On this day, June 6, 2018, we should remember June 6, 1968, when Bobby Kennedy died after being shot three times the previous day in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan. Two days later, RFK’s funeral train passed through Baltimore and mourners stood along the railroad tracks in their profound grief.
But our memories are muffled.
On this day, June 6, 2018, we should remember June 6, 1944, World War II’s D-Day, when American and British forces stormed the beaches of Normandy and changed the history of the world. I still have a newspaper clipping from D-Day, from the old Baltimore News-Post, under a front-page headline that reads, “Baltimorean First to Invade Europe.”
“Lieut. Abe Candiotti, U.S.N.R.,” the story says, “a 23-year-old Spanish-Jewish American boy from Brooklyn, today commanded the first wave of small assault boats which set troops ashore in this section of Adolf Hitler’s Europe. The boat carried members of an infantry company commanded by Capt. Leonard T. Schroeder, 25, who comes from Baltimore, Md., and is of old German-American stock.”
The heart swells: the Spanish-Jewish guy from Brooklyn; the German guy from Baltimore. We should remember them this day, but our memories are muffled.
They’re muffled by the great pretender in the White House, named Trump, who launches a lie about football players and patriotism and then, finding the lie has political benefits, perpetuates it by disinviting the champion Philadelphia Eagles from a White House celebration.
“The Philadelphia Eagles … disagree with their president,” Trump said, referring to himself in the third person, “because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military.”
This, despite the widely-publicized fact that none of the Eagles failed to stand for the national anthem across the entire season. This, from the man, Trump, who honored the military himself by receiving five deferments for a bone spur during the Vietnam War.
This, from the man who has heard repeatedly, and explicitly, from the NFL that players demonstrated not to disrespect the U.S. military or the American flag or the natioanal anthem – but to call attention to police shootings of unarmed young black men.
This, from the man who thinks the silent, dignified taking of a knee during the national anthem is cause to curse these players in public and suggest they be deported – but then lavishes praise on Roseanne Barr, who once famously botched the singing of the national anthem at a baseball game and then, responding to boos, grabbed her crotch and spat.
Yeah, boy, there’s our kind of patriotic gesture.
And so, on a day when we should recall Bobby Kennedy, and a day to recall young men risking their lives on a beach in France, we’re left with President Donald Trump telling us that he’s the true arbiter of patriotism.
Except for one dissenting voice in the White House crowd Tuesday, a civilian who took a knee and called out, “Stop hiding behind the armed services and the national anthem to attack your fellow citizens.”
But who heard that man’s voice, when so many others – like so many memories – are muted on this day by ongoing lies?
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, is now in paperback.
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