JACK LUDWIG
city frozen by automotive martyrs. The Fair could have used something
dramatic. Anything. All it had was the same old Moses (Robert) and
the same old line about a Promised Land (parks he'd build out of the
Fair's profits) . And the same old blame-game when the first year of
the Fair was a flop-highbrows and esthetic critics were Moses' villains.
An election year is a bad time for any other kind of circus. Bobby
Kennedy arrived in New York. Moses should have done it with as much
style. In spring Bobby was Attorney-General, his voting place was
Massachusetts, Kenneth Keating was a senator, his reelection a cinch.
This winter Bobby Kennedy is a resident of New York, and its junior
senator. His campaign week by week grew into the movie cliche which
has the young guy turn on the mob with a "from now on you mugs
are workin' for
me."
One by one the bosses, gentle and tough, fell into
line-generous Averell Harriman, and that nice guy, Robert Wagner.
The ex-President's inner circle, now out in Washington, swung into
New York; as far as anyone could make out during the campaign not
only Bobby Kennedy but Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was a New York
resident. He worked "intellectuals" and "Temple Mr. and Mrs. Clubs"
brilliantly. B.obby's image went from cold to hot; his ruthlessness
(rumored) became his compassion (filmed) ; even asking for a fork in
a pizza joint didn't harm
him.
Negroes didn't forget Bobby; many
others didn't forget Bobby's brother. On his side Kenneth Keating had
Governor Rockefeller, a dubious coattail-catch; Senator Javits carne .on
TV and fixed the ideal
Yiddishe mama
with a half-cringe, half-smile,
saying, "I want everybody who voted for me to vote for my good
friend, Kenneth Keating." Not everybody did. As a friend of mine
quipped when he heard Bobby had been elected: "Now the Kennedy's
will have as many senators as a state."
There's a more somber side to the Kennedy matter in New York.
All spring I had heard of Mark Lane's speeches and rallies throughout
the city, around the country, and in Europe. People I respect have
handed me sheets which convinced them that Mark Lane was one of
the few people dedicated
to
finding out the truth ab.out John F. Ken–
nedy's death. "The bullets entered from the front," I heard, or "Lane
has an eyewitness to the meeting of Jack Ruby, Bernard Weissman
[the man who put the foul ad in the Dallas paper the day Kennedy
was killed], and Officer Tippit."
After the Warren Commission report carne out I decided to go to
the Jan Hus Theater on East Seventy-fourth Street to see for 'myself
what was happening. The most recent Gallup Poll showed that though
85 percent of the American people believed Lee Harvey Oswald had
