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Rewriting History on Kennedy's Chappaquiddick Accident
usnews.com ^ | Aug. 30, 2010 | Paul Bedard

Posted on 08/30/2010 2:43:40 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY

For many, the name Chappaquiddick conjures images of a drunken Sen. Edward Kennedy hitting on Mary Jo Kopechne in his Oldsmobile, losing control, and plunging into the water of Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island, adjacent to Martha's Vineyard where President Obama was vacationing. Kopechne, a family friend, drowned; and Teddy fumbled for excuses about what happened.

Now, a year after Kennedy died, his lifelong biographer Burton Hersh, armed with fresh interviews with Kennedy's mistress at the time, tells Whispers that the whole July 1969 episode should have been handled as a simple crash, leaving the senator's legacy untainted. "It was a car accident," he says. "Ted was a terrible driver. He never paid much attention to where he was going."

"He took a tremendous blow on the head," says Hersh. In interviews following the crash, Kennedy displayed confusion and amnesia, he says.

"If the thing had been handled properly, the first thing they would have done is put him in a hospital. Then they would have said he was a victim of an auto accident and didn't know what he was doing and couldn't be held responsible for anything that happened really after that, which would have been a fair explanation," says author-journalist Hersh, who knew Kennedy since they were classmates at Harvard. "But instead, he felt terribly guilty about the whole thing ... tried to take responsibility and ... just confused the issue."

In Edward Kennedy: An Intimate Biography, Hersh adds some new details about the episode from Helga Wagner, Kennedy's then-girlfriend and "the love of [his] life," at least until he married his second wife, Victoria.

(Excerpt) Read more at politics.usnews.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: accident; biographer; chappaquiddick; coldwar; deadtedkennedy; drunkard; history; kennedy; kennedylegacy; kopechne; maryjokopechne; murderer; pravdamedia; procommunist; redtedkennedy; rewriting; tedkennedy; traitor; zogbyism
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1 posted on 08/30/2010 2:43:45 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
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To: Free ThinkerNY

So poor Teddy got a bump on the head and wasn’t responsible for his actions afterward? But then, being the upstanding moral person that he is, he felt guilty and took responsibility. And that opened the door for those nasty conservatives to attack him ever since. Oh, the poor martyred saint!!


2 posted on 08/30/2010 2:46:23 PM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard
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To: Free ThinkerNY
And so the revision begins.

Fortunately there's enough evidence and witnesses around to refute Hersch's absurd claims. If he had sustained a bump on the head, hard enough to cause a concussion and/or bruising, why no bandages around the head of ole Teddy after the accident?

That would have been played to the hilt if that were the case.

3 posted on 08/30/2010 2:46:55 PM PDT by Northern Yankee (Where Liberty dwells, there is my Country. - Benjamin Franklin)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Scrub, scrub, scrub. Sorry. Too late. Story is etched in stone in the brain of 90 percent of the population. He “was a bad driver” is not an excuse for leaving that woman to die in his car. This is not 1970 and the Kennedys can no longer buy off the media.


4 posted on 08/30/2010 2:47:04 PM PDT by La Lydia
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To: Free ThinkerNY
tried to take responsibility and

What!?!

History revisionism is alive and well.

5 posted on 08/30/2010 2:47:08 PM PDT by cowboyway (Molon labe)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

“Ted was a terrible driver. He never paid much attention to where he was going.”

Same for his political career.....


6 posted on 08/30/2010 2:47:15 PM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
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To: Free ThinkerNY

“He took a tremendous blow on the head,” says Hersh. In interviews following the crash, Kennedy displayed confusion and amnesia, he says.

_______________________________________

Man! The comment I could make. But it’s distasteful and disrepectful of Mary Jo.

Better leave it unsaid.


7 posted on 08/30/2010 2:47:15 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd (PALIN/MCCAIN IN 2012 - barf alert? sarc tag? -- can't decide)
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To: Free ThinkerNY
Post-mortem efforts to clean the scum and slime off the Kennedy image and 'rehabilitate' him as the next sainted liberal hero.
8 posted on 08/30/2010 2:48:23 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Moronic mental gymnastics.

This is truly what they believe: Power entitlement. Treat yourself well and to hell with the peons...they are there for your amusement.

You belong to history and deserve a legacy - so make one up.


9 posted on 08/30/2010 2:48:36 PM PDT by sodpoodle (Despair - Man's surrender. Laughter -God's redemption)
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To: Free ThinkerNY
Typical democrat temperament -

Always dreaming up new ways to weasel out of responsibility.

10 posted on 08/30/2010 2:49:28 PM PDT by Iron Munro (I carry a gun because I'm too young to die and too old to take any more beatings.)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

11 posted on 08/30/2010 2:49:35 PM PDT by Sgt_Schultze (A half-truth is a complete lie)
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To: Free ThinkerNY
"If the thing had been handled properly, the first thing they would have done is put him in a hospital jail."
12 posted on 08/30/2010 2:49:42 PM PDT by Savage Beast ("True evil has a face you know and a voice you trust." Greg Iles. "True Evil")
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To: Free ThinkerNY

The Kennedy family has always been a group of disreputable vermin. Let the historians try to whitewash this. There are those of us who remember.


13 posted on 08/30/2010 2:50:57 PM PDT by Silentgypsy
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Ted and his handlers were guilty of criminal conspiracy in not coming to the aid of his passenger or notifying authorities in a timely manner.

Deal with it.

Ted also boasted of numerous affairs near the time of his death.

Deal with it.


14 posted on 08/30/2010 2:51:07 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Obama canÂ’t spend all his time with his BC on his forehead, heÂ’s busy fighting its release!)
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To: La Lydia
He couldn't report the accident right away because he had to wait for the blood alcohol level to go down...He testified that he had consumed only three rum & Cokes, but I don't think he was asked how large the containers were (32 oz.?).

Mary Jo was an only child.

15 posted on 08/30/2010 2:51:10 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Free ThinkerNY

The body and the car were found in a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, on the morning of July 19, 1969. After the discovery, Kennedy gave a statement to police saying that on the previous night Kopechne was his passenger when he took a wrong turn and accidentally drove his car off a bridge into the water. After pleading guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury, he received a suspended sentence.

Bump on the head, that no one ever saw made him wait ALL NIGHT. Not.


16 posted on 08/30/2010 2:51:36 PM PDT by November 2010
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To: Free ThinkerNY
Print 100 or 1000 excuses--Teddy still smells like week old fish lying in the sun. I ain't buyin any.

vaudine

17 posted on 08/30/2010 2:51:36 PM PDT by vaudine
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Two facts they can NEVER change

One, he was a drunk and two, he was a spineless murderer.


18 posted on 08/30/2010 2:52:02 PM PDT by bfree (The revolution is coming - FUBO)
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To: Free ThinkerNY

Seymour Hersh? He is a far-Left lunatic like Howard Zinn, trying to re-write history to un-defile the Communists losers.


19 posted on 08/30/2010 2:52:09 PM PDT by wac3rd (Somewhere in Hell, Ted Kennedy snickers....)
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To: Savage Beast

lol!
Glad you fixed that!


20 posted on 08/30/2010 2:52:16 PM PDT by texaschick
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