"Those young voters don't know how Miss Kopechne, trapped inside Kennedy's Oldsmobile, gasped for air until she finally died, while the Democrats' leading Iraq war critic rushed back to his compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of.
Neither does Generation X know how Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard on his ear 15 years earlier -- for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final. Or why the ! US Army denied him a commission because he cheated on tests."
That is so true! When I told this to some medical students (presumably the cream of the student crop) a few years ago, they had no idea whatsoever about Chappaquiddick and Ted Kennedy.
I posted this before, but in honor of Teddy's manslaughter anniversary, it bears repeating:
May 1951: Ted is caught cheating on an exam and is expelled from Harvard. Kennedy earned C grades at the private Milton Academy, but was admitted to Harvard as a "legacy" -- his father and older brothers had attended there, so the younger and dimmer Kennedy's admission was virtually assured. While attending, he was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him.He enlists in the Army and will serve for the next 16 months. Fat Boy mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, then U.S. Ambassador to England, pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged. (Ain't it great to part of "America's royal family?" Pardon me while I spit.)
While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked. He passed the bar exam in 1959, and two years later was appointed an Assistant to the District Attorney in Massachusetts' Suffolk County.
In 1962, at age 30 (Constitutionally, the minimum age to hold a Senate seat) he ran for the Senate. His timing was perfect -- his brother John had given up the seat to become President, and Kennedy easily won the office. He was re-elected in 1964, 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, and 2000.(Could that be the result of another "legacy?")
June 1964: Senator Ted Kennedy's back is broken in a plane crash that kills his aide and the pilot. (I wonder if he was piloting?)
1965: The Great Bloviator supports and promotes the 1965 Immigration Reform Bill which abolished the national origins quota system that had regulated the ethnic composition of immigration in fair proportion to each group's existing presence in the population. Senate floor manager and Camelot knight-errant Ted Kennedy assured jittery senators that "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually." In 1965, Ted Kennedy confidently predicted, "No immigrant visa will be issued to a person who is likely to become a public charge." However, political refugees qualify for public assistance upon setting foot on U.S. soil. He also claimed the 1965 amendments "will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." And he is still monkeying with our immigration policies. (If I wasn't crying, I would be laughing).
July 18, 1969: Following an appreciation party for volunteers on Robert Kennedy's campaign, Senator Ted Kennedy drives his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. Kennedy manages to escape; his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, does not. Kennedy will not report the accident for hours.
July 25, 1969: Ted Kennedy delivers a national television address to explain his actions at Chappaquiddick. The text can be found at the following address (laughing out loud is permitted and encouraged!):
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tedkennedychappaquiddick.htm
(In 1973, at the height of Nixon's Watergate scandal, Kennedy thundered from the Senate floor, "Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?") I think this speaks for itself.
In a late-1980s media profile, Kennedy was succinctly described as someone who "grew to manhood without learning to be an adult." He is rumored to have had several affairs while married to his first wife, and had often been seen in public while thoroughly tanked and/or behaving obnoxiously. In 1987 he was caught in flagrante delicto with an unidentified woman on the floor of a restaurant.
March 30, 1991: The William Kennedy Smith debacle. William also met a woman named Patricia Bowman, a 29-year-old single mother out with her girlfriend, Anne Weatherly Mercer. Later that evening when the bars closed, the two couples went back to the Kennedy family retreat for the remainder of the evening.
Michelle and Patrick drank wine and talked in the living room. According to Green, at one point Ted Kennedy walked into the room "without his trousers" and sporting only a long-tailed shirt, something that made Michelle Cassone feel extremely uncomfortable. (I am soooo proud to be from Massachusetts!)
2000: Fat Boy trashes black man in bid for reelection. Read Jeff Jacoby (http://216.247.220.66/jacoby/2000/jj03-28-00.htm) on the almost perversely hypocritical smear campaign Kennedy ran against a black man that had the temerity to run against him. I guess Teddy must've been worried, since Robinson was making significant inroads into Teddy's "traditional" seat! So much for the party of the minority groups!
And that is just the stuff we know about!
Hey Spiny, any word on how he did at UVA and how on earth he managed to pass the bar exam? I wonder who took that test?