When Allen Ginsberg Went Off On RFK Over Pot

When the Ginsberg showed up at Senator Kennedy’s office without an appointment, the senator heard the poet out “on everything from the plight of heroin addicts to federal drug policy to global warming to the war in Vietnam to the invention of LSD to the degraded state of New York City.” Then Ginsberg asked RFK if he had ever smoked marijuana, and Kennedy said no. Uh-oh. (And before he finally left, Ginsberg insisted on singing Kennedy the Hare Krishna mantra.)