Senator Kennedy

[Jerry Biggers]

Anyone remember "The Horror File" columns that were published in the old The Objectivist? It used current news items to illustrate that Rand was not exaggerating in her depiction of the liberal mindset in Atlas Shrugged. Of course, now such a documentation would occupy a wing of the Library of Congress (at least).

But here would be a choice entry documenting the full extent of (some) liberals' moral bankruptcy: Melissa Lafsky, a blogger in The Huffington Post, today has an entry entitled, "The Footnote Speaks: What Would Mary Jo Kopechne Have Thought of Ted's Career?" No, really. In it, she muses that the drowned Ms. Kopechne might have thought it was all worth it because Ted went on to achieve such great things. No, really. Note also that she labels Ms. Kopechne's life as a mere footnote.

Check it out: http://huffingtonPost.com/melissa-lassky/the-footnote-speaks-what_b_270298.html

(If that link does not work, go to Huffington Post and search on Melissa Lafsky).

Also, note the comments from readers that follows her article.

Edited August 28, 2009 by Jerry Biggers

[Selene]

Adam -

Interesting letter from the KGB! I assume that it is genuine... Could you please provide the citation where this letter was revealed?

Jerry:

My understanding is that this is the actual after action memo that was discovered in the document dump that occurred after the "fall of the Soviet Union" in the 80's.

This is the better of the sourcing that I was able to do.

I find it stunning and I perceive it as treasonous. I cannot see how it was not treason. But then again there is that wonderful book None Dare Call it Treason...*

A declassified KGB document reveals a disturbing letter written by the Democratic Senator to the head of the KGB at the height of the Cold War. But the media silence continues.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Paul Kengor, the author of the New York Times extended-list bestseller God and Ronald Reagan as well as God and George W. Bush and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. He is also the author of the first spiritual biography of the former first lady, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life. He is a professor of political science and director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College.

FP: Paul Kengor, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

Kengor: Always great to be back, Jamie.

FP: We’re here today to revisit Ted Kennedy’s reaching out to the KGB during the Reagan period. Refresh our readers’ memories a bit.

Kengor: The episode is based on a document produced 25 years ago this week. I discussed it with you in our earlier interview back in November 2006. In my book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, I presented a rather eye-opening May 14, 1983 KGB document on Ted Kennedy. The entire document, unedited, unabridged, is printed in the book, as well as all the documentation affirming its authenticity. Even with that, today, almost 25 years later, it seems to have largely remained a secret.

FP: Tell us about this document.

Kengor: It was a May 14, 1983 letter from the head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, to the head of the USSR, the odious Yuri Andropov, with the highest level of classification. Chebrikov relayed to Andropov an offer from Senator Ted Kennedy, presented by Kennedy’s old friend and law-school buddy, John Tunney, a former Democratic senator from California, to reach out to the Soviet leadership at the height of a very hot time in the Cold War. According to Chebrikov, Kennedy was deeply troubled by the deteriorating relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, which he believed was bringing us perilously close to nuclear confrontation. Kennedy, according to Chebrikov, blamed this situation not on the Soviet leadership but on the American president---Ronald Reagan. Not only was the USSR not to blame, but, said Chebrikov, Kennedy was, quite the contrary, “very impressed” with Andropov.

The thrust of the letter is that Reagan had to be stopped, meaning his alleged aggressive defense policies, which then ranged from the Pershing IIs to the MX to SDI, and even his re-election bid, needed to be stopped. It was Ronald Reagan who was the hindrance to peace. That view of Reagan is consistent with things that Kennedy said and wrote at the time, including articles in sources like Rolling Stone (March 1984) and in a speeches like his March 24, 1983 remarks on the Senate floor the day after Reagan’s SDI speech, which he lambasted as “misleading Red-Scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes.”

Even more interesting than Kennedy’s diagnosis was the prescription: According to Chebrikov, Kennedy suggested a number of PR moves to help the Soviets in terms of their public image with the American public. He reportedly believed that the Soviet problem was a communication problem, resulting from an inability to counter Reagan’s (not the USSR’s) “propaganda.” If only Americans could get through Reagan’s smokescreen and hear the Soviets’ peaceful intentions.

So, there was a plan, or at least a suggested plan, to hook up Andropov and other senior apparatchiks with the American media, where they could better present their message and make their case. Specifically, the names of Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters are mentioned in the document. Also, Kennedy himself would travel to Moscow to meet with the dictator.

Time was of the essence, since Reagan, as the document privately acknowledged, was flying high en route to easy re-election in 1984.

FP: Did you have the document vetted?

Kengor: Of course. It comes from the Central Committee archives of the former USSR. Once Boris Yeltsin took over Russia in 1991, he immediately began opening the Soviet archives, which led to a rush on the archives by Western researchers. One of them, Tim Sebastian of the London Times and BBC, found the Kennedy document and reported it in the February 2, 1992 edition of the Times, in an article titled, “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file.”

But this electrifying revelation stopped there; it went no further. Never made it across the Atlantic. Not a single American news organization, from what I can tell, picked up the story. Apparently, it just wasn’t interesting enough, nor newsworthy.

Western scholars, however, had more integrity, and responded: they went to the archives to procure their own copy. So, several copies have circulated for a decade and a half.

