printYesterday, on the phone to my father in South Africa, he reminded me of who Ted Kennedy REALLY was:
“A man who left a young girl to drown”:
“On the evening of July 19, 1969, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts drove his Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, drowning his passenger, a young campaign worker named Mary Jo Kopechne. The senator left the scene of the accident, did not report it to the police for many hours, and according to some accounts considered concocting an alibi for himself in the interim. … At the time, Kennedy managed to escape severe legal and political consequences for his actions thanks to his family’s connections…”
Amidst the latest genuflection to TK, Americans and the mindless media would do well to reflect on this man’s defining act. Dad thinks the Kennedy clan is rotten to the core.
My father has been a big influence; he’d always remind that justice was the most frequently occurring word in the Hebrew Bible. When Waco happened, dad was outraged. “They—the government—murdered those people in cold blood,” he fumed. It’s an immutably true insight that has eludes too many Americans. Needless to say that we did not debate, but only touched on, the kidnapping by Texas authorities of 450 FLDS kids—it was implicit and obvious dad would be appalled by that act of tyranny. And he was.
What’s more remarkable is that dad has always been left-leaning. Although I would not call him a left-liberal, he’s certainly not quite the classical liberal, as he seems to believe state interventions outside the remits of classical liberalism can be a good thing.
Still, my father’s sense of justice is really quite extraordinary, always has been. It doesn’t matter who commits injustice, he will speak truth to power, a trait that has been as helpful to his career as it has to mine.
Always an original thinker, Dad had this to say about the banal Obama: “He reminds me of a community organizer.”
Another of his funny lines that stuck with me from last night’s call: In the wake of these assaults, “a few thousand people had fled South Africa to the safe haven of Zimbabwe.”
Yes, Kennedy’s still alive and Kopechne is still dead. I Lived in Massachusetts at the time and the general attitude seemed to be that “she shouldn’t have been in the car”, usually said in a leering voice. Never forget that the semi-good people of Commonwealth have sent TK back to the Senate time after time. This very liberal state has always been my model of the justice we can expect when Liberals run things.
Sounds just like my own father. We’ve had the worst arguments one can imagine, at the point of screaming, but I have never doubted his love. To him the state is just a very large homeowner’s association, so there has not been much common ground politically, but his basic moral compass and mine always seem in sync somehow when we see a real injustice. Don’t you forget that wonderful man on father’s day.
Your father may be interested to know that Mary Jo Kopechne did not drown. She suffocated. She’d found an air pocket and hung on (waiting to be rescued) until the oxygen was used up. That’s why she didn’t have any water in her lungs. I think the reason we always hear that she drowned instead of the truth is because the truth reveals that Teddy’s reactions were even more reprehensible than we thought.
[Please provide a citation for this. This makes TK’s crime even worse.–IM]
Re: Kopechne suffocating. This was in a book loaded with footnotes and pictures back when it was news – but the title escapes me after all these years. However, if you go to ytedk.com you will find this charge confirmed. Mary Jo had a couple of teaspoons of water in her lungs. That means she did not drown. You’re darn right this makes it worse. That’s my point.
Ted Kennedy should have been (under) a federal prison long, long ago.
Martin Berrow