Somewhere in Soho just off Broadway (4×5 film)

Like many kids in the early 60s, I was a fan of John F. Kennedy. I kept a plaque in my bedroom with Kennedy’s famous “ask not” quote embossed on it. He was the first president I knew, and his natural eloquence and character formed my understanding of who and what an American president was supposed to be. I was 9 years old when he was cut down by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas.

I was 14 years old in 1968, the most tumultuous year, perhaps, in post war American history. I was young, but fully aware of what was going on–the civil rights struggle and the war in Vietnam. The murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy left me devastated and heartbroken, and I don’t think I’ve ever really recovered. I remember poignantly Teddy Kennedy’s eulogy delivered in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as deeply eloquent a tribute as has ever been written.

A few days ago Teddy Kennedy was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and while one hopes for his recovery, I am already prepared for the worst.

We are in the middle of a dramatic and prolonged Democratic presidential campaign between the heir to Bill Clinton’s two term presidency and, to many of us, the heir to the legacy of the Kennedy brothers. We all know the personal dangers associated with Barack Obama’s candidacy as the first black man with a real chance to the highest office in the land. And we all know–and see–how messages of hope and idealism pose a threat to the status quo. There is an undercurrent of anger that lurks menacingly.

Yesterday Hillary Clinton raised the specter of assassination in an off hand reference to Bobby Kennedy, and how his campaign ran into June of 1968. When I read her comments and watched her deliver them on YouTube, I froze inside. She had invoked one of the darkest moments in American political history to justify the continuation of her campaign, knowing–surely–that in doing so, she was dipping, however gingerly, into a poisonous well of hatred.

Hillary Clinton’s honor (and campaign) now hangs in tatters along with the legacy of Bill Clinton’s presidency. It’s over. Good riddance.