Dems In Mourning
His friend of many years’ body not yet cold, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shows the depth of his grief. Boston Herald:
The Bay State political landscape Sen. Edward M. Kennedy dominated for four decades has been thrown into disarray by his death, as local pols face national pressure to appoint a temporary replacement and potential successors quietly prepare for a high-stakes battle to win the once-in-a-lifetime seat.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wasted no time applying pressure to replace his colleague, calling Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday to express concern about the “promptness with which we fill the vacancy,” said Patrick, who added, “I . . . support Sen. Kennedy’s request that the governor be given the authority to appoint an interim senator.”
The late Lion’s dying wish was that the Massachusetts governor and Legislature overturn the 2004 law they passed on his request, restoring the interim appointment power to Democrat Patrick that they took away from Republican Gov. Mitt Romney when it actually looked like there might be a vacancy in John Kerry’s seat. In his later years, specifically the last couple of months, Kennedy was to come to believe that democracy would be best served by ensuring a placeholder is in office to vote on the Kennedy Memorial health care monstrosity … tragically now on life support though possibly about to benefit from a new infusion of animation due to Kennedy’s demise.
Meanwhile, listening to ”Reflections on Sen. Kennedy … Lion of the Senate” on the Diane Rehm Show on the drive home last night, I was deeply moved to hear Newsweek’s Ed Klein tell guest host Katty Kay about Kennedy’s love of humor. How the late senator loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes, and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones. Not that Kennedy lacked remorse, Klein quickly added, seeming to intuit that my jaw and perhaps those of other listeners had just hit the floorboards. I gather it was a self-deprecating maneuver on Kennedy’s part, exercised with the famous Kennedy charm, though it sounds like one of those “I guess you had to have been there” things.
A lot out there today on Kennedy’s charm, collegiality. I’ve always been charmed by the knowledge that this paragon of American democracy/champion of the little guy tried to kill the scrappy conservative blue-collar tabloid I work for as part of his feud with Rupert Murdoch, with the 1988 FCC cross-ownership ban.
The Boston Herald … still alive and kicking today, and having made considerable efforts at reconciliation … joins the world’s media in honoring the fallen Lion: Legend mourned. Heart touched. A lifetime of inspiration. Though the Herald’s incorrigible Howie Carr can’t help a little tasteful meanspiritedness:
I never voted for Ted Kennedy, not once, and neither did maybe a quarter to one-third of the Massachusetts electorate, although you’d never know that from the echo chamber of the mainstream media since his death in Hyannisport late Tuesday night.
Count me in that quarter to a third. Even in my more ambivalent voting days two decades ago, I always appreciated any underdog willing to take on the Kennedy juggernaut … wackjobs though some of them were. Chappaquiddick didn’t sit right, and voting against dynasty seem like the American thing to do. (I later broke that dynasty principle for Bush, but what the heck, if they don’t have to be consistent, why should I?)
While offering condolences to the Kennedy family at this sad moment, it is important to note that his life was not as simple, nor heroic, as is now being portrayed. On the cable channels yesterday, his fellow Senate graybeards, of both parties, were lamenting the passing of what was invariably described as Ted Kennedy’s “collegial” Senate - where voices were seldom raised, and partisan bickering ended when the gavel came down to end the session.
All of which would have come as a surprise to Robert Bork, the Supreme Court nominee of whom the collegial Ted said in 1986:
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters . . .”
So much for collegiality. Of course, Kennedy is now endlessly lauded for his support of “women’s rights,” i.e. abortion. But into the 1970s, before the Roman Catholic Church’s influence began to wane, Kennedy was a traditional pro-life New England Democrat.
Howie’s just getting started. I though this bit was particularly hurtful:
Chappaquiddick, of course, never went away. But sometimes Kennedy could seem oblivious even to that ultimate blemish on his career. In 1974, when President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his Watergate crimes, Kennedy issued this thundering statement:
“Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?”
Ouch. Is this really the time to be pointing out the flaming hypocrisy of the dead, as regards the dead? Here’s the Herald’s quick look back at Chappaquiddick, by the way. The Herald also visited the bridge at Chappaquiddick. A poignant mood piece reports the lone memorial to Mary Jo Kopechne is a laminated stack of newspaper articles in the guard shack, kept on hand to spare the gate guard at the Trustees of Reservations property from having to constantly explain everything to the curious.
