Touchstones, by Elayne Riggs
Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby
Can you tell me where he’s gone
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John.
Well, last time I did an actual comic book review, and as expected it received almost no comments. So I don’t want to hear from anyone about how this column isn’t about comics!
I could probably make it about comics. After all, I’m going to be discussing the ’60s, which were about many things. Many people my age cut their fanboy and fangirl teeth on Marvel comics of the ’60s. (Me, I didn’t start reading until the mid-’80s or so, even though my late best friend Bill Marcinko tried pretty hard to get me interested in the Marvels of the late ’70s.) But, despite my trepidation about the kind of Google ads this column will attract, today I want to write about something else that happened in the ’60s, and about the persistence of memory.
Last week on the campaign trail, in an interview given to South Dakota’s Argus Leader, a frustrated Hillary Clinton reiterated her response to the "why won’t that bitch just quit?" crowd of media pundits that she’d initially articulated in a Time magazine interview back in March. Her original words: "I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual."
This time around the phrasing was only slightly different: "My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June. We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just don’t understand it," the "it" in question being the pundits’ incessant and unprecedented calls for a leading candidate to step aside (as if the media were orchestrating the process rather than the voters of each state). In March, nobody seemed to notice; this time, with the anti-Clinton hysteria ratcheted up as high as it’s been since the Whitewater nonsense, suddenly all sorts of folks were up in arms.
Now, I don’t want to delve too much into the varied reactions to this fairly matter-of-fact statement. I’ve already done that on my blog, here and here, and urge folks who automatically assume I’m a Clinton supporter (and thus my analysis can be discounted) to read those two entries. In summary, I think Clinton’s phrasing was put rather poorly, she might have said something more like "we all remember how Bobby Kennedy had just won a closely-contested race in June when he was tragically taken from us" or somesuch. But I think it still wouldn’t have helped.
Even RFK Jr.’s correct reading of her words ("It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June. I have heard her make this reference before, also citing her husband’s 1992 race, both of which were hard fought through June. I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense.") wasn’t enough. Heck, even "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family, was in any way offensive" wouldn’t do for those inclined, nay eager, to stretch logic and credulity and take offense on others’ behalf and believe the worst, many of whom were chomping at the bit to find something, anything else to yank out of context and pin on her like a poisoned corsage.
It reminded me of Usenet. Clinton’s deep in damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t territory, has been for months. Beyond that, for a lot of people, you just can’t say the "A" word at all, it invokes the specter with which nobody wants to consciously deal. It taps into their worst fears. And very likely Clinton’s as well; I’ve no doubt the first viable female US Presidential candidate has had to contend with just about as many death threats from loonies as her opponent has.
Assassination is something that reverberates through the years and affects a lot of people very deeply. It’s recognized as a special brand of fear in this age of rule-by-fearmongering. It’s something that strikes at the soul of the nation, touching us all through targeting someone we’ve grown to admire, someone taken from us way too soon, before the rest of their good works can be accomplished, someone who, damn it, should have been protected from this random madness. To leave a people without a leader can conjure up an immense sense of helplessness from deep within our lizard brains. We don’t want to think about it. And yet it creeps in, constantly.
I wasn’t old enough to really remember the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK. I think they first drifted into my consciousness with the lyrics of the Dion song referenced above. But I’ve been profoundly affected by a more recent assassination. I’ve often defined the two major touchstones in modern US history that directly led to our current downward spiral (and make no mistake, even with eight years under the right-leaning centrist Bill Clinton and now with the Democratic race between the centrists Obama and Hillary, the political pendulum in this country has yet to swing back even to the point where more than a few so-called liberals actually espouse progressive political programs) were the election of Ronald Reagan and his campaign’s efforts to forestall an "October surprise," and the assassination of John Lennon. I mention this a lot. It doesn’t mean I’m eager to see any other progressive activist musician or ex-Beatle assassinated! It means it affected me a lot, and continues to this day to inform my feelings about this country’s political and cultural direction.
