — and the brain stem, or the “foot soldier” of the brain.

However, the most advanced research is still focused on finding physical evidence of changes in the brain, and possibly a genetic cause behind the disorder. For now, most spasmodic dysphonia patients work with the cycle of low-dose Botox treatments three times a year that leave their voices first as breathy, then normal then stilted again.

Rappaport falls among the one in 10 people with spasmodic dysphonia who suffer from the from abductor form, which is more difficult to treat with Botox than adductor dysphonia. Instead of sounding strained and stilted, she sounds breathy and weak.

Rappaport decided to stop Botox treatments for fear of building immunity — although most doctors say the low dose in spasmodic dysphonia treatments is unlikely to cause this.

“It’s not good, it’s not perfect, but I can make myself understood and that’s what matters,” Rappaport said. “But I do want to help people understand this — you become less credible because people don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

 

 

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

JFK’s Independence Day Speech, 1946

LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It was the price yesterday. It is the price today, and it will ever be the price.”

 

– John F. Kennedy

This Independence Day, we’d like to take you back in time to an America that some of you might be old enough to remember. Even if you’re not yet a senior citizen, upon reading this you’ll surely wish we had this kind of country - and these kinds of leaders - again today.

The time: July 4, 1946. The place: Boston’s Faneuil Hall. The man: young John Fitzgerald Kennedy, barely 29 years old and already the frontrunner in a pitched battle for his first Congressional seat in the 11th District. The occasion: the annual Boston Independence Day oration on the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of these United States.

A youthful but visibly ill John Kennedy campaigns for Congress, 1946

In 1946, Americans were observing the first peacetime Fourth of July in five years. Kennedy, himself a battered veteran of the war, seemed a perfect emerging leader of this young generation of fighting Americans. He understood what they faced; what our society and indeed our world would have to face as we moved from world war to cold war.

Of course, Kennedy’s time was yet to come. At this point, no one (most likely including the candidate himself) could have envisioned him as president. In the summer of 1946, John Kennedy was just a sickly, skinny rich kid, whip-smart and world-wise, but hardly a seasoned leader in Boston political circles. Had it not been for the power and position of his father Joseph P. Kennedy and the influence of his grandfather “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald (Boston’s beloved former mayor), young Jack Kennedy might have been laughed right out of the race - or run out of town as a carpetbagger. (JFK hadn’t actually lived in Boston since he was nine; having moved with his family to New York in 1927. He listed a Boston hotel as his address.)

Of course, many of the oldtime Boston Irish politicos predicted he would be trounced in the election. But “that Kennedy kid” surprised `em all in November, winning a seat in the House of Representatives he would keep for six more years. Then he decided to run for U.S. Senate, and of course all the wise old men said he’d never unseat Henry Cabot Lodge, who’d been in that seat since 1932. Although the margin of victory was narrow (3%), Kennedy did win that Senate seat, leaving a befuddled Lodge to mutter, “I felt rather like a man who has just been hit by a truck” on election day.

After eight years in the Senate, JFK set his sights on the White House in 1960. And of course, everybody said he could never beat Richard Nixon, the sitting Vice President. And once again, through the narrowest margin of victory the country had ever seen, Kennedy did just that, becoming the youngest president ever elected to the presidency.

Now that’s what I call the old American “can do” spirit.  Here in this land of opportunity, we can make anything of ourselves. An Irish Catholic kid from Boston can grow up not only to be a Congressman or a Senator, but even President of the United States. And not just the president, but a great president.

To think that the journey only took 14 short years is a marvel, and a testament to Kennedy’s drive and vision. A journey which started in Brookline, Massachusetts, went to Washington, all around the world, and which would eventually take us to the moon. And that amazing journey shifted into high gear on this day exactly 62 years ago.

On that sweltering 4th of July, Kennedy gave the finest speech of his young life, an oration which can still stir the heart of any American - or anybody who just loves the American Republic and all it stands for, wherever they may live.

And so we now bring you JFK’s 1946 Independence Day address in hopes that it will remind all of us of our heritage and our responsibilities; our hopes and our ambitions; our collective American spirit which, once resolved to a cause, can take us anywhere we want to go - beyond old ways of thinking - out of our own backyards and into a New Frontier…even beyond the stars and planets into the deepest reaches of space. That spirit, my friends, is the essence of our American character.

If someone had told you in 1946 that this fresh-faced kid would one day be President of the United States, would you have believed it?

SOME ELEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN CHARACTER

By John F. Kennedy, as delivered in Boston on July 4, 1946.

Mr. Mayor; Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.

     We stand today in the shadow of history.

     We gather here in the very Cradle of Liberty.

     It is an honor and a pleasure to be the speaker of the day–an honor because of the long and distinguished list of noted orators who have preceded me on this platform, a pleasure because one of that honored list who stood here fifty years ago, and who is with us here today, is my grandfather.

     It has been the custom for the speaker of the day to link his thoughts across the years to certain classic ideals of the early American tradition. I shall do the same. I propose today to discuss certain elements of the American character which have made this nation great. It is well for us to recall them today, for this is a day of recollection and a day of hope.

     A nation’s character, like that of an individual, is elusive. It is produced partly by things we have done and partly by what has been done to us. It is the result of physical factors, intellectual factors, spiritual factors.

     It is well for us to consider our American character, for in peace, as in war, we will survive or fail according to its measure.

     RELIGIOUS ELEMENT

     Our deep religious sense is the first element of the American character which I would discuss this morning.

     The informing spirit of the American character has always been a deep religious sense.

     Throughout the years, down to the present, a devotion to fundamental religious principles has characterized American thought and action.

     Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual. It was this religious sense which inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”    

Our earliest legislation was inspired by this deep religious sense:         

“Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.”    

Our first leader, Washington, was inspired by this deep religious sense:        

“Of all of the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”    

Lincoln was inspired by this deep religious sense:         

“That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”    

Our late, lamented President (FDR) was inspired by this deep religious sense:         

“We shall win this war, and in victory we shall seek not vengeance, but the establishment of an international order in which the spirit of Christ shall rule the hearts of men and nations.”    

Thus we see that this nation has ever been inspired by essential religious ideas. The doctrine of slavery which challenged these ideas within our own country was destroyed.

     Recently, the philosophy of racism, which threatened to overwhelm them by attacks from abroad, was also met and destroyed.

     Today these basic religious ideas are challenged by atheism and materialism: at home in the cynical philosophy of many of our intellectuals, abroad in the doctrine of collectivism, which sets up the twin pillars of atheism and materialism as the official philosophical establishment of the State.

     Inspired by a deeply religious sense, this country, which has ever been devoted to the dignity of man, which has ever fostered the growth of the human spirit, has always met and hurled back the challenge of those deathly philosophies of hate and despair. We have defeated them in the past; we will always defeat them.

     How well, then, has DeTocqueville said: “You may talk of the people and their majesty, but where there is no respect for God can there be much for man? You may talk of the supremacy of the ballot, respect for order, denounce riot, secession–unless religion is the first link, all is vain.”

     IDEALISTIC ELEMENT

     Another element in the American character that I would bring to your attention this morning is the idealism of our native people–stemming from the strong religious beliefs of the first colonists, developed as they worked the land.

     This idealism, this fixed regard for principle, has been an element of the American character from the birth of this nation to the present day.

     In recent years, the existence of this element in the American character has been challenged by those who seek to give an economic interpretation to American history. They seek to destroy our faith in our past so that they may guide our future. These cynics are wrong, for, while there may be some truth in their interpretation, it does remain a fact, and a most important one, that the motivating force of the American people has been their belief that they have always stood at the barricades by the side of God.

     In Revolutionary times, the cry “No taxation without representation” was not an economic complaint. Rather, it was directly traceable to the eminently fair and just principle that no sovereign power has the right to govern without the consent of the governed. Anything short of that was tyranny. It was against this tyranny that the colonists “fired the shot heard ’round the world.”

