A new Bono story

I haven't put a good Bono story up here for a long time and I know you were missing it, so here's a good one. It's a quote from the book 'Bono'.

Harry Belafontane is one of my great heros. He told me this story about Bobby Kennedy, which changed my life indeed, pointed me in the direction I am going now politically. Harry remembered a meeting with Martin Luther King when the civil rights movement hit a wall in the early sixties:

(Belafontane) "I tell you it was a depressing momvent when Bobby Kennedy was made attorney general. It was a bad day for the civil rights movement. Bobby at that time was famously not interested in the civil rights movement. We knew we were in deep trouble. We were crestfallen, in despair, talking to Martin, moaning and roaning about the turn of events, when Dr. King slammed his hand down and ordered us to stop the 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 somebody 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 made them all go home. He wouldn't hear any more negativity about Bobby Kennedy. He knew there must be something positive. And if it was there, somebody could find it. Well, it turned out that Bobby was very close with his bishop. So they befriended the one man who could get through to Bobby's soul and turned him into their Trojan horse.

"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." Bono: That was a great lesson for me, because what Dr. King was saying was: Don't respond to caricature - the Left, the Right, the Progressives, the Reactionary. Don't take people on rumour. Find the light in them, because that will further your cause. And I've held on to that very tightly, that lesson. And so, don't think that I don't understand. I know what I'm up against. I just sometimes don't appear to.

Great story with some great characters. I think the point tells itself.

Out.