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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...

It was just one line at the end of a segment. But it spoke volumes about the way a media willing to look the other way saved Ted Kennedy's political career at the time of Chappaquiddick. Jim Pinkerton made the observation on yesterday's Fox News Watch at the very end of the segment on the media's treatment of Kennedy's death. View video here.

In all the obits published and specials aired this week, Chappaquiddick gets a few paragraphs, a few minutes, a tidy recapping of the events of July 19, 1969: The married Ted Kennedy, driving late at night with young campaign aide Mary Jo Kopechne, pitches off a bridge and into the water below. He escapes; she drowns. He does not report the accident for 10 hours. He pleads guilty and gets a suspended sentence, two months in jail. In most of these narratives, Chappaquiddick is told as Ted's tragedy, the thing that kept him from ever becoming president. And in these...

After Ted Kennedy was elected for the first time, at age 30, his home state sent him back to the Senate eight times, all but once by unassailable margins. Here in Massachusetts, people understood him and wanted him on their side – and it wasn't just because of his the name. It was the accent that was as much Boston as Brahmin. It was his collection of imperfections and failings trumped most of the time by his stubbornness, real passion and just plain will. And there was something else about him that made him an untouchable here: He came from...

Click on link to watch; actually mostly audio. From 1994, Howie Carr, then with WHDH AM 850 talks with John Farrar who discovered Mary Jo Kopechne's body. He was pressured not to talk about his discoveries. excerpt: Howie Carr: John let me just get this straight..your belief is that while Ted Kennedy was walking past all these houses back towards the "party house" where we're broadcasting from now, Mary Jo was still alive. Farrar: Uh, that is correct. Carr: And she would have been alive probably for about an hour, do you think. Farrar: I think that's most reasonable--an hour...

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...

Birth: Jul. 26, 1940 Death: Jul. 19, 1969 Teacher and Administrator, she is most remembered for her controversial death in an automobile accident with Senator Edward Kennedy; the resulting political scandal caused Kennedy to reverse his decision to run for the US Presidency. Born in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, she was the only child of insurance salesman Joseph and Gwen Kopechne. After graduating from Caldwell College, New Jersey, she taught at Montgomery Catholic High School in Montgomery, Alabama, and then moved to Washington DC to work as a secretary for Florida Senator George Smathers. Shortly afterwards, she went to work...

Two kinds of people reacted to news of Ted Kennedy’s death last week. The first — not all liberals, either — spoke of Kennedy’s hard work in the United States Senate, his dream of universal healthcare, his commitment to working people, civil rights and equality. This “most imperfect man,” wrote analyst William Bradley, was also a powerful advocate for progressive principles. Barack Obama predictably (though accurately) observed that “for America, he was a defender of a dream.” In another variation on the visionary theme, Joe Biden said of his old friend, “He was never small.” The other kind of reaction...

The late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) had requested that he be buried at sea. While such requests normally are honored, this one was vetoed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The key sticking point was the Senators request that his “coffin” be a “1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88.” Those familiar with the Chappaquiddick incident may recognize this as the car that the Senator drove off a bridge in 1969 on the way to an extramarital tryst with a young campaign volunteer named Mary Jo Kopechne in the car with him. Ms. Kopechne was trapped in the submerged car for several hours...

I finally figured out why Ted Kennedy wants to have Governor Devoid Patrickakis appoint someone to replace him - Ted is staying in Florida. Ted has been in Florida since he collapsed at an Obama inauguration dinner many months ago. Like his dear mother Rose, Teddy wants to establish Florida as his primary residence in order to avoid those massive estate taxes and dreaded Massachusetts income taxes. This is important because Teddy has a new book coming out and he wants the income from that book to be declared tax free in Florida - not Taxachusetts. The same way we...

Didn't see this.

Reviewer: "One has to feel amazed, reading this book, at how PROUD the people of Massachusetts must be of their esteemed senior US senator. First, he was eminently generous to host a party for six young women who had all toiled so hard to assist with his family's politics. You have to know that lower-level campaign workers of their age rarely receive attention from the more powerful folks in the political apparatus. The girls must have been utterly thrilled, to have been asked to a cook-out and get to mingle with all of those seasoned, powerful men. Edward Kennedy was...

There are some of you out there who don’t understand why we’ve detested Senator Edward Moore Kennedy since childhood — even though we grew up in Democratic households, where our families always voted the party line, and pictures of Jack and Jackie, Franklin and Eleanor, and Bill and Hillary hung proudly on our walls (Jimmy Carter was always a known anti-semite embarrassment to us, whose single term was best forgotten). But, whenever Ted Kennedy’s name was said by anyone on television, or Heaven forbid someone in the house, the room would grow quiet and more than one of the older...

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 baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it. In this case, the unmentionable corpse is Mary Jo...

What the heck, let's start with a limerick from my top five. This was the most difficult one to compose that I ever did. Scary choices, on that you can bank To not face them, your Lord you can thank Would you rather be stuck On a bridge in Ted's truck Or a closet with Congressman Frank? YOUTUBE - Ted Kennedy, Chappaquiddick Lifeguard Skip to comments.DFU SONG: Surrey with the Fringe on Top (Ted Kennedy, happy Chappaquiddick anniversary)DFU SONGS | 7-2004 | Lyrics, Doug from Upland Posted on 07/03/2004 5:00:40 PM PDT by doug from upland MIDI - SURREY WITH...

Somehow, the fact that she recognizes Chappaquiddick as “unconscionable, despicable, unmanly and inexplicable” only makes it worse. It’s come to this: Yet, ironically, following this nadir in his life/ career, Ted Kennedy seemed to have genuinely refashioned himself as a serious, idealistic, tirelessly energetic liberal Democrat in the mold of 1960s/1970s American liberalism, arguably the greatest Democratic senator of the 20th century. His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only “second acts”...

We must, as a matter of precept, pray for the salvation of heretical Catholics like Senator Edward Kennedy, but we do not have to praise him let alone extol him with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event. There was very little about Ted Kennedy's life that deserves admiration from a spiritual or moral point of view. He was probably the worst example of a Catholic statesman that one can think of. When all is said and done, he has distorted the concept of what it means to be a...

This isn't an accusation from Ted Kennedy's political opponents, but a nostalgic remembrance by one of his friends. Ed Klein, former Newsweek editor, tells the Diane Rehm Show: "I dont 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. Its not that he didnt 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,...