     This belief in principle was expressed most impressively by George Washington at the Constitutional Convention in 1783. “It is probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained.  If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair, the event is in the hands of God.”

     This idealism, this conviction that our eyes had seen the glory of the Lord -that right was right and wrong was wrong-finally led to the ultimate clash at Bull Run and the long red years of the war between the States.

     Again, the cynics may apply the economic interpretation to this conflict: the industrial North against the agricultural South; the struggle of the two economies. Say what they will, it is an undeniable fact that the Northern Army of Virginia and the Army of the Potomac were inspired by devotion to principle: on the one hand, the right of secession; on the other, the belief that the “Union must be preserved.”

     In 1917, this element of the American character was stimulated by the slogans “War to End War” and “A War to Save Democracy,” and again the American people had as their leader a man, Woodrow Wilson, whose idealism was the traditional idealism of America. To such a degree was this true that he was able to say, “Some people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.”

     It is perhaps true that the American intervention in 1917 might have been more effective if the case for American intervention had been represented on less moralistic terms. As it was, the American people eventually came to look upon themselves as giving food and guns to a general cause in which all other people had material ends and in which they alone had moral ends.

     The idealism with which we had entered the battle made the subsequent disillusionment all the more bitter and revealed a dangerous facet to this element of the American character, for this bitterness, a direct result of our inflated hopes, brought a radical change in our foreign policy and a resulting withdrawal from Europe. We failed to make the adjustment between what we had hoped to win and what we actually could win. Our idealism was too strong. We would not compromise.

     And thus we brought to our shoulders much of the burden of the responsibility for World War II–a burden which we would not then acknowledge but for which we have paid full price in recent years on distant shores, on faraway fields and valleys and hills, on pieces of foreign soil which will be forever ours.

     It was perhaps because of this failure that the second world war never did become a crusade as did the first.

     Our idealism had become tarnished, but extraordinary efforts were made to evoke it, and it is indubitably true that the great majority of Americans had strong convictions as to which side spoke for the right before our entry into the war.

     It is now in the postwar world that this idealism–this devotion to principle–this belief in the natural law–this deep religious conviction that this is truly God’s country and we are truly God’s people–will meet its greatest trial.

     Our American idealism finds itself faced by the old-world doctrine of power politics. It is meeting with successive rebuffs, and all this may result in a new and even more bitter disillusionment, in another ignominious retreat from our world destiny.

     But, if we remain faithful to the American tradition, our idealism will be a steadfast thing, a constant flame, a torch held aloft for the guidance of other nations.

     It will take great faith.

     Our idealism, the second element of the American character, is being severely tested. Now, only time will tell whether this element of the American character will be true to its historic tradition.

     PATRIOTIC ELEMENT

     The third element of the American character that I would bring to your attention this morning is the great patriotic instinct of our people.

     From our pioneer days, perhaps because we were a people who developed from a beachhead on a tremendous continent, this American patriotism has always had as its core a strange and almost mystical love of the land.

     Early in our history we acquired, as James Truslow Adams has pointed out, “a sense of unlimited energy face to face with unlimited resources.”

     Land, land, land, stretching with incredible richness across half a world. Its sheer vastness has made it a challenge to the American spirit. The endless land stretching to, the western sun caught the imagination of men who founded this nation and awakened the patriotic spirit that has become a characteristic of the American people.

     In the words of America’s poet, Walt Whitman, we note this deep sense of the land:          

“Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-field of the world, land of those sweet-air’d interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobe!
Land where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the southwest Colorado winds!
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan! Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and Connecticut!
Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen’s land!”    

This preoccupation with the land records itself in the catalogue of the colonists’ grievances against George III. It has always been reflected in the highest moments of our patriotism, for, throughout the years, in the early days here at home and in recent years abroad, Americans have been ever ready to defend this native land.

     From the birth of the nation to the present day, from the Heights of Dorchester to the broad meadows of Virginia, from Bunker Hill to the batteries of Saratoga, from Bergen’s Neck, where Wayne and Maylan’s troops achieved such martial wonders, to Yorktown, where Britain’s troops surrendered, Americans have heroically embraced the soldier’s alternative of victory or the grave. American patriotism was shown at the Halls of Montezuma. It was shown with Meade at Gettysburg, with Sheridan at Winchester, with Phil Carney at Fair Oaks, with Longstreet in the Wilderness, and it was shown by the flower of the Virginia Army when Pickett charged at Gettysburg. It was shown by Captain Rowan, who plunged into the jungles of Cuba and delivered the famous message to Garcia, symbol now of tenacity and determination. It was shown by the Fifth and Sixth Marines at Belleau Wood, by the Yankee Division at Verdun, by Captain Leahy, whose last order as he lay dying was “The command is forward.”  And in recent years it was shown by those who stood at Bataan with Wainwright, by those who fought at Wake Island with Devereaux, who flew in the air with Don Gentile. It was shown by those who jumped with Gavin, by those who stormed the bloody beaches at Salerno with Commando Kelly; it was shown by the First Division at Omaha Beach, by the Second Ranger Battalion as it crossed the Purple Heart Valley, by the 101st as it stood at Bastogne; it was shown at the Bulge, at the Rhine, and at victory.

     Wherever freedom has been in danger, Americans with a deep sense of patriotism have ever been willing to stand at Armageddon and strike a blow for liberty and the Lord.

     INDIVIDUALISTIC ELEMENT

     The American character has been not only religious, idealistic, and patriotic, but because of these it has been essentially individual.

     The right of the individual against the State has ever been one of our most cherished political principles.

     The American Constitution has set down for all men to see the essentially Christian and American principle that there are certain rights held by every man which no government and no majority, however powerful, can deny.

     Conceived in Grecian thought, strengthened by Christian morality, and stamped indelibly into American political philosophy, the right of the individual against the State is the keystone of our Constitution. Each man is free.

     He is free in thought.

     He is free in expression.

     He is free in worship.

     To us, who have been reared in the American tradition, these rights have become part of our very being. They have become so much a part of our being that most of us are prone to feel that they are rights universally recognized and universally exercised. But the sad fact is that this is not true. They were dearly won for us only a few short centuries ago and they were dearly preserved for us in the days just past. And there are large sections of the world today where these rights are denied as a matter of philosophy and as a matter of government.

     We cannot assume that the struggle is ended. It is never-ending.

     Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It was the price yesterday. It is the price today, and it will ever be the price.

     The characteristics of the American people have ever been a deep sense of religion, a deep sense of idealism, a deep sense of patriotism, and a deep sense of individualism.

     Let us not blink the fact that the days which lie ahead of us are bitter ones.

     May God grant that, at some distant date, on this day, and on this platform, the orator may be able to say that these are still the great qualities of the American character and that they have prevailed.

JFK’s closing words should strike a deep chord in all of us now. 62 years to the day since he delivered this address, his dream has still not yet been fully realized. But we too still hold on to the hope that God may grant on some distant day, on that same platform in Boston, the orator may be able to stand up and say that Americans have not fogotten how to turn our brightest dreams into beautiful realities. And it won’t be just pretty campaign rhetoric; it will be the truth.

We also hope that future orator’s name will be Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be more precise. Sure, we dream big, but why dream small? America didn’t get where we are today by taking baby steps.

Remember always to dream, America. And dream BIG. If we ever cease to chase big dreams and pursue higher ideals, we won’t stay a great nation for long.

And if some evil usurper should come along and try to turn our collective dream into a nightmare, then we should remember well our ancestors who fought a bloody revolution to free us from the reign of tyrants once before — and that we can do it again.

The answer to 1984 is 1776.

Viva Liberty!

Long Live The Republic!

