Ted Kennedy: The Last of His Kind
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- The news came out of the Kennedy compound Tuesday night. Teddy was dead.
You don’t hear much about “compounds” anymore, they seem like a relic of a bygone era, like the “trusts” and “robber barons’ that generated the loot that built them.
People who knew him better and admired him more will write his eulogy. That’s not my purpose here. I agreed with him often, disagreed some, admired much of what he stood for and considered him a flawed, shambling wreck of a patriarch who had much more excuse than most for being that way.
If I’d lost everyone I loved to assassin’s bullets and bad piloting I’d probably get fat, drink too much, and cat around with random women just like Edward Kennedy, though I hope I’d have the sense to use my chauffer when I mixed them.
But there is much to mourn here, more than a fallen Senator who did far more good in his public life than the harm he did in private. What died Tuesday was an era in American politics, the kind of liberalism and spirit of public service that came out of “compounds.”
Back in the sixties, when I was the radical who knew absolutely everything and wasn’t shy about admitting it, I said a few wrong things. I wouldn’t take back most of what I said or believed in those days, history has been kind to most of our causes and what was radical then is Middle America now, but there is one thing I believed that was particularly stupid.
“Never trust anyone fighting against anyone’s oppression but their own.” We said that because we believed that the “liberals” will betray you when the shit came down. Plus we liked to act oppressed.
That was wrong, it was youthful arrogance and posturing. We mistook selfishness for purity. There is nothing more noble than fighting to help people who are less free than you. Even if you have little connection to those people, even if your “interests” and theirs don’t coincide. You may do it for reasons of guilt or vanity, but it is a noble act nonetheless and not an easy one.
When “society” and the bankers and the reactionaries wanted to damn FDR’s soul in the strongest terms possible they called him ‘A traitor to his own class.” That was the nastiest thing they could say about him.
FDR came from privilege when privilege knew they ruled by the grace of God. To folks in that class, you and me and everyone reading this blog were peons, beneath notice, “the help.” Yet Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man of the “compounds,” fought from his wheelchair to make us a little more equal, a little more free, and a lot more secure.
Ted Kennedy, born in a compound built on the crimes of a bootlegger father turned isolationist and apologist for fascism, a rich, privileged playboy who could have spent his life being nothing more, died Tuesday, the last of his kind.
He fought all his life for the interests of people he could have bought and sold. He helped the disabled, the aged, the sick, the poor. He had no compunction about taxing the rich. He was a traitor to his class.
And that’s the nicest thing I can say about him.
Comment by joker on 26 August 2009:
Well written as usual Snark.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t his class that paid the tab for all the people he “helped.” It was people like my parents, who worked hard all their lives just to eek out the barest of lower-middle-class existences. We had a decent house and plenty to eat, but my dad never owned a brand-new car in his whole life. I never knew growing up that my folks were just barely making it. I do remember always having to pay for my school lunches though, because my father “made too much money.” It would’ve been much easier for him to not bother working at all so Ted Kennedy could “help” him, and I could’ve gotten a free lunch at school along with all the minorities and white trash.
But there is something called pride. My parents worked for every single thing they ever had. They paid every bill with their own money. The consequence of this was no summer vacations on Cape Cod or ski trips to New Hampshire in the winter. It was all they could do to keep food on the table and the heat on in the winter, but they did, and they did it without ONE shred of help from the likes of the uber hypocritical and hubristic Edward Moore Kennedy.
He should have spent his life making little rocks out of big ones for killing Mary Jo, but the power from “the compound” is not to be underestimated. Instead, the blind, ignorant and just plain stupid voted him back in after the police were properly coerced into letting Teddy off the hook. I’m so glad he got the chance to make struggling, hard working folks like my parents pick up the tab for all the human refuse he “helped.”
I’m glad he’s dead, and I hope his body hurries up and rots so it can catch up with his soul. My only regret is that you are wrong about him being the last of his kind. John Forbes Kerry-Heinz will have his ass in Ted’s chair before it gets cold, and the legacy of the people who do all the work paying for those who do not will go on like an incurable cancer.
Comment by Nicole Jordan on 26 August 2009:
Ted Kennedy was dedicated to the most fundamental needs of the less fortunate. He made mistakes, and I should think that anyone and everyone understands that may have been part of his motivation for the good work he did in his Senatorial career. Joker, really, leaving the scene of an accident in which someone dies deserves that level of hate and ugliness? Or is it that those who were able to eke (ps–check a dictionary) out a middle-class living looked beneath themselves and saw other ethnicities and other religions and hated that those people wanted the same thing for their families, thinking incorrectly that somehow they were lessened by “human refuse” sharing their same goals. Ted Kennedy spent decades helping us all recognize there are no lessers among us, that all Americans deserve attention and help and that providing that elevates the nation as ONE. Teddy was a traitor to his class, as Snark says. That’s another word you may want to look up in the dictionary. You might learn something.
Comment by joker on 26 August 2009:
Congratulations Nicole, you caught me in a one-letter typo. Since your dictionary reference is obviously meant to highlight a lack of erudition on my part, I suggest that you are quite mistaken. I am well aware of the meanings of both “eke,” and “eek.” Were it not for the fact that it may annoy our Chief Hypocrite, it would be my great pleasure to suggest what you can do with your dictionary in eloquent, flowing Iambic pentameter. You may have to Google that one.
Ted Kennedy was dedicated to satisfying his bloated ego, waistline, and never-ending desire for both Dewar’s and water and women to whom he was not married. You make leaving the scene of a fatal accident sound as passive as a parking lot fender-bender. To answer your silly question, yes, it does deserve that level of hate and ugliness. Perhaps you would agree if a loved one of yours were the victim of such an “accident.” I am amazed that you or anyone else is actually capable of dismissing the victim and defending the criminal here. If you are an attorney, then I defer to the famous quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VI. You can look that up too.
