Geez, you know, can you even live in this country?

Walt Mossberg: Our whole family just totally idolized John F. Kennedy. And he was probably the biggest deal. That and a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll stars in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll because I was right at the right age for that to come along.

In terms of a mass public figure, it would have been John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Those were huge influences on me.

Well it was horrible. I think if you talk to anybody my age – and I am a baby boomer, second year of the baby boom – it was awful. I was in high school. They announced it. They closed the school, and it was a sort of shattering. I had a very happy childhood in the suburbs. My parents were not rich. They were totally just working class folks, but we believed – and I still do actually; but the American dream was a big deal to us. And the fact that he could be shot and killed, the President of the United States and particularly this guy, who we had been so excited about.

You have to understand I remember my entire extended family gathering to watch the Kennedy-Nixon debates as if it was a football game. And we were all rooting for Kennedy. This was an electric event. And for him to be murdered only a few years later was an incredibly depressing thing.

And then in 1968 when I was in college, and I was, you know, marching against the Vietnam War and marching on Civil Rights demonstrations and things like that, for Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy to be killed was; I was horribly depressed. I could remember thinking about, “Geez, you know, can you even live in this country?” it was so awful. It was just awful.

Recorded on: Sep 13, 2007