Politics and Civil Rights

Regarding his opposition to the death penalty and to various government attempts to limit individual freedoms and rights: Please click here to view David Soul’s Late Late Show interview in which he spoke of these issues and his traveling to Dublin in 2006 to appear in the stage production of ‘The Exonerated’.

Regarding issues of racism and racial hatred in the United States: I don’t think a lot of people like to believe that things like this are actually occurring in our country, but that’s one of the reasons why they exist.

Regarding his idealism and social conscience early on: I was a JF Kennedy baby. We really believed that ‘Ask not what your country can do for you’ stuff.

Regarding political ties and campaigns: I was first involved with John Kennedy back in 1960 as a 17-year-old Young Democrat. He turned the state around that had for years voted on the Republican side, and we turned the state around and we won that campaign. And then I worked for Bobby Kennedy as well in 1968 and was there that fateful night, that awful night at The Ambassador Hotel when he was murdered. And they’re two men I guess who probably inspired me more than anyone has ever inspired me in terms of political sphere, and they provided a kind of leadership that I’ve never lost the kind of indelibility of their influence. And I think the guy who comes closest to it now is Barack Obama. I wouldn’t compare him so much to the Kennedys, but what I would say is that his effect on young people today is not unlike the effect that the Kennedys had on young people then.