I got my copy when a reader of Frontpage Magazine, named Marko Suprun, whose father survived Stalin’s 1930s genocide in the Ukraine, alerted me to the document. He apparently had spent years trying to get the American media to take a look at the document, but, again, our journalists simply weren’t intrigued. He knew I was researching Reagan and the Cold War. He sent me a copy. I first authenticated it through Herb Romerstein, the Venona researcher and widely respected expert who knows more about the Communist Party and archival research beyond the former Iron Curtain than anyone. I also had a number of scholars read the original and the translation, including Harvard’s Richard Pipes.

Of course, all of those steps were extra, extra, extra precautions, since the reporter for the London Times had done all that work in the first place. He went into the archive, pulled it off the shelf, and the Times ran with the story. This wasn’t rocket science. I simply wanted to be extra careful, especially since our media did not cover it at all. I now understand that that blackout by the American media was the result of liberal bias. At first I didn’t think our media could be that bad, even though I knew from studies and anecdotal experience that our press is largely liberal, but now I’ve learned firsthand that the bias is truly breathtaking.

FP: So what shockwaves did your exposure of this document set off in the media?

Kengor: Well, I thought it would be a bombshell, which it was, but only within the conservative media.

I prepared myself to be pilloried by the liberal mainstream media, figuring I’d be badgered with all kinds of hostile questions from defenders of Ted Kennedy. I still, at this very moment, carry photocopies and the documentation with me in my briefcase, ready for access at a moment’s notice. I’ve done that for two years now. The pages may soon begin to yellow.

I need not have bothered with any of this prep, since the media entirely ignored the revelation. In fact, the major reviewers didn’t even review the book. It was the most remarkable case of media bias I’ve ever personally experienced.

I couldn’t get a single major news source to do a story on it. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC. Not one covered it.

The only cable source was FoxNews, Brit Hume’s “Grapevine,” and even then it was only a snippet in the round-up. In fact, I was frustrated by the occasional conservative who didn’t run with it. I did a taping with Hannity & Colmes but they never used it, apparently because they were so focused on the mid-term elections, to the exclusion of almost any other story or issue. The Hannity & Colmes thing was a major blow; it could’ve propelled this onto the national scene, forcing the larger media to take note. That was the single greatest disappointment. I think Sean Hannity might have felt that I wasn’t hard enough on Senator Kennedy during the interview. He asked me, for instance, if what Kennedy did could be classified as treason. I told him honestly, as a scholar, that I really couldn’t answer that question. I honestly don’t know the answer to that; I’m not a constitutional scholar. I don’t have the legal background to accuse someone of being a traitor. I was trying to be as fair as possible.

Rush Limbaugh, God bless him, appreciated it. He talked about it at least twice. So did blogs like Michelle Malkin’s HotAir. Web sources like FrontPage hit it hard. But without the mainstream news coverage, the story never made the dent I expected it would.

I should note that Ed Klein of Parade magazine recently contacted me. He himself got a rude awakening on the media’s liberal bias when he wrote a negative book on Hillary Clinton. I’ve not heard back from him. But he’s a rare case of journalistic objectivity.

If I may vent just a little more on the mainstream press, Jamie: There’s a bias there that really is incredibly troubling. Over and over again, I’ve written and submitted the most careful op-eds, trying to remove any partisan edge, on issues like Reagan and Gorbachev privately debating the removal of the Berlin Wall (I have de-classified documents on this in The Crusader as well), on Reagan’s fascinating relationship with RFK, on various aspects of the Cold War that are completely new, based on entirely new evidence from interviews and archives. When I submit these op-ed to the major newspapers, they almost always turn them down. The first conservative source that I send them to always jump at them. The liberals, however, are very close-minded. Nothing is allowed to alter the template. You can construct the most fair, iron-tight case, and they turn it down. This is not true for everything I write on the Cold War era, but no doubt for most of it. And certainly for the case of Senator Kennedy and this KGB document.

FP: How about trying to place some op-eds on the Kennedy document?

Kengor: Here again, all the mainstream sources turned me down. I had no alternative but to place the op-eds in the conservative outlets. Liberal editors blacklisted the piece. I began by sending a piece to the New York Times, where the editor is David Shipley, who’s extremely fair, and in fact has published me before, including a defense I wrote on the faith of George W. Bush. This one, however, he turned down. He liked it. It certainly had his intention. But he said he wouldn’t be able to get it into the page.

I sent it to the Boston Globe, three or four times, actually. I got no response or even the courtesy of an acknowledgment. It was as if the piece was dispatched to the howling wilderness of Siberia—right into the gulag—airbrushed from history.

The most interesting response I got was from the editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, another very fair liberal, a great guy, who since then has retired. He published me several times. We went back and forth on this one. Finally, he said something to the effect, “I just can’t believe that Ted Kennedy would do something this stupid.” My reply was, “Well, he apparently did.” I told the editor that if he was that incredulous, then he or someone on his staff should simply call Kennedy’s office and get a response. Hey, let’s do journalism and make news! It never happened.

