In fact, on Halloween 1963, I played JFK, complete with plastic mask. 22 days later, JFK was murdered. I heard the cheers of 3rd and 4th graders up the hall in Mantua, N.J.
Later I read Arthur Schlesinger’s book, A Thousand Days, about the Kennedy Administration – he noted how kids in Dallas cheered. But they cheered at my elementary school. JFK worked to extend civil rights to all and saved the world from conflagration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was apparent that the Protestant parents of some of the kids in my school hated JFK because he was a Roman Catholic (like me); that is why 3rd and 4th grade children cheered upon news that our President was shot.
In 1968, Senator Robert Francis Kennedy was murdered; I was eleven years old. I was devastated. I supported his run for the presidency and opposed the war in Vietnam. Senator Kennedy spoke from the heart, spontaneously, in the heart of Indianapolis’ ghetto the night that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered:
…we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. ..
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much. (Applause)
In 1972, the Watergate scandal broke. I was fifteen years old. I watched the scandal unfold, read the New York Times every day and watched the Senate Watergate hearings on TV. Slowly, like all other thinking Americans, came to the conclusion that President Richard Milhous Nixon was a crook. The lessons that I learned watching Watergate shaped the rest of my life – holding governments and corporations accountable to the people and using journalism and law to do it.
I watched Richard Nixon resign and leave office in disgrace in August 1974.
Within days I was enrolled at Georgetown University, where I hoped to watch the criminal trial of Richard Nixon.
There I heard Ralph Nader speak to Georgetown freshmen in Gaston Hall, answering all our questions until the last students left.
The next day, I volunteered to work for Senator Edward M. Kennedy (at age 17 ½) and worked for him and three Senators, earning the nickname of “Fast Eddie” in Kennedy’s office for the speed with which I perambulated about the Senate, U.S. Capitol and environs and performed errands.
A few weeks later, our new President, Gerald Rudolph Ford, pardoned disgraced, resigned ex-president Richard Milhous Nixon. I found out about the Nixon pardon when one of the maids in our dormitory walked in my room and told me about it. I was so angry I punched the wall by my desk, next to the color photo of Robert Kennedy.
Punching the wall hurt – it was made of actual plaster (I was a “hick from the sticks” of Southern New Jersey, where our walls were made of wallboard).
Our country was hurt by Ford’s pardon, which functioned as a never-go-to-jail card, and allowed a criminal politician to avoid a criminal trial, without Nixon ever confessing his guilt.
I watched as anti-Gay haters (like Jerry Falwell) announced a “30 years war against homosexuality,” attempting to declare 10% of Americans were immoral and persona non grata, enacting Nuremberg-style laws (including the Defense of Marriage Act and the recently repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law).
When Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated to the Supreme Court, Jerry Falwell and other haters opposed her, because she might be pro-choice. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) said at a public forum that “every good Christian ought to line up to kick Barry Goldwater in the ass.” Rep. Morris K. Udall responded by passed note, “he’d just turn the other cheek.”
I watched as President Ronald Reagan attacked civil rights and held his first campaign appearance in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a KKK stronghold where civil rights workers Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman were arrested on bogus speeding charges, released by the local sheriff and murdered by his friends in the KKK.
I’ve watched as organized bigots, funded by right-wing oil billionaires, have attacked every progressive politician, targeting them.
I've watched as St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID BERNARD SHOAR issued t-shirts encouraging violence against anti-war protesters (although he later apologized to me and our community, the t-shirt speaks volumes about the quality of debate in our county).
I've watched SHOAR coverup the September 2, 2010 shooting death of Michelle O'Connell in the home of one of SHOAR's deputies, with his service weapon, aided and abetted by State's Attorneys RALPH JOSEPH LARIZZA and BRADLEY KING, Medical Examiner PREGRAG BULIC, M.D. and Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT, who took the Fifth Amendment 75 times in depositions involving his dodgy corporation, which paid some $1.6 billion in settling Medicare and Medicaid fraud charges.
Lately, I’ve watched reprobate St. Augustine MAYOR JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. spend 1/5 of his campaign budget on HATE RADIO for his re-election campaign and law office advertising, soliciting clients.
Despite his occasionally inspiring efforts to reach out to African-Americans, including Ambassador Andrew Young, BOLES is NOW subsidizing HATE RADIO with thousands of dollars from his personal fortune and campaign coffers.
