Posted on 04/06/2018 5:47:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
One measure of how old we're getting is realizing how many voters today have no familiarity with the Chappaquiddick scandal. In July of 1969, then-Sen. Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond with a young woman in the passenger seat and left the scene of the accident alone. Kennedy waited 10 hours to report it, and Mary Jo Kopechne died.
This is one compelling reason why many older voters thought liberals sounded preposterous when they suggested Donald Trump's presidential campaign should be canceled over the "Access Hollywood" tape of him boasting of grabbing women in the crotch. Kennedy had a woman's death on his resume, and it never stopped the left from boosting him as the finest presidential timber.
How far has the manipulative Kennedy dynasty fallen? Somehow, the movie "Chappaquiddick" was made with well-known actors and distributed to movie theaters. Seven years ago, pressure caused the History Channel to deep-six a dramatic Kennedy miniseries (it ended up on the obscure cable channel Reelz).
This movie is drawing favorable reviews from the movie critics. That's in part because they recognize the filmmakers didn't make a hard-edged cartoon -- like, for example, the way Oliver Stone smeared then-President George W. Bush in 2008. From the first moments, the Ted Kennedy in this film is haunted by his older brothers, who were inflated into political giants, and spurned as a loser by his nearly mute father, who suffered a stroke in 1961.
Staying close to the historical record is brutal enough. Kennedy left the scene of a fatal accident, failed to report it for hours, lied to investigators and the public about how and when it happened, and then expected that everyone would accept what he had done and re-elect him. The film notes at the end he was re-elected overwhelmingly and became known (to some) as the "Lion of the Senate."
It also shows how the Kennedy political machine arrived to manipulate the press, and even the Kopechne family. There was no autopsy. This was pitched as another Kennedy tragedy, and the national media eagerly xeroxed the narrative.
One of the things that the moviemakers get wrong is the idea that the press were hostile. The only named reporter in the movie was James Reston of The New York Times, who the script suggests was skeptical of Kennedy's claim of having suffered a concussion. In real life, Reston was, in the words of media critic Jack Shafer, one of those who "attended to the family's legend like priests on retainer."
Reston's first draft on Chappaquiddick began, "Tragedy has again struck the Kennedy family." Mention of the actual victim was submerged in paragraph four. Luckily, the Times advised Reston to edit it and mention the actual victim in the lede. After Kennedy spoke to the nation with his dishonest narrative about what happened, Reston oozed again that he was a "tragic 'profile in courage.'"
For the rest of Sen. Kennedy's life, the media treated Chappaquiddick as an extremely distasteful subject only conspiracy-obsessed right-wingers thought was important. Whenever the scandal surfaced, journalists turned it into a story of "redemption."
That's still happening. Former Boston Globe reporter Peter Canellos, now executive editor of Politico Magazine, did a write-up on the movie and oozed that it "marked the start of one of the most remarkable revivals in American politics, as Kennedy settled down to the hard work of legislating and, almost as penance, went on to amass the most impressive list of accomplishments in Senate history."
As long as a politician can pass "landmark" liberal bills, his personal scandals are washed away by liberal journalists. And they call themselves idealists.
Joe... an a-hole, yes, but a perceptive one.
The Trump tape didn’t even boast of doing that. It boasted of his being viewed as so sexy that the women would “beg him” to do it. OK that was a bit adolescent of the fellow who was 60 years old at the time and married too. It was a worldly idea of affirmation. But it could have been far worse... and yes. The Kennedy incident is too wild to explain by ordinary causes.
Well there’s questions of causation. Remember that this was “liberals” having their usual domination fights.
Who do they think will want to see this? I doubt it will do well this weekend. This is more like a story for TV.
A Ted who had gotten a warmer welcome by his dad might have been tempted to go even further down his dad’s road than he ended up going. We might have much worse than even Chappaquiddick. The world isn’t one dimensional.
May fall short of $3 million and not make top 10. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4385&p=.htm
....the latest excuse story being pushed to “adjust” history is that Mary Jo was asleep in the back seat and the swimmer never saw her.....
The star was born July 17, 1969. Huh.
Remember when Ted ran against Jimmah Cahtah, a sitting president running for reelection ?
Yes, Old Joe was smart, wickedly smart. Smart enough to have a leading NYT reporter, Arthur Krock, on retainer so he would write oozing things about his sons and basically act as JFK’s press agent. Krock, by the way, was often called the “Dean of the Washington Press Corps.” A more fitting title would have been “Madame of the Washington Press Whores” but old Joe Kennedy knew whom to buy.
So, what’s your point?
The mushy middle, maybe. Both left and right have their reliable partisans.
It’s not a ‘ must see’ for me......
.....We all are still living with the effects this ruthless self absorbed phony Camelot coated sponge brought us with years and years of liberal assault in the senate.
I’m not sure why they made this movie......the Kennedys got free passes on earth....
.....But God is their ultimate judge and there is nothing the msm can do to mitigate that now!
But God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. The question for us is whether we are willing to play along with that plan, or just try to come up with our own kind of “wickedly smart”?
No, I do not a point there. Except that I doubt many young people care about this film .
If the people through indifference allowed a God vacuum in the country, why are we so surprised at the thing which room was found for?
For the heart of Christianity is caring, in fact a very dogged caring. If we don’t see it from the people who vaunt themselves as being of God, then the “stones” of government will cry out.
The Trump tape has been falsely reported.
Billy Bush, a reporter promoting Trump’s show, cornered Trump on a private bus ride and started talking about women in Hollywood. Bush encouraged Trump to talk about women.
Trump said if you’re a star you can do whatever you want.
Trump thought it was a private conversation. Bush was recording it.
Twelve years later Bush sold his tape to the media.
Nope, I would have had no desire to be old Joe Kennedy or to have lived like him in any respect. I remember reading that one of his many open affairs was with the actress Gloria Swanson, a Hollywood conservative by the way. On the way to Europe to be Ambassador to the UK, he took his family and Miss Swanson who was in a separate room on the ship. He very openly did this in front of, and in the face of his wife, Rose, who really was a devout, good person and who suffered the loss of five of their children. One of the Kennedy bios reported that years later, when old Joe had a stroke which largely immobilized him in a chair, Rose would walk by him with the hint of a smile on her face.
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