 

Copyright RFKin2008. Kennedy speech text courtesy of the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

RFK Jr. at Green Our Vaccines Rally in D.C.

Kennedy Speaks Out at Green Our Vaccines Rally in DC

(If you don’t mind us sayin’ so, Sir, you’re lookin’ mighty Presidential there…)

KENNEDY SPEAKS OUT AT “GREEN OUR VACCINES” RALLY

On June 4th, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined with Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and a crowd of several thousand at the “Green Our Vaccines” rally on the Capitol grounds in Washington, D.C. — and his words obviously made quite an impact.

Over the past week, our website has been flooded with new visitors who heard him speak at the rally and were deeply moved. Signatures on the “Kennedy for President” petition have also spiked dramatically. We notice that many of the latest signers adding words of encouragement and pleas for leadership are autism mothers, and we heartily welcome them.

Parents of autistic children are tired of being lied to. They’re tired of being ignored in Washington. They’re tired of being told by media decision-makers that their issue is not newsworthy and therefore does not merit any substantial coverage. They’re tired of hearing that their concerns about toxic vaccines are scientifically irrelevant. They’re tired of watching their kids suffer while politicians flap their lips.

Above all, they want to elect leaders who understand and actually care enough to do something about this issue. When the vaccines we give our kids to keep them well make them sick instead, something is terribly wrong. All these parents ask for is a real investigation. And some real action.

Who we put in the White House is going to have a lot to say about the direction of the autism/vaccines debate in years to come. The President will steer the legislative and public agenda on this issue. That’s why it is so critically important that we elect someone who is informed and willing to listen. Someone who will advocate for this cause and act in the best interests of children. Someone who isn’t in Big Pharma’s back pocket.

To the minds of many in the autism awareness movement, RFK Jr. is exactly that kind of leader. After hearing Bobby speak at the autism rally a week ago, the answer to their leadership question seems clear: they want to put him in the White House where he can help their families!

RFK Jr. addresses the “Green Our Vaccines” rally in Washington, D.C., June 4, 2008.

If you missed Kennedy’s tremendous speech, you’re not alone - the mainstream media didn’t bother to cover it - (surprised, much?), but several video versions are quickly spreading across the web and RFK Jr.’s speech is certainly garnering a lot of rave reviews.

We highly recommend you check it out. Highlights from the rally are available on YouTube, and the Age of Autism website also posted Bobby’s complete speech in 3 parts.

YouTube Video link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udxgXp_nsMs

“We have been inspired by Mr. Kennedy’s support of mothers’ positions on vaccines and his ground breaking article, Deadly Immunity,” Jenny McCarthy told press of Kennedy’s appearance. “His continued efforts are greatly appreciated.”

According to a Sun Herald report, Jim and Jenny have said that they “do support immunization, like many parents and experts in the medical community, although they and their many allies feel that children are receiving too many vaccines, too soon, many of which are toxic. Their goal is to demand a safer vaccine supply and schedule for children.”

RFK Jr. delivers a passionate speech on the Capitol grounds.

Bobby must have brought that “Kennedy weather” with him. A heavy rain fell on D.C. last Wednesday morning, threatening to postpone the march. But just about the time Bobby arrived on scene, the sun came out and shone down on the rally for most of the afternoon. No sooner had the speeches ended, the sky opened up as if on cue — unleashing furious severe thunderstorms and dropping tornados. Ironically, several meetings between autism activists and their Congressmen had to be quickly and unceremoniously adjourned because tornado warnings evacuated the Capitol!

And to think…I used to believe all that talk about “Kennedy weather” was rubbish. Guess it might be true after all.

Kennedy greets the demonstrators, Green Our Vaccines rally, Washington. June 4, 2008.

(Photos by Elizabeth Cary and Lighthouse Studios, who have some wonderful photos from the rally on their website.)

 

Story copyright RFKin2008.com. Used with permission.

Op-Ed: There’s Just No Excuse for This

Op-Ed: Whoops, They Did It Again

THIS STUFF ISN’T AMUSING ANYMORE

The mainstream media continues to fail us day after day (just ask Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who regularly reports stories establishment media won’t go near) - and here lately their reporting on the Kennedy family in particular has gone from bad to worse to positively abysmal.

If you’ve been reading this blog in recent weeks, you know we’ve been highly critical of the media’s hysterical coverage of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s illness, and the endless, pointless pontificating on Hillary Clinton’s recent comments about the RFK assassination.

We’ve also given `em hell (and rightfully so) when they failed to demonstrate a basic ability to spell and fact-check stories about the Kennedys prior to publication — and then for not printing corrections once the damage was done. 

We’re not complaining about trivial little errors here. We’re talking whoppers, the kind of stuff that makes you scratch your head and wonder what qualifications one needs to become a journalist, or a copy editor, these days.

We’re not talking about small newspapers or independent bloggers making mistakes - oh, no - we’re talking about the biggest names in media: The New York Times, CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News…you name it, they’ve mucked it up.

Most recently, we tore ABC News a new one for printing perhaps the most absurd wonder blunder we’ve ever seen - a story which asserts that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is, quite incredibly, the son of John F. Kennedy. (See related story, “ABC News Can’t Keep Their Kennedys Straight.”)

And we’re not just bitching about isolated errors popping up every once in a while. What we’ve witnessed over the past month alone in the media sphere of nonstop Kennedy coverage is an epidemic of poor research and reporting, combined with sloppy editing and irresponsible choices at the top levels of these newsroom hierarchies.

To run stories chock full of inaccuracies — when it’s so damned easy to catch and fix these massive screw-ups before they wind up embarrassing you (and your illustrious news organization) in print — is a transgression these great bastions of American journalism should have to answer for. But so far, no one is holding them accountable.

THE BOSTON GLOBE’S BIG BOO-BOO

Latest infuriating case in point: The Boston Globe’s May 11th review of Ted Sorensen’s new White House memoir, “Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.” (The book itself is a marvelous read, by the way. If you don’t have it, get it!)

The book review was penned by Douglas Brinkley, distinguished author, history professor and ”presidential historian.” Not that he doesn’t have the academic cred to back up that fancy pants title - he does - which leaves him absolutely no excuse for the colossal faux pas he committed in his recent Globe article. (Brinkley is a former director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization and taught history at Tulane University before he was “relocated” to Texas by Hurricane Katrina. Now we have to contend with him.)

By far the most astonishing thing about this latest media mistake is that it appeared in the Boston Globe, for crying out loud, the Kennedy clan’s hometown newspaper.

To my mind, and to that of many Americans, no U.S. news publication should bear a greater responsibility than the Boston Globe for accurately reporting All Things Kennedy. Of course, we expect every news organization to do their homework, but the Globe has only to look in their vast archives of Kennedy coverage — or even out their own back door — to get the story straight.

This time, they didn’t even bother. Not only has the Globe damaged its’ credibility among readers in Boston and elsewhere (who do know better) with this foul-up, they have also done a disservice to history; to Theodore Sorensen, and to the memory of President Kennedy.

John F. Kennedy (left) and Ted Sorensen in the late 1950s. Sorensen began working for Kennedy as a research assistant in 1953. (PAUL SCHUTZER)

SAY WHAT?????

Upon reading the lede of the Globe’s book review, a smoking, flaming bomb of a boo-boo flies right up and smacks you in the face. (Hey, if you’re going to goof, do it big. And always make sure to put it in the first paragraph.)

Here’s the intro as originally published. How many of you can spot what’s wrong with this version of events?

