A Political Quip, in Front of the Kids
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Thursday, October 23, 2008; 7:11 PM
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. How old is old enough for political banter? At a Politics and Prose bookstore chat for his new kids' book on Monday, Robert Kennedy Jr. got a little partisan with some grade-schoolers. Discussing the Civil War -- his book is about slave-turned-war-hero Robert Smalls -- the lawyer-activist asked the assembled kids if they knew Lincoln's party. Republican, they answered. "You're right," he said. "That's when the Republicans used to be the good guys." The joke annoyed Susan Sylvester, the chaperoning mom of a Murch Elementary fourth-grader who considers herself an independent. "I'm tired of people making these blanket generalizations," and hurting the feelings of those from GOP families, she said. "How do you know how a child processes that?" (Otherwise, she liked his talk -- and bought the book.) Kennedy told us he had no qualms about the quip "since those children struck me as
