I’ll say. 😀
At our last City Council Meeting, our City Manager opened the discussion of selecting the developer for Parcel A by recounting that, early in his career he had been given a fellowship by the Robert F Kennedy for work with low income families in Oakland, California. I had no idea what that has to do with building a boutique hotel at our Marina, but I get accused of grandiosity from time to time, so I’m willing to roll with the occasional rhetorical flight.
But then he winds up by quoting RFK…
Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?
Me being me, I’ll tell ya why not…
- That is not an RFK quote. It’s actually from a really stupid play by George Bernard Shaw. The only reason I know that is because we have very few famous people in Ireland, so as a child you’re required to learn about every last one of them–no matter how boring. (Although to be fair, if you ever visit Ireland, one of the coolest places is the National Art Gallery–in Shaw’s house in Dublin.)
- Kennedy used that line while campaigning to end the war in Vietnam, which was a pretty bold move in 1968. He was not talking about building a hotel. And conflating the two kinda bugs me in the way it bugs me when Cadillac and Mercedes started using 60’s protest songs to advertise luxury cars. OK, Boomer.
We can debate the merits of building a hotel at the Marina. But that warm-up made it sound as though this development had some connection with a greater service to humanity. And that’s a bit of a stretch for a boutique hotel which would be charging close to $200 a night.
http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/07/i-dream-things-that-never-were-and-say.html