Sen. Edward M. Kennedy 1932-2009
I'm sorry but whenever I hear Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" I think of him ("If you told me you were drowning I would not lend a hand") but more on that in a minute. It's funny to hear the msm refer to Kennedy as the liberal lion of the Senate but that's because he described himself as a liberal so it was ok, the msm had no choice. It's kind of like coming out of the closet, the media won't do it for you (the responsible media anyway), you have to get the ball rolling yourself. If not they would have happily referred to him as a moderate because in the universe of the msm, must have something to do with the warping of space/time, parallel universes and wormholes but there are no liberals. OK on to the murky waters of Chappaquiddick.
MY THEORY and it's a darn good one is this and it was first proposed to me by a woman -- Ted was not in the car that night. He gave the keys to Mary Jo when he shouldn't have, everybody must've had some that night and so she was the one who drove off the bridge all alone. This helps enormously to help clear up some discrepancies like why he didn't notify the police immediately afterwards and why he was spotted early the next morning outside his hotel room all clean and with fresh clothes on and seemingly not a care in the world and that's because he didn't know at the time. Not exemplary behavior to be sure but not the monster he was often made out to be by right-wingers to this day.
OK a true John John story. JJ went to a nice restaurant with a woman and the head waiter told this other couple he was relocating them to make room for the Kennedy scion and so the guy was naturally miffed. JJ must have sensed this because after he came in he invited the other couple over to join them for dinner. Years later JJ bumped into the man again and remembered him and asked "so how was your dinner?" That to me speaks volumes, that's all I need to know about the man.
I can't understand why you Yanks idealize this coward so much.
ReplyDeleteKennedy lived a life of extreme privileged due to bootlegging by his Hitler appeasing old man, Joe. The old man turned his ill gotten gains into legitimate investments, just like any smart hood would do. The whole family was set from then on. Now, with a gene pool that's as watered down as old Joe's scotch, maybe the media manufactured Camelot BS FINALLY comes to an end.
By the way, did the American's care at all about torture when Mary Jo was tortured waiting to die in that car?
She had enough air for about 40 minutes. Do we know if she was conscious? How dare these people who laud Kennedy forget about the torture he put her through.
You American blokes should know better than to make this coward and liar into a Saint!
As if Chappaquiddick were the only mistake he made!
Did you Yanks know that there was a request made by U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy to Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov offering his “assistance” in helping to prevent President Ronald Reagan from putting nukes into Europe? Yes, a politician actively working against a sitting president in the area of foreign policy.
"Lion of the Senate” my azz,but more like the Weasel of the Senate.
I personally won't miss him, but the theory makes sense, just not why he never made the claim himself to clear his name.
ReplyDeleteEdward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end.
ReplyDeleteHe was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived.
Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary presidency, but his chances were dashed following the drowning of the pretty, young campaign assistant Mary Jo Kopechne.
Forever known as the Chappaquiddick Incident after the Massachusetts island where it took place, the scandal in 1969 broke the Kennedy grip on the White House.
A drunk Ted had been driving back from a party to the family 'compound' on Martha's Vineyard when he veered off a bridge and into a deep tidal dyke.
Drowned: Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge with her inside
Drowned: Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge with her inside
Mary Jo was in the back seat and, while he claimed he was just giving her a lift back to her hotel, it was widely thought that he had picked her up for sex. Kennedy swam ashore to save himself, but left Mary Jo to drown - in fact, it was even worse than that.
It was nine hours before he reported the accident. In the meantime, he walked back to his motel, complained to the manager about a noisy party, took a shower, went to sleep, ordered newspapers when he woke up and spoke to a friend and two lawyers before finally calling the police.
Divers later estimated that if he had called them immediately, they would have had time to pull out Mary Jo. She had not drowned, but had survived in an air pocket inside the car - she was asphyxiated only when the oxygen ran out several hours later.
As always, Ted used the family name to save his neck. In any other state but Massachusetts, the Kennedys' home turf, and with any other name, he would have been charged with homicide.
Instead, he escaped with a slap on the wrist: a two-year suspended sentence and the loss of his driving licence for a year. He had been allowed to plead guilty to no more than the charge of leaving the scene of an accident.
