1) he is just one man — worthless, yes, but just one man;
2) he has been protected by the fawning press and we'll all have to put up with the inevitable historical revisions to his life story;
3) he was elected to office — which means there are a lot of stupid people in the Commonwealth who are complicit in his evil deeds. (They'll probably reelect him after he's dead, too — idiots.).
He might not have been able to help who or what he was, but I blame his constituents for keeping him in office long after the rest of us knew what a pox on humanity he had become.
Amen.
My primary criticism of Kennedy could be applied to me, or almost anyone else: he was, at key moments, weak and selfish.
Granted, because of his privilege, many more people suffered in part due to his weakness, but the extent of the evils for which he will answer is a product more of his circumstance than any remarkable malice on his part.
Here's my favorite:
I went to Washington with my son, who had received a free trip to the Capitol for winning some school competition of one sort or another.
We were in the observation gallery above the Senate floor watching the goings-on — some debate about a bill before the vote. As soon as Kennedy took the floor and started to play to the C-span camera with one of his famous ‘orations’, practically everybody — on both sides of the aisle — promptly got up and walked out like they were late for cocktails or something, and he continued to thunder on in typical fashion. Funniest thing I saw that trip (and quite instructive, too)...