Posted on 08/29/2009 5:19:12 PM PDT by Chairman of the Bard
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:
read on....
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
The clown had the audacity to show up at a press conference with a neck brace. I don’t think that even joran could have come up with such a devious prop.
Supposedly, the ratings during all this Kennedy coverage are terrible.
We USED to have a “conservative lion” Jesse Helms. But the left did a hatchet job on him when he died.
This “lion” crap has become a mantra. They're canonizing Teddy because he was their ideological kin.
The condescending, backhand tributes to Reagan in June, 2004 consisted of describing him as “sunny”, “affable” and “optimistic” as though describing the American leader who faced down, outwitted and played a major role in winning the Cold War as though he was Chancey Gardner.
The press cannot help themselves.
Yes indeed-! The air DOES taste much fresher now that the Swimmer is no longer sharing it-! What a disgusting heap of excrement he was, for so many reasons-!!
Ordinary Steyn is Steyn at his best.
I wish they’d get the SOB buried, STFU about him and get his nauseating mug off of my TV screen.
I believe the Kennedy’s are awaiting true justice.... right about now. Every man and woman will stand before God to give account for themselves. No exception.....no excuses.
Kennedy trying to cut a deal with Andropov in subverting Reagan, now that’s classic “liberalism” at it’s finest.
I imagine the Kennedy brothers are now busy stoking coal, begging for just one more sip of Scotch.
"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."
Many have been cowed into not printing the truth about this "man" (pardon the pun as Steyn says). I shutter to believe that he might have actually asked people if they had "heard any new Chappaquiddick jokes?" In my years in Washington I was known for saying the unsayable. Had I known that I would have told Teddy a new Chappaquiddick joke:
"What defines the aging, alcoholic, womanizing, boorish, Senator Kennedy? Chappaquiddick." What's wrong? Not funny? Well what do you know, Teddy Kennedy and I agree.
And the fact he let her drown.
Let’s say Mary Jo eventually quit slutting around with married men, which she most certainly would have. She eventually got married and had 2 kids. They would have kids by now, maybe each would have 2. That makes at least 7 people that are gone from this world because to TK. Not to mention all the soldiers who have died in Iraq since his “quagmire” speech. His action has also given aid and comfort to the Taliban. How many have died in Afghanistan since his treason? What about abortion? Millions. I don’t have ONE thing to do say about him.
Very great article...Steyn is really good!
No one does sarcasm better!
I am not sure that we were all complicent. Many Conservatives that I know constantly invoked the name of Mary Jo whenever Ted’s name was mentioned. I think it would be fair to say we were powerless to bring about justice for her but, rather knew that he would find the justice he currently faces in another life.
Mark Steyn is still a great writer.
Amen to the last sentence of that column.
Thinking of Ted reaching the pearly gates, I am reminded of the scene in the Godfather when Michael Corleone comes in and says, “you have to answer for Santino, Carlo”.
Here we have another disconnect. While Big Media and all the other libs are heaping praise on Kennedy, we conservatives who despised him and his policies are supposed to shut up. Even if he hadn’t killed Mary Jo, most of us would have regarded Ted Kennedy as just another loud-mouthed, obnoxious lib in a Senate filled with them. He’d be the most obnoxious. And all those “good” things Kennedy did for the “oppressed and downtrodden?” Excuse me while we think about all the lives he ruined with his lib legislation. Let’s be honest, Ted Kennedy was a disaster. Not just for Mary Jo Kopechne but for the country as well.
Here we have another disconnect. While Big Media and all the other libs are heaping praise on Kennedy, we conservatives who despised him and his policies are supposed to shut up. Even if he hadn’t killed Mary Jo, most of us would have regarded Ted Kennedy as just another loud-mouthed, obnoxious lib in a Senate filled with them. He’d be the most obnoxious. And all those “good” things Kennedy did for the “oppressed and downtrodden?” Excuse me while we think about all the lives he ruined with his lib legislation. Let’s be honest, Ted Kennedy was a disaster. Not just for Mary Jo Kopechne but for the country as well.
Great opinion piece. He was able to summarize what I have felt, having to live in this state and watch this breathless parade of toadies heap praise on him for being such a fine person and great legislator.
There IS that one, little, itsy-bitsy thing about going off a bridge and leaving a girl to gasp her last breaths in the pitch black from a diminishing pocket of air while you figure out how to save your reputation.
As Mark Steyn alludes to, anyone could make a mistake, have a lapse in judgement, even make a serious enough one to get someone killed.
Anyone.
To have bad judgement of any kind resulting in harm to others can happen at any time. You a little too fast down a residential street and a kid steps out from behind a parked car, or whatever. The circumstances of those events have to be borne and lived with no matter who you are.
But what illustrates the quality of people is how they live their lives from that moment when confronted with the truth and consequences of their poor judgement.
As he lay panting on the bank after saving his own physical skin from the icy waters of Poucha Pond in Chappaquiddick, he IMMEDIATELY began to figure out how to save his personal and political skin.
He lay there in the sand, thinking of who he could call to help him, frantically wondering how he would get out of this trap, searching for ways how he could avoid the shame and scandal of a famous married politician with alcohol on his breath and a dead unmarried woman in his car on a deserted road.
As he lay there on his back in the sand, there was a 29 year old woman, her clothes plastered to her body in the pitch black, underwater with her face in an air pocket, and she could not figure out how to get out.
She probably thought “He will save me. He will swim down and open the door and pull me out. Or he will get help. If I stay here and wait, he will come.”
And that is wha makes his “ugliest single moment from the late senator’s 77 years on Earth” at Chappaquiddick (as a liberal columnist recently said) such a heinous one is his behavior following the accident.
How instead of putting her LIFE first, he schemed, juggled, obfuscated, hedged, delayed and used every social and political scheme and resource at his disposal to save his reputation, even the wearing of the neck brace.
Liberals want to redefine everything so that reality is packaged in terms, phrases and definitions that make the reality so much more flexible and explainable.
It is why they call “abortion” choice.
It is why they call “discrimination” Affirmative Action.
It is why they call “Terrorists” insurgents or Freedom Fighters.
It is why they now call acts of terrorism “man-caused disasters”.
And it is why they have always called the death of 29 year old Mary Jo Kopechne a “tragedy for the Kennedys”.
And how Ted Kennedy dealt with that tells you all you need to know about him.
As I’ve said in the past, my condolences to the family. But I believe Kennedy was a deeply evil, remorseless, soulless man, and the world is far better off without him.
The dishonorable bastards don't play by Marquis de Queensbury rules.
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