When Ted Sorensen first heard the news on Nov. 22, 1963, that President John F. Kennedy had been shot, he fell into a state of zombie-like mourning. Struggling to control his emotions, he rushed to the Fish Room - the lounge across from the Oval Office - to watch CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite grimly report on the tragedy. Earlier that morning Sorensen had chatted with JFK near the White House helipad just before the president left for Dallas. Now, watching TV in a sullen trance, Sorensen doubted whether he would ever laugh again. The assassination had hit the 35-year-old special counsel harder than even his father’s death. “The news kept showing clips of the president delivering a speech earlier that day at a breakfast in Texas,” Sorensen recalled, “the same speech I had gone over with him in the Oval Office on the morning of his departure.”

Anyone who has ever done more than a cursory study of President Kennedy’s last day on earth know that he was not at the White House on the morning of November 22, 1963.

The President of the United States had been in Texas since the previous day on a goodwill tour, working to reunite warring factions of the state Democratic party and raising funds for the `64 campaign. Kennedy awoke that morning in Suite 850 of the Hotel Texas to a steady rain and 5,000 hardy souls standing in the parking lot beneath his window — all of them hoping for a smile; a word; a wave from their president.

Kennedy did brave the weather to address the crowd that morning, uttering that now-famous line: “There are no faint hearts in Ft. Worth!”

Apparently, the Boston Globe editors never heard this story, despite the fact that it is told in every printed account of Kennedy’s Final 24.

Don’t the copy editors up in Beantown at least have a copy of William Manchester’s JFK Assassination primer, The Death of a President, sitting on a reference shelf somewhere? All they had to do was hit the index.

Or maybe they could just read Ted Sorensen’s book. You know, the one they are reviewing here. Had anyone bothered to actually read it, there is no implication whatsoever from Sorensen that he spoke to Kennedy in person on Friday morning. As he describes that awful day in Counselor:

“The news kept showing clips of the president delivering a speech earlier that day at a breakfast in Texas,” Sorensen recalled, “the same speech I had gone over with him in the Oval Office on the morning of his departure.”

The morning of Kennedy’s departure was Thursday, November 21st, the previous day. I’d say that’s a rather important date to Mr. Sorensen. He remembers well the last time he saw the president - his dear friend - alive.

Nope, one doesn’t forget memories like that. But the Boston Globe does.

Have no doubt: photographic proof of the President’s whereabouts on the last morning of his life. JFK (with Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Texas Governor John Connally behind him) addresses the crowd at Fort Worth’s Hotel Texas, November 22, 1963.

BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE

While your head may still be reeling from a goof like that ever making it into print, hang on to your helmet because here comes another one.

Following right on the heels of the first flub, the second paragraph goes on to say:

With a writing style as smooth as ice cream, Sorensen’s “Kennedy” focused on such Cold War flashpoints as Cuba, Laos, Berlin, and Oxford, Miss. It recounted the famous “Ask Not” inaugural address that Sorensen had so brilliantly written.

Oh, brother…do we have to go through that again?

Sorensen did not write JFK’s inaugural address. His role would be best described as that of collaborator (actually, there were several cooks in Kennedy’s literary kitchen whose suggestions made the finished draft). The record on this has been clarified time and time again by none other than Sorensen himself.

For example, in his 1969 book The Kennedy Legacy (guess the Globe editors never read that one, either), Sorensen states that “the final shape of every text was always the President’s decision alone.”

Furthermore, we know that oftentimes throughout their decade-long collaboration, Kennedy would frequently carry a Sorensen speech to the podium only to ignore most of it, delivering instead his own extemporaneous oration. Sorensen was probably the greatest presidential speechwriter of the 20th Century, but his greatest skill lay in channeling Kennedy’s intellect. He himself has admitted this, writing that “in the vast majority of cases” Kennedy did not follow the speech he had prepared.

Sorensen has always loyally affirmed Kennedy’s authorship of the inaugural address. In Kennedy (Sorensen’s 1965 book noted above in the Globe’s review, which no one at the Boston Globe apparently bothered to speed-read), he insists that “the principal architect of the Inaugural Address was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

Could the man be any clearer than that? Then why does the mainstream media continue to get it wrong year after year, decade after decade?

Don’t Believe the Hype: one of JFK’s early drafts of the inaugural address, in his own practically illegible but nonetheless distinctive handwriting. Clearly a work in progress at this point, Kennedy is still toying with the language of “ask not what your country is going to do for you” instead of “can do for you.” (Larger images available for study at the National Archives’ website.)

FOR THE RECORD

If you might be tempted to think all this is much ado about nothing, think again. The issue of whether Kennedy composed his own inaugural address, or simply delivered Sorensen’s beautiful words, is not some arcane historical footnote. The speech is generally acknowledged to have been the greatest oration of any twentieth-century American politician. To deny the rightful author (JFK) full credit for it not only diminishes his legacy and weakens his claim on the hearts and minds of future generations, it also distances him, and us, from a speech that is a distillation of his experiences, philosophy, and character.

Erroneous assertions that Sorensen wrote JFK’s inaugural address have appeared frequently in the popular media through the years. In 1988, for example, Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow described Sorensen as “the author of so many of Kennedy’s speeches, including the inaugural.”

Even as late as 2002, PBS’s Great American Speeches series instructed U.S. schoolchildren everywhere that “John Kennedy’s inaugural address has been praised as one of the best public speeches ever…Kennedy, however, did not write the speech himself. Ted Sorensen did.”

None of these writers — including the illustrious Dr. Brinkley — offer any evidence that Sorensen wrote the Kennedy inaugural (but we offer clear and convincing evidence to the contrary; see image of Kennedy’s handwritten draft above). Instead, one detects the assumption that since speechwriters wrote the inaugural addresses of other presidents, one must have written Kennedy’s too, and that because Sorensen was the author of so many other Kennedy speeches, he must have been the author of this one as well.

But just because so many other media outlets made the same error before you is never an excuse to continue to perpetuate a falsehood, especially when there is clear documentary evidence to the contrary readily available. If a media outlet should do so knowingly, they might be well considered part of some elaborate conspiracy to undermine President Kennedy’s historical importance and intellectual abilities.

Now of course, we know the mainstream media has too much integrity to ever engage in such a thing, let alone an eminent historian like Douglas Brinkley, so therefore we must conclude that errors like these are not made out of any sense of spite or jealousy, but are rather the result of either laziness or ignorance.

That’s no comfort to me. How about you? What does it say about us as a society if our “best and brightest” historians and news editors are so ignorant of basic facts regarding any American president? And what kind of future historians, journalists and editors will we be sending into the workforce of the Fourth Estate in years to come? Isn’t that a scary thought?

Here’s an even scarier one: Douglas Brinkley is not only an esteemed “presidential historian,” he also is a Professor of History at Rice University in Houston. He’s a Senior Fellow at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and was asked by former U.S. Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher to be part of a commission studying Presidential War Powers. Obviously, Professor Brinkley has friends in very high places, and is often called upon to “interpret” history for them.

And if that doesn’t sufficiently frighten you, he’s also the staff historian at CBS News.

PROFESSOR OF POP HISTORY 101

Now let’s throw another log of irony on this already-searing fire: Brinkley was once a friend of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s and a contributing editor at Kennedy’s George magazine. But in the days immediately following JFK Jr.’s 1999 fatal plane crash, Brinkley quickly became “the William Ginsberg of the Kennedy Death Circus” (so said Slate’s David Plotz), appearing on MSNBC, Late Edition, Meet the Press, Good Morning America, Dateline, Today (twice), and NPR (twice). He also penned columns about his relationship with Kennedy for Newsweek and the New York Times, and was quoted everywhere else ink touches paper.

According to the Washington Post, Brinkley cut a $10,000 deal with NBC for a week of exclusive Kennedy commentary after JFK Jr.’s death, but then agreed to provide it pro bono. Editors at George were reportedly so annoyed about Brinkley’s death punditry that they dropped him from the masthead.

But Brinkley somehow managed to work his way back into the family’s good graces after that, and over the next near-decade became known as some sort of Kennedy authority; the talking head to call for analysis whenever something happened in the Kennedy kingdom.