I've watched SHOAR coverup the September 2, 2010 shooting death of Michelle O'Connell in the home of one of SHOAR's deputies, with his service weapon, aided and abetted by State's Attorneys RALPH JOSEPH LARIZZA and BRADLEY KING, Medical Examiner PREGRAG BULIC, M.D. and Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT, who took the Fifth Amendment 75 times in depositions involving his dodgy corporation, which paid some $1.6 billion in settling Medicare and Medicaid fraud charges.
Lately, I’ve watched reprobate St. Augustine MAYOR JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. spend 1/5 of his campaign budget on HATE RADIO for his re-election campaign and law office advertising, soliciting clients.
Despite his occasionally inspiring efforts to reach out to African-Americans, including Ambassador Andrew Young, BOLES is NOW subsidizing HATE RADIO with thousands of dollars from his personal fortune and campaign coffers.
As Douglas Bloomfield wrote about his late father in the Jerusalem Post in 2009: “To him many of the hate radio voices of today were echoes of one from his youth, Father Charles Coughlin, the rabid anti-Semitic radio preacher who praised Hitler and accused FDR of ‘leaning toward international socialism’ (sound familiar?) and being a tool of the Jews. Dad didn't listen to talk radio; it just made him angry, he said, and he thought most of those on it were "stupid." He said people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and their ilk reminded him of Father Coughlin. He called them ‘aginners.; They don't stand for anything, they just want to tear things and people down and tell you what they're against, he liked to say. ‘They're aginners, not builders,’ he explained. ‘It's always easier to be an aginner.’ The aginners don't have to take any responsibility, they don't have to solve problems. Actually they prefer to create problems for others, he'd say. Often the aginners are haters, racists, elitists. Or they are stirring up rage for purely mercenary reasons. NO PARTY has a monopoly on aginners, although the conservatives appear intent on cornering the market these days and have the greatest access to the mass media - despite absurd claims about the ‘liberal media.’ Race baiting is a popular focus for hate-talkers like Beck, who has accused the president of hating white people, and Limbaugh, who is alerting the nation to the looming crisis created by two black teens beating up a white kid on a Missouri school bus. …When it came to politics, my father and I found little in common, but there was one thing we could agree on - the aginners. Dad would have agreed with The New York Times's resident conservative columnist David Brooks, who said Beck and Limbaugh, with their agenda of fear and hate instead of ideas and policy, aren't going to take over the country, but they are taking over the Republican Party, and that's not good for the country.”
In Arizona, these have reached a fever pitch, and Arizona is becoming, as Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik said, “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”
"It’s time for us to do some soul-searching,” Sheriff Dupnik said.
I reckon Sheriff Dupnik is correct.
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, won re-election over a Republican Tea Party opponent backed by Sarah Palin, who urged that Giffords was someone who needed to be taken out! “Don’t retreat, instead- RELOAD!” was how Sarah Palin introduced a map targeting 20 officeholders for their support of health care reform, targeting GIffords’ Congresional district with rifle cross-hairs. Palin’s staff now claims that the cross-hairs were “surveyor’s marks.” That dog won’t hunt.
According to Desert Living Today, quoting Gawker, “Giffords’ Tea Party opponent in the 2010 election, Jesse Kelly, went even further with the violent rhetoric. Kelly’s campaign held an event called ‘Get on Target for Victory in November.’ Description: ‘Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.’”
After Gabrielle Giffords was shot down on Saturday at a Tucson Safeway supermarket, Sarah Palin wrote,” “My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona. On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.”
“Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue,” as Francois de la Rochefoucauld said.
Our Founders pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” to protecting liberty in our Declaration of Independence.
Some haters would like to read out of the Constitution Hispanics, African-Americans, women, poor people and Gays and Lesbians. These haters are other-directed and would if empowered vote to protect only corporations’ rights (like House Speaker John Boehner).
Haters want to divide us between “us and them” – as Bill Clinton once said, “they’re ‘themming’ us to death.”
They’d like America the way Dick Cheney wanted it – “afraid, very afraid!”
Authoritarians would like to rule the world and destroy our democracy. Senator Robert F. Kennedy said in South Africa June 6, 1966, in the face of the racist Apartheid government there: “"Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation ... It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Real Americans agree with the late Senator Robert Kennedy, who said in the Indianapolis ghetto April 4, 1968: “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”
No comments:
Post a Comment