Robert kennedy

Tuesday

Simon Ings

Vivid, gripping and surreal: a new slice of Ellroy madness

From our UK edition

Los Angeles, August 1962. PI and extortionist Freddie Otash is snooping on Marilyn Monroe for labour leader and racketeer Jimmy Hoffa, who’s paying good money for dirt on Jack and Bobby Kennedy. Is Jack really schtupping Miss Monroe? Who cares? Make it so. But the operation is rumbled and then Monroe dies of an overdose (or does she?) and Otash finds himself pushed from pillar to post by greasepole Pete (Pitchess, 28th Sheriff of LA County) and ratfink Bobby (US attorney general Robert Kennedy), for they too have a stake in filthing-up the film star’s name.

Wednesday

John Maier

After Aberfan, clairvoyants had a field day

From our UK edition

In the wake of catastrophe, however random or unpredictable, one of the first things people can be relied upon to do is look around for somebody to blame. There isn’t always an obvious candidate, of course, but disaster makes us resourceful, and often the casting process is simply a matter of laying hands on someone who happens to be fairly near by and looks like a good enough fit for the role. Assigning responsibility is an extremely effective therapy, after all, restoring a feeling of control over the capricious environment. Someone should have known, we insist. Someone ought to have seen this coming. John Barker, the central figure of The Premonitions Bureau, took this final claim rather literally.

Thursday

John Maier

Enjoyably bad-tempered: The Lock In with Jeremy Paxman reviewed

From our UK edition

‘I used to be Mr Nasty! That was good! Mr Nasty was easy!’ Jeremy Paxman bellows at Michael Palin on his new podcast. Now Paxman wants to know: ‘Have you got any recommendations as to how you become the nicest man in Britain?’ ‘I’m a very angry, cross person half the time!’ Michael Palin protests, pleasantly. The Lock In with Jeremy Paxman is Paxman’s attempt at a more convivial register — ‘just interesting people, over a pint, with me’ — in contrast to the tone he deployed famously on Newsnight for 25 years: that of the professional curmudgeon. Luckily Paxman is still a hopeless grouch and cannot easily sustain common standards of politeness even over the course of a half-hour interview.

Friday

Leon Hadar

The Democrats are damned if they nominate Sanders. And damned if they don’t

It might be a stretch to compare the ugly-but-not-violent warfare of American politics in 2020 with the explosive politics of the 1960s. But history does repeat itself, as the hackneyed old phrase says: first as tragedy then as farce. Consider the common thread linking these two political epochs: the rise of a messianic left that sabotaged two attempts by the Democrats to take over the White House, which eventually forced the party to change direction and move to the center. In 1968, the Democratic leadership wanted to campaign on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historic civil-rights legislation and his efforts to reinforce the foundations of the welfare state with the Great Society programs, steps that enjoyed wide national support.

iowa voting democrats

Thursday

Taki

50 years after Bobby Kennedy’s murder, the ‘deep state’ still reigns supreme

New York This week 50 years ago saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a man I met a couple of times in the presence of Aristotle Onassis, whom some Brit clown-writer once dubbed Bobby’s murderer. (Bad books need to sell, and what better hook than a conspiracy theory implicating a totally innocent man?) I once witnessed Bobby, at a Susan Stein party, asking Onassis for funds — the 1968 election was coming up — and Ari showing Bobby his two empty trouser pockets. Bobby’s assassination did alter American politics. Violence, black anger and despair spilled out on to the streets of American cities.