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Fifth Column
Ted Kennedy, please STFU!
2004-04-06
Mods - please place this under Politix if you feel the need to reclass. I think it’s correct.
Time to Read Uncle Ted the Riot Act?
Why, yes!
When Sen. Ted Kennedy was merely just another Democrat bloviating on Capitol Hill on behalf of liberal causes, it was perhaps excusable to ignore his deplorable past.
And his drinking, and his womanizing, and...
His driving?
But now that he’s become Sen. John Kerry’s leading campaign attack dog, positioning himself as Washington’s leading arbiter of truth and integrity, the days for such indulgence are now over.
Truth and integrity from a DemocRAT? My irony meter is redlining!
It’s time for the GOP to stand up and remind America why Sen. Kerry’s chief spokesman had to abandon his own presidential bid in 1980 - time to say the words Mary Jo Kopechne out loud.
Well, I remember a talking head (Koppel?) asking him point blank in 1980, "Why do you want to be President?" The response was classic Kennedy: "Um, er, ah, you know, er, um, ’cuz, er, I, uh, wanna, er..." (you get the drift. This is a game on local guy Howie Carr’s radio show - he plays a speech by Ted and the caller who correctly counts the ’um’’s in a speech wins a free dinner somewhere). That’s what lost him the election.
As is often the case, Republicans have deluded themselves into thinking that most Americans already know the story of how this "Conscience of the Democratic Party" left Miss Kopechne behind to die in the waters underneath the Edgartown Bridge in July 1969, after a night of drinking and partying with the young blonde campaign worker. But most Americans under 40 have never heard that story, or details of how Kennedy swam to safety, then tried to get his cousin Joe Garghan to say he was behind the wheel.
To paraphrase Mayor Daley James Michael Curley, remind them early and often. By proxy.
Those young voters don’t know how Miss Kopechne, trapped inside Kennedy’s Oldsmobile, gasped for air until she finally died, while the Democrats’ leading Iraq war critic rushed back to his compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of.
And thanked his lucky stars that the Kennedy's hand-pick the District Attorney on Martha's Vineyard. Still do, why do you think JFK Jr.'s autopsy was quickly followed by a cremation, the same day I believe?
More here for the morbidly curious.
Neither does Generation X know how Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard on his ear 15 years earlier - for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final.
Or how Teddy’s dad bought ’donated $ 1 million to Harvard University before JFK applied there, "but don’t let the donation affect his application, OK?"
As they listen to the Democrats’ "Liberal Lion" accuse President Bush of "telling lie after lie after lie" to get America to go to war in Iraq, young voters don’t know about that notorious 1991 Easter weekend in Palm Beach, when Uncle Teddy rounded up his nephews for a night on the town, an evening that ended with one of them credibly accused of rape.
And who could forget about the waitress sandwich shared by Senators Kennedy and Dodd back in 1985? What a ’full’ life Teddy led, eh?
It’s time for Republicans to state unabashedly that they will no longer "go along with the gag" when it comes to Uncle Ted’s rants about deception and moral turpitude inside the Bush White House.
Fish, meet barrel...
The Democratic Party, not to mention Sen. John Kerry, should be ashamed to have the national disgrace from Massachusetts as their spokesman. And the GOP needs to say so out loud.
I was born in Masachusetts and I ain't never going back. Remember, Ted Kennedy is now the Conservative Senator from Mass. John Kerry is the liberal.
And often!
Posted by:Raj

#13  ...I remember a talking head (Koppel?) asking him point blank in 1980, ....

It was Roger Mudd, not Koppel. And Kennedy's answer wasn't nearly as comprehensible as you make it out to be. Fact was, Teddy hadn't done his preparation and his homework before he hit the interview circuit in that campaign. That's one of the basic questions you're supposed to hit outta park.
Posted by: Steve White   2004-04-06 5:34:09 PM  

#12  TFJ - You (and your hand) have our condolences..... :^)
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-04-06 4:55:53 PM  

#11  Hey, quit knockin' my man Teddie. He shook my hand once.
Posted by: ThreeFingerJack   2004-04-06 4:40:47 PM  

#10  Would it be possible for RB-er's and other bloggers to purchase ads in print publications that set out the facts on this bloviating prick? I'd like nothing better than to buy a 1/4 page ad in USA Today that lists some pertinent facts about Ted Kennedy's history.
Posted by: mjh   2004-04-06 4:24:47 PM  

#9  I wonder sometimes what would have happened if Old Joe hadn't been a rich bootlegger. The male Kennedy's would have been a bunch of pretty boy bartenders and drunks and the women would have been talented clerks and secretaries.
Posted by: davemac   2004-04-06 4:12:35 PM  

#8  Regardless of partisan politics, you'd think the dumbshit might scrape together enough class to NOT demoralize his own country's troops while they are at war.

I've never liked the man, and now like him even less.

Posted by: Zenster   2004-04-06 3:48:40 PM  

#7  RC, either that or they could get their vessels rammed from out of the blue by the odd Jap destroyer.

DB, I didn't know gen-y even paid attention to politics yet. I'm gen-x as well.
Posted by: Jarhead   2004-04-06 3:35:06 PM  

#6  Excellent insight RC, makes you wonder how the hell they got here.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-04-06 3:34:02 PM  

#5  All Kennedys should be required to travel over water -- in the conveyance of their choice -- at least once a day. We'd be rid of the lot of them within a year.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2004-04-06 3:29:18 PM  

#4  As an afterthought.....ALL kennedys are no-good pieces of shit. They just aren't dying fast enough to suit me.
Posted by: Halfass Pete   2004-04-06 3:12:33 PM  

#3  Well...if they want someone in the Democrat party to epitomize "truth and integrity" they could have tried Lieberman. He seems to be a basically decent guy....which is why he got buried in the primaries.

And speaking as a card-carryin' member of Generation X, believe me, we think of Teddy Boy as a joke. And a kind of scuzzy one at that. I don't think Generation Y is too impressed with him either. If this is how the Boomers are trying to connect with the younger generations, they really have their heads up their asses.
Posted by: Desert Blondie   2004-04-06 3:11:22 PM  

#2  teddy boy kennedy not only left Mary Jo Kopechne to die alone in his submerged car. He STOOD ON HER TO GET HIS WORTHLESS ASS OUT OF THE CAR. He is the sorriest piece of shit God ever created. He's a coward and a no-good son-of-a-bitch. I'd love to stomp a mudhole in his ass....sorry bastard!!
Posted by: Halfass Pete   2004-04-06 3:10:42 PM  

#1  Will somebody stick a martini glass in Teddy's yap??? Bush's Vietnam, my butt.

He has more confirmed kills that a lot SEALs I know.
Posted by: anymouse   2004-04-06 2:37:11 PM  

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