I like and highly respect the host of this blog, and it so happens that Kelley knows more about Bono than most people. I assume that you also respect Kelley, Duncan. Maybe you should do a little more digging into some of the things she’s written about U2.

I think that all Bono is saying here is that anything we can do to humanize other people in times of conflict is more conducive to resolving the conflict. I don’t think he’s trying to make a point that RFK was a saint. We can disagree on his interpretation (honestly, who cares?). I don’t think we disagree on the overall point.

I do try to encourage conversation here. I want to be open to different opinions and disagreements. But I do need to ask for some clarification from you. Your first paragraph seem to read to me as though you’re assuming that because I called Bush out for his pronunciation, that I am a person who looks down on other people about accents in some global sense, and that I am petty. If you’re intending to describe me that way, then we’ll need to talk more about that. Actually, it’s not clear to me whether the whole first paragraph is addressed to me specifically or to some general reader.

Thanks for adding context to Bono’s story, but it doesn’t really change anything. Jennifer also seems to have forgotten that the story is about RFK when he was first appointed attorney general, when he was still basically a McCarthyite, and there’s nothing in the story to indicate that King and his associates were wrong about him — only that, thanks to the intervention of his bishop, instigated by King and his people, RFK changed. While JFK lived, he and his brother were trying to block and contain the Civil Rights movement, trying to stop the March on Washington and doing nothing while people were being beaten and killed in the South. I don’t have enough books on that period at home, but I found my copy of Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire, and it confirms what I’m saying here. Even more, privately King seems to have held JFK in contempt even after his assassination; Branch reports an obscene (not a word I use lightly) and enraged outburst King made while watching JFK’s funeral on TV. He tempered that disgust in public commentary, but it doesn’t seem that King ever forgave JFK for his deadly intransigence. The book ends in 1965, so I can’t trace King’s relations with RFK, but it doesn’t matter much since the whole point is that RFK changed his views after the period Belafonte was talking about, as the material you added shows. Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t a racist prick before; there’s nothing in that story to indicate he wasn’t.

Which is why Bono’s interpretation of the story is wrong, as I said. King was not, as far as I can see, saying that we shouldn’t “caricature” and so on. I’m sure King would have agreed that we shouldn’t, as do I. But King’s insistence on finding something positive about RFK was, as I said, tactical. Like a Mafia boss, if you like, saying, “How can we get to this guy?” They found someone RFK would listen to, and that was a major factor in his change of opinion. This doesn’t diminish King in my eyes. I remember Sarah Schulman saying that she and other Lesbian Avengers read Taylor Branch to learn King’s tactics for direct action.

As for Bono, I don’t know much about him (except that he used to be a good singer), but people whose opinions I respect see him as a self-promoting hustler. I’ll withhold judgment on that score, but this excerpt doesn’t incline me to like him. Still, doors can be opened, and conversation (I agree) is important. Thanks, Kelley, for allowing and encouraging it here.

And I’ll be he never ever says “nucular” instead of “nuclear” (Shrub drives me insane with that).

Duncan, I probably should have included the rest of the story about MLK and Kennedy, but it felt like it was getting long and I wanted to get to the light (grin). The rest goes like this (again quoting Bono):

“Well, it turned out that Bobby was very close with his bishop. So they befriended the one man who could get through to Bobby’s soul and turned him into their Trojan horse. They sort of ganged up on this bishop and got the bishop to speak to Bobby. Harry became emotional at the end of this tale: ‘When Bobby Kennedy lay dead on a Los Angeles pavement, there was no greater friend to the civil rights movement. There was no one we owed more of our progress to than that man’….And whether [Harry] was exaggerating or not, that was a great lesson for me, because what Dr. King was saying was: Don’t respond to caricature…” Etc.

Not trying to make you like Bono more (grin), just worried that I had not given you the full context.

Thank you all for responding to my hope for the possibility of opening doors and finding light behind them. It’s important to me right now, and I appreciate the chance to share it.

Bono is a huge talent, and he has done an untold amount of good as an activist in recent years. Look at his “Red” campaign and his efforts to fight poverty there and globally.

It’s a lot more than I have done.

And since I am looking for the light, that is all I will say right now.