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Ted's Dead Baby, Ted's Dead.

X3pilot

X3pilot

Texans fan - LOL
Aug 13, 2007
5,860
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SoMD
sanjuro said:
Chappaquiddick & Mary Jo Kopechne: why Kennedy never became president

You'd think he wouldn't elected to dog catcher.
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Started waaaay before that:

Kennedy earned C grades at the private Milton Academy, but was admitted to Harvard as a "legacy" -- his father and older brothers had attended there, so the younger and dimmer Kennedy's admission was virtually assured. While attending, he was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England, pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged.

While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked. He passed the bar exam in 1959, and two years later was appointed an Assistant to the District Attorney in Massachusetts' Suffolk County.

In 1962, at age 30 (constitutionally, the minimum age to hold a Senate seat) he ran for the Senate. His timing was perfect -- his brother John had given up the seat to become President, and Kennedy easily won the office. He was re-elected eight times to the office.
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Now I'm just piling on:

Since the accident, Kennedy's political enemies have referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick, or worse. He pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a suspended sentence of two months. Kopechne's family received a small payout from the Kennedy's insurance policy, and never sued. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy's family paid their attorney's bills.

In 1973, at the height of Nixon's Watergate scandal, Kennedy thundered from the Senate floor, "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?"
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(My bolding) Source
 
JohnE

JohnE

filthy rascist
May 13, 2005
13,563
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Front Range, dude...
'In 2004, Tom Ridge's Department of Homeland Security put Kennedy's name on the secret national "no-fly list", and he was barred from a shuttle flight from Washington to Boston. After a flurry of phone calls to Ridge's office, Kennedy's problem was described as "a clerical error", and solved within a few days.'

Tell me that was truly an accident...
 
sanjuro

sanjuro

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Sep 13, 2004
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Question: should the good that Ted Kennedy has done as a senator outweigh the horrible tragedy and coverup of the death of Mary Jo?
 
ska todd

ska todd

Turbo Monkey
Oct 10, 2001
1,776
0
Silver said:
No, it shouldn't.
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Have any of the following benefited you personally or a relative or close friend?

•Civil Rights
•Medicare
•anti-Vietnam War movement
•Voting age amendment
•ending conscription
•public education
•abortion rights (blocking Bork appointment)
•ADA
•HIPAA
•opposing Defense of Marriage Act
•supporting ERA
•voting against '02 Iraq invasion

Despite obvious faults & foibles, Ted Kennedy shaped our America in ways that define us as a country and that we all now take for granted. As staunch a liberal as Kennedy was, he successfully worked across party lines to pass legislation in ways that seen utterly foreign to today's political sound-bites & stagecraft pageantry by partisan hacks.

-ska todd
 
Silver

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
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Orange County, CA
ska todd said:
Have any of the following benefited you personally or a relative or close friend?

•Civil Rights
•Medicare
•anti-Vietnam War movement
•Voting age amendment
•ending conscription
•public education
•abortion rights (blocking Bork appointment)
•ADA
•HIPAA
•opposing Defense of Marriage Act
•supporting ERA
•voting against '02 Iraq invasion

Despite obvious faults & foibles, Ted Kennedy shaped our America in ways that define us as a country and that we all now take for granted. As staunch a liberal as Kennedy was, he successfully worked across party lines to pass legislation in ways that seen utterly foreign to today's political sound-bites & stagecraft pageantry by partisan hacks.

-ska todd
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Yeah, but he was a child of extreme privilege who managed to let a girl drown and didn't bother reporting it until he dried out the next day. Just because someone does something that benefits me personally doesn't mean that I can't make an ethical judgement about behavior.
 
ska todd

ska todd

Turbo Monkey
Oct 10, 2001
1,776
0
Silver said:
Just because someone does something that benefits me personally doesn't mean that I can't make an ethical judgement about behavior.
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I simply find it amusing that pretty much the only thing that the right continually called Ted Kennedy out on was Chappaquiddick, even after it was done and past by 40-odd years and helped to hand them the Presidency twice (Nixon & Reagan). Almost as though they should have thanked him as they got so much mileage off it.

Do I condemn him for the act? Yes, certainly as do almost all Americans. But, I also recognize that the Kennedys (along with the Bushes, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and many other political and economically dominant families) lived in an insular bubble of privilege that none of us here can quite fathom. While we can cast stones, it to a large degree is such an issue of "different time, different place" that really it cannot be judged on an even ground to today. It was how the game was played for those families. It was a culture that existed since colonial times.

