Fuck You, Ted Kennedy.

Okay, first of all, despite the F.U. up there, I think his entire life's work professionally is been beyond reproach. He was a mover, a shaker, a champion of those at the bottom of the ladder.

How-fucking-ever:

Let's just consider how CNN ( my news source of choice ) would have handled certain events had they occurred now. I'm pissed because I feel that CNN and the entire Media Machine ( Fox, CNN, whomever ) has taken a monumental pass on something because it happened 40 years ago. It's a skewed and sickening stance to take.

I'm talking, of course, about Chappaquiddick. Watching the female reporters quickly gloss over that even ( more so than the men ) was just awful. They degraded themselves and lost some cred. " Yes, there were difficult times, some mistakes were made, but this day, this week is about Redemption. " Ohhhh, how many times did I hear the R Word in the last week or two? How many of those female reporters were gagging inside, choking out the necessary and demanded R word, skipping quickly over his criminal act to return to the Glorification Of The Moment? Most of em. It was awful to see and hear.

I've a book- which I don't have on hand but will in a few hours- which gives direct quotes from the police officer on duty the night Ted Kennedy committed an act of either voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. ( I'll dig it out later, provide the officer's name and direct quotes from him on this incident. The cover-up was massive and 100% complete. )

He was never charged with manslaughter ( did it exist as a crime then? ), we are left with a dearth of hard facts but some mighty skeevy and calculated actions, way too late to do Ms. Kopechne any good at all.

Remove the Rose Kennedy-colored glasses. How would this event be covered by CNN today?

Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room: Coming up next, a United States Senator leaves a young campaign aide to die in a watery grave. Why did he leave her? Playboy and power-broker Ted Kennedy now in the political hotseat, fighting for his career. We're covering all the angles, next in The Situation Room.

Nancy Grace: Good evening, Friend. I'm Nancy Grace and tonight we return to the Pond Scum Politico. This well-bred, well-heeled Massachusetts mover and shaker abandoned his campaign aide after his car flew off of the Dike Bridge in Chappaquiddick. She died and he's dancing, dodging and denying, avoiding all charges. All favors and chits have been called in. We're joined by Forensic Pathologist Kim Hwon Yi, Prosecutor in the Commonwealth of Massachussets Alfonso Storiano and Cape Cod's Nauset Light Beach Lifeguard Chad White.

Anderson Cooper with A.C. 360: Brutal killing or frisky evening out gone terribly wrong? Where WAS Teddy Kennedy for 24 hours after his car skidded off of the Dike Bridge three nights ago? What exactly was his relationship with 29 year old Mary Jo Kopechne? Why did she leave her keys and purse behind when Ted Kennedy offered to take her to the last ferry back to Edgartown? And why did Kennedy wind up on that bridge, since it was not on the way to the Edgartown Ferry? We will investigate the beginning of a watery end to the powerful roiling career of one Edward Kennedy.

And so on. He got to behave in an illegal manner. Camelot was powerful, so was he, and the locals never got a good foothold on the case. Now? He'd be done for. We all know the long list of politicians whose careers have ended for far less than an unreported dead body.

Many argue that Chappaquiddick cost him the Presidency in 1980. Perhaps, but I'd argue it was Carter as much as Kopechne who cost him the election.

So Fuck you, Teddy. You left your plaything for the evening to die upside down in a car Poucha Pond below the Dike Bridge. You ruined a life, wrecked a family and somehow that killing, 40 years later, is reduced to " Yes, he had his moments, yes he made some mistakes, there were problems, but this story is really about Redemption. "

Who's redeeming Mary Jo?


Cartooniverse

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Originally posted by Cartooniverse

Who's redeeming Mary Jo?


Cartooniverse

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mswas at the Dope as soon as he gets back from his month suspension. Mark your calendar and you can join him.

I don't understand.

Was mswas suspended for ranting about Mary Jo Kopechne?

Apparently there's a new autobiography coming out where Ted admits he made some horrible decisions that night, and it haunted him for the rest of his life. He didn't get the punishment he deserved for it, and definitely not the one you or I would have gotten. But can you (Cartooniverse) say for certain that if you'd been in his place you wouldn't have used your family influence and power to get out of jail? If so, dude, you're a better man than me.

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Originally posted by Zuul

Was mswas suspended for ranting about Mary Jo Kopechne?

