The males in the Kennedy family all had that Untouchable Rich Kid attitude that they felt they could do whatever they wanted and to hell with the consequences. What they didn't consider was the accountability of being in public office. Chappaquiddick probably did America a favour in exposing Ted Kennedy's weaknesses at an early stage. This wasn't the 1920s where such 'shenanigans' could be hushed up with a little of Daddy's money spread around in the right places.

Likewise, John Jr, thinking that, with a foot in plaster and restricted mobility, he could still fly a plane. I didn't have much time for any of the Kennedy men.

Ouch, EJ. Luckily for us many of them made time for us.

I had to tell the Chappaquiddick story to a coworker, who knew nothing of it. I feel like a wise old storyteller.

Thank you, EJ.

I know Sen Kennedy (well, his staff--I worked with them once, while at a legal clinic) did a lot of hard work on important legislation. But really, anyone else who had killed a very young mistress, driving drunk, would have been cruxified. Would not have been given the chance to make his mark in the world. Why wasn't he cruxified? Why was he given a chance to redeem himself?

Because people thought his dead brothers were gods. That disgusts me. Not because Sen Kennedy did not or should not have been able to redeem himself but because he was allowed to only because of privilege he owed to no part of himself or his character. That angers me.

It's sort of inevitable that everyone will mention Chappaquiddick (and Kopechne was, at best, an acquaintance). I'm not entirely sure about the anger, though, as the voters of Massachusetts had ample opportunities to express their opinion. For all his faults, and that's a list that pretty much starts and ends with Chappaquiddick, Ted worked tirelessly on progressive causes, long after it became unpopular and his image became that of a dionsaur rather than a lion. His work for labor, for education, and for health care, must have provided reason for his electorate to return him to office again and again.

Why such political acumen -- his and his brothers' -- was chained to flawed men is a ponderable question. But we need not confuse the two.

Thank you dhartung, that was well said. Everyone is always so quick to be angry with Teddy and gloss over this man's achievement and decades of public service with cavalier posture. We all have great faults and great abilities, and within perspective of contemporary politics, I'm thinking Teddy is and was among the best of them. He was a friend of the minority, the downtrodden, and worked bravely for civil rights, worker rights, women's rights, and human rights all over the world.

I think he had the same cancer my roommate did. May he rest in peace.

The work he did in the Senate, the legislation he passed, redeemed him, I believe. I have a harder time with his run for president in 1980. His failure to support Carter contributed to 8 years of Reagan, and that was a catastrophe for the nation, and world.

Splash and Sunny will miss their dad.

Damn, essexjan, that's a really shitty bunch of things to say (at the very top of the thread, no less) about a man who worked very hard to redeem himself with a life of real, positive public service, caring about and working on the issues that mattered most to his constituency. Sure, the dead Kennedys lived in a different world than me. And a far different world than you, over there across the ocean. Maybe the distance provides insulation from the good he did and leads you to think of nothing but Chappaquiddick the minute he dies, I don't know. He represented more that a drunken tragedy to Americans, I guess. The gratuitous swipe against John Jr., too, I mean, what the hell? That's really nasty of you. Show some class, wait a day or two to piss on the dead.

My dad was a die-hard old school conservative who disagreed with probably 90% of what Ted Kennedy stood for, but even he had great admiration for the man, not only for his political acumen, but also for his lifelong commitment to working for the things he believed in. And though he loved Reagan, my dad always said that Kennedy was by far the most qualified man running for president in 1980.

Sorry you find my opinion offensive, Hugh, but I'm as entitled to it as you are to yours.

It's not what you think, it's how and when you deploy it.

Let's all join hands and sing Koombayah then.

Stay classy.

You can have the last word, I'm off to cook dinner.

I agree with dhartung that Ted Kennedy did work tirelessly to redeem himself. Whether or not you believe that he should have been given the opportunity, no-one can deny that he became the US liberal arm's moral center in his latter years. If nothing else, we should mourn his passing because any meaningful healthcare reform may well be lost without his restraining presence and his vote.
Oh - and I too feel for his dogs, poor souls.

I guess my point is only that I am disgusted that the only reason he--after killing someone, drunkenly--was allowed to redeem himself was privilege of birth. In the US, we put children--I mean 15 year olds--in prison for years because they were in the room when one dealer killed another, or because they sold drugs, or any number of nonviolent crimes, and when they get out they can't even get hired to clean toilets. That is what disgusts me about the Senator Edward Kennedy story. Not Kennedy himself. That people were perfectly willing to hand him power and let him wield and retain his privilege when that privilege was an accident of birth, and unearned. Nonetheless, people refuse to do the same thing for some punk kid who was never even allowed to graduate from high school because he was jailed for a much less serious offense than killing someone while driving drunk. It's fucked up and until people start denying the Kennedys of the world a second-chance, I will continue to be disgusted by it. Until people start giving the petty offenders of the world a real second chance, I will continue to be disgusted by it.

