Mark Steyn: Things only a Kennedy could get away with
And by not calling his bluff on Chappaquiddick, Americans became complicit in it.
We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation – or, at any rate, its "mainstream" media culture – declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing, America's TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there's a baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it.
In this case, the unmentionable corpse is Mary Jo Kopechne, 1940-1969. If you have to bring up the, ah, circumstances of that year of decease, keep it general, keep it vague. As Kennedy flack Ted Sorensen put it in Time magazine:
"Both a plane crash in Massachusetts in 1964 and the ugly automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 almost cost him his life …"
That's the way to do it! An "accident," "ugly" in some unspecified way, just happened to happen – and only to him, nobody else. Ted's the star, and there's no room to namecheck the bit players. What befell him was … a thing, a place. As Joan Vennochi wrote in The Boston Globe:
"Like all figures in history – and like those in the Bible, for that matter – Kennedy came with flaws. Moses had a temper. Peter betrayed Jesus. Kennedy had Chappaquiddick, a moment of tremendous moral collapse."
Actually, Peter denied Jesus, rather than "betrayed" him, but close enough for Catholic-lite Massachusetts. And if Moses having a temper never led him to leave some gal at the bottom of the Red Sea, well, let's face it, he doesn't have Ted's tremendous legislative legacy, does he? Perhaps it's kinder simply to airbrush out of the record the name of the unfortunate complicating factor on the receiving end of that moment of "tremendous moral collapse." When Kennedy cheerleaders do get around to mentioning her, it's usually to add insult to fatal injury. As Teddy's biographer Adam Clymer wrote, Edward Kennedy's "achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne."
You can't make an omelet without breaking chicks, right? I don't know how many lives the senator changed – he certainly changed Mary Jo's – but you're struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the basic equation: How many changed lives justify leaving a human being struggling for breath for up to five hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy's Oldsmobile? If the senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been OK to leave a couple more broads down there? Hey, why not? At the Huffington Post, Melissa Lafsky mused on what Mary Jo "would have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history … Who knows – maybe she'd feel it was worth it." What true-believing liberal lass wouldn't be honored to be dispatched by that death panel?
We are all flawed, and most of us are weak, and in hellish moments, at a split-second's notice, confronting the choice that will define us ever after, many of us will fail the test. Perhaps Mary Jo could have been saved; perhaps she would have died anyway. What is true is that Edward Kennedy made her death a certainty. When a man (if you'll forgive the expression) confronts the truth of what he has done, what does honor require? Six years before Chappaquiddick, in the wake of Britain's comparatively very minor "Profumo scandal," the eponymous John Profumo, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for War, resigned from the House of Commons and the Queen's Privy Council and disappeared amid the tenements of the East End to do good works washing dishes and helping with children's playgroups, in anonymity, for the last 40 years of his life. With the exception of one newspaper article to mark the centenary of his charitable mission, he never uttered another word in public again.
Ted Kennedy went a different route. He got kitted out with a neck brace and went on TV and announced the invention of the "Kennedy curse," a concept that yoked him to his murdered brothers as a fellow victim – and not, as Mary Jo perhaps realized in those final hours, the perpetrator. He dared us to call his bluff, and, when we didn't, he made all of us complicit in what he'd done. We are all prey to human frailty, but few of us get to inflict ours on an entire nation.
His defenders would argue that he redeemed himself with his "progressive" agenda, up to and including health care "reform." It was an odd kind of "redemption": In a cooing paean to the senator on a cringe-makingly obsequious edition of NPR's "Diane Rehm Show," Edward Klein of Newsweek fondly recalled that one of Ted's "favorite topics of humor was, indeed, Chappaquiddick itself. He would ask people, 'Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?'"
Terrific! Who was that lady I saw you with last night?
Beats me!
Why did the Last Lion cross the road?
To sleep it off!