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Not exactly, he was banned for having a multi-forum meltdown over it. I do think his initial thread about it shouldn't have been closed, but I think it was re-opened, so I couldn't follow what the issue was after that.

I'm no fan of Ted Kennedy...I think he was a drunken old ne'er-do-well, basically, but there does seem to be a tendency by the media to whitewash the past of dead celebrities. Look at Michael Jackson and his...problems. People go from being angry about that kind of stuff while the person was alive to making it a sad footnote after the person dies. Human nature, I guess.

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Originally posted by Sarahfeena

I'm no fan of Ted Kennedy...I think he was a drunken old ne'er-do-well, basically, but there does seem to be a tendency by the media to whitewash the past of dead celebrities. Look at Michael Jackson and his...problems. People go from being angry about that kind of stuff while the person was alive to making it a sad footnote after the person dies. Human nature, I guess.

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Bolding mine for emphasis.

Holy crap. I'm not Teddy's biggest fan and the Kennedy family has *almost* as many foul things in their closet as the Bush family but....

ne'er-do-well (nârd-wl)
n. An idle or lazy, irresponsible person.

Irresponsible in his youth and too much drinking all the way through? Check. Idle? Lazy? What the what? If I live to be 100 I'll never come close to accomplishing half of what he did as a servant of his country. I dare say the thousands of people he personally touched working for Massachusetts would disagree with you heartily on the idea that he was idle.

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Originally posted by Sleeps w/Butterflies

Bolding mine for emphasis.

Holy crap. I'm not Teddy's biggest fan and the Kennedy family has *almost* as many foul things in their closet as the Bush family but....

ne'er-do-well (nârd-wl)
n. An idle or lazy, irresponsible person.

Irresponsible in his youth and too much drinking all the way through? Check. Idle? Lazy? What the what? If I live to be 100 I'll never come close to accomplishing half of what he did as a servant of his country. I dare say the thousands of people he personally touched working for Massachusetts would disagree with you heartily on the idea that he was idle.

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He was an effective Senator for an old and tired agenda and the people of his state. But he was part of the liberal old guard and for everyone he helped, he pissed off as many or more.

My biggest beef, he did a favor for some friends and killed a Wind Mill installation off the coast of the area where he lives. For a liberal, he sure wasn't too green.

I do not like or respect Ted Kennedy. I do respect the older brothers that were killed. We sadly only got to keep the least of the brothers.

Considering that his state is the most progressive state in our country and he was part of pushing through many of those agendas, I have no idea what you mean other than "I'm a conservative and it is my duty to hate Kennedys"

I do understand the RAEG about the windmill project, but I'm certain that all of them have their dirty dealings like that for friends.

It's hard to think of any better senator than Ted Kennedy -- his accomplishments and his fierce advocacy for the poor were genuine and truly admirable. Yeah, he drove drunk. Someone died. It's fucking awful and I bet he was haunted by it as he should have been. I've never driven drunk and I look down on people who do but the fact is a lot of folks do it. I have a cousin who's a decent guy but has multiple drunk driving arrests. Dunno why people do that, but there's a lot of people who do. A long and particularly distinguished career shouldn't be totally overshadowed by this, and frankly I've heard a whole fucking lot about Chappaquiddick lately. It shouldn't be ignored, of course, but I don't think there's been any lack of coverage of it.

Sleeps, I wasn't think of that term as describing a lazy person, I was thinking of it more in terms of being irresponsible, which as you say, he was in his personal life. I won't take his hard work in his public life away from him, even if I don't agree with a lot of it.

Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized his doctoral thesis and cheated on his wife (a lot).

There's a lot of people who do great things and really are disgusting fucks in their personal lives. When I learn about stuff like this I never really know how to really understand it. How do I establish a coherent mental narrative that manages to include both the fact that I would probably refuse to speak to someone I met who conducted their life like that and the fact that the person has accomplished great, important things?

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Originally posted by Sleeps w/Butterflies

Considering that his state is the most progressive state in our country and he was part of pushing through many of those agendas, I have no idea what you mean other than "I'm a conservative and it is my duty to hate Kennedys"

I do understand the RAEG about the windmill project, but I'm certain that all of them have their dirty dealings like that for friends.

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Well I'm moderate (vote/campaigned for Obama and liked the overall policies of the Clintons though not the Clintons) and as I said, I like the older brothers.

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Originally posted by Excalibur

Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized his doctoral thesis and cheated on his wife (a lot).