He even won the prestigious 2007 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for “The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” a work which was highly praised by his fellow presidential historian and Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger before his death. 

Brinkley has been touted as one hip history professor, an historian for a new generation of Americans. He believes Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson are the giants of American literature. He quotes Ramones lyrics. He’s an idealist and a Democrat who by all accounts loves the Kennedys. So how could he make such glaring, easily avoidable mistakes in this Globe piece? What kind of reputable historian and “authority on the Kennedys” could let those elephants silp quietly by?

And why on earth didn’t the Boston Globe editors catch them before the story was allowed to be printed?

I’ll leave that question to our readers. I’m quite certain you will have a few thoughts to add on the swift deterioration of our intellectual and journalistic standards in America, of which this is just another shining example.

For those who actually do care about what our children and grandchildren will be taught as “history,” it’s enough to make you want to home school. And for those in the news profession who still care about accuracy, credibility and earning the people’s trust, it’s enough to make you want to go out and start your own media empire, dammit.

With the explosion of independent media and the blogosphere, these new contemporary documentarians often do a better job of reporting the news than their overpaid brethren over at World News Headquarters in New York, Washington D.C. or even Boston.

Perhaps fortunately for Brinkley, the Boston Globe did not open his book review to public comments, or they likely would have been besieged by a rein of rotten virtual tomatoes over the past two weeks. But you can still write a Letter to the Editor through their website if you’d like to let them know of your displeasure.  We heartily encourage you to do so.

THE GOOD NEWS: WE STILL HAVE C-SPAN

If you’re looking for unfiltered coverage of news and events the mainstream media won’t touch (or perhaps because they screw up everything they touch) - such as important testimony before Congress, how your elected reps are voting, or the libertarian party convention, C-SPAN is the only place you’re going to get it. 

And if the mainstream media’s butchering of the Kennedy legacy is starting to get tiresome; if you’re weary of all the nonstop, fawning punditry we’ve had to tolerate lately in the wake of Sen. Kennedy’s cancer diagnosis, Clinton’s “Assassingate,” and the 40th anniversary of RFK’s murder, you might want to keep an eye on C-SPAN over the next couple weeks. They will be broadcasting several programs to remember RFK’s legacy in a low-key, respectful manner.

The first of which we caught live last week; a special symposium and panel discussion on the 1968 campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. Hosted at Washington D.C.’s Newseum, the program featured many of Kennedy’s closest surviving friends sharing their memories of him and was deeply moving to watch.

“To Seek a Newer World: A Symposium on the Life and Legacy of Robert F. Kennedy” was sponsored by the Freedom Forum, Vanderbilt University and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. Kennedy’s widow Ethel and daughter Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend also attended the panel discussion, and were on hand to present the annual Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism Awards later that evening.

Former Kennedy associates John Doar, Peter Edelman, Frank Mankiewicz, John Nolan, John Seigenthaler, James E. Tolan, William Vanden Heuvel, and Charles McDew spoke at length about RFK’s 1968 campaign and the transformative effect his all-too-brief bid for the presidency had on America.

C-SPAN will most likely rebroadcast this program in the days ahead, so keep an eye out for that. You can also watch the video online for free once it has been added to the C-SPAN Archives website.

And just thank your lucky stars (or your cable/satellite provider) for C-SPAN. In the barren desert wasteland of cable news these days, C-SPAN is an oasis, the only network we have left which still serves the public interest, not corporate interests.

 

* Copyright RFKin2008.com. The opinions expressed in this editorial are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Kennedy family, or the owners of this website.

After 40 Years, We Still Miss Someone

A WORLD WITHOUT RFK, 40 YEARS LATER

On June 6, 1968, a sweet dream died with Robert F. Kennedy. A generation lost their last best hope. But even more tragically, ten children lost their father.

Bobby Kennedy never got to meet his eleventh child; his wife Ethel was pregnant with daughter Rory at the time of his assassination. RFK’s daughter would have to grow up knowing her father only through photographs and home movies; through books and stories told by others.

His other children would have only memories of their all-too-brief years together. And his widow now shouldered a tremendous burden: the care and rearing of eleven kids.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was only fourteen when his father died. On the night of June 4, 1968, he had watched the California primary returns on TV and gone to bed early. (His younger brother David, who was in an upstairs room at the Ambassador Hotel, unfortunately decided to stay up late, and saw the horror unfold on live television. The trauma left scars on his heart that never fully healed.)

Within a few hours, young Bobby Jr. and his siblings would be on a plane headed for Los Angeles, barely arriving in time to see their father one last time before he expired.

“I held his hand,” RFK Jr. said later. “His head was bandaged and his eyes blackened. I knew he had little or no chance.”

Saying goodbye to your father in such a way - when he cannot speak, perhaps is unable to hear your words of farewell - leaves an empty chasm inside of a person, an uncertainty which lingers for the rest of your days.

I should know. This is how I lost my father, too.

A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

Bobby Kennedy Jr. and I share the common experience of having both lost our fathers when we were children. Although my father was not murdered, nor was he running for president at the time of his death, our final memories of our fathers is the same: watching the big strong man we knew, loved and looked up to spend his last hours helpless, kept breathing only by life support devices and a noisy menagerie of machines.

My father died when I was nine. After suffering a ruptured aneurysm in his heart, he fought valiantly for three more months — although we all knew the situation was hopeless. And still he fought, day after day, his life a miserable existence of liquid food, IV tubes, and a silence enforced by the respirator tube in his throat. Even if it was a losing battle and he knew it, Dad was fighting for our sake. He didn’t want to leave his lovely young wife a widow with a bewildered nine year-old girl to raise.

He could fight death, but he couldn’t fight fate. Fate always wins. And so, my mother did her best to raise me (or perhaps I should say we rather raised each other) over the years that followed. Although I certainly didn’t make her job any easier. Much like Bobby Kennedy Jr. and some of his other siblings, I railed at the heavens in my teens and made more than my share of mistakes with drugs and alcohol. 

And much like Ethel Kennedy, my mother (stubborn Irish woman that she is) remained devoted to my father’s memory, steadfastly refusing to remarry or even date again. When I asked her why, her answer was always the same: “You can never settle for anything less once you’ve had the best.”

She still idolizes him to this very day, as do I. We still quote his wisdom and witticisms constantly; he’s still a guiding force in both of our lives. We keep him alive in our thoughts and in our hearts. As long as we do not forget him, he lives, no matter how many years pass. And we can still talk to him.

Upon the untimely death of Robert Kennedy’s son Michael on New Year’s Eve, 1997, his eldest brother, then-Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III recalled their father’s 1968 assassination at the funeral. He urged Michael’s three children, ages 10 to 14, to remember their father and speak to him through prayer.

“To little Michael, to Kyle and Rory, you can still talk to your father,” Kennedy said. I’ll never forget those words because my mother once spoke them to me when I was about the same age.

“YOU CAN STILL TALK TO YOUR FATHER”

My mother and father were married for 18 years, up until his death. Their wedding was on January 22, 1963, exactly nine months to the day before the assassination of President Kennedy. I was conceived five years later, about a week after Robert Kennedy’s murder in June of 1968.

This always seemed an odd series of coincidences in our family; especially because my folks were staunch old school Republicans who certainly had no great affection for the Kennedys. My father strongly disliked RFK in particular, and was no doubt mortified to discover his daughter was a true blue Kennedy Democrat practically right out of the womb! (That’s a mystery no one in the family has yet unraveled, believe me.)

Also quite coincidentally, the first time I ever met Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was at a medical science school located right next door to the VA hospital where my father had passed away. I had not been back to the place since the day he died - nor did I ever particularly ever want to see it again - and yet there I was…to meet a person who knew that same painful experience intimately.