It was expected that if you came from a prominent family that daddy got you into Yale/Harvard, daddy got you out of the draft (or at worst a cushy spot from the sidelines as a commissioned officer), daddy got you jobs, & then you took over daddy's political position and repeated the process for your kids.

The problem for the Kennedy clan is that it all hit for them as our nation burst into the age of television and mass media. The excess was therefore more easily documented and what was quietly known but not discussed was thrust into every household. Everyone wanted a piece of the American royalty but were shocked to discover that they didn't act like the "common folk". I'm sure there are lots of skeletons like Chappaquidick in the other families' closets as well, they just covered them up more successfully.

-ska todd
 
X3pilot

X3pilot

Texans fan - LOL
Aug 13, 2007
5,860
1
SoMD
ska todd said:
I simply find it amusing that pretty much the only thing that the right continually called Ted Kennedy out on was Chappaquiddick, even after it was done and past by 40-odd years and helped to hand them the Presidency twice (Nixon & Reagan). Almost as though they should have thanked him as they got so much mileage off it.
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Almost, but not quite as much as another Yale dent that liked to drink, just his last name started with a B.

Do I condemn him for the act? Yes, certainly as do almost all Americans. But, I also recognize that the Kennedys (along with the Bushes, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and many other political and economically dominant families) lived in an insular bubble of privilege that none of us here can quite fathom. While we can cast stones, it to a large degree is such an issue of "different time, different place" that really it cannot be judged on an even ground to today. It was how the game was played for those families. It was a culture that existed since colonial times.
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It still is a culture that exists today. William Kennedy ring a bell?

It was expected that if you came from a prominent family that daddy got you into Yale/Harvard, daddy got you out of the draft (or at worst a cushy spot from the sidelines as a commissioned officer), daddy got you jobs, & then you took over daddy's political position and repeated the process for your kids.
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Still is expected. In fact, it's a lot of what's wrong with our political system, imo. Majority of Americans are not represented by someone truly of their demographic

The problem for the Kennedy clan is that it all hit for them as our nation burst into the age of television and mass media. The excess was therefore more easily documented and what was quietly known but not discussed was thrust into every household. Everyone wanted a piece of the American royalty but were shocked to discover that they didn't act like the "common folk". I'm sure there are lots of skeletons like Chappaquidick in the other families' closets as well, they just covered them up more successfully.
Click to expand...

Another major flaw with our political system. Most Americans secretly want a kingdom. If not, why our collective fascination with every time one of the Princes' take a poop, When Diana got married/fooled around/died. We gave the Kennedy family the moniker of "Camelot" for god's sake. We name things after fantasy kings and knights and wizards. Not just the Kennedys either to be fair, there is the self proclaimed Bush "dynasty" as well. We secretly don't want leaders, we want gossip, news that fits on ET or Extra and then we're off to see who's on Dancing with the Stars.

The man helped author some decent legislation that had a positive impact, but so do many other lawmakers. But without his "career" of elected office, what else could he have done? 47 years as an elected official? Not sure that was the point of a Platonic form of legislating.

Either way, enough kicking of a dead man's corpse for me.
 
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kidwoo

kidwoo

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Aug 25, 2003
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Squirtin ketchup n' mustard on charred flesh
ska todd said:
Do I condemn him for the act? Yes, certainly as do almost all Americans. But, I also recognize that the Kennedys (along with the Bushes, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and many other political and economically dominant families) lived in an insular bubble of privilege that none of us here can quite fathom. While we can cast stones, it to a large degree is such an issue of "different time, different place" that really it cannot be judged on an even ground to today. It was how the game was played for those families. It was a culture that existed since colonial times.

It was expected that if you came from a prominent family that daddy got you into Yale/Harvard, daddy got you out of the draft (or at worst a cushy spot from the sidelines as a commissioned officer), daddy got you jobs, & then you took over daddy's political position and repeated the process for your kids.
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Yeah I don't know man. Walking away from a drowning chick in a car you drove there is pretty gnarly, regardless of what sparkling, insulated high horse you were born on.

I respect the guy's work, I'm thankful for much of it, glad he did it, but he still had the moral character to allow something like that to happen.

NEITHER diminishes the other. They're both parts of a life. It's not a black and white thing.
 
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