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Thanks to B. Smasher and Bartcop at bartcop.com for permission to reprint this article.
You can e-mail B. Smasher here.
Guest Editorial
The Scar
by B. Smasher

Saturday, June 10, 2000 (bartcop.com via AmpolNS) -- In case you missed it, this week marked the 32nd anniversary of the assassination of the 37th President of the United States, Robert Francis Kennedy. Shot to death by an extreme right wing nut religious fundamentalist...

....with...a... HANDGUN!

You know, "get the gun, Rafer, break his fingers but get the gun."

Of course you do.

I'd pay good money to get a copy of that live Mutual News broadcast of the event.

Lots of you have probably never heard that tape.

It's gruesome.

I know I said I don't have a tattoo, not on the outside of me anyway.

A certain 12 year old Brain Smasher has a tattoo on his spirit from listening to that tape and watching the news footage of the assassination.

I mean, it's imbedded!

I've scrubbed and scrubbed, lasered it, tried plastic surgery, it won't come off.

It hurts.

To this day, it hurts.

We were having a garage sale, my sainted ma came out of the house and with tears streaming down her cheeks, and said, "They killed Kennedy!"

Smell that smell?

That was the hot searing burn on my spirit.

Even at 12, I knew which Kennedy she was talking about.

Most assuredly, even at 12 years old, Brain Smasher knew who "they" were.

Don't worry though, I had long before that incident detested Republicans.

What's that, you say? Tricky Dick was the 37th president of the US?

Over RFK's dead body he was. Not to me. As a famous philosopher once said, "He's not my president."

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."--Aeschylus