Posted on 01/26/2006 10:22:20 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
On 12 January, 2006, the New York Times ran an article entitled “Thrust into the Limelight, and for Some A Symbol of Washington’s Bite.” It was a mini-biography of Mrs. Martha-Ann Alito, and it purported to explain the reasons for Mrs. Alito’s tears during her husband Samuel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It blamed them on a follow-up question by Senator Lindsay Graham, rather than on the verbal savaging of Judge Alito by the Democrats on the Committee, led by Senator Ted Kennedy.
The Times should have gotten the story right, because one of the three reporters on the story was in their New Jersey Bureau, and based in Caldwell. But they didn’t. Here are the operative paragraphs from that article on the cause of her tears:
She has sat behind him [her husband] all week, a pleasant-looking woman in sensible clothes, peering through rimless glasses as Democrats grilled Judge Alito about his investments and his affiliation with a conservative Princeton alumni group and Republicans tried to provide him some relief.
On Wednesday, one of those Republicans, Mr. Graham, tried to mock the Democrats with a question about the alumni group, which opposed affirmative action.
"Are you really a closet bigot?" Mr. Graham asked, at which point Mrs. Alito drew her hands to her face and left the hearing room weeping.
Source: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20C14FD3C5B0C708DDDA80894DE404482
As the article explained, Mrs. Alito is “fiercely protective” of her husband. And she was upset by the attacks on him as if he were dishonest, or a bigot, or a poor judge. But there was an additional reason, much older and much darker than what happened at that hearing. It concerns the fact that Senator Kennedy led the attack against Judge Alito.
Mrs, Alito was born Martha-Ann Bomgardner in Ft. Knox, Kentucky. The family moved with her father’s profession as an air traffic controller to New Jersey, where she attended Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Kentucky, she returned to New Jersey and became a librarian in the US Attorney’s office, where she met her husband.
Through her husband’s family, she learned of their personal friendship with another young woman who was also an only child. This other woman and her family were staunch Catholics. On occasion, they attended the same church in Roseland, New Jersey, as the Alitos, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, one of only two churches in that town of 5,298. The Alitos live in Caldwell, population 7,584, where this other woman graduated from Caldwell College, probably as a commuter student from her home, rather than a resident student.
From the personal memories of this woman that Mrs. Alito got from her husband’s family, and from her own understanding of what it means to be an only child, Mrs. Alito knew of the worst thing that any human being could do to another. She also heard of its impact on the family.
That other woman’s name was Mary Jo Kopeckne. She was killed by Senator Ted Kennedy, in an auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, on 18 July, 1969. That was the other reason for Mrs. Alito’s tears.
[Author’s notes: The author did not bother any of the three families referred to here in writing this. All the information was gathered from reputable Internet sources. If the Times puts a competent reporter on the story, it can find the same information. It should also then apologize for its original article, in which the three reporters presented their personal assumptions as facts on the cause of Mrs. Alito’s upset at the hearing.]
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
I'm not interested in the Kennedy history because it simply smelled bad before I knew about them. It was all a whitewash 40 years ago as it is now. My instincts were proven correct again. I was a belly-button-lint picking squirt when JFK became a God to all around me and I knew then that something was wrong about that!
Apparently, some Freepers would prefer to tout stories without verifying them.
Questioning the author about his use of pronouns in order to nail down a story is not a bad thing. Stop taking it personally. Wait for the author's answers and then we'll know where to go.
It sounds like the article is claiming that Mrs. Alito was crying for Mary Jo, doesn't it?
No. It sounds like it was an additional factor.
Knock it off Southack. I understood the article the first time I read it and I posted the correct interpretation to you after your first post in the thread.
How large is the place where you live?
I wonder where this "fact" came from?
Those who voted against him will be mired in their own soured pestilence; lost, forgotten and laughed at. Teddy-boy will be there with his bermuda shorts and his inane comments. Still, no one will listen.
And so it goes...........
BRAVO Judge Alito. !
OK. So Judge Alito's parents knew the Kopechne's. Thank you.
Now we just have to nail down how we know that the former Ms. Bomgardner was crying over her in-law's acquaintence (relationship with Sen Kennedy), rather than over her husband's brutal Senate grilling by desperate Democrats.
I was commenting on the other person's response, not your article. I think your article made it perfectly clear that Mrs. Alito went to high school in New Jersey.
This is a horrible article...there is NO REASON to think Mrs. Alito was CRYING for MaryJo Kopeckne!!! She was crying because her husband was attacked and someone finally said a kind word (Graham).
This has no place in breaking news...and just makes FR look silly.
I can read better in the National Enquirer!! This just exploits Mrs. Alito!!
Sorry to be so adamant...but this article embarasses FR!!
If Kennedy were a Republican, he'd have been censured and expelled by the Senate in 1969 and tried on charges of manslaughter.
Yes, that Mrs. Alito was crying for Mary Jo in addition to crying about the attacks on her husband. But why would she be crying for Mary Jo at all? Even as an additional factor? She didn't know Mary Jo personally. And from the article, it doesn't even sound as though her husband knew her really well either.
It's called Earth. Google it.
That's a condescension. Some of us didn't have to wait...we got it when we read the article.
I have no opinion as to the conclusion the article draws from Mrs. Alito's tears, other than to say I've always respected Billybob's posts, just as I have yours...but the article itself doesn't leave any room for misconstruings.
This might be something to trump Buckhead's feat of uncovering the dishonesty at CBS and Dan Rather...
You are absolutely correct- The Kennedy family history has stunk for many decades, and the stench gets cumulatively worse as time goes on.
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