To top off this mounting pile of strange coincidences, it just so happened that the man I was about to meet hosts a weekly radio show called Ring of Fire, named for a wonderful old Johnny Cash song. And of course, it just so happens that this song holds a very deep and special significance within my own family.

But that’s another story…one I will share because it connects all of the threads and in a roundabout way, makes my point for me.

THE RING OF FIRE

One of my parents’ favorite songs which stayed on the turntable throughout their honeymoon summer of `63 was Ring of Fire, the latest hit from Johnny Cash. It was love at first listen: my father’s Texas roots made him a sucker for anything with Mariachi horns on it; my mother had always loved the Carter family and correctly predicted this song would be June Carter’s greatest songwriting achievement upon its’ initial release. But more than that, it was one of “their songs,” seeming to describe how they felt about one another.

Actually, the love story of Johnny and June Carter Cash has always reminded me of my parents’ own. In the beginning, theirs was a star-crossed love, too - one that just should never be -and yet simply had to be. Regardless of the odds or outside influences or circumstances or any challenge, these two people were just supposed to be together. Like Johnny and June, they shared an attraction that transcended all logic and convention; a force so powerful it makes you follow its’ will…even if you must pass through a burning ring of fire to finally achieve it.

As she later told the story, her song describes the personal hell Carter went through as she wrestled with her forbidden love for Cash (they were both married to other people at the time) and tried to deal with Cash’s personal “ring of fire” (drug dependency/alcoholism):

One morning, about four o’clock,I was driving my car just about as fast as I could. I thought, ‘Why am I out on the highway this time of night?’ I was miserable, and it all came to me: “I’m falling in love with somebody I have no right to fall in love with…I thought to myself, ”I can’t fall in love with this man, but it’s just like a ring of fire.”

They both knew what was percolating between them, said Johnny:

“We knew what was going to happen: that eventually we were both going to be divorced, and we were going to go through hell. Which we did. But the ‘ring of fire’ was not the hell. That was kind of a sweet fire. The ring of fire that I found myself in with June was the fire of redemption. It cleansed. It made me believe everything was all right, because it felt so good.”

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A 1968 performance of “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash at the Opry.

LOVE AND LOSS

Johnny and June were finally wed on March 1, 1968. A little more than two months after their 35th wedding anniversary, June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003.

Many believe that when June left this earth, she seemed to take Johnny’s spirit with her. He would linger only four more months (Cash passed away on September 12, 2003), but despite his own ill health, honored her wish of continuing to perform to the end. At Johnny’s last concert, he performed Ring of Fire and dedicated it to June, reading a statement about his late wife that he had written shortly before taking the stage. He spoke of how June’s spirit was watching over him and how she had come to visit him before going on stage. He barely made it through the song.

It wasn’t the first time Johnny Cash had known the pain of separation from one he so loved, nor was it the first time he’d spoken of feeling the presence of the departed. He’d walked with ghosts nearly all his life. That’s why the man dressed in black.

Back in 1944, when Cash was only 12, he witnessed his older brother Jack get pulled into a whirling table saw in the mill where he worked. Jack was cut almost in two and suffered for over a week before he died. On his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in heaven. He wrote that he had seen his brother many times in his dreams, and that Jack always looked two years older than whatever age Cash himself was at that moment.

Perhaps that’s who Johnny was thinking of when he sat down with his younger brother Roy to co-write I Still Miss Someoneso many years after their brother Jack’s death.

WE STILL MISS SOMEONE

I Still Miss Someoneappeared on the same 1963 album with Ring of Fire - the record that never seemed to leave my parents’ turntable. His music was always part of the soundtrack of our lives, and I vividly recall wearing the grooves out of I Still Miss Someone for months after my father’s death. Over and over it played, those lonely guitar strains and Cash’s haunting voice echoing throughout the house. So deeply engrained was that song, I can still hear it; can call it up at will and the memories inevitably follow.

Although it’s a song I will always associate with the death of my father, I Still Miss Someone just as easily applies to the loss of any loved one, whether through physical death or separation. It speaks to the tie that binds; a love that never dies; a memory that lives on over decades, perhaps even lifetimes. And it captures the emptiness we all feel inside when that person is severed from us…a space that is never fully filled again…and years later we realize that even after all this time, we still miss someone.

For some reason, that old song has been stuck on my mind for the past couple of days. Perhaps the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s death reminded me of losing my own father, or maybe it was somehow brought to the surface after visiting with the late Senator’s son in Dallas a few days ago. Whatever the reason, the song was in my thoughts and just would not go away. As it has so many times in my life, it seemed to be calling out to me again.

So I finally dug out the album, gave it another listen, and thought about how this song might have touched Bobby Kennedy’s heart after losing his brother Jack in 1963 (believe it or not, JFK loved country and western music and probably had a few Johnny Cash records in his collection). I wondered  how the Kennedy brothers’ widows and children must have felt when they heard this song on the radio a few years later. I Still Miss Someonewas a crossover hit in the `60s, with cover versions by other artists penetrating every genre’ of music (from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Fairport Convention and Ray Charles) - anywhere your radio dial landed back then, you were likely to hear it.

This song may have echoed the feelings of so many Americans who lost the boyish 42 year-old man they had looked to as a kind of unlikely surrogate father figure in 1968. RFK had represented a collective hope: that by electing him, we might somehow replace the president we lost - the symbolic father figure of our nation itself.

But that dream died, too, forty years ago today. And we still miss the man RFK was just as much as we miss the dream he represented.

We know that Johnny Cash always admired the Kennedy brothers, and that he was personally devastated by their deaths. So we don’t think he’d mind too much if we published a slightly altered version of his immortal lyrics in this tribute, changing the “I” in the last verse to a collective “we.” Because we all get the blues at times like these, and we all still miss someone.

I STILL MISS SOMEONE

Lyrics by Johnny Cash

(From the album Ring of Fire, released November 1, 1963)

At my door the leaves are falling
A cold wild wind has come
Sweethearts walk by together
And I still miss someone

Oh, no I never got over those blue eyes
I see them everywhere
I miss those arms that held me
When all the love was there

I wonder if he’s sorry
For leavin’ what we’d begun
There’s someone for me somewhere
And I still miss someone

I go out on a party
And look for a little fun
But I find a darkened corner
‘Cause I still miss someone

Oh, no I never got over those blue eyes
I see them every where
I miss those arms that held me
When all the love was there

And I wonder if he’s sorry
For leavin’ what we’d begun
There’s someone for us somewhere
And we still miss someone

And we still miss someone.

We all still miss you, Bobby Kennedy. Your wife and kids miss you. Your family and friends miss you, too. The whole damn country misses you. But most of all, this world misses you…and after 40 years, we realize that we need you more than ever.

Front page of the New York Post depicting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the bier of his father. June 7, 1968.

 

Copyright RFKin2008.com.

Midnight in Dealey Plaza

Midnight in the Plaza of Good and Evil

MIDNIGHT IN DEALEY PLAZA

Ever stood on the Grassy Knoll at midnight? Only the truly brave dare. But there’s no reason to fear (despite all you hear about Elm Street, it’s perfectly safe to walk, even at that late hour). Actually, you might find it a perfect moment to visit the Scene of the Crime and do a bit of quiet reflecting.

At midnight, Dealey Plaza is silent, almost strangely serene but for the occasional car whizzing by en route to Stemmons Freeway. The old School Book Depository (now the 6th Floor Museum, as it’s called) building sits dark. The tourists, museum visitors, downtown businessmen and County office workers who keep this public park a bustling beehive of activity won’t be along for a few more hours yet. No street vendors or conspiracy buffs to disturb your thoughts, sell you something, or try to engage you in a debate about Who Shot John.

No - at midnight in Dealey Plaza, it’s just you, the night, the place, the memories, and God.

