The Slow Moon Climbs

I don't think that we're automatically correct or automatically right and morality is on our side or God is automatically on our side because were involved in a war. I don't think that the mere fact that the United States is involved in the use of force with an adversary makes everything that the United States then does absolutely correct. So I ─ the idea that we're involved in this kind of a struggle, if there are those within the United States that feel that the struggle could be ended more rapidly with less loss of life, that the terror and the destruction would be less if we took a different course, then I think that they should make their views known. I don't think they're less patriotic because they feel that. In fact, I think that they would be less patriotic if they didn't state their views and give their ideas, just because the United States is involved in this kind of a conflict as we are at the present time. Not to state any opposition, or say that we can't state an opposition because of the ─ the fact that we're involved in a struggle I think is an error. This is a difficult period of time, but the mere fact that we're shooting one another across the world doesn't make the United States automatically right.

─ Robert Kennedy

We Band of Brothers by Edwin Guthman

Jack was a precious commodity and was not to be scratched, worn down or irritated… A campaign is a difficult thing and there are endless decisions to be made. Not only must the candidate be saved from making them in order to conserve his time, but more ─ a lot of the decisions are cruel, they have an element of rejection in them, and they can make enemies. Thus a person whose campaign idea or campaign role is rejected must not be made to think that it was the candidate who had turned him down. He must think that it was unsympathetic underlings. In this case it was the illiberal Bobby who was blocking him out. It was also Bobby who had to separate the endless fights between the local reform groups and the local machines, while keeping both in the Kennedy camp. It must always be the Good Jack and the Bad Bobby.

The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy by David Halberstam

in 1964

Physically, it was a miserable start. Day after day, he was scratched, squeezed, pummeled, and thrashed. He began wearing suits off-the-rack since they were shredded within a few days. He sported cloth cuff links instead of the gold ones Jack had given him since they were repeatedly torn from his wrists. He bled mostly from the hands, though a woman gashed his chin. In Plattsburgh, a large man squeezed the back of his neck and pounded his back with exuberance. “Bobby! Bobby!” Flowers, confetti, and rice flitted in the air like a disorienting dream. Three times , they bowled him over, Markham and Guthman holding fast to his legs and belt. Riding away from Plattsburgh’s dedication of the John F. Kennedy Bridge, Bobby asked in a weak voice, “Do I have to make another speech?” “One more here, Bob. There are a lot of people waiting in town.” Each day ended by cleaning the scratches with ointment to ward off infection.

In another little pool of light on the greasy floor was a huddle of clothes and staring out of it the face of Bobby Kennedy, like the stone face of a child’s effigy on a cathedral tomb.

The single word that was broadcast for two and one-half hours, from 8:20 A.M. to 11 A.M., over WPIX-TV yesterday. Instead of cartoons, a rise- and shine exercise show, a comedy and two dramatic programs, the single word "Shame" appeared on the television screens of viewers watching WPIX-TV (Channel 11) yesterday morning. “Shame is what everybody should be feeling,” Fred M. Thrower, president of WPIX, Inc., said yesterday. He said it would have been “ludicrous” to start the day as usual with regular programming in view of the shooting of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The station usually goes on the air at 8:20 A.M., with a test pattern. Regular programming begins 10 minutes later. Mr. Thrower said that it was not possible "to gear up and get news working" in time to start the day. "But we wanted to try and say something," Mr. Thrower added, and so he thought of the message, "Shame." No slide makers were in the studio so a piece of glass was covered with dust and the word written on it with a finger.

Robert Kennedy attending the funeral of Cardinal Spellman on December 7, 1967. When the U.S. entered the Vietnam War, Spellman staunchly supported the intervention and called the war a “war for civilization” and “Christ's war against the Viet Cong and the people of North Vietnam.”

Heretical was Kennedy's mood at Cardinal Spellman's funeral. The Kennedy family had long been at odds with Spellman, who favored Nixon for the Presidency in I960. Riding to the services at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Kennedy was complaining that he would have to sit through a boring, three-hour service next to Lyndon Johnson, while keeping a solemn expression on his face. When I offered him a copy of The Village Voice to read, he got an even more irreverent idea, and dispatched an aide to find him a copy of the Old Testament, which he would covertly read all through the services. The next day I asked him if he had actually read the Old Testament. He answered, “All the way up to Absalom, Absalom. Test me, and I'll prove it.”

─ Jack Newfield

Photo by Jean-Pierre Laffont