One of the finest moments of former Attorney General Robert F Kennedy’s life came on the day that Martin Luther King was murdered. Senator Kennedy was campaigning in Indianapolis and gave a remarkable off the cuff speech to calm an angry crowd of mourners:

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”

It was one of many great speeches delivered by Senator Kennedy during a campaign that ended with his own murder. In that campaign, he earned the right to be called RFK. I’ll explain below.

We move from 1968 to 2026, which finds RFK’s son campaigning for MAGA Republicans.

Most people call Bobby Junior RFK Jr. I refuse to do so. That sort of acronym typically denotes pols, usually presidents, who have accomplished something major: TR, FDR, JFK, and LBJ immediately spring to mind. What has Bobby Junior accomplished in comparison? He was born into the right family then besmirched its name with his lethal MAHA malakatude.

Let’s play compare and contrast. Here’s an account of what Bobby Junior said on the stump in Michigan:

“Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed on Monday that Arabs did not win major global awards and “don’t produce literature,” remarks that came as President Trump and his allies step up anti-Muslim messaging in the final days of the midterms.

Speaking at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mr. Kennedy said at first that the “Muslim religion produced a golden age” in which “Islamic lands were the center, the foundation for art and literature and science and engineering, and they were highly tolerant and pluralistic and cosmopolitan.”

But then he argued that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political movement founded in 1928, had “created stagnant societies,” falsely claiming that Arabs no longer produced award-winning work.

“That’s why you don’t see any Muslims, any Arab Muslims winning the Nobel,” Mr. Kennedy said. “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce — they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Field prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”

Arabs have in fact won all of these prizes, including as recently as 2025. Clips of Mr. Kennedy’s comments spread widely online, with some angry users sharing names of Arab and Muslim winners of major awards.”

You say Islamophobia; I say bigotry. Let’s call the whole thing off.

The featured image shows Bobby The Bigot with his HHS subordinate Dr. Mehmet Oz who happens to be Muslim. If Muslims are so stagnant and backward, why did Kennedy hire Dr. Oz? Is it because Oz is Turkish not an Arab American? Is Bobby Junior bigoted against Arabs, not Muslims?

That is, of course, a distinction without a difference: The Ottoman Empire ruled the Arab world until being on the losing side of The Great War. You say Turk; I say Arab. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Since abandoning the party of his father and uncles, Bobby Junior has disgraced himself. The Kennedys have always been known for their fierce almost tribal devotion to family: Bobby Junior is the acorn that fell far from the tree. He serves a president who has desecrated the Kennedy Center:

Bobby Junior was too busy damaging our public health system to object to that illegal attack on his Uncle Jack’s legacy.

That same president has hung Big Brother style banners on the building named for the real RFK:

This too was greeted with silence from Secretary Kennedy. He was too busy fomenting measles epidemics with his anti-vax rhetoric to stand up for his father’s legacy.

Bobby Junior has gone from anti-science extremism to overt bigotry. He’s the horseshoe person as Trumpist stooge. The real RFK was a champion of the poor and dispossessed. It was not the starting point of his political journey but he ended up as a fierce opponent of bigotry in all its pernicious forms. In contrast, his son deserves to be called Bobby The Bigot.

Friends don’t let friends call Bobby Junior RFK Jr. Instead, he’s the man with RFK’s face.

A great song was written in response to RFK’s assassination in 1968 with these lyrics: “Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby? Can you tell me where he’s gone? I thought I saw him walking up over the hill with Abraham, Martin, and John.”

The last word goes to Dion followed by Marvin Gaye: