Yesterday, “Fresh Air” replayed some old interviews with Pete Hamill, the great New York journalist and writer who died on Wednesday. Hamill, who had grown up Irish in Brooklyn, and worked for a time in Mexico City, was a friend and advisor to Robert F. Kennedy, and had been standing by Kennedy the night he was shot. In one of the interviews he explained that the candidate was able to win the California primary by getting the Mexican vote, and he got that vote, he explained, not through his famous charisma, but the fact that the Mexicans and the Irish have the same fatalistic view of life.
