words from a rock star

I'm reading Bono's biography and I could not get this story he tells out of my head. It's long, but I wanted to share it anyway. It's from a part in the the book where he's discussing the roots of his activism, especially around Africa and AIDS: (excerpted from "Bono in conversation with Michka Assayas")

"Harry Belafonte is one of my great heroes. He told me this story about Bobby Kennedy, which changed my life indeed...Harry remembered a meeting with Martin Luther King when the civil rights movement had hit a wall in the early sixties: [impersonating the croaky voice of Belafonte] "I tell you it was a depressing moment when Bobby Kennedy was made attorney general. It was a very bad day for the civil rights movement." And I said, "Why was that?" He said: "Oh, you see, you forget. Bobby Kennedy was Irish. Those Irish were real racists; they didn't like the black man. They were just one step above the black man on the social ladder, and they made us feel it. They were all the police, they were the people who broke our balls on a daily basis. Bobby at that time was famously not interested in the civil rights movement. We knew were were in deep trouble. We were crest-fallen, in despair, talking to Martin, moaning and groaning about the turn of events when Dr. King slammed his hand down and ordered us to stop bitchin': "Enough of this," he said. "Is there nobody here who's got something good to say about Bobby Kennedy?" We said: "Martin, that's what we're telling ya! There is no one. There is nothing good to say about him. The guy's an Irish Catholic conservative badass, he's bad news." To which Martin replied: "Well, then, let's call this meeting to a close. We will re-adjourn when sombody has found one thing redeeming to say about Bobby Kennedy, because that my friends, is the door through which our movement will pass." So he stopped the meeting and he made them all go home.

Well it turned out that Bobby was very close to his Bishop. So they befriended the one man who could get through to Bobby's soul and turned him into their Trojan hourse. They sort of ganged up on this bishop, the civil rights religious people, and got the bishop to speak to Bobby. Harry become emotional at the end of this tale: "When Bobby Kennedy lay dead on a Los Angeles pavement, there was no greater friend to the civil rights movement. There was no one we owed more of our progress to than that man."

So Bono sums up the moral of this story as: "Don't respond to caricature--the Left, the Right, find the light in them because that will further your cause."

What an idea--for current 'big' events in the news, and for the people I just can't understand myself!