At the height of the scandal, Kennedy went on TV to explain himself in an extraordinary 13-minute address in which he denied driving drunk and rejected rumours of
'immoral conduct' with Kopechne.
He said he was haunted by 'irrational' thoughts immediately after the accident, and wondered 'whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys'.
He said his failure to report the accident right away was 'indefensible'.
Yet the tragedy and his actions appalled millions of Americans, and still does..
Ted Kennedy is the poster child for the Americans who have recently attended the "tea parties" and town hall meetings. Politics in OUR country is now dominated by dispicable people which would include Kennedy and all of the far left screwballs.
Ted Kennedy's gun killed more people than my gun!
ReplyDeleteDidn't Joe the Patriarch have one of his daughters lobotomized? she became a vegetable for the rest of her life so look no further for the origin of the famous curse.
ReplyDeletePat M doesn't allow pissing on the dead. I do for lack of a better phrase but so far I haven't noticed its opposite, the political necro stuff which we're seeing in the news of late but anyone here can give it a shot.
Well Beth that very theory was posited in a book once, forget the name. Perhaps saying you let someone else drive drunk was not the way to go either. I am well aware of that air pocket, read all about Chappaquiddick in Leo Damore's excellent Senatorial Privilege once. Watched "American Experience" last night, went through the JFK years, Bobby's death, Chappaquiddick and all the rest and if you wanna throw in John Jr's death in a plane crash you got the sense there really is a curse, it's weird. Teddy Teddy, only God can judge.
ReplyDeleteI really have to start proof-reading my stuff. That should have been:
ReplyDeleteTed Kennedy's CAR has killed more people than my gun!
I was trying to figure that one out, thought the gun in question had a certain phallic symbolism. Me? when I blog after work I can't even spell. Oh yeah Teddy had somebody else take his bar exam for him. Even though it's Teddy I CAN make certain allowances with his drinking, he did lose two brothers after all. Watching the program last night I always get the names confused, Rose, Ethel and the name Lawford kept coming up (as in Peter Lawford's something or other). Fascinating stuff though then I went to bed.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure that had the Chappaquiddick incident happened today, things would be different. Vehicular manslaughter as an offense did not even exist then.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as I am sure many are aware, we, as a country, were not so anti drinking and driving.
Add to that a much smaller and generally compliant media, and lots of things conspired to gloss over this event.
I am sure in his own private times, Kennedy had paid dearly many times. Perhaps that was part of political motivation, to pay back society for what he did.
I would no more speak ill of him in his passing than I would a conservative who served most of his life in political service just because I disagreed with him or her. [Strom Thurmond comes to mind]
I hope he made his peace with God and that he can now rest.
Honestly I think Chappaquiddick is a perfectly valid issue when forming an opinion of the man. I already stated for the record what I think happened there, other conservatives have called him an outright murderer. I think it's all valid and as Kyle Smith wrote in Sunday's New York Post everyone talks about Chappaquiddick as if it were Teddy's tragedy, held back his aspirations and he bore it like a man but what about the Kopechnes? If people don't want to speak ill of the dead that's perfectly fine but going overboard in the other direction doesn't help either IMO.
ReplyDeleteHe has met his Maker and for me that he is the final judge, not my problem. I did have a problem with the Catholic burial, but maybe that was just me.
ReplyDeleteBeth, if he confessed his sins to a priest, what would preclude him having a Catholic funeral?
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, if he confessed and received the last rites on his death bed, as I am sure he did, won't we see him in heaven, much like the thief on the cross?
You know what I would have liked though, the truth and nothing but the whole truth about Chappaquiddick from none other than Ted to be revealed at or sometime after the time of his passing and I don't mean this in a sarcastic fashion. There's a long list of mysteries of the ages you could call them from the not so important (who's Carly Simon referring to in "You're So Vain"?) to things like Chappaquiddick. I kinda like things cleared up is all but the other thing is many libs are saying conservatives are saying hateful things about Teddy at their blogs. Well hate is often in the eye of the beholder, if your understanding of the evidence leads you to conclude he was a murderer I don't see that as being somehow an invalid viewpoint to hold even if I don't fully agree with it. Libs just love to throw the word hate around but I say reserve it for when it really counts otherwise it loses its meaning.
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