There's a lot of people who do great things and really are disgusting fucks in their personal lives. When I learn about stuff like this I never really know how to really understand it. How do I establish a coherent mental narrative that manages to include both the fact that I would probably refuse to speak to someone I met who conducted their life like that and the fact that the person has accomplished great, important things?

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That's a question I ask myself a lot, actually. Which is more important, the great, important things, or being a basically standup human being? I guess the former, but I hate to have to compromise my feelings about the latter in order to admire the person. And it seems that has to be done with an awful lot of people, as you say. :(

The legacies that I think of for Ted Kennedy tend towards the negative. I don't deny that he'd been a bastion of the so-called old liberal Democrats. Nor do I think that he did nothing good during his years in the Senate. But what he always exemplified for me has been the concept of 'rules for thee but not for me.' One of his laws, IIRC, was a Federal law that made shore properties permanently accessible to the public, except for special properties - such as the Kennedy enclave on Martha's Vineyard. I don't doubt the wisdom of restricting the public access to that section of beach, but I don't see why other property owners shouldn't have the right to same degree of privacy, if they so wish it.

More frustrating to me is that I *credit* Ted with having pioneered, in modern times, the practice of turning confirmation hearings for Presidential appointees into dog and pony shows that often have damn-all to do with the issues, the candidate's suitability for the position, or even factual arguments. Whether Robert Bork would have been a good Supreme Court Justice is impossible for me to decide. Fabricating an attack campaign that distorted, and even manufactured, evidence against him to damn him in the public's eyes is a vile tactic, and one that both parties have endorsed whole heartedly since then.

Part of this is that as I get older I'm getting more and more frustrated with politicians and political supporters who assume that every current issue or race is the end-all or be-all of civilization. That all battles must be won, because losing would be intolerable. The reality, to my mind, is that mistakes and errors will often be made, and waiting for the time when you and your supporters can actually affect changes that you believe are needed and important are far, far more important than fighting to the last man over stupid shit that will pass.

This year we're seeing at least two examples of the stupidity of failing to take the long view of politics. First, there's the whole idiocy of the NY Senate, where the *censored* idiots in the Senate staged a 'coup' to try to return control of the Senate to the Republicans. Whereas, IMNSHO, if they'd simply taken their time in the cellar with grace and patience, when the mess that is the state budget comes home to roost in two years, they'd have been able to clearly blame the Democrats (who were the only people who had any input to the stupid thing) for everything that's gone wrong since it got passed. In short they got so focused on immediate, and dubious victories, that they're thrown away any chance for a larger, and more useful, victory in the future. Second, there's the mess in MA, where they'd changed the law to keep then Governor Mitt Romney from sitting a *gasp* Republican in John Kerry's seat for the two years left in that term, should Kerry prove victorious in his presidential bid. Which has left MA under represented in the Senate at a rather important time, now. They're scrambling to enact new law, but I can't think of anything that came up in the Senate for the last two years of that Senatorial term that is worth the lack of representation, now. And that ignores the whole appearance of tailoring the law to benefit one party, specifically.

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Originally posted by Exy

There's a lot of people who do great things and really are disgusting fucks in their personal lives. When I learn about stuff like this I never really know how to really understand it. How do I establish a coherent mental narrative that manages to include both the fact that I would probably refuse to speak to someone I met who conducted their life like that and the fact that the person has accomplished great, important things?

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It's just part and parcel of being human. We all have these contradictions. For some people the contradictions are greater. It's not hard to understand for me, it's what makes human beings so endlessly complicated and fascinating.

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Originally posted by OtakuLoki

[stuff about the Mass senate seat]

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Yeah, that is a really embarrassing example of the results of childish partisanship. The Massachusetts legislature decided that they'd rather not have a senator than a Republican senator.

Hello. First of all, I suspect I'd be just grasping for help from family, etc. However, and this is the key issue, he KNEW BETTER on so many levels. Self-preservation of career, family, public image. And yet he fled. She died. According to medical accounts, she suffocated. Ran out of air in a small pocket. Does this not suck?

My rant was much more about the rosy beautiful tinting given to this disgusting event by the 2009 media. ( Hence my creativity with CNN ). Does history blunt things? Yeah. Am I indicting his lifestyle overall? Man, stones, meet glass house. I am not.

What I am pissed about is the pass being taken NOW about his manslaughter then. How many lives is enough lives? Is one life not enough? He blew it, he fled, he lied, he covered, he ran.

Thank god he wasn't elected President.