[Para-Ord.45]

MORE: " The most notable exponent of this was the man who almost invented socialism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He declared, “I am the friend of all mankind”, but treated his wife and children with revolting heartlessness: he ordered her to send one after another of the infants she produced to institutions where two-thirds of those committed never reached their first birthday. Rousseau, who was at least honest about his own behaviour, wrote: “How could I achieve the tranquillity of mind necessary for my work, filled with the domestic cares and the noise of children?” He believed the task of improving the lot of humanity absolved him from the need to nurture his own family. Dickens, with his unerring eye, characterised this moral delusion in Bleak House in the person of Mrs Jellyby, so devoted to the cause of starving Africans that she had no time for the care of her own children: the consequent wretchedness of their plight scarcely crossed her mind. A recent, entirely non-fictional example of what we might call Rousseau-Jellybyism is the case of Arthur Miller. When the playwright died in 2005, one noted obituarist described him as “the moralist of the past American century”, while The New York Times acclaimed this man of the left’s “fierce belief in man’s responsibility to his fellow man”. Yet two years after his death it was revealed that in 1966 he had committed his newborn son Daniel, who had Down’s syndrome, to an institution — one that someone who worked there at the time described as “not a place you would want your dog to live”." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article6814927.ece?openComment=true

[kalee]

bttt

[Natural Law]

We do not owe Edward kennedy unconditional forgiveness for his negligent homicide of Mary Jo Kopechne, for his complicity in the murder of millions of unborn, or for his undermining of the American military that undoubtedly cost lives from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Forgiveness requires contrition and there is no evidence that Ted, even upon his deathbed, was ever sorry for any of his sins.

[skeeter]

I'm not as understanding towards Uncle Ted as is the author here.

He was a spoiled nihilistic rich kid, who used individuals as well as his country as a place to relieve his bladder after a few too many.

[Aria]

The problem was that even if Ted Kennedy’s conscious motive had been to redeem himself, or his family’s reputation, he could hardly have said so without appearing to define his fight for control of the White House as a gruesomely public display of emotional neediness. Yet that was the story of his life.

Seems to me that zero might have similar motives for being POTUS but in his case looking for relevance to make up for his childhood.

[henry_reardon]

I wasn’t aware we had a right wing press

[rbg81]

I am really sickened by the unprecedented orgy of MSM coverage of the Kennedy funeral. I don’t think even Reagan got the reverance that Ted Kennedy is getting. Even Fox News got into the act. Other than his famous name, it is a sham to call Ted Kennedy a great man. He has done nothing of real value—his “great” legislative achievements are little more than pokes in the eye to the Middle class. To call this man a “hero” is a disgrace and I for one will not mourn his passing.

[goldi]

“and although he paid $90,000 out of his own ample pocket to the parents of Mary Jo, her mother later recalled: “I don’t think he ever said he was sorry.”

Well, being a Kennedy means you never have to say you’re sorry, just pay people off. That should be sufficient, peon.

[Lurker]

Personally I'm glad that Ted Kennedy is finally dead. I hope the end was extremely painful. You know, maybe as painful as being left in a small confined space until the oxygen is depleted. You know, that kind of painful.

And I most sincerely hope that Mary Jo greeted him at the Pearly Gates when the drunken, abusive, murdering piece of crap got there and the Good Lord let her push the "Down" button on the express elevator to Hell.

Rot in a lake of Fire, Ted Kennedy.

[DejaJude]

The British are a less forgiving people.

I must be British.

[takenoprisoner]

Dominic has a way with words. He places Ted’s conflicting dual personas in private and public life succinctly in the proper perspective.

It is revolting indeed to witness all the glorious testamonials eulogizing this ambiguous tyrant.

I find comfort in knowing that where Ted travels now, all the Mary Jo’s of the world he woefully and willfully harmed, are anxiously awaiting his arrival. May they have the final say in his final judgment. May justice finally be done. Since where he travels now, money and power cannot redeem nor save him. The would be Emporer is finally naked and on his own.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Bump....

[ntnychik]

One of the media idiots was mourning that the last Kennedy (other than Jean) is gone, and now what will happen to their legacy? Joe and Rose had 30 grandchildren, and now some 69 great-grandchildren. There will be no end to their strain in America.

[dsc]

“that would be to suggest Kennedy was not genuinely moved by the plight of those whose struggles he embraced on the political stage. He clearly was so moved.”

Road apples. He was animated by the power of Satan to work tirelessly for America’s destruction.

[nmh]

Excerpt:

It was only in a British newspaper that the American author Joyce Carol Oates was able last week to publish the following (factually accurate) account: “Kennedy chose to flee the scene leaving the young woman to die an agonising death, not of drowning, but of suffocation over a period of hours. It was over 10 hours before Kennedy reported the accident, by which time he’d consulted a family lawyer. The senator’s explanation for this unconscionable, despicable, unmanly ... behaviour was never convincing.”

MaryJo’s parents weren’t much better.

They let the Kennedy’s BRIBE them to SHUT UP!

Imagine taking Kennedy money for justice in the murder of your daughter. I can’t.

[Stand Watch Listen]

Here's a good article to peruse... by Mark Steyn
For the "LEFT' that feel that the "bridgers' are only concerned about Mary Jo Kopechne and not the legacy of 47 years of his 'work"

Mark Steyn: Airbrushing out Mary Jo Kopechne ("Only a Kennedy could get away with it.")

“…........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? ……………”.

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?’”

“…………When a man is capable of what Ted Kennedy did that night in 1969 and in the weeks afterwards, 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 re-segregation 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.

………”

[NonLinear]

bttt

[fortunecookie]

in this country even politically sympathetic newspapers published excoriating accounts, concentrating on the incident 40 years ago when the 37-year-old Ted Kennedy abandoned Mary Jo Kopechne to die alone in a car he had driven off a small bridge linking Chappaquiddick to Martha`s Vineyard.

Will our left leaning MSM call them out as 'Chappaquiddick Type-people'? I won't hold my breath. It does point out the relevance of his behavior even 40 years on.

I, too, have always thought that about Ted, the needy little boy, trying to live up to the larger than life much older brothers in a famous family. It must have been difficult for him. My biggest issue with Ted being lionized or canonized as heroic is how he has dealt with people one on one when it really counted. His constituents recall a 'regular' guy (maybe he secretly longed to be) who got on well with everyone, but who can't be nice to strangers in a diner when it's time to put in some face time as a politician? Most can. He left Mary Jo in the car - he wasn't some young kid, he was a grown man and he didn't even anonymously call in a tip to police. Or call in a favor. His treatment of his wife Joan while he philandered away was atrocious. It's those little things that get me, even before we discuss his pro-abortion stance or other political issues.