Do you think that upstate New York would have elected this woman to dogcatcher? No, because when she drove drunk and killed 8 people, she didn't have a famous rich family. Well, and because she also killed herself. Do you think she would have been allowed to plead guilty to "leaving the scene of an accident" if she had left those children dying in the car? Of course not.

What disgusts me about him is how starkly it throws into relief how unjust our system is. How skewed our system for awarding second chances is. How willing we are to just let people be important and powerful because someone in their family amassed a lot of money. Because someone else in their family was powerful.

Even that he did redeem himself cannot erase my disgust at that disparity.

Do you think that upstate New York would have elected this woman to dogcatcher?

No, I don't. But I also don't think that otherwise reasonable people would be talking shit about her on the day she died. Not on a website populated by other reasonable people, at least.


Thanks for voting against that Iraq thing, Teddy.

One of my friends Chappaquiddicked his Facebook wall - just the word, in all caps - and I let him have a piece of my mind for his too-easy single-mindedness. Good deeds don't undo anything - I don't believe that anything we do in our past can be undone - but they help atone for what cannot be undone.

I don't disagree with you at all, crush, and I think you explained your stance even better the second time around, particularly the first paragraph.

Not that the Kennedy name wasn't far and away the deciding factor in his ability to continue his political career, but it's important to note that he'd been elected to fill the Senate seat in '62 (obviously helped by the name, but he also ran a hell of a campaign, even though he had what many would describe as an insurmountable advantage) and then elected properly in '64 (again the name, but voters did have two years experience to look at.) By the time of Chappaquiddick, he'd already spent seven years in the Senate. To say that his getting a pass on this incident, horrific as it was, was SOLELY based on his name is a bit disingenuous. (Not that you are.) Remember: It's the people who voted him back in, and it's the people (though fewer of them than the previous election, granted) who did so knowing that it would ultimately set the tone for public perception of the incident and its aftermath.

But more importantly, I think you really nailed why this rankles people so. Separate of the man, it points out, about as dramatically as possible, the disparity and inequality that exists in this country and in the world at large. That the remainder of his life was a tireless struggle to rectify this is about as close to redemption for something so horrible as anyone could hope to achieve.

We have to remember that the moral campaign against drunk driving did not begin until the late 1970s or early 1980s and faced resistance even then.

By the way, I don't see his Senate record as a journey of personal redemption. Partly because "journeys of personal redemption" in political life are a bit silly, and partly because it's an explicitly Protestant-Evangelical cast. Catholics don't see things that way. I'm not sure that many mainline Protestants really do, either.

While I cannot disagree with anything anyone says here, I am, on the whole saddened, and feel like the nation is a better place, for his life. The rich and powerful get a free ride in this country. You can go AWOL from the military, drive drunk and kill someone, have any number of sexual picadilloes, be a pedophile, etc etc etc.

But, as I said, Ted Kennedy did a lot more good than harm.

And I just can't resist. (This came up on my shuffle this morning. . .Meet Me on the Levee Tonight . .a really nice track)

*smile*

I don't think anyone has the right to judge anyone else's humanity. We all have our own private reality, & we navigate it as best we can.

I loathed Jesse Helms' attitude towards women, blacks and gays, but I respected his tenacity & dedication, however misguided it seemed to me. I never uttered anything as degrading and diminishing of him the day he went.

And not that it matters, nor to start any flame wars, but my respect for you EJ slipped a notch with that opening comment.

I'm saddened, too, that he was possibly the last of the truly passionate in the senate, and that what's left is mediocre by comparison.

I feel sadder about his death than I expected to. I dislike empires and the ruling class more than the next guy, but I think he did a better job and cared more than his station in life gave him a right to. Worse than an isolated accidental death are auto deregulation and anti-wind turbine NIMBYism in my book. But he didn't say to get out of his backyard or off his lawn for a lot of things that made this country better and are easy for senators and rich people, and especially where the two intersect, to want to have off their lawn; those unwashed masses. He didn't avert his gaze uncomfortably from us. And I'm sad that his death represents a great percentage of loss among those who rule us and don't feel uncomfortable viewing our unsexy needs and rights.

He's a man that people loved and that makes his death sad. But he was a collection of ideas that I loved and that makes me sad.

I compare this to Michael Jackson's death - yes, many people spoke out about his failings on that day, but I did not. The man, even in death, squicked me right the heck out, but people had genuine and strong feelings about his contributions over his time on earth, so I stayed silent, as it was just my gut feeling talking.

In this case, I do not have the squick, but I understand that people do. I would have hoped that people would have acted as I had, and just been silent about Kennedy's failings, at least for today, but I can't control that.

