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

National Review ^ | August 29, 2009 | Mark Steyn

[paulycy]

[martin_fierro]

This is how you write about Ted Kennedy.

And yes, I did read Charles Pierce's quote in what you call its larger context. It was, and remains, and shall ever remain, a mind-numbingly stupid statement no matter how much you (Is that you, Chuck?) try to spin it.

[madinmadtown]

Old Joe Kennedy may not have been Satan incarnate, but he understood and used the Old Sod's ways as well as any man.
Old Joe Kennedy bribed reporters for years with money, mortgages, women and all the vices and in return the reporter sold his soul to Kennedy to write a favorable article about his sons or a company that Kennedy would exploit for unseemly profit.
Once the reporter's soul was sold, it would never be redeemed and was understood to do Old Joe's bidding forever. It was truly a devil's agreement.

[Alex Murphy]

I don’t know how many lives the senator changed — he certainly changed Mary Jo’s — but you’re struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the basic equation: How many changed lives justify leaving a human being struggling for breath for up to five hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy’s Oldsmobile? If the senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been okay to leave a couple more broads down there? Hey, why not? At the Huffington Post, Melissa Lafsky mused on what Mary Jo “would have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history . . . Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”

I love Mark Steyn.

Melissa Lafsky was on the John Stewart show last night, and she was asked to clarify what the "it" was in that last sentence. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, she affirmed that by "it" she meant that Mary Jo would feel that Mary Jo's death at Ted Kennedy's hands was "worth it" for all the great legislation America got (which, supposedly, America would have never got had she not died).

[McLynnan]

I wouldn’t swear this is true, but I vaguely remember hearing that the Kennedy’s paid for Mary Jo’s funeral. It’s hard to whitewash the fact she left a party alone with a married man known as a skirt chaser. She was 29 years old so probably knew exactly what she was doing. No parent would want that fact belabored by the press. You may be right that they didn’t want to see her name dragged through the mud, but for her parents the huge injustice of having her trivialized by the Kennedy machine must have been galling.

[Spok]

Dan Quayle misspelled a word and, in the press, it defined him; Bush 41 went back on a pledge not to raise taxes and it cost him the presidency; Ted Kennedy kills a young woman while cheating on his wife, and nothing. The MSM double standard has been around for decades.

[edge10]

I would say the Senator changed the lives of millions of pre-born babies for the worse as well.

[Thommas]

Mary Jo was one of the little people, a servant, a dispensable waif. The Pelosis, Reids, Kennedys, et. al., play the propaganda music from the score of compassion, regard and servitude to the hoi poli; but, they hold all the little people in abject contempt and harbor utmost hatred for any who stand in the way of their retention of power.

[Thommas]

And Jim Jones only had one bad day!!

Well said.

[fatfertile]

I’m printing this article; it will be by my side as the slobbering over the “great lion of the senate” continues all weekend. Thank you Mark Steyn for this terrific piece.

[oust the louse]

I could only take three or four minutes of that sickening travesty.

That’s 3 or 4 minutes more than I watched. I will not watch any of this pimping of a so called legacy of this man. He was basically a pig at the trough of big Gov’t.

[Republic of Texas]

I read Steyn because he says what I know better than I can. Ted Kennedy didn't get away with anything. He was psychologically damaged from that day on. He lived a pathetic life, propped up by the ill gotten gains of his for-bearers. The crime is that half of this country let him inflict the damage on all of us simply because they agreed with his politics. Our country will pay the price for that, and the price will be steep.

[leilani]

To be fair, it wasn't Steyn taking the shot at Appalachians, it was Steyn referring to Sam Shephard taking the potshots in his play "Buried Child". I don't even recall that the play was set in Appalachia, though - I remembered it as being in the midwest somewhere.

Regardless, it was a superb analogy for the media's tiptoe-ing around the Kennedy clan patriarch's very own "Buried Woman" over the last few days. Great column.

[KansasGirl]

Kennedy, who was married at the time, was off on a drunken tryst when the accident happened, so I can see why her Catholic parents would be concerned for her reputation. Kennedy's wife was not at the party that night. She was home on bed rest with a threatened miscarriage. She miscarried days later after Kennedy dragged her out in front of cameras and to Mary Jo's funeral.

Although pregnant and confined to bed in the wake of two previous miscarriages, she attended Kopechne's funeral. Three days later, she stood beside her husband in court when he pled guilty to having left the scene of an accident.[6] She suffered a third miscarriage shortly thereafter.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Kennedy

[Mr. K]

too bad they were not cremating him so he could get a sneak preview of coming attractions

[headstamp 2]

This whole episode for TK ultimately shows it’s an almost exclusive affair for the political and moneyed elite and illustrates how disconnected they are from the rest of society.

[Cooter]

For Kennedy’s comrades, the cost was worth it.

Relating the three main news topics of today:

Kennedy wasn't punished for Mar Jo because the cost was worth it.

Grandma must be denied that life-extending procedure in order to save health care, because the cost is worth it.

The CIA can't blow cigar smoke in some terrorists face in order to save american lives, because the cost isn't worth it.

[Senator Goldwater]

What do you call 200 Kennedy sycophants at the bottom of a Chappaquiddick pond? A great start, but bad news for NPR guest-bookers!

---

You gotta love Mark Steyn.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

“Although pregnant and confined to bed in the wake of two previous miscarriages, she attended Kopechne’s funeral. Three days later, she stood beside her husband in court when he pled guilty to having left the scene of an accident.[6] She suffered a third miscarriage shortly thereafter.”

That's horrible. No wonder she drank.

[y6162]

“Ted was a typical liberal. Loved humanity but despised mankind.”

There is no spontaneous outpouring of love for Kennedy like Reagan. I think the liberal elite are going to be surprised.