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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...

Mary Jo, this one's for you

In a draft chapter that failed to make the final editor’s cut, the late Senator Ted Kennedy boasted that he had slept with more than 1,000 women during his life. The Senator also recounted that he was quite pleased that it only cost him a total of $10 million in hush money. “In a way, the drowning of Mary Jo helped keep down the costs,” Kennedy wrote. “My ability to skate on that convinced many of my subsequent conquests to be reasonable in their demands lest a similar fate befall them.” The chapter also expressed some regret over the Kopechne...

ORALANDO, September 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In addition to his announcement that he is considering a run for President in 2012, former US Senator Rick Santorum gave his assessment of the controversy around the Ted Kennedy funeral during his speech to the Catholic Leadership Conference last week. Santorum's talk focused on rejuvenating the Catholic Church in the United States.During his speech Santorum lamented "what the Church allowed to happen" with the Kennedy funeral, referring to it as a "deification" of Kennedy.  "The damage done" to the Church, he said, "is profound.""We have Catholic politicians who have led this country astray, have led...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said in a new book that he was not romantically involved with young Mary Jo Kopechne and that he never escaped the despair he felt after she died in the 1969 car crash that has been seared into the national consciousness as "Chappaquiddick." He acknowledged that he enjoyed women and drink — sometimes too much so — but said reports of wild Kennedy excesses were exaggerated. Yet it was the specter of Chappaquiddick that Edward Kennedy, the youngest brother, never could shake. "That night on Chappaquiddick Island ended in a horrible tragedy that haunts...

If we'd had insatiable 24/7 cable news networks in July 1969, the accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a passenger in a car driven by Sen. Edward Kennedy drowned would likely have dominated the national consciousness for months. Special programs every night devoted to nothing but pundits bickering over the depths of the 37-year-old Kennedy's responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, 28. Town-hall-style chat shows every afternoon in which ordinary Americans issued their verdicts and sentences before the evidence was in.

The truth of what really happened on July 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts will never be known. What is known is that at the end of the evening, Mary Jo Kopechne was found dead in a car that Edward (Ted) Kennedy had been driving. Was her death the result of a tragic accident or due to gross negligence on the part of Ted Kennedy? Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne attended the same party on the evening of July 18, 1969. Kennedy left the party with Kopechne as a passenger in his car and accidentally drove off the road...

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...

I've made a decision. After thoughtful reflection I've come to the conclusion that my life can have no greater purpose than to sacrifice it for the sake of another. But this sacrifice cannot be for some Jack Nobody. No, I am looking to lay my life down for a very specific type of person. If you are a young person of privilege, perhaps the black sheep of your family, and have an alarming drinking problem and been thrown out of an ivy league university, you might be the person I am looking for! Oh, quick question, were you a legacy...

From Kennedy’s close friend Ed Klein: I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too. Hear audio here

Sorry....Ted Kennedy is a monster, no other way to describe him. Here is one of his close friends, former editor of Newsweek and New York Times Magazine Ed Klein describing one of the favorite kind of jokes Mr. Kennedy enjoyed: [VIDEO AT SITE] I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that...

Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy stood for sleaze. Bloated and drunken, he used his standing in the Kennedy clan to chase vulnerable women - which brought his dream of reaching the White House to a shameful end. He was the youngest of the four Kennedy brothers, and by far the longest lived. Incredibly, he was in line to inherit his brother John F. Kennedy's legendary presidency, but his chances were dashed following the drowning of the pretty, young campaign assistant Mary Jo Kopechne. Forever known as the Chappaquiddick Incident after the Massachusetts island where it took place, the scandal in 1969...

"I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" That is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too."

On this message board a poster started this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529543 and was threatened with being suspended from the message board for posting it. Then she went to discuss this in the section dedicated to discussing moderator actions and she was threatened with being banned. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529547 Then after that another poster defended her: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529549 and a bunch of posters complained they rescinded the warning violation order but said that her thread wouldn't be reopened and not allowed to be posted because it was posted in the wrong subcategory. So she posted it into a different subcategory: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529558 and a bunch of...

The following is an edited and abbreviated transcript of Edward Kennedy's statement following the Chappaquiddick controversy: There is no truth, no truth whatever, to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind. I know of nothing in Mary Jo's conduct on that or any other occasion — and the same is true of the other girls at that party — that would lend any substance to such ugly speculation about their character. Nor was I driving under...

Vote on Lower left

How do you rate Sen. Edward Kennedy's political career?

This is my first vanity ever and likely my last but I have a question that some enterprising pajama journalist might investigate and answer. Why was there total silence from the Kopechne family after there daughters death?. There were no criminal charges against Teddy at the time , but there were never any civil procedings instigated either. Not a word from Mary Jo's family. Were they payed off? "Camelot" may have prevented it then but there is no reason it can't be investiagted now. Thoughts?

Senator Edward Kennedy makes a testament on the events that lead to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. She was a passenger in his car when he drove off Dyke Bridge into the channel between Chappaquiddick Island and Martha's Vineyard in 1969. The Senator swam to safety, but Kopechne drowned. He did not report the accident until the following day. He pleaded guilty to leaving a scene of crime and received a two-month suspended sentence.

Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy, the youngest Kennedy brother who was left to head the family's political dynasty after his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, has died at age 77.