I received this odd email in response to today’s column — which doesn’t really trash Bobby Kennedy at all:

Subject: Very poor article
After insulting Bobby Kennedy, who was not what you protrayed, I didn’t bother reading the rest of the article.
Quoting George Bernard Shaw or any other respected Literary Figure is no reason to assume someone wanted to tear about society. Kennedy was trying to hold the place together, but you may not have been around in 1968 to realize what was happening. His ideas – punish the bad guys, not by laws but focused prosecution, support israel, do not expend resources on a war that was not being fought to win, encouragement of diversity to build a better society – and his record of being right in the cuban missile crisis and dealing with George Wallace – do not deserve what you said.
Bobby Kennedy was no Ted Kennedy – and Ted and every one else knows it.
No incident harmed America in the last 50 years more than Sirhan’s bullet.

Me: I get this sort of thing from time to time and I remain fascinated by it. I don’t object to people liking Bobby Kennedy or continuing to lament his murder. But it’s so intriguing how the Kennedy myth clouds the memories of people who would otherwise normally object to, say, wiretapping Martin Luther King or being Joe McCarthy’s most important aide, after Roy Cohn. The Cuban Missile Crisis was hardly American statesmanship at its finest, no matter what Hollywood wants you to believe. Only when you lower the bar to “didn’t burn planet to a cinder” does the Cuban Missile Crisis emerge as an unqualified triumph.