For the record, one news source, a regional cable outlet in the Philadelphia area, called CN8, took the time to call Kennedy’s office. The official response from his office was not to deny the document but to argue with the interpretation. Which interpretation? Mine or Chebrikov’s? Kennedy’s office wasn’t clear on that. My interpretation was not an interpretation. I simply tried to report what Chebrikov reported to Andropov. So, I guess Kennedy’s office was disputing Chebrikov’s interpretation, which is quite convenient, since Chebrikov is dead, as is Andropov. Alas, the perfect defense—made more perfect by an American media that will not ask the senator from Massachusetts a single question (hard or soft) on this remarkable incident.

FP: So, Kennedy’s office/staff did not deny the document?

Kengor: That’s correct. They have not denied it. That’s important. Because if none of this had ever happened, and if the document was a fraud, Kennedy’s office would simply say so, and that would be the end of it.

FP: Tell us about the success the book has had in the recent past and the coverage it has received outside of the U.S.

Kengor: The paperback rights were picked up by the prestigious HarperPerennial in 2007, which I’m touting not to pat myself on the back but to affirm my point on why our mainstream press should take the book and the document seriously. The book has also been or is in the process of being translated into several foreign-language editions, including Poland, where it was released last November. It is literally true that more Polish journalists have paid attention to the Kennedy revelation than American journalists. I’ve probably sold about 20 times more copies of the book in Poland, where they understand communism and moral equivalency, than in Massachusetts.

FP: One can just imagine finding a document like this on an American Republican senator having made a similar offer to the Nazis. Kennedy has gotten away with this. What do you think this says about our culture, the parameters of debate and who controls the boundaries of discourse?

Kengor: History is determined by those who write it. There are the gatekeepers: editors, journalists, publishers. The left’s ideologues are guarding the gate, swords brandished, crusaders, not open to other points of view. The result is a total distortion of “history,” as the faithful and the chosen trumpet their belief in tolerance and diversity, awarding prizes to one another, disdainful and dismissive of the unwashed barbarians outside the gate.

You can produce a 550-page manuscript with 150-pages of single-space, 9-point footnotes, and it won’t matter. They could care less.

FP: So, this historical revelation is not a revelation?

Kengor: That’s right, because it is not impacting history—because gatekeepers are ignoring it.

Another reason why the mainstream media may be ignoring this: as I make clear in the book, this KGB document could be the tip of the iceberg, not just with Kennedy but other Democrats. John Tunney himself alluded to this in an interview with the London Times reporter. That article reported that Tunney had made many such trips to Moscow, with additional overtures, and on behalf of yet more Democratic senators. Given that reality, I suppose we should expect liberal journalists to flee this story like the plague—at least those too biased to do their jobs.

For the record, I’ve been hard on liberal journalists in this article, and rightly so. But there are many good liberal journalists who do real research and real reporting. And it’s those that need to follow up on this. I’m a conservative, and so I’m not allowed into the club. Someone from inside the boys’ club needs to step up to the plate.

FP: All of this is in sync with David Horowitz’s and Ben Johnson’s new book, Party of Defeat, isn’t it? As the book demonstrates, many Democrats are engaging in willful sabotage in terms of our security vis-à-vis Islamo-Fascism today. And as the Kennedy-KGB romance indicates, a good portion of Democrats have always had a problem in reaching out to our enemies, rather than protecting our national security. Your thoughts?

Kengor: Obviously, as you know and suggest, this does not apply to all Democrats, needless to say. But there are many liberal Democrats who were dupes during the Cold War and now are assuming that role once again in the War on Terror. President Carter comes to mind, as does John Kerry, as does Ted Kennedy, to name only a few. When I read President Carter’s recent thoughts on Hamas, it transported me back to 1977 and his stunning statements on the Iranian revolution, or to 1979 and his remarks on the Soviets and Afghanistan. Many of these liberals and their supporters on the left literally see the conservative Republican in the Oval Office as a greater threat to the world than the insane dictators overseas that the likes of Reagan and George W. Bush were/are trying to stop. That’s not an exaggeration. Just ask them.

History is repeating itself, which can happen easily when those tasked to report and record it fail to do so because of their political biases.

FP: Paul Kengor, thank you for joining us.

Kengor: Thank you Jamie

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

Adam

*http://www.fortifyingthefamily.com/None_Dare_Call_It_Treason.html << a current review of the 1964 book.

[Reidy]

One evidence is that Snopes, UrbanLegends and FactCheck all come up dry on "Kennedy KGB" and "KGB Kennedy".

[Selene]

One evidence is that Snopes, UrbanLegends and FactCheck all come up dry on "Kennedy KGB" and "KGB Kennedy".

Yes which is comforting. I think it is true, but with that post action report syndrome which causes the "reporter" to "fit" the report into what his superiors want to see.

I am just continually stunned by the mind numbing bias of the media in what is suppressed..

Adam

[jeffrey smith]

One evidence is that Snopes, UrbanLegends and FactCheck all come up dry on "Kennedy KGB" and "KGB Kennedy".

Yes which is comforting. I think it is true, but with that post action report syndrome which causes the "reporter" to "fit" the report into what his superiors want to see.

I am just continually stunned by the mind numbing bias of the media in what is suppressed..

Adam

Kennedy's assessment of the strength of Reagan's political position may have worked to Reagan's advantage, even if that was not Kennedy's intention.

