Sen. Ted Kennedy's car is pulled from the water at Chappaquiddick July 19, 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne's body was found in the back seat
Posted on 08/27/2009 9:21:17 PM PDT by OneVike
Here are two poll questions about Ted Kennedy the swimmer.
What is your overall feeling about Kennedy?
How important is Chappaquiddick to Kennedy's legacy?
(Aug. 26)
He looks bad already, but I sure would like to see him look a lot worse still. The guy deserves as much respect as he gave Mary Jo on that late night in 69 when he allowed her to die instead of trying to rescue her.
If obituaries were written based on Google Trends results, Chappaquiddick would be in the first paragraph of Sen. Ted Kennedy's obituary.
"Chappaquiddick" and other search terms related to the car accident on Martha's Vineyard that killed Mary Jo Kopechne account for four of the top 10 on the list as this is being written.
Sen. Ted Kennedy's car is pulled from the water at Chappaquiddick July 19, 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne's body was found in the back seat
(Excerpt) Read more at news.aol.com ...
sorry, but if one of the choices isnt “fat drunk & communist” I really cant vote...
piers ??? Freudian or sarc ??? lolol...
On July 18, 1969, Kennedy and five other men – all but one of whom was married – met six single young women who had worked on Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign. The women were known as the “Boiler Room Girls” for their tireless work in a windowless office in that ill-fated campaign. All of them, especially Teddy, had grieved hard when Bobby had been killed 15 months earlier. Although he was only 37 years of age, Teddy had lost all three of his brothers; two to assassin’s bullets, one in the skies over England in World War II. Mary Jo Kopechne had felt gut-shot by Bobby’s murder, too. For all of those people who met in the cottage in the island off Martha’s Vineyard, getting together must have been cathartic.
Sometime late at night after an evening of drinking, Kennedy and Kopechne went for a drive in his 1967 Oldsmobile. Kennedy placed the time he left at 11:15 p.m. A local cop who believed he saw the car put the time at 12:40 a.m. – significant at the time because Kennedy testified that he was taking Kopechne to a ferry that ran to Edgartown, a ferry that stopped running at midnight. In any event, Kennedy wasn’t headed toward the ferry landing when his car careened off Dike Bridge and into the inlet known as Poucha Pond; they were heading toward the beach.
Kennedy got out of the car alive, Mary Jo Kopechne did not. He said he dived down several times to try and rescue her, before walking back to the cottage where his friends were staying. To do so, he passed at least four houses with working telephones, including one 150 yards from the accident with a porch light on – as well as a firehouse with a pay phone. When he got to the cottage, none of the women were told what happened. According to the 763-page coroner’s inquest, this was just the first of a series of appalling decisions Kennedy made that night, decisions that stretch credulity.
First of all, he and two of the men, a cousin named Joseph Gargan and a friend named Paul Markham say they returned to the bridge to try and rescue Mary Jo. (If the Edgartown constable who believes he saw Kennedy was accurate, this was impossible.) Next, the men claimed that they drove Kennedy to the Chappaquiddick ferry landing, where he told them not to tell the other women for fear that they would try to rescue Mary Jo – at great peril to themselves – and assured them that he would report the incident to authorities. Then, the men said, Kennedy dove into the water and swam across the sound to Edgartown himself.
Upon reaching Edgartown, Kennedy went to his room at a local inn – it was now 2:25 a.m., — where he spent the night, and the following morning engaged in small talk about sailing with a local yachter and agreed to have breakfast with the man when Gargan and Markham showed up about 7:30. They asked him who he’d called about the accident only to receive the astounding reply: no one. Kennedy explained it this way at the inquest: “I just couldn’t gain the strength within me, the moral strength, to call Mrs. Kopechne at 2 in the morning and tell her that her daughter was dead.” But he hadn’t called the cops, either, and wouldn’t until 9 a.m.
Not reporting a fatal traffic accident is a felony in most places. On Martha’s Vineyard, if the driver is a Kennedy, it’s not even a matter of official curiosity: The local police chief never even asked Kennedy why he waited nine hours to report what had happened. The state of Massachusetts, citing Kennedy’s excessive speed on the bridge, suspended his license for six months. That was it.
He was a penis with ears.
Can I say that?
Does that register on the poll.
Works for me. I disliked Teddy because I knew him over the years, was fully aware of the kind of person he was. His father was a ruthless bastard with a lot of money, determined to jam his kids down the throats of the voting public. And he managed to manufacture an image, in the early days of political marketing, that got JFK elected. But any serious evaluation of what Teddy was, and did, is lost on the younger generations - and that, ironically, will be the great thing to watch as an attempt at hagiography begins and is received with a big yawn and a “whatever” by people under, say, 45.
The question is, is the one murder (okay manslaughter) he committed worse than his awful 47 year record of selling out the entire country?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 National Review Online
Q: What Would Mary Jo Kopechne Have Thought of Ted’s Career? [Mark Hemingway]
HuffPo answers:
We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don’t know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.
Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.
Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.
08/27 08:24 PMShare
Oh that’s just nasty
My mom told me many years ago to never speak ill about the recently departed, so I choose not to respond.
Friday, August 28, 2009
“One of His favorite topics of humor was Chappaquiddick” [Mark Hemingway]
Jules Crittenden mentioned on his blog he heard Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, recalling on air that Ted Kennedy liked to joke about Chappaquiddick. It seemed to defy belief, so I listened to the episode of The Diane Rehm Show in question and sure enough — I’ve transcribed what Klein told guest host Katy Kay (Here’s a link to the audio in WMA format, relevant portion starts at about 30:15):
I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.
EXCUSE ME? If that’s true it makes Kennedy kind of a monster. The odd thing is that if you listen to the whole show, the tone of everyone involved is nauseatingly haigographic and reverential. Klein apparently let his guard down a bit; after he lets it slip Kennedy liked to joke about the woman he killed you can actually hear in his voice that he’s trying to backpedal. The show actually cuts to a break as he’s trying to explain himself, and I seriously wonder if it wasn’t the producers trying to do Klein a favor. But I’m sorry, there appears to be little to that could explain this. It goes way beyond “you had to be there.”
08/28 12:09 AMShare
Ted’s entire life was spent spending other peoples money.
The only money he ever “earned” was in the Senate and that wouldn’t even pay is food/beer bill.
The organizers are no doubt trying to make this a huge national outpouring. The one funeral that had the truest and most sincere outpouring of grief was President Ronald Reagan’s. That was true American grief from true Americans.
God help the pallbearers.
oh I waited 24 hours
When a liberal knows he about to die, is he repentant? Or is he a liberal to the end?
...say they returned to the bridge to try and rescue Mary Jo. (If the Edgartown constable who believes he saw Kennedy was accurate, this was impossible.)...
How ??? the alibi 'time request' back at the inn ???
Kennedy dove into the water and swam across the sound to Edgartown himself.
what are we talkin here ??? 100 yds ??? 1/4 mile ???
what distance would you allow your cousin to swim in dark currents after flippin a car ???
thanks in advance...
In the old days, it was 3 days before you knew for sure if he was dead, or just 'dead drunk.'
So you figure he’s good and cold by now?
he’s as dead as mary jo kopechne (...which means that he doesn’t deserve even second more than 24 hours)
Eww. What gives with his right hand? It seems to have rotted off,
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