What do you call 200 Kennedy sycophants at the bottom of a Chappaquiddick pond? A great start, but bad news for NPR guest-bookers! "He was a guy's guy," chortled Edward Klein. Which is one way of putting it.
When a man is capable of what Ted Kennedy did that night in 1969 and in the weeks afterward, what else is he capable of? An NPR listener said the senator's passing marked "the end of civility in the U.S. Congress." Yes, indeed. Who among us does not mourn the lost "civility" of the 1987 Supreme Court hearings? Considering the nomination of Judge Bork, Ted Kennedy rose on the Senate floor and announced that "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit down at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution."
Whoa! "Liberals" (in the debased contemporary American sense of the term) would have reason to find Borkian jurisprudence uncongenial but to suggest the judge and former solicitor-general favored resegregation of lunch counters is a slander not merely vile but so preposterous that, like his explanation for Chappaquiddick, only a Kennedy could get away with it. If you had to identify a single speech that marked "the end of civility" in American politics, that's a shoo-in.
If a towering giant cares so much about humanity in general, why get hung up on his carelessness with humans in particular? For Kennedy's comrades, the cost was worth it. For the rest of us, it was a high price to pay. And, for Ted himself, who knows? He buried three brothers, and as many nephews, and, as the years took their toll, it looked sometimes as if the only Kennedy son to grow old had had to grow old for all of them. Did he truly believe, as surely as Melissa Lafsky and Co. do, that his indispensability to the republic trumped all else? That Camelot – that "fleeting wisp of glory," that "one brief shining moment" – must run forever, even if "How To Handle A Woman" gets dropped from the score. The senator's actions in the hours and days after emerging from that pond tell us something ugly about Kennedy the man. That he got away with it tells us something ugly about American public life.
©MARK STEYN
The ‘Hero of Chappaquiddick’ speaks
For those who have not forgotten, a very ironic quote from the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts on his support for amnesty for illegal aliens …….
The ‘Hero of Chappaquiddick’ speaks ……
Ted Kennedy on why he supports amnesty for those sneaking across the Rio Grande
Rest In Peace
Mary Jo Kopechne
Your killer has is no longer a public disgrace.
I happened to be in the Rockies National Park today and what did my eyes behold? The American Flag at half staff in honor for the scum of the earth “Killer” Ted Kennedy. The bastard did everything he could to stay out of combat. Had Daddy Crook Kennedy pull strings to get his four year enlistment cut to two year, and then have him posted to a nice safe country. Makes me sick!
Now the Democrats and all his Liberal cronies are using his death as a back stabbing method to get Obamacare passed. Why don’t we call the Pope and see if we can’t get made a saint now. What a load of crap. The man was useless, he took credit for much that others before him did like the Civil Rights Act.
God, put the snake in the ground, and not ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY! He deserves be put in a whole there less than anyone I can think of. At least his brother did serve his country. Not like the Killer is nothing more than disgrace to every brave American who did, honorably serve their country! Hell, put in a trash pit! Let the other rats feed off of him.
The only people who will miss the bastard are illegal immigrants, welfare recipients and lobbyist who lined his pockets. Get him in the ground and let’s forget about the whole rotten clan!
Waxman, another of the snakes and other complaints.
Snake Waxman
Sen. Henry Waxman it appears he is not happy in not getting his way with Obamacare. Now he has sent a letter to 52 of the leading insurance companies asking them to disclose details about what their exec’s make, where they go, what they eat, and some of their business models. How low is this Whore House in Washington going to go to get this Obamacare bill shoved down the throats of the American public?
The Democrats are bound and determined to get what has to be one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation into law, come hell or high water. They just don’t believe that the American people don’t want any part of Our Dear Leader, Comrade , Obamacare plans.
They don’t want any part of the U.S. Census Bureau counting ILLEGAL ALIENS in the 2010 Census. The American people just don’t understand how the people who are WELL PAID (over paid) who were elected to represent them, have become so corrupt and so ignorant. How is that they DON’T UNDERSTAND A SIMPLE WORD LIKE “ILLEGAL“?
