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| Mary Jo Kopechne, the unmentionable corpse |
| 2009-08-29 |
| Mark Steyn, National Review ...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: “Both a plane crash in Massachusetts in 1964 and the ugly automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 almost cost him his life.” That’s the way to do it! An “accident,” “ugly” in some unspecified way, just happened to happen — and only to him, nobody else. Ted’s the star, and there’s no room to namecheck the bit players. What befell him was . . . a thing, a place. As Joan Vennochi wrote in the Boston Globe: “Like all figures in history — and like those in the Bible, for that matter — Kennedy came with flaws. Moses had a temper. Peter betrayed Jesus. Kennedy had Chappaquiddick, a moment of tremendous moral collapse.” Actually, Peter denied Jesus, rather than “betrayed” him, but close enough for Catholic-lite Massachusetts. And if Moses having a temper never led him to leave some gal at the bottom of the Red Sea, well, let’s face it, he doesn’t have Ted’s tremendous legislative legacy, does he? Perhaps it’s kinder simply to airbrush out of the record the name of the unfortunate complicating factor on the receiving end of that moment of “tremendous moral collapse.” When Kennedy cheerleaders do get around to mentioning her, it’s usually to add insult to fatal injury. 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 omelette 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 okay 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? We are all flawed, and most of us are weak, and in hellish moments, at a split-second’s notice, confronting the choice that will define us ever after, many of us will fail the test. Perhaps Mary Jo could have been saved; perhaps she would have died anyway. What is true is that Edward Kennedy made her death a certainty. When a man (if you’ll forgive the expression) confronts the truth of what he has done, what does honor require? Six years before Chappaquiddick, in the wake of Britain’s comparatively very minor “Profumo scandal,” the eponymous John Profumo, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for War, resigned from the House of Commons and the Queen’s Privy Council, and disappeared amid the tenements of the East End to do good works washing dishes and helping with children’s playgroups, in anonymity, for the last 40 years of his life. With the exception of one newspaper article to mark the centenary of his charitable mission, he never uttered another word in public again. Ted Kennedy went a different route. He got kitted out with a neck brace and went on TV and announced the invention of the “Kennedy curse,” a concept that yoked him to his murdered brothers as a fellow victim — and not, as Mary Jo perhaps realized in those final hours, the perpetrator. He dared us to call his bluff, and, when we didn’t, he made all of us complicit in what he’d done. We are all prey to human frailty, but few of us get to inflict ours on an entire nation.... |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #7 You are a dear to say so, 746. Thank you! |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-08-29 17:55 |
| #6 For general amusement, google kennedy swimmer secret service Don't skip Fiddle and Faddle. |
| Posted by: KBK 2009-08-29 16:56 |
| #5 TW : excellent synopsis |
| Posted by: 746 2009-08-29 15:59 |
| #4 John Kennedy's defining moment during WW II was how he behaved after PT109 was sunk. He swam to the nearest island with the life jacket strap of one of his crewmen in his teeth. In the process he wrecked his back, leaving him in pain for the rest of his life. He managed to get a message to rescuers. For this, he was truly a hero. On the other hand, someone pointed out that PT109 was the only warship in modern times that was sunk by ramming. There were suggestions that Kennedy and/or his crew were asleep when they got hit. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-08-29 14:48 |
| #3 http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y25/mluphoup/delegate.jpg "The Delegate From Chappaquiddick", National Lampoon Surprise Poster. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-08-29 13:49 |
| #2 I contributed this comment about him, on a thread here, at Chicagoboyz. It seems relevant, so I might as well quote in full: "That’s the failing that people - across the board, politically - can never forgive. Not so much because his actions, his drunkenness and stupidity put his car off the road in a relatively shallow body of water - it’s because he panicked, and thought only of himself. And if he had any scrap of self-awareness, any sense of the obligations that are due from anyone who has a pretense of calling themselves a responsible human being, he wouldn’t have been in the position that he has been, ever since that fatal night. He must lived the rest of his life knowing that if he had only thought heroically, thought of someone else besides himself, been a sensible, sober and responsible human being - gone to the nearest house and called for help - she might have been rescued in time. He might have been able to live down the temporary embarrassment, had a heck of a lot to explain the next morning but … He was a Kennedy, and one of those-so-called charismatic Kennedy-generation Kennedys, after all, of whom much is expected and a lot forgiven - but no. He thought first, foremost and always of himself, drunk and sober. What we want, I think, of our politicians, is that they at least make a good pretense of thinking of the better good, and of making a more convincing show of caring abut of the people they make a great show of pretending to care about. Ted Kennedy couldn’t even be bothered, in that particular instance and that particular crisis, and so the very nakedness of that ‘don’t care-think-of-myself’ resonates after all this time. His older brother, for all you might say about him politically - swam a good distance in a South Sea ocean, towing an injured crewman from his PT boat, after the same was sunk in a collision with a Japanese warship. JFK didn’t leave a friend/crewmate/acquaintance behind. And Teddy did. And had to bear that knowledge for all time. No wonder he turned into a drunk - if he hadn’t already been one before." |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2009-08-29 13:45 |
| #1 As has been commented elsewhere, Senator Edward Kennedy only achieved what he did because his successful brothers were murdered. And so one has the uncomfortable feeling that had Joe, Jack, or Bobby been in that car, they would have either brought Miss Kopechne to the surface with them, or have dived back in the water in a rescue attempt, successful or no... and then turned the whole thing into another Camelot fairy tale: "Prince Charming Rescues the Peasant Maiden". But although third sons are supposed to win the princess and the crown, it is supposed to be through cleverness and kindness; princes who fail the test through selfishness never get anything until they learn their lesson. Senator Edward Kennedy never learnt the lesson, and so he never won the crown he so desired. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-08-29 13:28 |