Posted on 08/26/2009 10:50:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
I never voted for Ted Kennedy, not once, and neither did maybe a quarter to one-third of the Massachusetts electorate, although you’d never know that from the echo chamber of the mainstream media since his death in Hyannisport late Tuesday night.
While offering condolences to the Kennedy family at this sad moment, it is important to note that his life was not as simple, nor heroic, as is now being portrayed. On the cable channels yesterday, his fellow Senate graybeards, of both parties, were lamenting the passing of what was invariably described as Ted Kennedy’s “collegial” Senate - where voices were seldom raised, and partisan bickering ended when the gavel came down to end the session.
All of which would have come as a surprise to Robert Bork, the Supreme Court nominee of whom the collegial Ted said in 1986:
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters . . .”
So much for collegiality. Of course, Kennedy is now endlessly lauded for his support of “women’s rights,” i.e. abortion. But into the 1970s, before the Roman Catholic Church’s influence began to wane, Kennedy was a traditional pro-life New England Democrat.
Here was his take on abortion in 1971: “Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized - the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.”
There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, that in his first Senate campaign in 1962, Kennedy was shaking hands at a factory-gate during a shift change. A haggard worker began berating him about how he’d never worked a day in his life. According to the legend, at that point another salt-of-the-earth blue-collar type leaned in and told Kennedy, “Never worked a day in your life, kid? You ain’t missed a thing.”
But in fact he had. Yesterday the tributes kept mentioning his commitment to the “working class.” He fought for, as President Obama said on Martha’s Vineyard of all places, “an America that is more equal and more just.”
But more equal and more just for some people than for others. When it came to the white ethnic working class from which his father came, Kennedy just plain didn’t get it. Whether it was court-ordered busing in Boston in the 1970s, or the affirmative action policies that stymied the careers of so many of his family’s traditional voters, Kennedy never grasped the depth of the blue-collar frustration as he veered left. And what infuriated them even more was that so many of them had grown up in homes where on one side of the mantel was a faded photo of the martyred JFK, and on the other the pope, with a dried-up palm frond given out at Mass on Palm Sunday between them.
Chappaquiddick, of course, never went away. But sometimes Kennedy could seem oblivious even to that ultimate blemish on his career. In 1974, when President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his Watergate crimes, Kennedy issued this thundering statement:
“Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?”
On issue after issue he was wrong - the nuclear freeze, the Reagan tax cuts, the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, which he assured his Senate colleagues would not lead to a “flood” of immigrants into America’s cities. With a Tele-Promp-Ter, he could be articulate, but when he wasn’t using his glasses to read a prepared statement, he was often an oratorical mess. In 2005, at the National Press Club, he referred to the current president as “Osama bin La-uh, Osama Obama, uh Obama.”
And yet he was always protected by most of the media, who shared his views on just about everything. In 1962, at the behest of President Kennedy, the Boston Globe played the story of his expulsion from Harvard below the fold on the front page. To the very end the Globe did its best to shield him - last week the struggling Times-owned broadsheet broke the story of his deathbed attempt to change the Massachusetts law on Senate succession, without mentioning that he himself had lobbied in 2004 to enact the law he was now denouncing as undemocratic. Only then, he was for stripping the governor of his right to fill a Senate vacancy, because, you see, that governor was a Republican.
The Globe reported that Kennedy was extremely concerned that the people of Massachusetts would have no representation in the Senate for five months until the special election. The fact that he had already missed 97 percent of the Senate roll-call votes in 2009 was not noted until the next day - in a different newspaper.
The hagiography will continue throughout the weekend. We all agree that Ted Kennedy should rest in peace. But let’s not forget that there was more, much more, to his “legacy” than is being reported on MSNBC.
The only hero in Teddy Kegger’s life is ... MARY JO KOPECHNE.
And, of course, Chivas Regal
both, of which, saved US from a Teddy Kegger Administration.
Thanks for posting!
