OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: EARTH TO BILL CLINTON: SHUT THE (BLEEP) UP!

"And John Kennedy replied, 'The world is changing. The old ways will not do. ... It is time for a new generation of leadership.' So it is with Barack Obama," he added.

Kennedy's niece, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the only surviving daughter of the late president, endorsed Obama in a op-ed column published Sunday in The New York Times.

Schlossberg, now 50, wrote that Obama could inspire Americans in the same way her father did. "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," she wrote. "But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

The 46-year-old Obama's candidacy also comes 40 years after Senator Robert F. Kennedy's run for the White House, which ended in tragedy with his assassination in Los Angeles on June 4, 1968, just minutes after he spoke to jubilant supporters after winning the California Democratic primary.

Kennedy Sank Carter in '80 -- Can He Sink Clinton in '08?

It's not immediately known what impact Kennedy's endorsement of Obama will have on the Democratic race. But it was highly sought after by all the Democratic candidates. Besides his status as a liberal icon and member of the Kennedy dynasty, Kennedy boasts a broad national fundraising and political network as well.

But Kennedy's decision to back Obama may have been triggered by the Massachusetts senator's anger at Bill Clinton for his attacks on Obama. It was widely reported last week that Kennedy berated the former president in a heated telephone call on the eve of the Nevada Democratic caucuses last Monday and told Clinton point-blank to "cool it." Neither Kennedy nor Clinton would confirm or deny the reports.

Kennedy's endorsement of Obama in the face of the former president's attacks is also a stern reminder to the Clintons that it was Kennedy who, more than any other Democrat, fired the torpedoes that sank the S.S. Jimmy Carter in 1980 -- and that he potentially could fire a new round of torpedoes to sink the S.S. Clinton.

Kennedy challenged President Carter in a bitter battle for the 1980 Democratic nomination -- a challenge that the Carter campaign never recovered from and was a major contributing factor in Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan in the fall election that year.

Adding Insult to Injury for the Clintons: Toni Morrison Backs Obama

As if the rebellion against the Clintons within the Democratic Party wasn't bad enough, they received yet another slap in the face on Monday: The African American writer who famously labeled Bill Clinton the "first black president" as a term of endearment has spurned his wife and instead is backing Obama.

Author Toni Morrison said her endorsement of the Illinois senator has little to do with Obama's mixed background — he is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — but rather his personal gifts.

Writing with the touch of a poet in a letter to Obama, Morrison explained why she chose him over Clinton -- which, much like TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, is her first-ever public presidential endorsement.

Morrison, whose acclaimed novels usually concentrate on the lives of African American women, said she has admired Clinton for years because of her knowledge and mastery of politics, but then dismissed that experience in favor of Obama's vision.

"In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates," Morrison wrote. "That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. . .

"Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace — that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom," Morrison wrote.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4