In other business, Kennedy’s touching choice of a Mission Hill church for his funeral could sorely tax Boston police resources, on a day that also includes the city’s heavily policed Caribbean festival, a game at Fenway, the return of tens of thousands of college students and the funeral of a fallen cop in nearby Weymouth. Kennedy reportedly chose Our Lady of Perpetual Help, also known as the healing church, because he prayed there daily while his daughter was battling cancer at one of the nearby hospitals. Public and emergency access to which also may be taxed by the senator’s funeral Saturday, given the cramped nature of streets in the area.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:20 am on Thursday, August 27, 2009
21 Responses to “Dems In Mourning”
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August 27th, 2009 at 10:00 am
[...] - Jules Crittenden [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
[...] Wow. Meanwhile, listening to ”Reflections on Sen. Kennedy … Lion of the Senate” on the Diane [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
[...] Teddy “loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones,” I’m sure somewhere offstage, he’s enjoying the above Lampoonery. Certainly, it would [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I don’t view “loving Chappaquiddick jokes” as self-deprecation. I view it as the arrogance of a conscienceless man who got away with a crime because of his money, power, and family name.
August 27th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden has more on the Dems in [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
[...] view from his luxury boat as he was flitting and sailing around the Nantucket sound. He enjoyed a “good laugh” over Chappaquidick jokes. Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
[...] The left (and many on the right) is crying for Kennedy’s foes to hold our tongues this week, to set politics aside. What they don’t get is that the reason most of us whole-heartedly detest Teddy Kennedy has nothing to do with politics. Call it petty. Call us stuck in the past. But we just can’t let the fact that he never took responsibility for Mary Jo Kopechne’s death go. I used to think, “Well, maybe he’s privately guilt ridden over it. I know I would be.” Apparently, not so much. Turns out Teddy LOVED him some Chappaquidick jokes. [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden has more on the Dems in [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 6:02 am
[...] but that’s not all: “Meanwhile, listening to ”Reflections on Sen. Kennedy … Lion of the Senate” on the Diane Rehm Show on the drive home last night, I was deeply moved to hear Newsweek’s Ed Klein tell guest host Katty Kay about Kennedy’s love of humor. How the late senator loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes, and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones. Not that Kennedy lacked remorse, Klein quickly added, seeming to intuit that my jaw and perhaps those of other listeners had just hit the floorboards. I gather it was a self-deprecating maneuver on Kennedy’s part, exercised with the famous Kennedy charm, though it sounds like one of those “I guess you had to have been there” things.” [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 10:04 am
[...] Teddy’s name!, more creepiness about Ted is still being revealed Jules Crittenden mentioned on his blog he heard Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor-in-chief of The New York Times [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 11:12 am
[...] Jules Crittenden wonders (with a great deal of snark) if “you had to be there.” Mark Hemingway is aghast: [...]
August 28th, 2009 at 11:22 am
That’s confirmation of just how little lefties value human life. Any human life, any where, for any reason.
Which gives people even more reason to fear Chappiquiddicare (nee’ ObamaCare).
August 28th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
There was a time, and I place that time at prior to 1992 that journalists would hold both side accountable in an issue such as this. Journalism was practiced in those days….it no longer is.
http://www.jourtegrity.blogspot.com
August 28th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
[...] but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too. Jules Crittenden wonders (with a great deal of snark) if you had to be there. Mark Hemingway is aghast:EXCUSE ME? [...]
August 29th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden wonders (with a great deal of snark) if “you had to be there.” Mark Hemingway is aghast: EXCUSE ME? If that’s true it makes Kennedy kind of a monster. The odd thing is that if you listen to the whole show, the tone of everyone involved is nauseatingly haigographic and reverential. Klein apparently let his guard down a bit; after he lets it slip Kennedy liked to joke about the woman he killed you can actually hear in his voice that he’s trying to backpedal. The show actually cuts to a break as he’s trying to explain himself, and I seriously wonder if it wasn’t the producers trying to do Klein a favor. But I’m sorry, there appears to be little to that could explain this. It goes way beyond “you had to be there.” [...]
August 29th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
[...] favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself”; Update: Audio added Jules Crittenden: Dems In Mourning Bookworm Room: Ted Kennedy — monster Synthstuff - music, photography and more…: Happy [...]
August 29th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
[...] favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself”; Update: Audio added Jules Crittenden: Dems In Mourning Bookworm Room: Ted Kennedy — monster Synthstuff - music, photography and more…: Happy [...]
August 29th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
[...] If it was OK for Ted Kennedy to joke about killing Mary Jo Kopechne . . . | Newsweek’s Ed Klein (told interviewer) Katty Kay about Kennedy’s love of humor. How the late senator loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes, and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones. Shouldn’t everyone emulate the Lion of the Senate? [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
[...] Tammy Bruce: Henry Rollins Asks “Where’s Mary Jo Kopechne’s Eulogy?” Jules Crittenden: Dems In Mourning Bookworm Room: Ted Kennedy — monster Gateway Pundit: Kennedy’s Death a TV Ratings Flop [...]
September 13th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
[...] The hypocrisy of the man, as well as that of so many of his [...]
September 24th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
[...] friend Ed Klein told a radio show that he loved to joke about the event that killed Mary Jo Kopechne… I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was [...]