“MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
all the sweet, green icing flowing down
someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh no!”
----Jimmy Webb “MacArthur's Park” 1968
“Spring
was never waiting for us, girl”...the
song, sung by British actor Richard Harris began, “It
ran one step ahead/ as we followed in the dance.” So
began “MacArthur's
Park”
which made it's debut unto the country's A.M. Pop music radio
stations late in March, 1968, following closely on the heels of
Robert Kennedy's announcement that he would run for president. Soon
it joined Simon and Garfunkel's “Mrs.
Robinson”,
Blue Cheer's remake of “Summertime
Blues”,
Bobby Goldsboro's “Honey”,
Friend and Lover's “Reach
Out in the Darkness”
and the Beatles' “Lady
Madonna”
atop the American music charts.
The
song in its tribute to lost love, was played—despite it's length
(it being twice as long as the then required three minute allotted to
an artist on A.M. radio), throughout the political primary season
serving as a haunting backdrop to the drama that was unfolding and
was, it turned out, yet to unfold. “
MacArthur's Park”, one
of several hit songs written by Jim Webb for the likes of, among
others, Glenn Campbell rose quickly in the charts with the
assassination of Martin Luther King and was fading by
late May when it achieved a second life with the assassination of
Senator Robert F. Kennedy in early June. Events, it transpired, had
given the song unintended meaning; spring, we discovered all-to-late,
was always one step ahead, indeed was never waiting for us. For those
of us who lived through those awful events, the song hauntingly remains
one of the signature pieces of cultural art perhaps best
encapsulating the time.
It
has been half a century now and we still haven't found that recipe.
“Its
a strange, strange world we live in Master Jack”, sang
Four Jacks and a Jill. Rivers of blood, years of darkness mark those
times from these. We have been wandering in the wilderness ever
since.
“Where
have you gone Joe DiMaggio
Our
Nation turns its lonely eyes to you”----Paul Simon, “Mrs. Robinson”.
Chris Matthews, who was five years old at the time, has
written a biography commemorating the half-century mark since Bobby
left us. What would have been; what should have been; what might
have been remains forever unanswered for the tribune of the
underclass, the one political figure able to unite the country
remains silent. Matthews', quite rightly, points to the crowds and
knots of people that lined the route of the funeral train as it
slowly made its way from New York to Washington. Poor blacks and
whites, midde class and working class blacks and whites, Latino's,
Native Americans, men in uniform, VFW and war veterans, police and firemen, mothers with children. High school bands, and crowds singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", school children out of class to pay their respects. Catholic priests and nuns, and Protestant congregations. A complete cross section of the country poured from
their homes and precincts to stand in salute, to stand with hand over
heart, to stand together to honor this man. Nothing in our national
experience except the train taking FDR from Warm Springs, Georgia
back to Washington, or Lincoln's funeral train from Washington back
to Springfield, Illinois, had been witnessed by this country.
Certainly no national outpouring of grief and respect had greeted a
man who had never been elected President of the United States.
Bobby spoke to the country. Bobby appealed to what
Lincoln called our “Better Angels”. Bobby told us that we were
better than this; that we had a responsibility to each other. Bobby
taught us that we are a community that is more than the sum total of
individual interests.
Hunter S. Thompson mused in “Fear and Loathing: the
Presidential Campaign of 1972” that the shit train began on
November 22, 1963. Indeed it had. Bobby's campaign was, in some
measure, a reach for national redemption, a restoration, of making
things right again. But it became much more than that as Kennedy
spoke directly to the divisions within the country, reminding all of
us that each of us bears some responsibility not only for the
existence of these divisions but for their resolutions. He
challenged us to become better citizens.
“You!,
You! And You! He shouted out at
a medical school in Indiana, telling the assembled that they would be paying for social justice; that they were
privileged to be able to attend such a school; and that their futures
were assured, reminding them that they had a responsibility to the
society that made such privilege possible. He did not pander. He
did not cajole. Instead, he raised the level of political discourse
by refusing to flatter his audience.
What
might have been? Would we have continued riding the shit-train down
the rabbit-hole of modern conservatism? Would the nation have
suffered another 5 long years of war and the deepening divisions and
erosion of confidence in governance that it produced? Would have we
had the acid-bath that was Nixon and Watergate further eroding
confidence in governance?
Kennedy's
bust is the most ubiquitous one in Washington. It populates more
congressional offices than any other. Men like Civil Rights leader and now Congressman John Lewis ask
themselves “What would Bobby have done?”. The
'Radical Priest', as Alice Roosevelt Longworth once called him, the
national scold, the voice that demanded the best from us was silenced
in that kitchen pantry as Kennedy was holding up network reporters
and newscasts as he paused to greet the hotel's kitchen staff. The
tribune of the underclass, the tribune of the people.
History
has a way of eliminating all other alternatives. No one can tell
what might have been, but the voice remains. I can still hear that
voice in my ears, echoing down the corridors of time. It's been a
half-century now and the wound still hasn't healed. Our nation still
turns its lonely eyes to you.
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