In the stillness, you can’t help but wonder why someone picked such a beautiful spot to do such an ugly thing. How could anyone want to destroy a nation’s highest hopes and dreams in a lush and lovely green tree-lined square, surrounded by Art Deco edifices, statues and a historic marker which informs all who come here that on this very spot, the city of Dallas was founded. This bluff selected because of its’ exquisite natural beauty.

And you wonder why more people don’t seem to care. The average Dallas citizen drives though this plaza several times a week, if not every day. They’ve passed over the “X” marking the spot where JFK lost his life so many times in their normal daily commute, most of them honestly don’t even realize or notice anymore. They just walk or drive on by; going about their lives with nary a thought as to how many tears have watered the ground beneath their feet.

Looking around, you’d never know this place is one of the most historic killing zones in American history. The locals enjoy concerts and events here; families gather on Sunday afternoons; downtown dwellers walk their dogs around, and occasionally you’ll even see some young office boy trying to impress an attractive coworker with a picnic lunch. (Strange place for a date, one can’t help but think…)

TRANSFORMING TRAGEDY INTO HOPE

I just returned from a weekend in Dallas, and can only write of this experience because I had it myself. As it turned out, the hotel my employer had arranged was located two blocks from Dealey Plaza and to make matters even a bit stranger still, my window overlooked the Plaza with a Bird’s Eye View of History.  That in itself was enough to give me the creeps.

They say you should always do the things you are afraid of, and then you won’t be afraid anymore. Although I’ve visited Dealey Plaza many times through the years during daytime hours, I always wondered if I had the guts to try it at midnight. All by myself. Alone. Somehow, I summoned the courage and am glad I did. The moments of insight I experienced there at such a quiet hour could never be equalled during the hustle-bustle of day. 

Not that it wasn’t a little strange, mind you. Imagine strolling through a Civil War battlefield or walking around Pearl Harbor late at night. Imagine sitting in Lincoln’s box at the Ford Theatre after hours. An experience not for the faint of heart, or for anyone who is afeard of ghosts.

On this warm, breezy, moonless early June night, my thoughts turned to President Kennedy’s life, even while I sat here in the place where he died. In those quiet moments of reflection I thought that this November will mark 45 years since that awful day in Dallas, and what have we done since then?

This is not the world JFK envisioned for future generations. In those solitary moments of meditation, I felt the urgency of Robert Kennedy’s efforts; how hard he worked to bring about more enlightened world, and recalled that he too was prevented from that goal by an assassin’s bullet exactly 40 years ago this weekend.

And then this, from “The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways” department: I also ran into Bobby Kennedy Jr., who was in town to speak at the IPI Convention on Sunday morning. While my schedule prevented me from attending/covering the conference, we at least had the opportunity to catch up a bit the previous evening.

During that conversation, needless to say, I didn’t mention the date looming large on the calendar. I didn’t mention where we were, nor did I once mention his father, his uncles John or Ted. I didn’t feel a need to.

Some things are too intense for words. Some best felt but never spoken of. Looking into the face of Bobby Kennedy’s namesake son and seeing that family resemblance that is at times always a bit jarring - but on the 40th anniversary of his father’s murder and in the place where President Kennedy was assassinated nearly a half-century ago only stressed to me the central point of why this generation must continue their work.

Because people are starting to forget…what the Kennedys lived, fought and died for…and we can’t let that happen.

Some say that the Kennedys are already forgotten relics of an earlier age; that they hold no real power in American politics anymore - and perhaps in some circles that’s true. But just ask those college kids (and younger) at a  Barack Obama rally why they’re “fired up” and “ready to go!” - they’ll tell `ya “because Barack is the black JFK!” - and you begin to hope anew again.

 

 

Copyright RFKin2008.com.

Obama Taps Caroline Kennedy To Lead VP Search

The presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee: now that it’s all but official, Senator Barack Obama is getting down to the business of selecting a running mate. Today he announced that Caroline Kennedy will be part of a three-member team who will help him choose a VP.

OBAMA TAPS CAROLINE KENNEDY TO LEAD VEEP SEARCH

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama turned in earnest to the general election and the hunt for a running mate Wednesday, embraced by Democratic leaders who signaled forcefully and sometimes impatiently to Hillary Rodham Clinton that her marathon duel with Obama was over. Clinton kept her silence in public, while supporters made a case for her as Obama’s No. 2.

Obama himself moved to link himself more closely with a young Democratic hero of a half-century ago, picking President Kennedy’s daughter Caroline to help him choose a vice president.

While Clinton still wasn’t conceding, even after Tuesday’s primaries and a flood of “superdelegate” endorsements of Obama sealed the nomination, there were signs aplenty that she was closing shop. She began bidding campaign staff members farewell, and a number were told not to come to work after Friday. Last paychecks were expected to go out June 15.

The primary rivals ran into each other backstage at a hall where both spoke to Jewish leaders, but Obama said there was no mention of how or when she would formally end her long campaign to become the nation’s first female president.

Obama showed no impatience, merely smiling and accepting congratulations from colleagues in both parties as he returned to the Capitol for a Senate vote. But other Democrats urged her to get out of the way.

“I don’t see why we don’t get on with it and endorse” Obama, said Rep. Charles Rangel, a congressman from Clinton’s home state of New York. He said it was only a matter of time before he and other Clinton supporters formally back Obama.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Obama supporter, said Clinton’s non-concession “creates a pretty delicate situation here, an awkward situation.”

“I don’t want to push her. Nobody is going to push her,” Durbin said on MSNBC. “But the sooner she does, I think the more likely we’re going to be organized and ready to win in November.”

Obama began focusing on who will join his ticket in the fall. His campaign said the vetting of potential running mates was to be managed by a three-person team of Caroline Kennedy, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and longtime Washington insider Jim Johnson.

Clinton has told lawmakers privately that she would be interested in the vice presidential nomination. Obama was noncommittal after his chat with her behind the scenes at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“We’re going to be having a conversation in coming weeks, and I’m very confident how unified the Democratic Party’s going to be to win in November,” he told reporters after a vote in the Senate where he received congratulations from all sides.

RFK Jr. on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton earlier this year in NJ.

(Well, if an Obama/Clinton ticket ain’t gonna happen: Pssst…Caroline! if it wouldn’t be too classic a case of Kennedy nepotism, we’d like to nominate your cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the VP selection committee’s consideration.)

CLINTON CAMPAIGN IS OVER

Update: As of late this afternoon, CNN is reporting that Senator Hillary Clinton will officially end her campaign Friday.

Meanwhile, the dam holding back endorsements broke from coast to coast on the day after the primary elections concluded.

Seven senators who had stayed out of the matter said they were giving Obama their commitment and would work toward uniting Democrats for the election, now exactly five months away.

In Nashville, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen was joined by two other superdelegates to say they hoped to bring the party behind Obama even though Clinton won their state. Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who had been a Clinton supporter, announced he was backing Obama.

It hardly mattered in terms of delegate math - after months of struggle, Obama had more than enough to prevail at the party convention in Denver in August. But Obama’s new backers were also sending a message to Clinton that her race was over.

Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, was lobbying members of the Congressional Black Caucus to urge Obama to place Clinton on the ticket. He said he was doing so with her blessing.

Rangel, a founding member of the caucus, expressed doubts that Johnson’s approach would work. “I don’t really think that the way to get Obama to (choose) Clinton would be to put pressure on him. I think it would have the opposite effect,” Rangel said.

The Obama camp’s disclosure about the three-person veep vetting team was an effort to change the subject from the long, divisive primary campaign toward the general election.

Kennedy’s name came as a surprise, although she endorsed Obama at a critical time last winter, saying he could be an inspirational leader like her father. She also campaigned for Obama.