And if this is treason, then apparently Nixon and Kissinger committed greater treason if the charge that they made contact with the North Vietnamese during the '68 election is true (roughly, they allegedly persuaded N.V. to stall talks so the Democrats could not get any political advantage out of them, with promises of better results from the NV perspective). (My source on this is was Hitchens' philippic against the "crimes" of Henry Kissinger).

[Selene]

One evidence is that Snopes, UrbanLegends and FactCheck all come up dry on "Kennedy KGB" and "KGB Kennedy".

Yes which is comforting. I think it is true, but with that post action report syndrome which causes the "reporter" to "fit" the report into what his superiors want to see.

I am just continually stunned by the mind numbing bias of the media in what is suppressed..

Adam

Kennedy's assessment of the strength of Reagan's political position may have worked to Reagan's advantage, even if that was not Kennedy's intention.

And if this is treason, then apparently Nixon and Kissinger committed greater treason if the charge that they made contact with the North Vietnamese during the '68 election is true (roughly, they allegedly persuaded N.V. to stall talks so the Democrats could not get any political advantage out of them, with promises of better results from the NV perspective). (My source on this is was Hitchens' philippic against the "crimes" of Henry Kissinger).

Jeff:

Something did not "feel" right about the N.V., although anything is possible in global international political negotiations. Here is the section from Hitchens', sorry about the bolding, can't seem to get rid of it.

"Here is the secret in plain words. In the fall of 1968, Richard Nixon and some of his emissaries and underlings set out to sabotage the Paris peace negotiations on Vietnam. The means they chose were simple: they privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers that an incoming Republican regime would offer them a better deal than would a Democratic one. In this way, they undercut both the talks themselves and the electoral strategy of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The tactic "worked," in that the South Vietnamese junta withdrew from the talks on the eve of the election, thereby destroying the peace initiative on which the Democrats had based their campaign. In another way, it did not "work," because four years later the Nixon Administration tried to conclude the war on the same terms that had been on offer in Paris. The reason for the dead silence that still surrounds the question is that in those intervening years some 20,000 Americans and an uncalculated number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lost their lives. Lost them, that is to say, even more pointlessly than had those slain up to that point. The impact of those four years on Indochinese society, and on American democracy, is beyond computation. The chief beneficiary of the covert action, and of the subsequent slaughter, was Henry Kissinger."

Adam

[jeffrey smith]

One evidence is that Snopes, UrbanLegends and FactCheck all come up dry on "Kennedy KGB" and "KGB Kennedy".

Yes which is comforting. I think it is true, but with that post action report syndrome which causes the "reporter" to "fit" the report into what his superiors want to see.

I am just continually stunned by the mind numbing bias of the media in what is suppressed..

Adam

Kennedy's assessment of the strength of Reagan's political position may have worked to Reagan's advantage, even if that was not Kennedy's intention.

And if this is treason, then apparently Nixon and Kissinger committed greater treason if the charge that they made contact with the North Vietnamese during the '68 election is true (roughly, they allegedly persuaded N.V. to stall talks so the Democrats could not get any political advantage out of them, with promises of better results from the NV perspective). (My source on this is was Hitchens' philippic against the "crimes" of Henry Kissinger).

Jeff:

Something did not "feel" right about the N.V., although anything is possible in global international political negotiations. Here is the section from Hitchens', sorry about the bolding, can't seem to get rid of it.

"Here is the secret in plain words. In the fall of 1968, Richard Nixon and some of his emissaries and underlings set out to sabotage the Paris peace negotiations on Vietnam. The means they chose were simple: they privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers that an incoming Republican regime would offer them a better deal than would a Democratic one. In this way, they undercut both the talks themselves and the electoral strategy of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The tactic "worked," in that the South Vietnamese junta withdrew from the talks on the eve of the election, thereby destroying the peace initiative on which the Democrats had based their campaign. In another way, it did not "work," because four years later the Nixon Administration tried to conclude the war on the same terms that had been on offer in Paris. The reason for the dead silence that still surrounds the question is that in those intervening years some 20,000 Americans and an uncalculated number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lost their lives. Lost them, that is to say, even more pointlessly than had those slain up to that point. The impact of those four years on Indochinese society, and on American democracy, is beyond computation. The chief beneficiary of the covert action, and of the subsequent slaughter, was Henry Kissinger."

Adam

Thanks for the correction. This is what comes of referring to a book you last read two years ago in a copy borrowed from the public library.

[Selene]

[duplicate post deleted]

Completely understood. Unfortunately on the so aptly noted happy birthday to astronomy on another thread, I am reminded of a post that is floating around here about

me alerting folks to Mars being the closest to Earth in our "lifetime" and not checking it out.

My sense of childlike wonder just took over and I did do my due diligence and of course it is a hoax lol

Wipes egg from face.

No problem, at least I learned something. I was not aware of that move by Nixon's folks, but it does not surprise me. He was a great President in many ways.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

Let's not get too digressive here--it's too soon to forget the SOB.

--Brant

[Selene]

Let's not get too digressive here--it's too soon to forget the SOB.

--Brant

Damn! Thanks!

kennedy-dodd waitress sandwich

Published Aug. 27, 2009

Views: 1008

In 1985, Dodd and fellow Senator Ted Kennedy were out (with dates) for a night on the town at La Brasserie. Much liquor was consumed--that will come as a shock to those of us familiar with Ted Kennedy--and the two Senators were at one point unaccompanied by their dates. The Senators made a "Waitress Sandwich" out of some poor, unsuspecting waitress.

