More on 'The Last Campaign'

Today I continued reading The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America. I really like it so far, even though I'm only to the point where he officially announced his campaign at Kansas State University.

In the follow-up speech at KU, he stated:

"Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

With an easy substitution of some of the dated references, I really like that this quote can still easily translate to today.

I'm excited to get further into the campaign, especially the parts where he reached out into urban areas. The book notes that RFK is the only candidate in history other than John Edwards to run on an anti-poverty platform.

Read More

To tame the savageness of man

I went on a used-book binge last week on Amazon. Now I’m elbow-deep in good reading material, and I’m starting with:

The Last Campaign: Robert Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America

I first fell in love with Robert Kennedy in a course called Great Speakers and Speeches at UW-Madison. We dissected the speech he gave in Indianapolis only a few hours after Martin Luther King, Jr. passed away.

Among the many things that are heralded about this speech, a few of my favorite anecdotes (and honestly, the ones I remember):

• He wrote it himself because he felt he could connect with the audience best by speaking to his own personal experience with inexplicable loss and violence
• The quote from Greek philosopher Aeschylus is considered improper by some rhetorical scholars because it was obscure and the audience would not have been familiar with it. However, Kennedy was known to carry around ancient Greek books on tragedy after his brother’s assassination, so I think it’s fascinating and inspiring that he pulled from something so deeply personal. My professor remarked that this is one of the very things that is wrong with many of today’s politicians and speakers- in an attempt to resonate with everyone, they end up losing themselves.
  
• As he was speaking on the fly and from the heart, he actually butchered the Aeschylus quote. Today, that’s called a gaffe and it would take the MSM less than a minute of googling to tear him to shreds for it.

I am so nerdily excited to read this book, and to (a year and a half late, and a dollar short) more fully understand the parallels between the 1968 and 2008 elections that were oft discussed in Obama’s historic run.

Oh, and the Aeschylus quote was:

My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And 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.

Read More

"Beware the non-conformist"

Mad Men Season Three premieres Sunday, people. That only gives you five days to watch the first 26 episodes of the greatest show on television. 

If you're still not convinced, then watch this clip that I lovingly embedded for you:

If you're STILL not convinced, then I would like for you to write in the comments section what it's like not to have a soul.

Read More