Holder is a former federal prosecutor and District of Columbia Superior Court judge who held the No. 2 job at the Justice Department under President Clinton.

Johnson is widely known among Democrats for having helped previous candidates, including John Kerry four years ago, sift through vice presidential possibilities. He is a former chief executive officer for the mortgage lender Fannie Mae.

Clinton visited her campaign headquarters in suburban Arlington, Va., where she thanked staff members for their work. Aides said she was also phoning superdelegates and supporters, and planned to host an 89th birthday celebration at her Washington home for her mother, Dorothy Rodham.

Several high-dollar fundraisers who had spoken to the former first lady described her as upbeat and realistic about what she faced.

“She’s very resolved, but open minded about whatever’s coming. She’s going forward with an optimistic eye,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a San Francisco-based fundraiser who flew from New York to Washington early Wednesday morning.

Some lawmakers showed deference to Clinton, an indication of the political and fundraising power that she and her husband still wield.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, an uncommitted superdelegate, said he will be supporting Obama but declined to make a formal endorsement. “I expect Mrs. Clinton to say some things over the next couple of days and I think that’s appropriate for her to do. And I expect her to say that, at which time I may make a more formal” announcement, Hoyer said.

Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett, Laurie Kellman, Beth Fouhy and Jesse Holland contributed to this report.
06/04/08 18:05 © Copyright The Associated Press.

Ted Kennedy Undergoes Brain Surgery

KENNEDY’S BRAIN SURGERY CALLED A SUCCESS

DURHAM, North Carolina (AFP) — US Senator Edward Kennedy underwent “successful” brain cancer surgery Monday, his doctor said, as the political icon vowed a return to work and to campaigning for presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

“I am pleased to report that Senator Kennedy’s surgery was successful and accomplished our goals,” Duke University Medical Center doctor Allan Freidman said in a statement.

“Senator Kennedy was awake during the resection, and should therefore experience no permanent neurological effects from the surgery,” said Freidman, one of the country’s top brain surgeons.

The delicate three-and-a-half hour surgery, Freidman said, was “the first step” in the Democratic party giant’s treatment plan. After a brief recuperation Kennedy is due to begin targeted radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston followed by chemotherapy treatment.

Kennedy, 76, is the last surviving brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

He reportedly told his wife, Victoria, afterward: “I feel like a million bucks. I think I’ll do that again tomorrow,” said the senator’s office, cited by US media.

The liberal lion of the Senate said he was eyeing an eventual return to Capitol Hill and to campaigning for Obama, whom he endorsed earlier this year.

“After completing treatment, I look forward to returning to the United States Senate and to doing everything I can to help elect Barack Obama as our next president,” the senator said.

Kennedy was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on May 17 after suffering a seizure at his family’s compound in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod.

Following results from a biopsy, doctors diagnosed Kennedy with a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, an area of the brain which controls speech, among other functions.

Doctors have not publicly offered a prognosis for Kennedy. But the US National Cancer Institute has said the outlook for such a diagnosis is poor, with average life expectancy depending on the stage of the tumor, from a few months to up to five years.

Gliomas often begin with genetic changes in the brain’s glial cells — cells which support neurological activity — although the source of such changes remains a mystery, according to experts.

A key challenge for doctors is removing such tumors without harming healthy brain tissue.

About 13,000 Americans die annually from malignant tumors in the brain or spinal cord, comprising 2.2 percent of all cancer-linked deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. Survival has improved over the past decade due in part to new drugs.

The tumors kills 50 percent of patients during the first year after diagnosis and few live beyond three years. Without treatment the tumor grows back between two to three months after being surgically removed.

The brain tumor diagnosis sent shockwaves through the US Congress, where Kennedy has been a dominant figure for nearly half a century.

He is a champion of causes such as health care, education, workers rights and immigration reform.

While he has been a fierce critic of President George W. Bush, he has also reached out to work with Republicans.

Kennedy, whose eighth term in the Senate expires in 2012, once seemed destined for the White House.

But his career was rocked by the death of a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, in his car late one night in 1969 after he drove off a bridge near Chappaquiddick island.

He did run for president in 1980 against incumbent Jimmy Carter. Kennedy lost the Democratic nomination but politically damaged Carter, who lost the general election to Republican Ronald Reagan.

Kennedy’s latest health crisis came six months after he had surgery to clear a blockage in a major neck artery, a common procedure to prevent a stroke.

His brother, late president John F. Kennedy Jr. was shot and killed in 1963, and brother Robert Kennedy was shot dead while campaigning for the presidency in 1968.

Ted is the youngest of nine children in the famed Kennedy clan. His eldest brother Joseph died in a plane crash during World War II.

Kennedys Still Shape Our History

KENNEDY DYNASTY STILL HAS POWER TO SHAPE NATION’S HISTORY

 The last brother is gravely ill, prompting an outpouring of acclaim, even from precincts that seldom have praised him. The Democratic Party is in a swivet over remarks Hillary Rodham Clinton made about the second brother, whose June triumph in the tumultuous year 1968 was undone by his June assassination. A sad spring anniversary — 40 years ago this week — approaches, dreaded by many of the victim’s aging acolytes, their idealism undiminished, their hero’s promise never realized. Who says the Kennedys are in eclipse?

For years the Bushes have been the American dynasty in the ascendancy. They’ve served three terms as president (about 5 percent of the time the United States has existed), been elected governor four times (of two of the four biggest states, comprising almost one-seventh of the nation’s population), served in the House, the Senate and the vice presidency, and at the United Nations, the Central Intelligence Agency and in an important diplomatic post in China.

The Bushes may be the family that defines the nation in its third century. Today the Kennedys have almost no political power — but they still retain immense power over all of us. Right now we are again in one of those Kennedy moments.

It began when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was diagnosed with an inoperable malignant brain tumor. The Massachusetts Democrat is often called the “lion of the Senate,” and his roar has given voice to those without health insurance, without economic prospects, without education or training. He is a liberal — the liberals’ liberal, you might say — but often his hand extended across the aisle, meeting Sen. Orrin Hatch’s to craft legislation on children’s health insurance and hate crimes, meeting George W. Bush’s to shape education law.

In the days since Mr. Kennedy’s diagnosis, Republicans and Democrats alike have said that they cannot imagine the Senate without him. That is in part because Mr. Kennedy is the third longest-serving senator in history, after Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. (He has been in the Senate a third longer than the entire life expectancy of a person born the year the Constitution was written.)

The Kennedys have been a prominent part of American history since the senator’s father was appointed the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a span that covers about a third of the nation’s history — and that does not account for the political lineage on Mr. Kennedy’s mother’s side, which includes John F. Fitzgerald, who more than a century ago became the first American-born Irish-Catholic mayor of Boston.

All three Kennedy brothers — the fourth brother, the oldest, Joe Jr., perished in World War II — served in the Senate and ran for president. Ted’s older brothers inspired two generations of Americans with their intelligence, wit and eloquence. But Ted, perhaps the least quotable but surely the most approachable of the three, is still, at 76, building a formidable legacy. His brothers’ words are in large letters on the sides of buildings and in the hearts and memory of a nation. But the youngest brother is the fine-print Kennedy. His words are in the fine print of the nation’s laws.

Few who met the new senator in 1962 (or who watched him in the frantic days after Chappaquiddick) thought he’d become a heavyweight legislator. Nine presidents later, Mr. Kennedy is arguably one of the leading dozen senators of American history. His colleagues include Webster, Calhoun and Clay.

Dynastic politics are difficult politics, which is why anything involving the Kennedys and such powerful families as the Bushes or Clintons is fraught with difficulty. Sen. Clinton’s remarks about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy likely were made in the spirit of saying that presidential nomination fights, like operas, aren’t over until the fat lady sings. But with her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, provided with early Secret Service protection and with