If you're not entirely sure what that means, let's just say you wouldn't want to be the waitress.

Article clip, from the Hartford Courant:

"Dodd and Kennedy were also reported to have made a 'human sandwich' with a waitress at La Brasserie, another Capitol Hill restaurant. The report had it that Kennedy threw the woman on Dodd, who was slumped in a chair, and then jumped on top of her. She was said to have run screaming from the room."

Summary of 1989 Penthouse magazine article, summarized by the Washington Times:

"When she put in an appearance in their private retreat - 'The Teddy Kennedy Fun Room' - the Massachusetts senator picked her up and heaved her onto a table. The crystal candlesticks and champagne glasses shattered as he grabbed her again and flung her on top of Dodd.

"Then Kennedy threw himself on top of the woman. The waitress implored Mr. Kennedy to 'Get off me!'

"Another waitress entered to find 'things all tipped over and Kennedy was on top, [the waitress] was in the middle and Dodd was on the bottom.' At that point the sandwich was disassembled."

Related: DC "Waitress Sandwich Shop" Shutters Doors

Washington Post, August 5, 2005

La Brasserie, a French restaurant on Capitol Hill, closed last month, after a 27-year history of catering to political bigwigs and Hollywood A-listers.

"It was quite a Hill institution," said Lynne Breaux, executive director of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, who has eaten there several times. "It was a lovely restaurant."

La Brasserie was located in a town house on Massachusetts Avenue Northeast. It served such politicos as the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan, New York Democrat, former Vice President Al Gore and the late Rep. Sonny Bono, California Republican, as well as actors like Jimmy Stewart, Paul Newman and Jane Fonda, [and who could forget Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd making unique contributions to our sandwich menu] said Lynne Campet, a former co-owner of the restaurant.

"A lot of important people dined there," she said.

Mrs. Campet and her husband, Raymond, bought the restaurant in 1978 with Gaby and Marie Aubouin. At the time, it was a Greek-owned restaurant called Maxim's and previously a cafe called La Ruche.

Mr. Campet and Mr. Aubouin, who worked at the French Embassy together, built the restaurant into a neighborhood favorite. The outdoor patio was "very special," Mrs. Campet said, adding that diners sought the tables under the property's big tree.

The 2003 Zagat Survey, which rates restaurants in different markets, said La Brasserie's terrace "transports one to Paris."

The French-inspired menu included such items as the cold three pepper soup, crabmeat and mozzarella lasagna, homemade tarts and creme brulee.

In 1992, the restaurant was sold to sisters Audrey and Karinne Dequeker, who could not be reached for comment yesterday.source

Adam

Edited August 29, 2009 by Selene

[Selene]

July 31, 2009, 0:00 p.m.

Chappaquiddick Revisited

Liberals still lionize Ted Kennedy. Forty years ago, he revealed his true character.

By R. P. George and D. Quinn

On the evening of July 18, 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne died while trying to free herself from Edward M. Kennedy’s submerged automobile in a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island.

The fortieth anniversary of Miss Kopechne’s death passed with scarcely a word’s being mentioned of it in the media. Perhaps it was not simply a matter of liberal bias. With Senator Kennedy now seriously ill, many journalists no doubt considered that it might be unseemly to bring up the subject.

But however uncomfortable it may be to recall the circumstances of Mary Jo Kopechne’s death, Americans must not forget what happened to her, nor must a delicate sensibility prevent us from remembering how a powerful man and his savvy handlers were able to shield him from responsibility for his behavior towards her. Mary Jo Kopechne died because, after recklessly causing an accident, Teddy Kennedy, in his nearly unfathomable self-absorption and political ambition, failed to do what almost anyone would have done to rescue her — namely, report the accident and call for emergency help. Instead, Kennedy thought only of himself and his political career.

Mary Jo Kopechne was 29 years old when she died. She was a bright and idealistic young woman who had worked closely with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in the presidential campaign that ended tragically with his assassination in June 1968. On July 18, 1969, she attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island that reunited several of RFK’s campaign workers and friends. Teddy Kennedy also attended the party, and he and Miss Kopechne left together sometime before midnight, with Kennedy at the wheel of his 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88.

Having taken a wrong turn, and driving too fast along a dirt road, Kennedy was unable to brake properly when approaching Dike Bridge, which had no guardrail. The car went over the side of the bridge and plunged into the channel, known as Poucha Pond. Ted Kennedy managed to escape the submerged and overturned vehicle, but Mary Jo Kopechne did not.

Kennedy later claimed that he made several attempts to swim down to the car to rescue her. He then rested on the shore for a few minutes before walking back to the party. On the way, he passed several houses where he could easily have stopped, asked for help, and notified authorities. With a woman in danger of drowning, that is what any decent person would have done. But Kennedy did not do it. He later said that he had not seen a house with a light on. This would have been a pathetic excuse even if true. The evidence is, however, that the very first house that he had passed, only 150 yards or so from the scene of the accident, had a light on.

