Dear Friends,

On this, the dreaded 40th anniversary of the assassination of the remarkable The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is vitally important to remember what Dr. King stood for and what he accomplished. For me, Dr. King’s passing will always be inextricably linked with the death of my personal hero, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. RFK is the forgotten man of American history. He would have easily beaten Nixon, shortening the Vietnam war and Watergate would only be the name of a hotel and apartment building in Washington. Mostly, RFK stood for the reconciliation of the races, something which since then only Bill Clinton and Barack Obama seem to care about. RFK would have been proud of Obama and I am mightily pleased that Ted and Caroline Kennedy and other family members endorsed Obama, saying that he embodied the spirit of John F. Kennedy. They should have added Bobby, too. This is a column about words and I therefore excerpt RFK’s address to a black crowd on the night Dr. King was killed, citing that he too had had a family member killed.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: good writing, Martin Luther King, Rhetoric, robert kennedy