Pinging to Howie list: Special Thu column. He said yesterday he submitted a column to the NY Post and also to the Herald
(same one)
Shocking how libs can overlook what a sleazeball somebody is as long as they’re a socialist from a hell. Conservatives are mean throwing Sanford overboard like that. He didn’t do 1% of what Kennedy did!
Even if he had been able to run for president, he wouldn't have taken Texas. TGTSOABID!
I do not wish to pick on the recently deceased. But this headline jarred me. The term “heroic” seems sullied by being related to this man’t legacy in any way. The best I can say of the man is that...uh...mmmm...I’m goint to have to get back to this...
Let’s Pay Respects To Ted Kennedy
Let’s take a moment now and reflect on the exemplary life of Ted Kennedy, the Lion of the Senate.
I hold this man dear to my heart, and remember attending the funeral for his liver almost a decade ago. Now the rest of him will enter eternal rest.
By opening your heart, you can visualize his entrance into the here-after, being greeted by his fellow liberals since past. First, of course, would be his parents, who made millions smuggling. Then his brothers, one of which still misses cavorting with playfully nude aides at the White House pool. Mary Jo Kopechne would run up to hug him as only a lover distanced by decades could do.
To his right would be Leon Trotsky, a fellow socialist, looking young again and without an axe in his head. Lenin would be near by, waiting to shake his hand, full of admiration.
Surrounded by this small gathering would be millions of inconvenient children who’s time had come unexpectedly. Ted did so much to support choice while he was alive and has an eternity to explain to each child why he did so.
We will miss this great man. The best we can do to immortalize him is to help pass the new health care package, and know he would be smiling from above.
We stood with our arms folded and didn't clap at the end of the tribute (we weren't the only ones). The applause wasn't particularly "robust"... I would say it was mostly "polite" applause.
They also ran an extended video montage of Ted's life during the middle of the first inning... there was hardly ANY applause for that.
Maybe there's some hope for the Bay State...
The link below is a video of the Ted Kennedy tribute at Fenway Park, 8/26/09 (video runs 3:34 min.):
Sen. Kennedy honored at Fenway
(If you don't want to bother hearing the tribute, turn the sound down... however, there are some nice shots of Fenway Park (built in 1912), if you're interested!)
the announcer talked about Ted wanting to live life at its fullest.
Mary Jo was not able to after that fateful night 40 yrs ago.
Mary Jo was not able to after that fateful night 40 yrs ago.
My thoughts exactly.
BTW, you were right... I listened to the game on WEEI 850AM (I always bring a portable radio). And I heard Howie Carr say (on WRKO) that he had his "full" show back... no more pre-empted show because of the Red Sox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kFwkIv8AsI
Of course you won’t believe the answer to the biggest mystery in history could be this simple.
Ted Kennedy (AKA lardass), the poor soul who spent 8 hours in silent prayer for the repose of the soul of Mary-Jo.
US Gov’t should have placed an APB for the bastard british engineer who designed that structurally unsound bridge at Chappaquiddick.
The Lion Liberal of The Senate
Thanks for the update Nutmeg. :-) And Ortiz homers twice!
As we pause to remember Ted Kennedy, let us say a prayer...for his victims:
- To Mary Jo...who was left unconscious and drowning in a car why the drunk driver responsible was scared out of his wits trying to figure out how to save his political career.
- To the MILLIONS of SE Asias condemned to communism, torture, and death when Kennedy prevented President Ford from upholding our treaty obligations to provide air support to South Vietnam; and then realizing the South Vietnamese were still holding their own, banned ammunitions sales to feed the weapons we left them.
- To Americans, who saw their judicial confirmation process forever poisoned by the politics of personal destruction, to satisfy the ego of one of the most self-centered spoiled brats who ever inherited a senate seat.
What was Teddy’s role in the appeasement of North Korea on its nuclear program?
Good article but unfortunatly 30% to 75% will vote in a Kennedy clone or based on what I’m hearing out of that state, over-turn the current law and the Govenor will appoint a Kennedy clone.
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