Wonkette
As Hillary Clinton has been reminding us during the long 2008 primary season, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June. Historians say RFK was specifically shot, multiple times, 40 years ago today, in the tranquil year of 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary.
(The anniversary of RFK’s assassination is June 5, 1968, because he was shot just after midnight California time following his June 4 primary victory. He died at 1:44 a.m. Pacific time on June 6, at Good Samaritan Hospital a few miles from the mid-Wilshire Ambassador, 26 hours after being shot.)
It was all just like Hillary’s campaign, except for these minor differences:
- RFK had entered the race just three months earlier, in March of 1968. Hillary began officially campaigning on January 20, 2007, nearly two years before the November 2008 election.
- RFK reportedly had no interest in the 1968 White House race until March of that year, while Hillary had been unofficially running since John Kerry lost in 2004.
- RFK was a young anti-war candidate who excited young voters who wanted a change from the war-crazed Democrat in the White House, while Hillary is a war-crazed Democrat who actually lived in the White House for eight years.
- At the scene of RFK’s assassination, everybody from Rosemary Clooney (who had a nervous breakdown) to George Plimpton and Rosie Grier were at hand. There was nobody at the scene of Hillary’s concession, as she did it in a 2 a.m. email sent only to her followers.
Experts also note that Bobby Kennedy has like 45 daughters and granddaughters and they will soon take over the world, with Obama.
Kennedy is Dead, Victim of Assassin [NYT]
A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy In the Sixties [ABC News]
“while Hillary had been unofficially running since John Kerry lost in 2004.”
I trust the editorial genuineness of Wonkette too much, Ken. Everyone knows that Hillary has been running since she was in grade school. Didn’t you post the “Young Hillary Clinton” video from the You Tubez?
The anniversary of RFK’s death is June 5, 1968, because he was shot just after midnight California time following his June 4 primary victory. He died at 1:44 a.m. Pacific time on June 6, at Good Samaritan Hospital a few miles from the mid-Wilshire Ambassador, 26 hours after being shot.
I’m confused… is this like how the new millenuim began on Jan 1 2000, but not really, actually it didn’t start ’till 2001?
Also, Kennedy’s secretary was Mrs. Lincoln, and Lincoln’s secretary was Mrs. Kennedy.
Serolf Divad: Yeah, also I make no sense there. I meant the anniversary of his assassination. Fixed.
So are the Superdelegates like, the second gunman?
Don’t forget, too, that Bobby was shot by a Palestinian while Hillary wants to shoot Palestinians.
Oh my god, those granddaughters! My perverted mind wants to believe that they actually live like that, all the time. I mean, it’s a sorority house full of Kennedys! Can you even wrap your mind around how awesome that would be?!
Ken Layne: “After all, it was you and me?” Don’t blame me for that shit.
Yup, if there’s one word that describes Hillarty, it’s Class.
If Rosie Greer were still alive, Hillary would never have conceded defeat (or alluded to conceding defeat, whatevs).
Gopherit v2.0: Are your “C” & “l” keys stuck?
A lot of people resented Bobby’s cynical opportunism in deciding to run only after Eugene McCarthy showed that LBJ was vulnerable. Not to say that such opportunism was unique to him, or that it warranted his being shot by a Crazed Palestinian Gunman™ named Sirhan [sup2]. In fact, when it comes to opportunism, Hillary’s kinda cornered that market.
StrangelyBrown: Growing Up Hotti?
Oooh! Oooh! I know this one!
Thane Eugene Cesar! In the pantry! With an Iver-Johnson!
Do I win something? Wonkette mouse-ears? Pretty please???
And now, the Ambassador hotel has been demolished to make way for a high school. Los Angeles, where history goes to die.
Holy crap the 1968 article from the Times is pretty graphic. I personally, am offended, er something.
Spence: And where, apparently, Wonkette posts go to be pulished in print format?
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/06/citybeats_remake.php
Spence: I don’t think history makes it through the gates, actually. It arrives, sure enough, but is quickly taken to a detox center where it’s given vaneers, botox injections and hair plugs. It is forced to stay there until it looks 20 again and then released. If that fails, it is shot.
It’s hard to snark about this since watching footage from that speech and then the resultant shooting, and how I paralleled RFK to BO in terms of his ability to inspire others that I kept fearing that such the same thing would happen to BO and I would be filled with terror. I can’t imagine how it would have been back then in 1968 for an RFK supporter to then have their candidate gunned down virtually in front of their eyes.