When Kennedy finally got back to the party, he enlisted a cousin, Joseph Gargan, and a friend, Paul Markham, to return to the accident scene and attempt a rescue. (What was needed, of course, was a properly trained and equipped emergency diver.) When their efforts failed, the two men — both of them lawyers — attempted to prevail on Kennedy to report the accident and get police and professional rescue help. But Kennedy did not report the accident. Gargan and Markham testified that they themselves did not report it only because they believed that Kennedy was going to do so. What Kennedy did, rather, was return to his hotel room in nearby Edgartown, where he retired for the night. Early the next morning, Gargan and Markham joined him and again pressed him urgently to notify the authorities. Instead, Kennedy found a pay phone and began soliciting advice from trusted friends and relatives. By this point, Mary Jo Kopechne was certainly dead, and Teddy Kennedy had still not notified the authorities.

The police first heard of the incident when a pair of fishermen, having seen the car in the water, went to one of the residences that Kennedy had passed the evening before to make sure that the authorities had been informed. The police sent a diver, who quickly recovered Miss Kopechne’s body. From its positioning in the car, it was clear that she had survived for some time before drowning or exhausting the available oxygen. It was surely a terrifying and perhaps an agonizing death. The diver later testified that, had Kennedy run to the nearest residence and called for emergency help, “there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.”

The police became aware that the car belonged to Edward M. Kennedy when they ran a check on the license plate. When Kennedy, still at the pay phone, saw that the body had been recovered, he went to the police station, where he made a few more calls and then dictated to Markham a statement for the police. It was carefully crafted to avoid saying very much, thus keeping open a range of explanatory options.

A week later, Kennedy pleaded guilty to the comparatively minor charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. Astonishingly, the local Massachusetts judge, a man named James Boyle, gave Kennedy only the statutory minimum punishment — two months of jail time — which he immediately suspended. In explaining his leniency, Judge Boyle pointed to what he described as Kennedy’s “unblemished record.” One supposes that for the judge, it was a bit like having Mother Teresa in the dock.

Having managed the immediate legal issues, the legendary Kennedy machinery went to work on managing the political problem created by the senator’s shocking behavior. On the evening of his sentencing, one week after Miss Kopechne had died in his car, Kennedy read a prepared statement that was broadcast on network television. The statement was a masterwork of spin — telling parts of the story (in the least unfavorable light possible, of course); leaving out the more inculpatory parts; and vacillating between abject apology and excuse making. The most risible part was when he suggested that his conduct was accounted for by a cerebral concussion and shock, while insisting that, of course, he wouldn’t dream of using his medical condition as an excuse.

He asked the people of Massachusetts whether they wanted him to resign. “Think this through with me,” he said. “In facing this decision, I seek your advice and opinion. In making it I seek your prayers.”

It worked.

Six weeks later, an inquest into Mary Jo Kopechne’s death was held. Kennedy’s lawyers asked the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to make it a secret inquest, and the judges proved to be entirely compliant. Later, a lengthy transcript of the inquest was made available to the public. The presiding judge was one who had already proven to be friendly from Kennedy’s point of view: James Boyle. Interestingly, Boyle found “probable cause” for believing that Kennedy was guilty of criminal negligence and even possibly manslaughter. Still, he did not issue a warrant for the senator’s arrest.

The district attorney, an ambitious Democrat named Edmund Dinis, almost certainly could have gotten a grand-jury indictment, but he, too, declined to pursue the matter. In fact, when a grand jury looked at the question, Dinis told the jurors that there was not sufficient evidence to warrant an indictment of the senator even on charges of reckless endangerment, much less manslaughter.

Did we mention that all of this happened in Massachusetts? Did we note that the perpetrator was Democratic United States senator Edward M. Kennedy?

In the end, Kennedy’s punishment for his appalling acts and even more appalling omissions at Chappaquiddick was that the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles suspended his driver’s license for a few months.

Many liberals lionize Teddy Kennedy. They like his politics and often thrill to his aggressive tactics against their adversaries. (That list begins with Robert H. Bork, whom Kennedy defamed brutally in a successful effort to block his confirmation as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.) But they should consider what kind of man Ted Kennedy is. His character was revealed at Chappaquiddick and in all that he said and did to evade responsibility for his conduct in the months and years that followed.

It is a sad irony that liberal groups heap praise on Kennedy as a champion of women’s rights. Of course, the reason they like him — and the reason he can always count on them to deflect attention from questions of character and to attack those who raise the questions — is that he is a champion of liberal ideology. Someone who honored women’s rights — someone who honored human rights — would have laid aside any question of political consequences, run to a nearby house, and called for emergency help to rescue a woman whose life, through his own fault, was in grave peril. Such a person would have honored the right to life of Mary Jo Kopechne.

— Robert P. George is McCormick professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Dermot Quinn is a professor of history at Seton Hall University.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I finally caught up to this thread. I avoided it since I was sick of so much media attention to the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy.

I just now totally confirmed for myself, I have nothing to say about Ted Kennedy.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

I finally caught up to this thread. I avoided it since I was sick of so much media attention to the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy.

I just now totally confirmed for myself, I have nothing to say about Ted Kennedy.

Michael

Michael; The less said the better. Let's hope we don't have to go through this when Robert Byrd dies.

