One Brief Shining Moment

happy 4th of july in a kennedy way! 🇺🇸❤️💙🤍

The man I knew was so very different from the mythology about him that the media constantly perpetuated. Article after article would describe RFK as being ruthless and calculating, driven only by political ambition. They were always attributing ulterior motives to everything he did. Some even seemed to view the sadness that surrounded him as nothing more than stubborn sullenness. The attacks continued even into his campaign for President, up until the day he died.

Perhaps reporters just didn’t want the public to think that they had gone soft on him, but in writing these stories, they demonstrated instead a reckless disregard for the truth and an unmistakable bias against the Senator. In response, he would sometimes make self-deprecating jokes about his “ruthlessness,” but I think it was simply a cover for the hurt and anger that he felt about that characterization. When I knew him, he simply wasn’t at all that way. He was sensitive, compassionate, and totally authentic. Yes, he could do or say things that sometimes seemed contradictory, but I think that was more a reflection of his own personal complexity rather than any sort of political calculation or ruthlessness on his part.

At his center, he had a truly gentle spirit, and he was shy—so shy that his hands would actually shake when he spoke, particularly in public. This is not to suggest that he was weak or soft, because he wasn’t—he was tough and he was courageous. And he was a gifted politician as well, but he had to work at it—it didn’t come naturally. So much of who he was existed below the surface—hidden in some private place that few got to see. As Adam Walinsky would say about the Senator years later, “He was a lot of things…He was sensitive, but he was a tough guy.” Still, the accusations got to him, I think.

The beat poet Allen Ginsberg came to see the Senator in his office early in 1968 and, at one point, he accused RFK of being “heartless” and told him that what the country needed was “a politician who’s friendly and tender-hearted”—with the clear implication that RFK wasn’t. Ginsberg would later say that the Senator “really resented that.” I’m not surprised. As Adam would remark about the Ginsberg meeting, “I could see him taking umbrage...Because, remember, by the time this happens, he’s had his Gethsemane and he’s pretty much aware that his Calvary is ahead of him. And by that point, he’s picked up and held a lot of little poor kids, who probably have pellagra all over them. So when he gets lectured on tenderness, maybe he’s thinking, ‘Who is this guy? Has he been where I’ve been?’” Adam added that he had often seen the Senator become irritable when he was completely misunderstood. And who could blame him?

It must have been extremely frustrating for him to have to continually deal with all of these firmly held misconceptions about his character, particularly when he would go out of his way to listen to people, to let them have their say, like he’d done with Ginsberg, only to have them turn around and insult him.