Chappaquiddick Revisited

National Review Online ^ | 7/31/2009 | R. P. George and D. Quinn

[PhilDragoo]

Ted Kennedy waterboarded Mary Jo Kopechne--to death.

[Cincinna]

All the original eye witness reports stated that Teddy wasn’t ever seen wet. This is a detail that has always troubled me.

There are a few theories out there... let’s see if it makes sense.

1. Teddy was never in the car. It was a setup to ruin his career. The car was driven by someone else.

I am not a fan of his by any means, but this seems possible.

[jessduntno]

“1. Teddy was never in the car. It was a setup to ruin his career. The car was driven by someone else.”

I think I might pay to see that have its own thread...

[Richard Kimball]

Re: your mention of JFK. I always thought that JFK was one of the most compelling figures in history. If someone had written him as a fictional character, no one would have believed him.

The son of a bootlegger that rose to national prominence as an advisor to President Roosevelt, his father pulled strings to get him a PT Boat assignment when the navy had judged him medically unfit. During his first month of combat, his boat gets run over accidentally by a Japanese destroyer, and he and his crew spend a week on a desert island, getting rescued after writing notes on cocoanuts and dropping them in the water. He gets out of the Navy and writes one book, which wins a Pulitzer prize. He gets elected to the Senate, then to the White House, has an affair with Marilyn Monroe, then the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis. He's so popular the actors on the Dick Van Dyke show are cast partially because they look like him and his wife. His head blows up on television, his alleged murderer is murdered on live television and Kennedy's death becomes a billion dollar whodoneit industry, and possibly the most famous unsolved crime in history.

If I wrote that as a book, no one would believe it.

[Andy'smom]

Great book. You can still get it on ebay.

[jessduntno]

“If someone had written him as a fictional character, no one would have believed him.”

If only he were hunted relentlessly by a Detective who falsly believed he murdered his wife, while chasing the one-armed man who really killed her...THAT would have put it over the top...

[Richard Kimball]

If only Teddy had been hunted relentlessly by a guy who thought he'd killed...

Aw, never mind.

[jessduntno]

“If only Teddy had been hunted relentlessly by a guy who thought he’d killed...Aw, never mind.”

Hahahahaha...thanks...yeah...if only...

[Newtoidaho]

I wake up every day hoping to hear that this fat POS has died.

[wintertime]

I wake up every day hoping to hear that this fat POS has died.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Betcha’ betcha’ that this abortion supporting, immoral, slug of a man will be **honored** with a HUGE Catholic funeral in the largest Catholic church in the nation with **lots** of cardinals and bishops in attendance.

Wa’na bet?

[Joe Boucher]

Same for the U.S. Congress, they are best when out of D.c.

[yarddog]

JFK was an interesting man but many of your facts are in error. Profiles in Courage was ghost written. His PT boat was not run over accidentally but rammed.

It is true that he wanted to get into combat which he used political influence to get a command.

All in all, one of the best of the Kennedys, but he also had an affair with an East German spy.

[Mac from Cleveland]

Great minds think alike....

I drew this up and have posted it a few times, most recently a couple weeks ago on the 40th anniversary.

Celebrate the life of Teddy Kennedy-the lyin’ Lion of Camelot—the man who helped pass legislation to try to ensure Third World status for the U.S., who smeared eminent jurist Robert Bork in order to keep the Supreme Court on track to dismantle the Constitution, coinventor of the waitress sandwich, ladies man, and the Hero of Chappaquiddick— who tried his utmost to deliver on his promise of “A blonde in every pond”. Here’s the soundtrack of his heroic saga- 5 separate acts, each recounting his inspiring life story—captured on 5 CDs in an exclusive boxed set:

CD # 1 Younger Days

“Party All the Time” Eddie Murphy

“Twistin’ the Night Away” Sam Cooke

“Sex Bomb” Tom Jones

“Super Freak” Rick James

“Please Please Me” The Beatles

“Lush Life” Nat King Cole

“Spill The Wine” War

“Tequila!” The Champs

“Family Tradition” Hank Williams Jr.