Don’t they understand we don’t want the government involved in health care! Hell, they hold the VA system up as “The Gold Standard” for health care in this country. Anyone who has been to a VA knows what a joke this is. It can takes weeks to get someone to return a call. Every time you call for an appointment, you get the nice little voice mail message: “I’m away from my desk, but your call is very important to us. Please leave your name, time you are calling, etc, etc”. And then you might just as well go away on vacation.
If these idiots in Washington look into ridiculous salaries, why don’t they look into any professional sport. Only there can a person get a complete free ride to college, come out as stupid as they went in and make multi-million dollars to PLAY a sport. Plus the endorsement they earn. They are paid to play a sport! A part time job! Get arrested, no problem, you’re special, get out of jail.
When is America going to get it’s act together, get The Whore House under control and start putting its priorities in order? For the salary of one baseball or football player you could solve the education problems. For the money that cities pump into building stadiums you could pay for a a heck of a lot of health care. Leave the companies who have built on the American dream and start hitting up these sports “STARTS” and over priced ACTORS. Let’s get real America!
My biggest fear is that the American people have a very short memory. The elections are over a year away for these members of the Whore House. We have got to keep these issues alive so come election day, we toss all of the snakes into the trash where they belong!
"Killer Ted" Kennedy
And I just saw on the news where “Killer Ted” Kennedy wants to bypass the laws of MA by doing away to allow him to appointment his own replacement instead of having an election to fill his seat. Damn, what an ego! He should be spending his last remaining days in a prison hospital where he will get excellent care. It would also give him time to ponder the death of the woman, Mary Jo Kopechne. Killer gets off, because he is special… Mary Jo Kopechne
Kennedy pushes his weight around for illegal aliens.
Killer Kennedy-Jackass Thank your Sen. Edward Kennedy, (D-MA) for asking Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chetoff to release arrested illegal aliens. You know Kennedy. He is the drunken coward who killed a Mary Jo Kopechne back in back in 1969. Well I digress.
On March 6th 2007 the Michael Bianco Inc. factory got a visit from ICE. During that visit some 361 suspected illegal aliens were detained. Interestingly, the factory had a large US government contract for equipment and clothing for our troops. Many of those detained by ICE were sent to Texas detention centers. Then a federal judge stepped in and ordered the remaing illegals to remain in MA for “humanitarian” reasons. Meaning they had kids with them. Harry Spence, Commissioner of Social Services went to visit the nice, illegal, folks in Texas and held interviews with them. Seems Mr. Spence and his cronies thought it best that 21 of the detained illegals be returned to MA. Immigration officials in TX were releasing 9 of the 21 Teddy wanted back.
Now for “Killer Ted“. He sent a letter to Michael Chertoff asking that ALL of the illegals detained in Texas be returned to MA for “supervised release“. Just what the hell is that? Are they going to be given state paid companions to keep track of them?
Luckily for America, Russ Knocheof Homeland Security notified “The Killer” that the “department has to enforce the law and added at least 20% of the immigrants” taken in the raid “had already received deportations orders”. Mr. Knochewent on to add “we will enforce the law and we will continue to do so in an aggressive and sensible way. Not enforcing the law is not an option”.
I say BRAVO to Mr. Knoche for standing up for the laws of the land and doing his job despite pressure from Kennedy and others.
Now the rub. Commissioner Spence wants the children between 2-16 (and some with special medical conditions) released. Why you might ask? Because… ready for it? All were believed born in the US therefore they are U.S. Citizens! This is another loop hole that congress has got to close. Some illegal comes up, gives birth on the U.S. taxpayers dollar and suddenly the child is legal. Ridiculous, you bet. Another Spence wants returned is a woman with cancer. Again, the U.S. tax payer is stuck with the bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment