[UPDATE: If you know of MORE instances, please post them in the comments section and I'll review to see if they should go into this timeline - Bruce Wilson]
[UPDATE X2: Paul Rosenberg, at Open Left, has just frontpaged this under the title The Cloud of Eliminationism Grows Over The Election]
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The New York Times editorial board concurs:
"We have no idea what, exactly, Hillary Clinton was thinking when she referred to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in explaining her decision to keep on campaigning when it looks like there is virtually no hope of her winning the Democratic nomination.
(We’ve supported her decision to do so. This is a democracy, after all.)
But she could, at least, have apologized.
Instead, she issued one of those tedious non-apology apologies in which it sounds like the person who is being offended is somehow at fault: "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive."
Here is how federally funded "Copycat effect" researcher Loren Coleman characterized in a Saturday May 24th, 2008 post: HRC Spreads Assassination Meme:
"Hillary Rodham Clinton let the political assassination meme out of the bottle! She unconsciously or consciously said she is staying in the presidential race just in case something happens. The copycat factor is a reality underlying assassinations, and she did the unthinkable."
Unlike Coleman, I am not ascribing intention here but I've compiled a fuller chronicling of 5 possible instances in which Hillary Clinton and her campaign have made statements that have accidentally floated the Barack Obama/assassination meme and, more specifically, the Barack Obama/Kennedy /assassination meme.
The Context
"Copycat Effect" researcher Loren Coleman puts Clinton's horrendous, apparently accidental May 23 remark in context :
Saturday May 24, 2008: Federally Funded "Copycat effect" researcher Loren Coleman has strong words for Clinton's "Obama-Kennedy-assassination" comments,
The power of words, the power of the media, and the power of graphic imagery cannot be underestimated in this political year, or any year. The fact that the vulnerable homicidal-suicidal mind of an assassin can and has been influenced by behavior contagion and the copycat effect cannot be disputed by anyone who is a student of assassinations.
Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton thinking?
The evening following Clinton's May 23 remark, Keith Olbermann, on Countdown, delivers perhaps the most scathing and morally outraged commentary of his career. Here's the core of Olbermann's critique:
She actually said those words.
**Those** words, Senator?
You actually invoked the nightmare of political assassination.
You actually invoked the spectre of an inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of triumph, for himself and a battered nation yearning to breathe free, silenced forever.
You actually used the word "assassination" in the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone of racial hatred -- and **gender** hatred -- and **political** hatred.
You actually used the word "assassination" in a time when there is a fear, unspoken but vivid and terrible, that our again-troubled land and fractured political landscape might target a black man running for president.
Or a white man.
Or a white woman!
You actually used those words, in **this** America, Senator while running against an African-American against whom the death threats started the moment he declared his campaign?
You actually used those words, in **this** America, Senator, while running to break your "greatest glass ceiling" and claiming there are people who would do anything to stop **you**?
You! . . .
The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton, you cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!
And to not appreciate, immediately -- to **still** not appreciate tonight -- just **what** you have done... is to reveal an incomprehension of the America you seek to lead.
This, Senator, is too much.
Because a senator -- a politician -- a **person** -- who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that she might just be sticking around in part, just in case the other guy gets shot -- has no business being, and no capacity **to** be, the President of the United States.
Good night and good luck.
***************************************
Timeline of the "Accidental Assassination Meme"
April 10, 2000: John McCain says that, if elected to Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy's New York Senate seat Hillary Clinton would inherit RFK's legacy. AP News/CBS, April 10, 2000:
(AP) Sen. John McCain predicts that if Hillary Rodham Clinton were elected, she would be a "star" unlike any politician seen in Senate since Robert F. Kennedy.
McCain made those comments a day after he campaigned for Clinton's opponent in the New York Senate race, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
"This is the first time in history a first lady has run," the Arizona GOP senator told Columbia University students on Monday.
"She would be a star of the quality that has not been seen in the Senate since Bobby Kennedy was elected senator from the state of New York."
