In a recent meeting with “five Black journalists” at his Washington headquarters, John Kerry said “that although he was supportive of civil rights during his college years, he regrets that he didn’t take part in the March on Washington, the Selma to Montgomery March and other major protest events of the 1960s.” It was, he said, “a very difficult personal choice about going or not going,” but, he continued, “I was on one of the athletic teams at the time. I did not go.”
Nevertheless, Kerry is proud of his youthful civil rights awareness, even though he didn’t walk the walk.
Asked if he has any regrets about the choice he made, the junior Massachusetts senator said, “It would have been a great experience. I didn’t, I made other choices at the time. Again, I was supportive and proud that I was conscious of it and aware of it and cared enough to be supportive of it. But I just made a different choice at that point in time.”
“It would have been a great experience. I didn’t, I made other choices at the time. Again, I was supportive and proud that I was conscious of it and aware of it and cared enough to be supportive of it.”
It’s all about me me me me me me me.
The marches and freedom rides weren’t made solely to have interesting experiences. Some of the participants, at least, were motivated by the desire to bring about needed social change; possibly at some sacrifice to themselves, like missing a football game maybe. It wasn’t “what can I contribute” it was “what’s in it for me, John Kerry”. What a jerk.
I’m not a fan of Senator Kerry, but this strikes me as nitpicking. It’s a rather high bar to set if we expect presidential candidates to have, in their youth, devoted great amounts of time and energy to every worthy cause. Morality doesn’t require you to drop out of society and be a full-time do-gooder. For instance, I support an aggressive American foreign policy, but I haven’t dropped out of graduate school to join the army. I think it would have been admirable for me to do so, but, given the lack of a draft or other large-scale mobilization, I don’t think I’ve sinned by failing to have signed up.
Basically, it’s nice, although certainly short of heroic, for Kerry to have passively sympathized with the pre-AA civil rights movement. And lest we forget, Kerry did have a great bit of civic motivation in his youth, first by serving in the military and later through his anti-war activism. You can say a lot of things about Kerry in his 20s, but apathetic isn’t one of them. And as for it being self-centered, it’s an interview about Kerry, not an oral history collection project, so it’s entirely appropriate for the focus to be on him. I think there are plenty of reasons to vote against Kerry, but his failing to have taken a semester off to do civil rights work in Mississippi is not one of them.
Gabriel – As usual, an astute comment. I think our difference here, insofar as we have one, may turn on exactly how unappealing we find Kerry. But I could have been clearer in what I find objectionable about his pride in his own sensitivity, and so let me try to clarify.
My objection is not that he did not go to Selma, etc. My standard is not that everyone always do the most noble thing. Hell, I don’t even have any objection to socialists claiming every tax deduction to which they’re entitled — believing that the gov’t should equalize assets imposes no ethical obligation on believers to give away what they have. Etc. My objection is to the smarmy, ethically elitist self-satisfaction that I smelled in his remarks.
That the issue is civil rights adds a general flavor to Kerry’s remark. This nation is full, tens of thousands, of people in their fifties and early sixties who learned to chord “We Shall Overcome” on a cheap four-string and who cut classes to throw Frisbies in support of civil rights, while peeing their knickers at the thought of going south of Cincinnati.
And they all thought/think of themselves as Very Fine Folk, superior to the rest of us.
It’s the really cheap, easy, practically free grace with which they have anointed themselves that grates.
Good thoughts are a dime a dozen, unless they’re on sale, and we really don’t need to hear about Kerry’s.
“It would have been a great experience. I didn’t, I made other choices at the time. Again, I was supportive and proud that I was conscious of it and aware of it and cared enough to be supportive of it. But I just made a different choice at that point in time.”
Doesn’t that sound eerily like what Dick Cheney said (and what Kerry has criticized) about his not going to Vietnam?