In the current issue of New York Magazine, veteran journalist Pete Hamill writes beautifully about being friends with Robert F. Kennedy and witnessing his assassination, which happened 40 years ago next month.
By 11 p.m., it seemed clear that Kennedy had won California, a huge triumph that would erase the comparatively minor shame of defeat in Oregon. Now we were in Kennedy’s own room: Schulberg, Brian, Cesar Chavez, Newfield, Breslin. I remember squatting with my back against a wall. Kennedy was on the floor, back to a sofa, one arm resting on a raised knee, the other leg stretched out. Others came and went. Frank Mankiewicz handed him a sheet of paper. Maybe words for a speech. Maybe more results. The TV set was on, the sound off, showing Kennedy ahead. Most people had glasses in their hands. Beer. Harder stuff. Soft drinks.
The mood was light, almost giddy. Kennedy smiled and smiled, and laughed out loud at Breslin’s interminable New York joking. Then someone said, glancing at a watch, that it was time to go down. Kennedy stood up, buttoned his cuffs and his collar, went into the bathroom. Everybody else was standing now. Some went back to the larger room across the hall where television might offer a better view. Kennedy came out of the men’s room. He had combed his hair and donned a jacket. He was smiling broadly.
“Let’s go down,†he said.
I saw Hillary’s interview that is making the rounds over all the and have to say what they are doing to her is what they did to Howard Dean in 2004 by taking it way out of context. If this doesn’t prove the press is trying to get her out of the running ASAP so Obama can get another step toward the presidency I don’t know what is. Everything she says is under the microscope & I am so tired of the way she is being trampled on all the time.
What context is there to take it out of? She can’t win the nomination without the superdelegates reversing the vote. She was asked to explain her rationale for staying in the race even though she can’t win, and instead she deflected the question and turned it into some bullshit random abstraction about the calendar. It has nothing, really, to do with how long the primary has lasted. People aren’t telling her to GO AWAY because it’s nearly June, they’re trying to get her to acknowledge that she lost. A long time ago.