The concerts, parties, balls, and general pageantry continues to unfold, as everyone: from our grand new President and major entertainers, to the youngest citizens along the train-and-parade route, believe they are now part of “history.” Everyone has come to have their picture taken, to be part of it all, to be in the historical picture.
But what does this mean if the historical record is as “cooked” as Bernie Madoff’s books? What if our textbooks and our media lie outright? Or “lie” by omitting crucial information?
For example: Yesterday, I watched the History Channel’s documentary about the American 1960s. It featured wonderful footage of stirring, iconic moments but, as for accuracy? No way, Jose!
The program showed us Martin Luther King Jr. speaking (he was wonderful then and he still is now), and focused on his noble, non-violent marches and ugly assassination; and on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy as he ran for the Presidency.
Oddly enough, just like the movie “Bobby,” which I reviewed two years ago, the History channel ”disappeared” the fact that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by an angry Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, who was furious that America was helping to arm Israel.
Why? Why did both the History Channel and a major feature film about the second Kennedy assassination, both fail to explain who Kennedy’s assassin really was? For the historical record, let me tell you.
On June 5, 1968, Palestinian Arab Sirhan Sirhan fatally shot Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Pasadena, California. Sirhan initially pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon, but while the jury was absent, he shouted in the courtroom, “I killed Robert Kennedy willfully…I’m willing to fight for [the Arab cause]… I’m willing to die for it.” He then requested to change his plea to guilty on all counts, announcing the intention to request execution, but the court denied this.
Defense witnesses testified that Sirhan had been psychologically scarred by his exposure to the Israeli war of Independence as a child in Jerusalem, where he was born in 1944. The defense also testified that Sirhan had become enraged when Senator Kennedy pledged military support for Israel (“fifty phantom jets”) if necessary.
Sirhan stated at trial that he “’read everything about the Arab-Israeli situation he could lay his hands on,’ including publications from the Arab information center in the United States and a book on Zionist influence on U.S. policy in the Middle East.” He also testified that, on seeing an advertisement for a march in support of Israel, he was “brought back to the six days in June of the previous year,” and that “a fire started burning inside of him as a result of the ad.”
Evidence produced at trial suggested that Sirhan was insane and inclined to outlandish mysticism, and that he had an intense loathing for the state of Israel and for Jews. He was sentenced to death, but this sentence was commuted to life in prison. All attempts at obtaining parole have been denied and he remains in a California State prison.
What’s really interesting is that Sirhan Sirhan is a Palestinian Christian, not a Muslim–but then, so was Edward Said, that arch fiend Propagandist whose seizing the mantle of sacred victimhood for the non-existent “Palestinian” people, especially their exterminationist-terrorist leaders, has become an idee fixee in both the West and in the “Orient,” to everyone’s great detriment.
Interestingly, both Said and Sirhan Sirhan were Palestinian Christians and were therefore considered “dhimmis,” inferior, subject to “protection.” (And taxation, torture, exile, and murder). Perhaps both Said and Sirhan wanted to please their superior race Masters–a variant on the court Jew phenomenon, or on the eunuch in the Islamic harem phenomenon.
My dear friend, Ibn Warraq, and others have challenged Edward Said on the grounds of truth. Ibn Warraq demonstrates that Said engaged in the art of the Big Lie. Said was a sexist who stole all thunder from a nascent feminist movement within the western academy and instead, insisted, right along with the Marxists, that brown-skinned men, Arab men, Muslim men, Palestinian men, were far more nobly oppressed than….mere women.
NEWSFLASH: A reader has pointed out that the very same lawyer who defended Saddam Hussein also defended Sirhan Sirhan: None other than America’s very own, left-leaning Ramsay Clark.
As I say: Follow the ideological alliances.
“…brown-skinned men, Arab men, Muslim men, Palestinian men, were far more nobly oppressed than….mere women.”
Pretty perverse. In any way you want to use the word, so long as it has a negative connotation.
Hanan Ashrawi is also a Christian, like Edward Said and Sirhan Sirhan. Few people realize how rigid she is in her opposition to Israel.
So, you never did expalian why exactly did the History Channel and “Bobby” omit these details? (as if I didn’t know)
It’s time someone wrote an article on this subject…takers anyone?
The mainstream media never ceases to amaze me. There seems to be a “politically correct”
czar hanging over everyone’s head shouting “off with your head if you speak the truth!”…Selah..glad to have found you Phyllis.
Another superb article, Phyllis.
I also can’t help wonder about why the Kennedy family has been so quiet on this issue.
“Left-leaning Ramsey Clark” would be the polite equivalent of saying that Joseph Goebbels was “a spokesman for Germany during the 1930′s” or that “Julius Streicher was a German journalist during the 1930′s.”
Like the History Channel and “Bobby” leaving out “why” (per JJ Sefton, #3) they left out the details about the background of Sirhan Sirhan (or Edward Said, etc). calling Ramsey Clark a “left-leaning” person is leaving out the “whole” of that person’s existence.
Clark has always been, at minimus, a far-left liberal (the JFK/LBJ years), but he started going Left-Insane over Vietnam and supported numerous communist fronts and causes from the 70′s thru the present, esp. the Stalinist Workers World Party and its front ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Repression) & IAC (International Action Center), as well as the Communist Party’s legal fronts, the National Lawyers Guild and its creation, the Kunstler-Kinoy “Center for Constitutional Rights”).
Clark has legally supported or tried to support terrorists from the German Baader-Meinhof Gang to the Iranians, Palestinians, Puerto Rican, and others. He apparently was brought into the orbit of the WWP thru one of their leaders, Gemma Gavrielle (sp?), who worked in his law office, in the 1980′s. During the 1990′s and in the years of 2000′s, he has been one of their top speakers at various protests they held on Irag, Iran, etc., including “war crimes” trials.
Clark is has always been weird, even when he was in the LBJ administration. While his work in the civil rights field was laudable, his order as Attorney General that disarmed U.S. soldiers and the National Guard during the April 1968 riots in DC (and by implication) elsewheres (esp. Baltimore, Md), allowed the riots and rioters to go unchecked for almost a week. I watched this on TV and then went out and spoke to soldiers who were on duty (friends), Jews whose businesses were looted & torched in allowed pogroms (esp. in Baltimore where Rep. Nancy Pelosi’ brother, Mayor D’Allesandro, II or Jr., let the rioters, including out-of-staters, run rampant without serious police or law enforcement. FYI: My mother and Pelosi were apparently born on the same or nearly same block of Albermarle St & Lombard St where Little Italy and Corned Beef Row met, but years apart).
Today, Ramsey Clark is a hardcore communist leftist loon, with a law degree and a Bar license. He is one of the top legal enemies of both the U.S. regarding internal security/national defense and of Israel regarding its sheer existence.
“Left-leaning”? A fence in a storm is “left-leaning”. Ramsey Clark is a crazy communist enemy of humanity who poses as a “civil or constitutional or human rights activist.” Sort of like calling Hitler an advocate for “population control.” Capish?