In 1965, Kennedy was floor manager for an immigration bill that ended four decades of preferences for Northern Europeans at the expense of Asians and other groups and, some have argued, paved the way for Barack Obama's presidential victory. In 1972, Kennedy helped shepherd Title IX, which banned sex discrimination in education programs and fostered the expansion of athletic programs for women in high schools and colleges. In 1974, Kennedy sponsored the "post-Watergate amendments" to campaign finance law, limiting the size and sources of private contributions to candidates and creating a public financing system for presidential elections. In 1986, Kennedy advanced key amendments to the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, guaranteeing continued health coverage to workers after they lost their jobs. In 1990, Kennedy sponsored the Americans With Disabilities Act, which enacted civil rights protections for the handicapped. In 1997, he sponsored the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which extended medical care to families with children that didn't qualify for Medicaid. Every one of these laws expanded in tangible ways the promise of American life.

Count me among the folks that think the late senator did far more good than harm, and among the folks that are a little surprised at both the timing and the tone of ej's response (though both she and crushy make some good points) (and, while you're at it, count me among the folks who try to mostly keep their grave-dancing shoes in the closet).

That's also a worthy epitaph for Ted Kennedy: Born of privilege, and yet absorbed with the fate of those in need.

.....................

"he became the US liberal arm's moral center in his latter years." I think his death may be the death of "the US liberal arm" of government altogether.

It may be. He was one of the few - only? - truly progressive voices in the Senate, one of the few who focused on our obligation to lift all boats, and didn't scurry to the economic and social center as soon as it became politically expedient.

R.I.P., Teddy. If only everyone born into privilege and haunted by terrible mistakes could develop the moral compass and personal strength you did.

I think his death may be the death of "the US liberal arm" of government altogether.

I agree, and that just terrifies me.

I remember after Princess Diana died people over here went crazy, there was this weird collective mourning and outpouring of grief for someone they didn't know. And my view at the time was, huh, you have to feel sorry for anyone who died in those circumstances, but I didn't know the woman, so what's all the fuss. That got me the same reaction as I seem to have had here. It's easy to forget from this side of the pond that the Kennedys are still the nearest thing to royalty the States will ever have and it appears that Americans are as sensitive to criticism of their 'princes' as the Brits are about their Royal Family.

Respectfully, Jan, I think there's quite a bit of difference between 'What's all the fuss?' and 'Chappaquiddick probably did America a favor.'

Oh, and this: The Kennedies, like my father's family, came to this country escaping the famine in Ireland, with little more than the clothes on their back. To my grandmother, that was a HUGE thing. They were wealthy beyond what anyone in my family could imagine, sure, but that made them matter all the more. To my family, and many like them I'm sure, the success of the Kennedy brothers was the success of the community.
Even on the Italian side of my family similar sentiments had been voiced. My grandmother, after Obama won, said "a lot of black people must feel like we did back when JFK won. I didn't really think America would ever accept Catholics as equals until then." That he died a US Senator who just happened to be Catholic is a testament to what his family accomplished. Fifty years ago he was a Catholic US Senator. Those few words make a world of difference to a lot of people.

As usual, I like the Rude Pundit's take on things.

Particularly this bit:

A man fucks up again and again, but he owns his mistakes and learns from them. Ted Kennedy wore his flaws openly in his personal life. Some of it was the price of juvenile overindulgence (even as an adult) and some of it was just stupidity. The question is less about fucking up, but how a man reacts to it. He was kicked out of Harvard for cheating on an exam, so he joined the military (although he would achieve none of the glory of John and Joe, Jr.). When the Chappaquiddick incident happened, he nutted up and told the voters to decide on his fate. He was a hard-drinking son of a bitch who screwed around on his first wife, a Dean Martin-like punchline to jokes about alcoholism and a tabloid laughingstock. During that period, among other things, he was getting funding cut off to Chile because of Pinochet's barbarism, pushing legislation to help political refugees, getting sanctions imposed on apartheid-era South Africa, negotiating with Gorbachev on nuclear missiles, stopping Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination, and strengthening the Civil Rights Act. What did you do on your years-long bender? He paid, too, with his presidential ambitions dashed. And when he was slugging 'em back like a frat boy with his nephews on a night that ended with William Kennedy Smith arrested on an accusation of rape, Kennedy made another public reckoning about who he was as a man in a speech in October 1991. And despite all he had accomplished before, he grew up, finally, understanding that to be a man one must become a man.

I think there's a lot of recognition of his legislative influence, Jan, which is where much of the appreciation for him lies. It's actually rather less emotional for a lot of people, and more pragmatically focused, than Diana's death. He was a pillar of progressive legislation, he improved the lives of all citizens through his work, and his absence changes things.