Mark Steyn: To the left, ideological purity trumps all

National Post ^ | January 13 2003 | Mark Steyn

[Temple Owl]

Yeah! Then there was Happy Rockerfeller. LOL

[billorites]

Yeah, there was a close call!

[Rocko]

Bump.

[Revolting cat!]

A week ago, The Boston Globe ran a 10,000-word profile of Ted Kennedy by Charles Pierce.

Charles Pierce himself (herself?)

[headsonpikes]

We can only hope he is the last of the American Gracchi.

[Dan Day]

Time asked poll respondents whether they themselves were in the top one per cent: 19% said they were, another 20% expected to be someday. "Right away," said Brooks, "you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that favoured the top one percent, he was taking a direct shot at them."

Yes!

[CFC__VRWC]

"If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."

Utterly unbelieveable that someone could actually write this, but then again that's not really the case, given the Left. "How DARE she have the nerve to die in Ted Kennedy's car! Why, if not for that act of pure right-wing spite, she would be living high on the hog on her $800/month Social Security check and her Medicare!"). And the editors and reporters who churn out this bile at the Boston Globe and the New York Times wonder why readers are leaving them in droves.

Thanks for the ping. Every time Steyn steps up to the plate he goes yard.

[Hildy]

That's a good one...but that's not the one that won. Actually, that might be better than the one that won!

[CARepubGal]

Thanks! I am very very glad that we have no visible signs of Kennedys in CA. Ahhnuld does nothing for me (RINOS are just annoying in the land of Ronaldus Maximus).

[aculeus]

This unbelievable sentence was first picked up by John Ellis a blogger and (yes!) a cousin of our President.

http://www.johnellis.blogspot.com/

[GOPJ]

LOL

those big ol' butt-numbing magazine profiles, which only reaches the reader after it's spent weeks working its way up through the deputy assistant copy-editor and the assistant deputy copy-editor and all the rest of the fine tooth-combers the American press employs to drain all the life out of their publications.

[dighton]

If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.

With a little help from Mark Steyn, Pierce just promoted himself from insufferable to infamous.

[GOPJ]

Thank you Mark Steyn for being a conservative and a decent person:

"I'm a conservative because I'll take human experience over ideology."

[okie01]

In case anybody's interested in the original source, here it is -- in all its slimy glory: Kennedy Unbound, by Charles Pierce (Boston Globe)

When I read the original, the item that Steyn quoted hit me, too.

"If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."

When I came upon it, it was one of those "turd in a punchbowl" moments. Well, actually, given its surrounding context, more like a "turd in a candy box".

It just lays there. Asking to be blue pencilled by an observant editor. How anybody could imagine this statement is beyond me. How one might actually write it, in a serious essay, is inconceivable. And how one might let it actually pass into print is simply unimaginable.

One can plausibly imagine such writing only in an "authorized biography" of Jozef Stalin...

[Brian Allen]

<< But you may rest assured -- and possibly take some comfort in the Justice of it all -- that every single morning of his pathetic alcoholic's "life" -- and quite frequently in a bed filled with his own excrement -- the Evil gangster bastard spawn of Evil gangster bastards, teddy-baby kennedy, wakes up and, through the agony of his hangover, looks all around and says to himself:

"Is THIS all there IS?

[Brian Allen]

<< ..... an oversexed drunk from becoming .... >>

Howsabout "a predatory drunk?"

"Oversexed" is a bit post-modernist for my tastes and implies an excuse.

And there can be no excuse for that obscenely-psychopathological predatory drunkard gangster bastard.

But, "prezidente?" An habitually-drunk homicidal gangster who'd been thrown out of at least three schools for cheating? Not on his very best day

[JohnHuang2]

Thanks! =^)

[JohnHuang2]

Mark Steyn MEGA PING!!

[twntaipan]

Kennedy may be irrelevant to the majority of Americans--but he has been an incredibly expensive irrelevance.

[conservativemusician]

Thanks Pokey.

The depths to which the left has sunk knows no end. It's a wonder they don't get the bends.

Steyn has this incredible ability to articulate what I, and I'm sure many of us, think about the left. But he's a brilliant writer and I'm a guitar player.