Perhaps my earliest memory like this was watching Bobby Kennedy get murdered. I was precociously interested in politics, and my mother took me to hear all of the Democratic nominees for president that year. She was a Eugene McCarthy girl, and the first we saw but then we went to see Bobby speak, a week or two later and I was mesmerized. I could decode his speech enough to get his opposition to the war, and support for racial and economic justice, but his charisma really got through to me, and the crowd at the college campus where my dad taught was going wild. I got the chance to shake his hand, and declared myself a Bobby man to my mother on the way home, as we had a satisfying debate. She of course was old enough to remember the old RFK, who had been a “Red-Baiter” and his brother’s son of a bitch, and she never trusted him.
The night of the California primary she let me stay up to watch the results. I remember staying awake long enough to see that Bobby had won, then fell asleep during his speech. I was awakened shortly after by the sound of my mother’s screams and then crying, saying “not again” over and over, as he was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador hotel. I was heartbroken and inconsolable. I am just old enough to remember where I was when his brother was shot, but we heard that announcement live on the radio, not TV, on the way to taking me to the doctor. My mother pulling over to the side of the San Diego freeway to cry, and my grandmother in the back seat screaming (extremely uncharacteristically, as she was very refined): “God Dammit! God Dammit! I knew he shouldn’t have gone down there!” On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 5:13 PM daniel anderson < [email protected]> wrote: > I was watching the World Series in 1989 when the Earthquake happened. I > can still remember hearing Al Michaels say "I'll tell you what, we're > having an earth-" before the feed cut out. I remember ABC airing something > else for a few minutes, before Ted Koppel came on form Washington(where he > was hosting Nightline). > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/cfc7388a-734b-46d7-8501-4395409f05ceo%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/cfc7388a-734b-46d7-8501-4395409f05ceo%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYKK1xViOf7%2BWXJWzzpzkObcWSXi4hxpEhYLzB63F3X-Fw%40mail.gmail.com.
