Recently, though, certain well-publicized remarks made by New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and, in particular, another prejudice-pushing (if not hate-mongering) e-mail I got resurrected this sad and historic moment for me.
What Clinton said was this: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”
The “it” she mentioned was the rush some Democrats felt to have her out of the presidential primary race.
Given that the senator was defending her decision to prolong her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, the key to both references would appear to be the month of June, not the word “assassinated.” Yet many viewed Clinton’s allusion to Kennedy’s fate as highly ill-chosen.
Because Barack Obama, the first African-American candidate with a convincing shot at the White House, has been under Secret Service protection for more than a year, perhaps it was. But I’ll never believe Clinton meant the comment as so many construed it.
When I was taught the Ten Commandments, I was instructed the one that tells us not to bear false witness against our neighbor means more than it appears to at first glance. It also means, I was told, that we are not to attribute false or imagined motives to a person’s words or deeds.
(As for who is our neighbor, see The Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37.)
Yet in our present society, presuming then vilifying a person’s motives is often as not embraced as a perfectly acceptable way to gain game advantage.
With sleight of word an accuser can stoop low yet appear to stand on moral ground higher than his opponent.