Though I’m too young to fully grasp the significance of the Kennedy’s, the concept of how he carried with him so much hope only for him to be violently killed is extremely vivid.
And so R.I.P.
tunamelt: Wow, now I can get my daily Wonkette with the added benefit of killing trees!
Hey, I was born at Good Sam!
Thought you’d like to know.
Humble Pi: They’re Kennedys — hotness is only the beginning.
See, this is why Hillary is shutting down her campaign. Assasination season is over.
StrangelyBrown: Hottness, wealth, and they drink like the Bush twins. What else can you ask for in a woman?
While Tarry McCalloff nervously fingers his dirty trix shooter, RMN rises from the dead and raptures republicans and hillarians to another planet, the end.
Lionel Hutz Esq.: You jest! Damn you!
Barack gave his acceptance speech in a warehouse and then hid in a theatre.
ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG!
Lionel Hutz Esq.: If they even have half the historic proclivities of their clan, I’m thinking a show called “Growing Up Kennedy” could redefine must-see tv. Steal that pitch, Colbert!
Canuckledragger: Sorry, Gawker holds the copyright on Wonkette mouse ears. Will Barry ears do?
StrangelyBrown: I’m sorry, but I can’t tear myself away from that Glamour article:
…and an impossibly limber 30-year-old does pretzel-like yoga poses.
Those are, without question, the most beautiful words in the English language.
Let us all hail the fortieth anniversary of the day the shittrain really started to roll, from the Ambassador Hotel, to the Dem Convention in “Chicago,” (then known and governed as “Nurmberg,”) through the election of the third worst president in American history (Bush knocked him out of #2, and is neck and neck with James Buchanan). Let’s remember all the greatest hits of the late 60s and early 1970s: “I am not a crook,” “I have a plan for peace in Vietnam,” the “Decent Interval,” the Kissinger Regency (while Nixon was drunkenly raving around the White House). Then we get the Carter Interregnum, followed by 12 years of the Reagan/Bush years, which, in a strange warp of the fabric of space/time, actually look sensible and reasonable compared with the rule of the evil spawn of Ronald Reagan and Joseph Goebbels (it’s right there, in Scott McClellan’s book).
It’s been a heck of a fun 40 years. I will go weep quietly in the corner now.
Bobby Kennedy was killed by a cheap .22 cal. rimfire.
Hillary Clinton would give any superdelegat a cheap rimjob.
Coincidence?
Or something more . . . sinister?
Speaking of “cheap rim jobs” (from Wikipedia):
Presidential assassin Leon Czolgosz shot and killed U.S. President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York on 6 September 1901 with an IVER JOHNSON .32 caliber Safety Automatic revolver (serial number 463344).
Convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Presidential candidate United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, California on 5 June 1968 with an eight-shot IVER JOHNSON .22 caliber Cadet 55-A revolver (serial number H-53725) . . . .
If Iver Johnson made a “Hillary Signture” model, I’d REALLY advise Hopey to duck.
The Kennedys = Luckiest family ever
Spence: I have been bummed out about the demise of the Ambassador for some time, always hoping for a renovation/memorial or something but, yeah, tear it down for a high school, great. At least I got to check it out inside years ago… went in the kitchen and everything, one of the eeriest places I’ve ever, ever been…
I was walking to school, early in the morning, to see some friends. A girl caught up to me and told me Bobby Kennedy had been shot. I couldn’t cry in front of her, because, you know, I was a guy. She did. All the way to school. It was just as the regular year was ending and the summer session was beginning. It is the one summer of my life, like the Thanksgivving 5 years earlier, that I don’t remember as happy. I was young, but I remember it so well. I wish I had something funny to say, but this is all I got.
masterdebater: But when Benasur Bhutto dented her head on the open top of that
SUV so badly she looked like a 1991 Yugo after a Demolish Derby, you didn’t shed a tear, did you, you HEARTLESS BASTARDS!!!
I, on the other hand, wept.
True, they were crocodile tears.
But I did weep.
From laughing.
Actually, that was harsh.
I, too, felt badly when Bobby died.
But not as badly as those Cuban guys Bobby and his older brother left to die on that beach in the Bay of Pigs.
FOR FREEDOM!
Rest in peace.(c) Magnum Photos
Rest in peace.UNITED STATES—Robert Francis Kennedy funeral train, 1968.
© Paul Fusco / Magnum Photos
Sorry. You try drinking Lestoil.
UNITED STATES—Robert Francis Kennedy funeral train, 1968.
© Paul Fusco / Purchase this print
It’s on Slate in the event I reetee again.