The Power of Words

Went to a free talk at a local library by Ray E. Boomhower, an Indiana author who wrote a book about Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary (back when Indiana's presidential primary actually meant something). The talk was interesting but what really brought it to life were the dozen or so photographs from that time, plus an audio recording of the famous speech RFK gave the night that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. That speech has been given partial credit for the fact that Indianapolis did not suffer the major riots that other large cities suffered that night. Did it deserve credit? Who knows? They were the right words at the right time.

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What was really impressive to me is that the speech, with all of its poetry and hope and feeling, was *not* the product of speechwriters. RFK did it himself from some notes he scribbled on the back of an envelope. I forget, sometimes, that politicians used to be capable of more than looking good on camera and reciting their lines like understudies in dinner theater.

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Which is too bad .... for all of us.