---

CD # 2 The Party-Friday night-July 18, 1969

“I Want to Make it With You” Bread

“In My Merry Oldsmobile” Billy Murray

“Baby, You Can Drive My Car” The Beatles

“Paradise By The Dashboard Light” Meat Loaf

“I Can’t Drive Fifty-Five” Sammy Hagar

“Do You Know Where You’re Going To ?” Diana Ross

“(It’s The) End Of The Road” Boyz II Men

“Bridge over Troubled Water” Simon and Garfunkel

“Wipe Out!” The Surfaris

“Free Fallin’ “ Tom Petty

“(I Might As Well) Jump!” Van Halen

“Splish Splash” Bobby Darin

“The Tide is High” Blondie

“Goodbye, Stranger” Supertramp

“I’ll Be Seeing You” Bing Crosby

“Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover” Paul Simon

“Take It Easy” The Eagles

---

CD # 3 The Next Day-Saturday morning, July 19, 1969

“Morning Has Broken” Cat Stevens

“Last Night, I Didn’t Get To Sleep At All” The 5th Dimension

“( I Think I’m In ) Trouble” Lindsey Buckingham

“(If I Could) Turn Back The Hands Of Time” Tyrone Davis

“Have You Seen Her?” The Chi-Lites

“She’s Gone” Hall and Oates

“I Don’t Want to Talk About It” Rod Stewart

“We Can Work It Out” The Beatles

“With A Little Luck” Paul McCartney and Wings

---

CD # 4 The Aftermath

“Suspicious Minds” Elvis Presley

“It Wasn’t Me” Shaggy

“Lies” The Knickerbockers

“With A Little Help From My Friends” The Beatles

“Free As A Bird” The Beatles

“It Don’t Matter To Me” Bread

“Feelin’ Groovy” Simon and Garfunkel

---

CD # 5 Epilogue

“Time Passages” Al Stewart

“Old Man” Neil Young

“The Party’s Over” Shirley Bassey

“(Goin’ To The) End Of The Line” The Traveling Wilburys

“You’ll Never Get To Heaven” Dionne Warwick

“Hell’s Bells” AC/DC

“I’m On Fire” Bruce Springsteen

“Always and Forever” Heatwave

“No Woman, No Cry” Bob Marley

“What A Diff’rence A Day Makes” Dinah Washington

[Richard Kimball]

It wouldn't surprise me if Profiles in Courage was ghost written, but that's an open question. It's very odd for a person to only have one significant published text, and for that text to win a Pulitzer. Of course, Joseph Kennedy had a lot of pull with the newspapers, and he certainly could have pulled enough strings to get the Pulitzer awarded to his son's book. It's also obvious that the book was published to give JFK "gravitas." There is disagreement on whether it's ghost written or not, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

As to the PT 109 thing, I've read a lot on both sides of that one. The captain of the Amagiri stated he never saw the PT 109. Some sailors claimed they did. The PT 109 was another bizarre twist in the JFK story. After getting command of the 109, he and his crew spent the first couple of months getting it in shape. His boat was run over or rammed less than a month into his first combat assignment. While it became a WWII legend, when it actually happened the possibility of a court martial was an open question. To the Navy, losing your ship is never a good thing. Losing a more maneuverable boat by being run over by a vessel five times your size and not realizing it was there until it was too late to get out of the way and never firing a shot is definitely bad. IIRC, the Navy investigation was an oddity, as the official inquiry was closed without reaching a conclusion as to fault on the sinking of the vessel. There are rumors that Joseph Kennedy again pulled strings to keep the sinking of the 109 from damaging JFKs military record.

It's hard to know what is true when researching JFK. In the PT 109 incident, some accounts paint him as the brave hero who rescued a crew member by swimming two miles dragging him by a strap between his teeth. Other accounts describe a man who was derelict, a rich yacht boy playing sailor who recklessly lost his ship a month into command. I think he was probably not a very competent officer, but he was there. He fought to get one of the most dangerous naval assignments and did his best, which wasn't that good. In Kennedy's defense, while Joseph pushed the media to turn the incident into some great naval tale, JFK never bragged about his war experience. When asked, he would say, "I was on a boat; it sunk."

JFK also fought to be reassigned to the PT Boats, but was declined. I know part of it was because of his back injury, which pained him the rest of his life, but I've always wondered if the Pacific command also pushed back because he was a liability in the combat theater. Incompetent enlisted men can be hidden. Incompetent officers can do a lot of damage.

[The Great RJ]

Teddy’s time on this earth is short and soon he will have to account for his actions before the ultimate judge who will not be swayed by political influence.

[yarddog]

It is strange that the capt of the Japanese destroyer (I wouldn’t have remembered the ship’s name) says he didn’t see the PT-109. I have seen an interview filmed quite a few years ago in which he describes clearly that the PT-109 was rammed deliberately.

In 1974 we were living in Tulsa and I met one of the Captains in Kennedy’s squadron. I asked him about the incident and he said it was considered the absolute worst thing that could happen to a PT boat to be rammed. He also said Kennedy was well liked by all of them.

I think it is pretty much known that Arthur Schlesinger was the real author of “Profiles”.

[Richard Kimball]

Good info. As a kid, I was fascinated by Kennedy, as he was the first politician I knew about that wasn't a geezer. I read "John F. Kennedy and PT109" and was in the 4th grade when he was assassinated. It wasn't until years later, when I re-evaluated him as an adult that I realized how much of the stuff about him was part of a manufactured image. I remember the book about the 1968 elections called "The Selling of the President" about how Nixon was packaged and sold as a commodity. I thought it was funny, because no President was ever packaged and sold as successfully as Kennedy.

The Profiles in Courage thing has always set off my BS detector. It's like a guy comes in off the street and gets named the starting quarterback for the Super Bowl and wins, having never played a game before and never playing again. The rumors I'd heard were that Theodore Sorenson, his primary speech writer, wrote most of it.

[yarddog]

After reading your reply, I realized I have heard of Sorenson as the ghost writer. I decided to look it up and indeed he is often credited as the writer.

I noticed some think it was both of them collaborating, by both I mean Sorenson and Sclesinger, not Sorenson and Kennedy.

[Richard Kimball]

Yeah, but it comes back to the difficulty of finding actual facts about Kennedy. I don't think the press has ever been much more reliable than they are today, but they used to be trusted a lot more, and people did not used to be as cynical. I don't know of anyone who thinks Hillary actually wrote "It takes a Village." In those days, though, most accepted that Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage.

I accepted it as it's still the claim of some biographers that he actually wrote it, although like you, I'm skeptical.

I've never read it.

[kellynla]

BTTT