The Love In The Room Between Bobby And Jimmy (Kennedy and Hoffa) 1959
(Robert F. Kennedy at the Teamsters Racketeering Hearings 1959 - air so thick you could mix concrete with it)
When Robert F. Kennedy took Lead Council in the Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Racketeering and Corruption in the Teamsters Union, an investigation that took over two years to complete, Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters Union President was more than in the hot seat, he was about to have his empire disintegrate. So heated and contentious was the cross-examination of Hoffa by Kennedy that many (in the conspiracy community) felt it was Hoffa who was responsible for Kennedy's assassination in 1968. The charges and counter-charges weren't relegated to the Senate Hearing chambers, the war was a very public one and threats were tossed by Hoffa at almost every opportunity. During a panel interview on Meet The Press from 1959, Kennedy is asked by Lawrence Spivak if he was worried regarding Hoffa's threat to sue from some remarks Kennedy made during a recent Jack Paar Show appearance.
Robert F. Kennedy: “I feel that in our investigation that we have shown that Mister Hoffa has made collusive deals with employers, that he’s betrayed the Union membership, that he sold out the Union membership, that he’s put gangsters and racketeers in important positions of power within the Teamsters Union, that he’s misused Union funds. I say that and I will say it again. If Mister Hoffa wishes to sue me I think we can take that to a court and allow it to be decided by a jury. And I’m sure that if Mister Hoffa that if he loses that case, and I think it should be done immediately, if he wishes to sue me. That if he loses that case, that he should resign as President of the Teamsters. Because if he is guilty of any one of these things he is not worthy to be International President of that Union.”
Needless to say, the news didn't get any better for Hoffa when Kennedy became Attorney General a little over a year later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmHnSvyKxg
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
on Bobby's legacy on this. anti-labor AND a McCarthyite too?
IMO Hoffa's way was the best way for the Unions to stay in power and keep the corporatists in check...if you didn't cooperate you were dead, "figure of speech", of course.
RFK was certainly not perfect and like many politicians learned some things the hard way. Being effective in politics requires an flexible, evolutionary approach that admits we are not perfectly formed when starting out.
Unlike any politician I ever knew, RFK sincerely empathized and connected with the dispossssed and marginalized in our society. Even though he was a millionaire from Massachusetts his sincere and compassionate message to them resonated with those people that he struggled so long to help. Paul Wellstone came closest to emulating him---but like RFK, passed on before his time.
The final proof of this were the thousands of brokenhearted mourners of all ages and races that lined the tracks of his funeral train to Arlington. They knew they had lost their hero---and who would replace him? Who would be for them now?
He was glad to take on the Hoffas and other criminal hypocrites of his time that fleeced ordinary working Americans in his pursuit of justice. That his actions did not endear him to everyone was a function of his political courage and willingness to do what was right versus what was politically expedient and convenient.
In his words:
..."Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change...I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world."
Address Day of Affirmation, University of Capetown, June 6, 1966
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
Bobby wasn't a McCarthyite and he wasn't anti-labor, he was anti-corruption.
Hoffa was a great union advocate who paid his dues in blood and got in bed with the mob. It's hard to blame him, he was up against unlimited money who could hire all the violent thugs and politicians they wanted. But let's not whitewash his history.
Bobby was young, ambitious and willing to bend principle to get the desired result. And a great man. He personally kept a city from erupting when MLK was assassinated. How hard must that have been for a rich white boy with a thick Boston Irish accent to do at the time?
They were both fearless, convinced they were right, and died too soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
The bottom of the page has all the references, you'll want to look at them also.
The mob was Hoffas protection from the corporatist goons and I won't hold that against him. Bobby ruined that relationship with that witch hunt and the bad press was the start of the downfall of the Unions public popularity I M O
add: should be IMGO, that was my Grandfathers opinion ;)
I was wrong.
He wasn't perfect. He made mistakes, but he evolved into someone admirable - for passing on a life of privileged obscurity in advocating for the common people, the disenfranchised, the poor and the powerless. Don't drape the sins of the Father around the shoulders of the son - at least not in this instance. RFK's story was one of redemption, and this effort against Hoffa's corruption was part of that path. His work for McCarthy ended before McCarthy's downfall, and didn't come until after RFK had seen through McCarthy - recognizing much of the puffery and nonsense behind his accusations for what they were.
And he left wayyyyy too soon.
Look at any pols faults before lionizing them.
The one that really pisses me off that has less in his closet than anyone before him that keeps getting put down is Obama.
Carter was another.
At least the Nobel committee is still sane.
IMHO as young man RFK was an arrogant, ambitious, priviliged little punk. Others have said "he wasn't a McCarthyite" I think that's more or less true but in some ways it makes his initial willingness to work for McCarthy even worse.
But as he worked on his brother Jack's campaign and then as AG he really grew and matured as a man. But then after his brother was assassinated he completely transformed. In the last year of his life he was saying and doing things that no politician who has a serious shot at the presidency is supposed to say. He wasn't just saying that the Vietnam war was a bad idea or too hard to win (the position of the democratic left) but that it was simply wrong and immoral. That was supposed to be out of bounds for polite debate. The assumption was always we were trying to bring democracy to Vietnam the debate was whether bombing and killing the Vietnamese was the right way to do it. RFK took principled stands on Vietnam, poverty, civil rights, and unions. And he actually had a chance to win.
Jimmy Hoffa is a fuckin american hero. I wish to god he was around now................
Reality has a liberal bias
Him and this guy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Wallace
Hoffa sold out the teamsters and let mobsters pilfer their pension fund. And he's your hero? This is why America is so f*d up, we make folk heros out of crooks and liars who screw us
He got snatched from the Chicago Road House in Southfield which is where we had our senior prom. That has always sort of creeped me out.
We could really use some bare knuckled, hard fisted, take no shit labor leaders like Hoffa and Reuther today.
These guys were nearly beaten to death by the corporate goons of a different era, and they still didn't back down!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
couldn't carry bobby kennedy's briefcase.
He doesn't have to. He carries Rahmabama's suitcase, which is filled with corporate bribes.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Holder sold his soul to the company till. He represents the image of competency, not the reality. We'll probably never see the likes of RFK again.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
Looks like Frank Church, who was elected to the Senate from Idaho in 1956. This would coincide with Kennedy's investigation of Hoffa.
...When Robert F. Kennedy took Lead Council in the Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Racketeering and Corruption in the Teamsters Union...
Jimmy Hoffa: The man who taught L. Ron Hubbard how to commit organized crime.
was that he served on mccarthy's staff and assisted with his 'communist' witch hunts...
And he actually turned against McCarthy and worked to expose the illegal tactics used by McCarthy's homophobic gay go to guy Roy Cohn. Whether that was because Bobby was outraged by the immorality he came to see in McCarthy or just pissed because at one point he wanted Cohn's job and because when he worked for McCarthy Cohn treated him like sh*t we'll never know. I suspect it was a little of both.
To me the fact that RFK started his life as such a spoiled little jerk makes his life story all that much more compelling. As a young man I agree he was ambitious and his politics were more or less the same as his father's and his father was a virulent anti-communist.
He matured and developed his own ideas and ethics. First as he worked on and then ran JFK's campaigns, then as AG (a post I admit he was unqualified for yet I think he did an amazing job at it). Finally after JFK's death Bobby changed completely. For months he was close to catatonic but when he started to come back to life he was more principled and more of a fighter for true left wing causes than JFK ever was.
Enough said.
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