We know that the world is
off its axis now.
We seem to live in a bizarro world, where what is normally right is wrong and where what is normally wrong is right.
And this weekend, when I heard the news from out west, I was completely and totally outraged, but it confirmed my belief that we are living in a very, very strange world right now.
Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted murderer of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was granted parole on Friday.
If this wasn’t bad enough, this murderer was granted parole because two of RFK’s sons spoke in favor of such a release, and prosecutors would not argue that he should be kept in jail for the rest of his life.
Sirhan, now 77, could now be released, although it will be up to the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, to make that decision official after a review process of several months is completed.
I am sure many people looked at Sirhan’s 16th parole hearing as nothing more than a formality, that the convicted murderer would plead his case yet again that he should be released, and that once again, the two-person panel hearing the plea would strike him down yet again.
But this time, things were different.
Douglas Kennedy, who was two years old when his father was killed in 1968, spoke at the latest hearing, and he said he was “moved to tears” by Sirhan’s remorse and said he should be released if he’s not a threat to others.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the senator’s eldest son, also stated that Sirhan should be released.
On June 5, 1968, RFK, the brother of John and Ted, gave a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his victory in the Democratic primary in California.
As Kennedy walked through the hotel’s pantry, Sirhan shot him, with five other people around Kennedy also being shot.
Several major figures in RFK’s campaign, including athletes Rafter Johnson and Roosevelt Grier, tackled Sirhan, and he was led away.
RFK died the next day.
I believe that Sirhan, who was rapidly convicted of the crime, was originally given the death penalty, but when that was struck down in California, he was given life in prison, but he could appeal his sentence every few years.
Sirhan has most recently stated that he has absolutely no recollection of the event, stating that he was drinking and still does not remember shooting anybody,
News reports state that RFK’s other children oppose the release.
Look, this whole thing is crazy.
I remember the morning after RFK was shot.
I woke up, ready to go to school, and that school year was in its final days, so we should have all been in a joyous mood.
I certainly remembered JFK’s assassination, but I was much younger then—age six—then I was when RFK was shot—age 11—so when I heard what was happening on the radio as I ate my breakfast, I just knew that this event would permeate what should have been a nice, normal day at school.
And it did.
Everyone brought their transistor radios to school, and our teacher let us listen in on what was going on.
If anyone made a peep, someone else would tell them to shut up so they could hear the latest update on the radio.
I think we all kind of knew that RFK would not survive, but we needed to hear it from our radios, and when we did, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
Like JFK before him, RFK promised a better world to us.
In my mind, RFK was the last politician who connected so greatly with the general public, even though we know now that he and his brothers were not as squeaky clean as we thought they were.
He really connected with Baby Boomers, and I do believe that he would have won the election if this would have never happened, and perhaps the world would have been a different place because of his presidency.
But a bullet stopped that from happening, and who would have thought that this conversation would have even arisen more than 50 years ago when Sirhan—drunken or not, remembering it or not—pulled the trigger.
If he does get off, he will be deported to Jordan, as he is a Palestinian, and I do not think he will fade into obscurity, which makes his possible release even more cruel and revolting than it already is.
Whether he likes it or not, he will become a paragon of the Palestinians, a martyr who put a crimp into America’s way of life, and eventually got away with it.
I am sure that whether he likes it or not, he will be applauded by some as a hero, and that very thought repulses me at my very core.
Governor Newsom, please see to it that Sirhan Sirhan only leaves prison in a body bag, when the devil takes him from us naturally.
He ruined our country, ruined our world, and he does not deserve to get out of prison alive under any circumstances whatsoever,
Let him rot in the hell that he created for himself on that fateful evening all those years ago.
We seem to live in a bizarro world, where what is normally right is wrong and where what is normally wrong is right.
And this weekend, when I heard the news from out west, I was completely and totally outraged, but it confirmed my belief that we are living in a very, very strange world right now.
Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted murderer of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was granted parole on Friday.
If this wasn’t bad enough, this murderer was granted parole because two of RFK’s sons spoke in favor of such a release, and prosecutors would not argue that he should be kept in jail for the rest of his life.
Sirhan, now 77, could now be released, although it will be up to the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, to make that decision official after a review process of several months is completed.
I am sure many people looked at Sirhan’s 16th parole hearing as nothing more than a formality, that the convicted murderer would plead his case yet again that he should be released, and that once again, the two-person panel hearing the plea would strike him down yet again.
But this time, things were different.
Douglas Kennedy, who was two years old when his father was killed in 1968, spoke at the latest hearing, and he said he was “moved to tears” by Sirhan’s remorse and said he should be released if he’s not a threat to others.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the senator’s eldest son, also stated that Sirhan should be released.
On June 5, 1968, RFK, the brother of John and Ted, gave a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his victory in the Democratic primary in California.
As Kennedy walked through the hotel’s pantry, Sirhan shot him, with five other people around Kennedy also being shot.
Several major figures in RFK’s campaign, including athletes Rafter Johnson and Roosevelt Grier, tackled Sirhan, and he was led away.
RFK died the next day.
I believe that Sirhan, who was rapidly convicted of the crime, was originally given the death penalty, but when that was struck down in California, he was given life in prison, but he could appeal his sentence every few years.
Sirhan has most recently stated that he has absolutely no recollection of the event, stating that he was drinking and still does not remember shooting anybody,
News reports state that RFK’s other children oppose the release.
Look, this whole thing is crazy.
I remember the morning after RFK was shot.
I woke up, ready to go to school, and that school year was in its final days, so we should have all been in a joyous mood.
I certainly remembered JFK’s assassination, but I was much younger then—age six—then I was when RFK was shot—age 11—so when I heard what was happening on the radio as I ate my breakfast, I just knew that this event would permeate what should have been a nice, normal day at school.
And it did.
Everyone brought their transistor radios to school, and our teacher let us listen in on what was going on.
If anyone made a peep, someone else would tell them to shut up so they could hear the latest update on the radio.
I think we all kind of knew that RFK would not survive, but we needed to hear it from our radios, and when we did, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
Like JFK before him, RFK promised a better world to us.
In my mind, RFK was the last politician who connected so greatly with the general public, even though we know now that he and his brothers were not as squeaky clean as we thought they were.
He really connected with Baby Boomers, and I do believe that he would have won the election if this would have never happened, and perhaps the world would have been a different place because of his presidency.
But a bullet stopped that from happening, and who would have thought that this conversation would have even arisen more than 50 years ago when Sirhan—drunken or not, remembering it or not—pulled the trigger.
If he does get off, he will be deported to Jordan, as he is a Palestinian, and I do not think he will fade into obscurity, which makes his possible release even more cruel and revolting than it already is.
Whether he likes it or not, he will become a paragon of the Palestinians, a martyr who put a crimp into America’s way of life, and eventually got away with it.
I am sure that whether he likes it or not, he will be applauded by some as a hero, and that very thought repulses me at my very core.
Governor Newsom, please see to it that Sirhan Sirhan only leaves prison in a body bag, when the devil takes him from us naturally.
He ruined our country, ruined our world, and he does not deserve to get out of prison alive under any circumstances whatsoever,
Let him rot in the hell that he created for himself on that fateful evening all those years ago.
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