[Barbara Branden]

Some of the comments about Edward Kennedy's death show a very naive concept of human beings and of the amount of good and bad they are able to absorb into their characters, Some of your comments about Kennedy would be justified only if you believed that an objective court of law should pronounce upon him the penalty of death. I do not believe it.

I don't like Edward kennedy, for three reasons: his political ideology, the sleaziness of much of his personal life, and, of course, the Mary Joe Kopechne incident,. But he was not Satan incarnate., He wa also a man who survived the many tragedies of his life without losing a certain gusto for life. He was a man who took on the job of being father to the çhildren of his asassinated brothers, and those children clearly love him to this day. By all accounts, he was a man capable of considerate, fiercely loyal friendships -- a virtue I greatly respect. .And he was a man who apparently performed many acts of kindness wihout fanfare.or publicity. And by all acounts, he faced his certain death with courage and dignity, with even a touch of humor. I'm not suggesting you wish him long life and happinesss , but is it really necesssay to dance on his grave? This gloating over suffering and death becomes repulsive. It reminds me of nothing so much as Perigo's ugly contention that Frank Zappa deserved to die a slow, painful death from prostate cancer.

In my mnd, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, bin Laden, are wholly political men. That is, their political and human evil is so great that no circumstances can be mitigating, no other qualities of character matter. I am not prepared to say that about Kennedy.

Now start yelling.

Barbara

[Brant Gaede]

Barbara, I don't agree with your general assessment of the man. He was reflective of his power grubbing family and the power grubbing liberal media which control and run this country politically and now economically and their great tool. Instead of taking a drunk woman to the beach to rape her he abandoned her and drowned her. A guy once tried to do that to me in college; I cut him with my knife.

--Brant

women should arm themselves

an "incident"? No, no, no!

why didn't he resign? He was a zero sans his elective office, an absolute zero

Edited September 1, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[BaalChatzaf]

Some of the comments about Edward Kennedy's death show a very naive concept of human beings and of the amount of good and bad they are able to absorb into their characters, Some of your comments about Kennedy would be justified only if you believed that an objective court of law should pronounce upon him the penalty of death. I do not believe it.

I don't like Edward kennedy, for three reasons: his political ideology, the sleaziness of much of his personal life, and, of course, the Mary Joe Kopechne incident,. But he was not Satan incarnate., He wa also a man who survived the many tragedies of his life without losing a certain gusto for life. He was a man who took on the job of being father to the çhildren of his asassinated brothers, and those children clearly love him to this day. By all accounts, he was a man capable of considerate, fiercely loyal friendships -- a virtue I greatly respect. .And he was a man who apparently performed many acts of kindness wihout fanfare.or publicity. And by all acounts, he faced his certain death with courage and dignity, with even a touch of humor. I'm not suggesting you wish him long life and happinesss , but is it really necesssay to dance on his grave? This gloating over suffering and death becomes repulsive. It reminds me of nothing so much as Perigo's ugly contention that Frank Zappata deserved to die a slow, painful death from prostate cancer.

In my mnd, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, bin Laden, are wholly political men. That is, their political and human evil is so great that no circumstances can be mitigating, no other qualities of character matter. I am not prepared to say that about Kennedy.

Now start yelling.

Barbara

No, he was not Evil Incarnate. But he was a swine. Jaba the Harp. (A reference to -Star Wars-).

He was a mediocrity, a low life and a not very good person.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... but is it really necesssay to dance on his grave? This gloating over suffering and death becomes repulsive. It reminds me of nothing so much as Perigo's ugly contention that Frank Zappa deserved to die a slow, painful death from prostate cancer.

In my mnd, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, bin Laden, are wholly political men. That is, their political and human evil is so great that no circumstances can be mitigating, no other qualities of character matter. I am not prepared to say that about Kennedy.

Barbara,

I agree with this. I do not celebrate hatred and spite and gloating about death. It saddens me when I see it coming from people I like.

I have nothing really to say about Ted Kennedy because he was not on my radar as a villain or hero. He was a typical liberal Senator with a little extra media attention because of his brothers. He was a good man in his personal life, as you said (barring the Kopechne mess). As a politician, spoiled rich kid who went into politics is more my take on him than anything else.

But you should see how they danced on Ted Kennedy's death over on Slop. In several threads.

Michael

[Philip Coates]

Subject: The Politics of Personal Destruction; The Substituting of People for Ideas

I agree completely with Barbara's post. And the reasoning behind it:

Best to focus on ideas rather than dancing on the grave or the suffering of one's political enemies. Not an admirable quality or the thing to be focused on.

I would add an epistemological caveat, though: It is difficult to trust what the press or the two opposing political camps dig up to say about a famous person, whether he be Cheney or Palin on the right or Kennedy and Obama on the left.

Often many biographical points can be unproven or exaggerated to make someone look worse or better. It wouldn't surprise me too much if the liberal press made Kennedy look better (good friend? fierce caretaker of his nephews?) than he was in his later life and/or if the conservative press made him look worse (waitress sandwich?) Nor, to broaden the issue, would it entirely surprise me if many of the things said about Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney or Obama's early life were untrue. The tendency to "Bork" one's opponents has only grown in the last few decades.

As a culture coarsens or declines epistemologically and educationally, the tendency to be a gossip or to focus on one's enemies (or sanctify one's leaders or allies) rather than ideas increases. DO NOT BE ANY PART OF THIS - even in a casual or offhand way.