Hillary Clinton’s a decade older than me, and has spoken before about how profoundly the death of both MLK and RFK affected her. This is from her speech in Memphis last month on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s death:
Like many of you here who are of a certain age, I will never forget where I was when I heard Dr. King had been killed. I was a junior in college. And I remember hearing about it and just feeling such despair. I walked onto my dorm room, took my book bag and hurled it across the room. It felt like everything had been shattered, like we would never be able to put the pieces together again.
I joined a protest march in Boston. I wore a black armband. I worked to convince my college to recruit more students and faculty of color, but it felt like it wasn’t enough. And then a few months later we heard of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, whose eloquence and courage had helped to persuade the people of Indianapolis to follow Dr. King’s example of non-violence. I remember wandering through the encampments of the Poor People’s March on Washington talking with those who had come from literally around the world to witness against poverty and injustice. It felt like the doors had closed on the hope that so many had felt. But that would have been such a disservice to Dr. King. To have taken the despair, the outrage and just ended with that.
By the way, I think it’s extremely telling of the double-standard coverage that surrounds each of the three main candidates that I had to go to Clinton’s campaign website to find a transcript of that speech, since most mainstream media, like this USA Today piece, only link to full transcripts from McCain and Obama.
And let’s not forget that, like Clinton, Obama also looks to the storied days of Camelot for his inspiration. His campaign doesn’t discourage comparisons with JFK, most prominent members of the Kennedy family have endorsed him, and he even followed in RFK’s footsteps by making his MLK remembrance speech in Indiana, saying, "And in few places was the pain more pronounced than in Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy happened to be campaigning. And it fell to him to inform a crowded park that Dr. King had been killed. And as the shock turned toward anger, Kennedy reminded them of Dr. King’s compassion, and his love. And on a night when cities across the nation were alight with violence, all was quiet in Indianapolis."
Just about every prominent Democratic politician nowadays wants to own the Kennedys, or at least the idea thereof. The name is still magical to many of us. Camelot! The heroic boy king, his attractive family, his band of brothers. And now, as the last of those brothers is threatened with an inoperable brain tumor, the specter rises again. So much lost, so much that could have been.
That also characterizes the ’60s for many Boomers. Helped by the way the media have framed those years, many people my age or a little older consider the ’60s to be the epitome of social progress. For many, it was. We made progress as a society by leaps and bounds. For me, the gay rights and women’s movements got going well after Woodstock, so I saw a continuation of that era well into the late ’70s when I attended college. I don’t remember Kennedy’s presidency, but Jimmy Carter’s was mostly admirable and I still consider him my absolute favorite living president. And when I graduated it seemed like we as a country could accomplish anything — until boom, the next year brought us Reagan’s election and John’s death. We couldn’t even imagine any more.
So yeah, I don’t begrudge Clinton her cultural and political touchstones. They shaped her every bit as much as the Reagan/Lennon one-two sucker punch shaped me. They’re things she needs to remember, to cling to, to use as inspiration for her own career. Thing is, there’s always the danger we’ll get too wrapped up in the past to push forward into the present and future. And as we all remember the 40th anniversary of that sad day a week from tomorrow, we’re obligated to turn it around to reclaim that lost energy for ourselves. After all, energy doesn’t disappear, it simply changes form. We are the ones on whose shoulders it now falls to create a new Camelot that not only echoes the old, but surpasses it. Maybe not now, maybe not in four years, but in little increments every day and for the rest of our lives.
Elayne Riggs blogs here, voted for Barack Obama in the NY Democratic primary mostly because she admires his written and verbal eloquence, and still hopes to see an actual progressive Democrat win the White House during her lifetime.
