Posted on 08/29/2009 5:19:12 PM PDT by Chairman of the Bard
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 baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it.
In this case, the unmentionable corpse is Mary Jo Kopechne, 1940-1969. If you have to bring up the, ah, circumstances of that year of decease, keep it general, keep it vague. As Kennedy flack Ted Sorensen put it in Time magazine:
read on....
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
In all fairness, I must report the following:
There’s this news/docu channel called MSNBC. I remember back in the day, they used to be all news, all the time. Years ago, however, they changed to mostly legends and a few evening rabid commentators.
Since I did watch the funeral, just to note the inconsistencies withing my Church, I kinda got lost in the Camelot fog and switched to MSNBC to see what they had to say. While we were waiting for the arrival in DC, they showed a “Legends” story on the Tedster. You guys are not gonna believe what I saw!!!!!
THEY TALKED ABOUT MARYJO! They laid the blame on the Tedster, they talked about how he turned himself in hours after some kids had found the car. Of course, they didn’t hack on him, but they did report the facts as they were known then. I was shocked! A little kernal of truth in an otherwise whitewashed life. Amazing.
They spoke very little about Joan, which upset me. I have no opinion about Vicky, but I do think Joan should be upheld as a saint. She had to live with him (sorta) while he was at his worst, and as a result, is basically excommunicated from the Kennedys. Joan, Ethel and Jackie, now THOSE were Kennedys to learn from!
Oh, and as for that channel MSNBC, I can’t even remember the channel number. I did hear Cwissie Matthews and that Olbemaniac, after the Legends show, so switched back to Fox.
Just as he was about to be buried a thunderstorm started to roll in, lightening flaring. De Devil comin’ to claim his own.
Wrong, research a little. Mary Jo was engaged, a professional, uptight about sexual matters, and a devout Catholic. She asked for a ride from a monster, thinking he was a friend. She was, and is, blameless.
As Teddy's biographer Adam Clymer wrote, Edward Kennedy's "achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne."
You can't make an omelet without breaking chicks, right? I don't know how many lives the senator changed – he certainly changed Mary Jo's – but you're struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the basic equation: How many changed lives justify leaving a human being struggling for breath for up to five hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking air pocket in Teddy's Oldsmobile? If the senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been OK to leave a couple more broads down there? Hey, why not? At the Huffington Post, Melissa Lafsky mused on what Mary Jo "would have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history … Who knows – maybe she'd feel it was worth it." What true-believing liberal lass wouldn't be honored to be dispatched by that death panel?
Mr. Steyn, I'd be honored to fetch your coffee and sharpen your pencils (or vacuum your keyboard).
You just can NOT make this stuff up.
In fact, you can't even exaggerate it.
I agree that Mary Jo is and was blameless. But that night, she would not have left her girlfriends and her purse. I believe they had all been drinking, and perhaps the dashing Senator had flattered her and wished to show her a special part of the island, a lovely beach or a private cove or some such. The ferry had long since stopped running, and the two left extremely quietly from the house of merriment.
The best that could have happened to her that night was to sustain a few beachside gropings from the famous Senator. As odious as that might seem to some of us, one does live on thereafter.
Video (mostly audio actually) of interview with Chappaquiddick diver John Farrar/ WHDH-AM Howie Carr show
done from the “party house” some 25 yrs later
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miAyUKStliM
Indeed. Lord of the Flies ain't just a river in Egypt.
(But it did come out of the tombs.)
Edward Kennedy - the original Joran Vandersloot.
“Nobody (except Free Republic) has EVER called them on this entirely hollow “presentation of self”,
There. Fixed it!;))
ML/NJ
You mean besides being caught cheating on a Spanish exam? (Didn’t he get kicked out for it?)
The Swimmer was expelled for cheating on an exam. Probably the last time in his life he was held accountable for his actions.
ML/NJ
Strom Thurmond served in the senate for 49 years. How many days of nonstop coverage after his death?
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