Edited September 1, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

> But you should see how they danced on Ted Kennedy's death over on Slop. In several threads.

Michael, having debated some of the people over there on the Chris Sciabarra issue, somehow that doesn't surprise me.

Edited September 1, 2009 by Philip Coates

[jeffrey smith]

Subject: The Politics of Personal Destruction; The Substituting of People for Ideas

As a culture coarsens or declines epistemologically and educationally, the tendency to be a gossip or to focus on one's enemies (or sanctify one's leaders or allies) rather than ideas increases. DO NOT BE ANY PART OF THIS - even in a casual or offhand way.

If you browse through political campaigns of the 19th century, you'll find very similar methods used throughout the period leading up to the Civil War: they could be just as focused on personal attack and personal hagiography as anything seen in our own era. The Jefferson-John Adams and Jackson-John Q. Adams contests are the best known and most outrageous examples. Things civilized after the Civil War, perhaps because people were forced to see what real civil war could do, but the last two decades or so are actually a relapse into an earlier type of American politics.

[Selene]

Subject: The Politics of Personal Destruction; The Substituting of People for Ideas

As a culture coarsens or declines epistemologically and educationally, the tendency to be a gossip or to focus on one's enemies (or sanctify one's leaders or allies) rather than ideas increases. DO NOT BE ANY PART OF THIS - even in a casual or offhand way.

If you browse through political campaigns of the 19th century, you'll find very similar methods used throughout the period leading up to the Civil War: they could be just as focused on personal attack and personal hagiography as anything seen in our own era. The Jefferson-John Adams and Jackson-John Q. Adams contests are the best known and most outrageous examples. Things civilized after the Civil War, perhaps because people were forced to see what real civil war could do, but the last two decades or so are actually a relapse into an earlier type of American politics.

So the tar and feathering instructional dvd is coming out when?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPWXQhh6-A

Yeah, that Revolution that we had was just sooo civil and sooo polite!

Adam

[Philip Coates]

> If you browse through political campaigns of the 19th century, you'll find very similar methods used throughout the period leading up to the Civil War: they could be just as focused on personal attack and personal hagiography as anything seen in our own era. [Jeffrey]

Maybe. All I know is I've seen it seem to get -steadily- worse in my own lifetime, decade by decade. (( Very hard to say about the pre-Civil War decades without an enormous amount of research. My sense of it is that there are always personal attacks but the question is if those drown out the careful discussion of issues: 1. You had the Federalist papers and the anti-Federalist response - an intellectual debate in all the papers and legislatures over how much central power should exist in the federal government. 2. You had Calhoun and Webster and Clay in the Senate. 3. You had the Abolitionists steady argumentation given a hearing nationwide. 4. There were the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Hardly any Senatorial or Presidential debates on that level since. 5. Part of the coarsening is seen in the unserious or unphilosophical or tabloidish kinds of questions too often asked of those aspiring to office today: "Senator, supppose your wife Kitty was raped and murdered...how would you respond?" And then when he gave a philosophical rather than an emotional response, he was finished as a candidate for national office. 6. Or, more and more, not merely disagreeing and arguing fairly against, but complete distorting or blanket evading or non-reporting of the positions and arguments of your opponents. ))

Edited September 2, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

We do an excellent job saluting our politicians.

The physical beauty of this Catholic Church with the full trappings of ritual, the pomp and the circumstance of the event is a perfect tableau for the Ave Maria:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSQFc4SsdR0

Adam

Edited September 2, 2009 by Selene

[Robert Campbell]

Phil,

I think Jeffrey has a point here.

Today, we admire the oratory and the essays of William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists. We forget that Garrison was thrown in jail in Baltimore for his public opposition to slavery, and that after he prudently X'ed the Southern states off his itinerary, he narrowly escaped being killed by mobs on two occasions—in Boston and New York.

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

> Today, we admire the oratory and the essays of William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists. We forget that Garrison was thrown in jail in Baltimore for his public opposition to slavery, and that after he prudently X'ed the Southern states off his itinerary, he narrowly escaped being killed by mobs on two occasions—in Boston and New York.

Robert, I said: "As a culture coarsens or declines epistemologically and educationally, the tendency to be a gossip or to focus on one's enemies (or sanctify one's leaders or allies) rather than ideas increases." Meaning I was talking about a particular kind of coarsening - in the cognitive/intellectual sphere. I wasn't talking about a general decline in every sphere as happened in the collapse of the Roman Empire. America's historical trends are more complicated (and less linear) than that.

I agree that a culture can change in other ways. Specifically, as your example points out, America has gotten better in terms of civil liberties and individual rights re: slavery, women's suffrage, freedom speech and the press over a hundred years or more. [There are many other examples in which the America of the past has improved: In the past, besides the Ablitionists (who weren't even allowed to -speak- or publish in much of the Old South)there was the Alien and Sedition Act, censorship/intimidation in wartime and occasionally at other times, and much more.]

It is probably due to the liberals kicking the ass of the conservatives intellectually and putting them on the defensive across perhaps? a century that the liberals' issues keep winning - civil liberties and rights on the positive side and loss of economic liberties and rights on the negative.

Edited September 2, 2009 by Philip Coates