October 15, 2007 JFK's closest living aid, Ted Sorenson, says Barack Obama is JFK's heir. (UK Telegraph)
December 27, 2007. Hillary Clinton, on Meet The Press, accuses Barack Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod of accusing Clinton of playing a role in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Clinton said Axelrod "accuses me of playing a role in Benazir Bhutto's assassination." [see Salon story for more complete transcript] But on on January , 2008 Albert R. Hunt, for Bloomberg News, writes:
"I was in the small group of reporters in Des Moines, Iowa, on Dec. 27, when Axelrod was asked if the Bhutto assassination would help the more-experienced Clinton politically. He disagreed and said the war in Iraq has "diverted" attention and resources from Afghanistan and Pakistan, bolstering radical elements, who may have played a role in the assassination.
That "diversion" argument is made by many Democratic politicians and foreign-policy experts, including Clinton advisers.
Whatever the merits of that argument, it isn't accusing Clinton of complicity in an assassination. Both Clintons had a professional relationship with Axelrod. Hillary Clinton and her husband, who leveled the same charge, know full well he wouldn't accuse her of playing a role in a murder."
January 7, 2008: Hillary Clinton, speaking to a crowd during the New Hampshire 2008 Democratic Primary, is introduced by Francine Torge, who tells the crowd:
"Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated."
January 9, 2008: Steve Bell, cartoonist for The Gaurdian, posts cartoon of Barack Obama with a shooting range target on Obama's chest.
February 1, 2008: Der Speigel floats Obama-Kennedy assassination meme.
February 25, 2008: The New York Times floats Obama-Kennedy assassination meme
February 26, 2008: Howie Kurtz, for the Washington Post, comments on the apparent circulation, by Clinton Campaign staffers, of a picture of Barack Obama dressed as a Somali elder. The picture pops up on right wing websites with titles alleging an Obama-Al Qaeda link. By May 12, 2008, notes Ali Etaraz on the Huffington Post, the Obama-Muslim smear had morphed into a veiled assassination threat via the claim, spread by right-wing and right-wing Jewish websites, that Barack Obama might be assassinated by Muslims because he's an "apostate muslim".
Hillary Clinton, March 6, 2008 [off-camera interview with Time Magazine]:
"Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June, also in California. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual. We will see how it unfolds as we go forward over the next three to four months."
May 12, 2008: Edward Luttwak, in a New York Times op-ed, worries that Barack Obama might be assassinated because of a perception that Obama is an "apostate muslim".
Hillary Clinton, May 23, 2008
"I don't. Because again, I've been around long enough. You know, 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. You know, I just don't understand it. You know, there's lots of speculation about why it is."
Friday evening, May 23, 2008: Keith Olbermann, on Countdown, delivers perhaps the most scathing and morally outraged commentary of his career
Saturday May 24, 2008: Federally Funded "Copycat effect" researcher Loren Coleman has strong words for Clinton's "obama-Kennedy-assassination" comments,
The power of words, the power of the media, and the power of graphic imagery cannot be underestimated in this political year, or any year. The fact that the vulnerable homicidal-suicidal mind of an assassin can and has been influenced by behavior contagion and the copycat effect cannot be disputed by anyone who is a student of assassinations.
Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton thinking?
Her non-apology "apology" only has made this worse, and I predict will fester like an unhealed wound until she steps aside. Despite what she said in her "apology," she has not honored RFK's New York Senate seat with her actions of late. She little realizes the power of her own words if she allows this to continue, and sit there, waiting to further infect the nation, as we move closer to the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Clinton will not be to blame, needless to say, if a politician is assassinated or an attempt occurs during this campaign year, but to reinforce the climate of instability with these words is beyond belief.
If Hillary Clinton is steeped in history, then she surely realizes that an African American man, Martin Luther King, was assassinated a mere two months before Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The meme was there in 1968. Actions are followed by actions. Why give this life in 2008? Is Hillary Clinton truly a student of history or does she wish to make a mockery of it?
Was she thinking that, indeed, Obama would be killed, and thus she wanted to be waiting in the wings?
How can she look at herself in the mirror and stay in this race any longer?
What is the "Copycat Effect" ? - "The copycat effect is what happens when the media makes an event into a "hot death story" and then via behavior contagion, more deaths, suicides, murders, and more occur in a regularly predictive cycle"