MovieChat Forums > The Kennedys (2011) Discussion > RFK -- 'address me as General?' -- WTF?

RFK -- 'address me as General?' -- WTF?

posted 13 years ago by brandall-7
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What the heck is going on in the scene where RFK tells Hoover to address him as "General"? Did this actually happen? It makes no sense.

RFK was Attorney General. His office had no connection at all to a military title of "General". "Attorney General" is one of those rare old-fashioned noun-adjective pairs (like "Surgeon General", "court martial", "blood royal", "gum arabic", etc.) The "General" in the Attorney General's title just means that he's the attorney at the federal level.

Did the scriptwriters just totally screw this up?

An Attorney General is formally addressed as "Mr. Attorney General."

[–] doug65oh 13 years ago

Okay, here’s the poop on the Attorney General/General thing: It’s perfectly proper to use “General” when addressing an attorney general – on the state or federal level, usually in formal settings. You might say it’s a shortened version of the more commonly-heard Mr. or Madame Attorney General. “General” can appear in court documents, pleadings, etc. (One example of such usage, the term appears numerous times in the transcript of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes.) As far as RFK is concerned, I’ve seen or heard him addressed as General in recordings and/or transcripts of meetings.