I hope this doesn't come across as too angry, Elayne, because I don't mean it that way, but I take pretty serious issue with the identification of Clinton as a "leading" candidate and writing off her RFK comments as reasonable political rhetoric.First, she's not "leading" anything, despite her advisors' continual attempts to misguide the public. She's in serious jeopardy of outright losing to Obama by delegates, and at the very least has no chance of catching him (unless Ickes & Co. manage to seat only the Michigan and Florida delegates that went to her and none of the 50-60 that went to Obama). She keeps claiming she's leading the popular vote, but that's also "Seussian math" (I quote Slate.com), which requires the counting of voters that shouldn't count (Florida and Michigan) and not counting voters that should (a few states that went to Obama haven't released popular vote counts since, you know, it doesn't factor).The RFK comment was foolish if only because she should have worded it better, but more importantly, it's a completely empty parallel because the primary calendar has changed dramatically since RFK was killed or even since Clinton the First won in '92. Each of them had been campaigning for less than a year (about three months for RFK) when their contest was ended by victory or death. Hillary has been on the trail for a year and a half, and all fair calculations give her literally no shot at winning (again I cite Slate's Hillary Deathwatch).
I stand by my phrasing, Van. "A" leading does not mean the same as "the" leading. Clinton is running a close second place, has for awhile. That makes her a leading candidate, unlike the guy I really wanted to vote for (John Edwards) who dropped out before the NY primary.
Hilary may not currently be "leading," but she certainly has been a "major" candidate and many considered her the "leading" candidate before the Iowa Caucus and after the New Hampshire Primary. I see nothing misleading in Elayne calling Clinton "a leading candidate."That said, I agree with Elayne that Hilary's comment about the death of RFK was pulled whole cloth out of context. I think the media gets bored. It was a slow news day and so somebody decided to pounce on this line and run with it. It's not fair. It's the way the media works.Howard Dean's campaign (and he was a "leading" candidate at one time) was derailed by a single word, "YEEEAARGH!" The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted from country radio and vilified by conservative media for an off-hand remark made between songs at a concert overseas. A remark that nearly 80% of Americans seem to agree with nowadays.The media is fickle and cruel. The public are addle-pated sheep. We're more concerned with Britney's train wreck of a life (and fueling that with our constant vigilance) than the hundreds of thousands dying in Myanmar, China, Iraq, Africa. Whose cellulite was showing on the beach? Who had wrinkled, old man-hands at their movie premier? Who is too thin? Who is too fat? Is Jennifer heartbroken again? Who is the sexiest Olympic Athlete? YEEEAARGH! Has the media coverage of Hilary been unfair at times? Yes. Can that be attributed to sexism? You really can't say. The media is unfair. That's a given. Not all of Clinton's unfair coverage has to do with her being a woman. From my perspective, not much of it has. But that's the problem with racism and sexism. A black man who gets shitty service at the drive-through window may wonder, "Was this because I'm black?" I get to just assume my local Wendy's has a shitty drive-through. Racism and sexism are insidious. It's so easy to misinterpret every slight as being sourced in an "ism." But then again, some "Ism"s IS.Bill Clinton was impeached in a legal/political chess match that dragged on for months. What did that boil down to, lying about getting caught with his pants down with an intern. Clinton lied. His actions were shameful. His Presidency will forever boil down to the punchline of a joke.But lets compare that to a Presidency where high ranking White House officials committed treason by outing a CIA operative. A Presidency where illegal surveillance, torture, rendition, callous ineptitude and misleading the public into war are standard fair. The problem with the current Presidency is that there are SO many scandals, the press can't keep up. And the public has become so NUMB to liars and incompetents that we just accept all this shit as business as usual.I am stunned that a medaled war hero, like John Kerry, could have his character attacked in a campaign against a President who had DWIs, was an admitted cocaine user and whose own record of military service was a shining example of skating through with minimum sacrifice. Bush had a track record of incompetence going back decades! But that's the media. That's the public. We are IDIOTS! Has Hilary gotten a fair shake by the media? No. Is that Barry Obama's fault? No. Did the media scream to get Mike Huckabee out of the Republican race after McCain became the presumptive nominee? Not as loudly as they are screaming for Clinton to bow out. Clinton has earned the right to duke it out, even into the convention if she wants. And Obama has earned the right to be seen as the front runner, the leading candidate. Supposedly, with just forty more delegates, Obama has a lock and can claim to be the "presumptive nominee." Let's see how it turns out. We just have to wait a week.After Teddy's passing (I know, I'm presuming), will the highest ranking political figure in the Kennedy clan be Arnold Schwarzenegger? Maybe I'm too young, but the stench of the Chappaquiddick lingers on the Kennedy Legacy. It's indicative of a sense of entitlement and a disregard for women in general. Maybe my favorite Kennedy is Eunice. Does it matter?Who is YOUR favorite Kennedy? Lets make a list! Who is the sexiest Kennedy? Oh, I know, it's easy to say, "Jackie!" But isn't that SO obvious. Rose was looker in her day. But did you ever see her in a swimsuit? Oh my, man-hands and cellulite! It was scandalous!