This goes far beyond merely leaving the scene of a fatal accident, but I’m sure like all other liberals you speak with no knowledge whatsoever of the facts of the case. Allow me to enlighten you. First, if you think that Teddy didn’t make himself available to the local constabulary (that means the police) until nearly 10 hours after the accident for any reason other than that he was drunk, then I have some land in Florida I’d like to interest you in.
Point number two: There was a home with an outside light on about 150 yards from the accident scene where Kennedy could have sought help, but he did not, claiming he didn’t see the light. That statement gets a “buffalo bagels” rating right up there with “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…Miss Lewinsky…” In the pitch black of a secluded area like that at night, any light, even at a distance of one and one-half football fields away, would have stuck out like a road flare.
Three: Teddy then walked back to the cottage where they’d all been partying, passing three more houses, from any of which he could have called for help. He did not. The cottage where the party was also had a telephone, but did our hero notify the authorities when he finally got back there? Survey says: NO! What he did do was go back to his hotel room in Edgartown, where he finally made a telephone call - to the hotel owner - complaining of being woken up by a noisy party. Am I the only one who can taste the bile at this point?
Four: The next morning, he had a nice casual chat with the winner of a sailing race that had taken place the day before, as if nothing was wrong at all. At the heated urging of two friends, Kennedy finally returned to Chappaquiddick to discover that his car and the body in it had been found. He then returned to Edgartown on the ferry and finally turned himself in to the police there, roughly around 10am. The accident had been between 11pm and midnight. Black coffee anyone??
Five: The diver who recovered Mary Jo’s body testified that he found her pressed up in what would have been an air pocket inside the car, and that had he been summoned immediately, he believed there was a strong chance he could have rescued her alive.
I don’t think anything else needs to be said. If you or anyone else thinks this was not the worst kind of criminal negligence amounting to manslaughter at minimum, then I suggest you are devoid of both conscience and rational thought.
Please do not turn my life-long disdain for Senator Kennedy into some kind of hate for other ethnicities and religions. I have no problem with anyone sharing similar goals; that does not make me feel lessened in any way. I do have a problem with bloated frauds like Kennedy standing up there telling people like my folks that he is “fighting for them,” when in reality all he did was make their lives harder, while making the lives of deadbeats easier.
Ted was dedicated to championing environmental causes too. Er, well, that is until they suggested putting a wind farm off shore from the Kennedy compound. What a surprise he adamantly oppossed it. Clean electrical power, Yes! Spoiling the Kennedy’s view of the ocean, NO!
You need to understand that everything Ted did in office was carefully scripted and choreographed by his handlers. He was a liberal Democrat, so obvously he had to champion causes that would make them continue to re-elect him, and that they did. His real motivation for this was not care or compassion, it was power. That was Joe Sr.’s philosophy, among other things like being a Nazi sympathizer, but I digress.
A real life incident like what took place on that bridge on Dike Road in 1969 is what truly tests a person’s character, and Ted showed the world he had none at all. He let an innocent girl die because he was only interested in saving his own sorry ass from a DUI/vehicular homicide charge. Those, madam, are the facts of the case.
I don’t need to look up class in the dictionary. Class is what Mayor Rudy Giuliani showed on 9/11 when he maintained rock-solid composure as the bodies fell from the burning twin towers above him. Class is what Ronald Reagan showed when he wouldn’t back down to the Russian deployement of missiles in Europe in the early 1980s. Ted Kennedy opposed him of course, saying, “I do not believe we will have less nuclear bombs tomorrow by building more nuclear bombs today.” History shows Kennedy was wrong of course, as he was wrong about every major foreign policy issue that arose during his tenure in the Senate.
If anyone needs to look things up Nicole, it is you. It would behoove you to assemble the facts before you suggest others may need to “learn something.” Please let me know if I misspelled anything; I tried to be very careful.
Comment by joker on 26 August 2009:
Oops…just noticed an extra “e” in “deployment.” I tried so hard too…
Comment by Nicole Jordan on 26 August 2009:
Yes, you did try very hard, didn’t you?
Comment by joker on 27 August 2009:
Indeed I did, but not hard enough. I just noticed an ‘i’ missing in “obviously,” and a hyphen from “real-life.” A pity you missed a chance to nail me on those, aa I rarely provide such opportunities.
Comment by Sherre on 30 August 2009:
RIP Ted Kennedy. He was most definitely a survivor. He was human, and made mistakes…….like ALL of us. However, he had the courage to admit to them, and try to make the world a better place. He deserves our respect.
Comment by joker on 31 August 2009:
Sorry Sherre.
How dare you say “ALL of us” caused the needless death of another human being in our lives. If you lost a loved one in such a needless manner through such gross criminal negligence, I’m sure you’d be deeply hurt by anyone simply saying the one resposible “was human and made mistakes.”
For the record, Ted Kennedy never admitted to having been under the influence of alcohol on the night of the accident, when clearly he was. He never admitted or explained in a manner that would satisy any reasonable person as to why he didn’t go to the first house nearby to call for help. In fact, he never called for help at all. He waited untii a passer-by found his car in the water and called police.
You’re right about one thing, he’s a survivor alright. He made sure he survived and Mary Jo Kopechne did not. His family’s money and influence corrupted the police and the judge to let him off with barely a slap on the wrist. They then quietly paid off the Kopechne family. RIP Ted for sure…as long as the ‘P’ is for purgatory.
He deserves no respect - and neither does anyone else who would defend such an evil, cowardly man. So sorry the facts don’t support your idealistic drivel.
Comment by banquet manager on 5 February 2010:
The last of his kind…good thing for us.
the Banquet Manager