The Democrats need something very impotant – a united front going into the coronationconvention. As of right now, Hillary has made it clear that she will keep fighting right up to and into the convention if she has to. Bill didn't clinch the nomination until June, but he did indeed clinch it. He had a number of weeks as the presumptive nominee, and when the convention started it was again mere formality, with the reading of the votes nothing more than an opportunity for the American public to hear the name Clinton, followed by cheering, repeated fifty times.It doesn't appear that is going to happen this time. No matter whch of them gets the nom, he other is gonna have an asterisk floating above their heads in a lot of eyes. Large numbers of voters have said they will cross the aisle, or stay home altogether should The Other Candidate get the nomination. Then there's that maddening idea that the only way The Other One could get the nom is bacause this is a (whichever)ist nation, and we've made no progress in 200 years, yadda yadda blather blather.For years we've bemoaned the fact that we never getanyone we want to vote FOR, just someone we want to vote AGAINST. Well, we got what we asked for this time, twice, and we're STILL bollixing it up.I'm with The Bobs in their song "Democratic Process", I believe Presidential selection should be based on our dental records. I just got my bonding touched up.
In fact, it was clear as early as April of 1992 that Clinton was going to be the nominee. It was unlikely that the math would allow any other candidate to overtake his lead. Just like Obama.Ever since his victory speech in Iowa, I've held my breath every time Obama gives a speech in public. Not just because the man can talk (and he's inspirational), but because it's so easy to imagine that shot ringing out. Maybe it's because 1968 is still so vivid in my memory, but I fear for the good ones. When I met her in 1992, I liked Hillary a lot. She's smart, and she's sharp, and she cares about people, especially kids. However, her vote for the war made it difficult for me to support her for president when there are other candidates who either didn't support the war or have apologized for their vote.
Clearly, Clinton has indeed suffered some abuse from the media — if she had a dollar for every time she was referred to as "Hillary" or "Mrs. Clinton" in the same sentence as "Senator Obama," then she wouldn't be over $30 million in debt.However, when it comes to her own comments it is no longer possible to give her the benefit of the doubt. She persistently misrepresented her record on experience, she engaged in shameless race-baiting (the candidate of working white men — you know, like those in Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas and South Carolina??), she flip-flopped on how to count the votes virtually every week, she lied to us about her experiences "under fire" in Bosnia… to name but a few. When it came to her comments regarding Bobby Kennedy, a reasonable person not associated with any campaign (which eliminates RFK Jr.) would have to take her at her word — the words she actually spoke, four times on four different occasions — the last being days after the last of the Kennedy brothers was diagnosed with terminal cancer.What concerns me more, though, is her growing recklessness as it became clear she could not win under the very rules of the Democratic party which she had previously supported. Senator Clinton's statements over the past few weeks bordered on some of the mindless but on-message comments from George W. Bush. More articulate and better delivered, but lacking in the one thing we most want to see in a candidate this year: truth.
Ten bucks sez Elaine's next column is about comics.Just a guess.
*Elayne.
Hah! So what you're saying is, I can make an easy ten? :)I have no idea what my next column will be about. I do want to review Suburban Glamour, but then I wanted to review Miki Falls and that never came about. I usually wait until Sunday rolls around and then start to panic about my subject matter… ;)