Aug 27 2009
The Passing Of Ted Kennedy, The Passing Of A Myth
Update: I was clearly not the only one who saw the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy as the end of a myth. – end update
My family and myself are great admirers of John Kennedy for obvious reasons. For one, he launched mankind to the Moon to begin our exploration of the universe. That alone should give him a special place in history.
John Kennedy’s younger brother Bobby Kennedy lived a more tragic, less inspiring life. I would shutter to think how President Bush would have been greeted if he had placed younger brother Jeb Bush as the US Attorney General of the country. The cries of nepotism, while guaranteed to be over the top, would still have a valid core of concern. One wonders what rules were bent for his older brother. But his life was still exemplary, his death a horrendous crime.
Ted Kennedy, on the other hand, was the misfit disaster of the Kennedy clan. He enjoyed the play of the  ‘powerful’, but rarely displayed respect for that power early on. He was the playboy to the older two ‘statesmen’. While people remember this man they should also remember the young lady he left trapped in a car to drown. Mary Jo Kopechne might have been the victim of a tragic accident, but they way Ted Kennedy was not even given a slap on the wrist for his criminal irresponsibility was despicable:
In July of 1969, Kopechne’s body was discovered inside an overturned Oldsmobile belonging to Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts under water in a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts.
After the body was found, Kennedy gave a statement to police saying that on the previous night he had taken a wrong turn and accidentally driven his car off a bridge into the water. Later, he pled guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury; he received a suspended sentence.
Anyone else who caused the death of another person using a car would face serious charges and punishment. This incident has become grosser over time, as we all have come to despise the actions and attitudes of drunk or wild drivers and the carnage their indulgence can produce.
This incident alone puts Ted Kennedy in the class of human that cannot be admired or respected – ever. He never paid for his crimes. He used his family’s power to get himself off even mild punishment, instead of being an adult and standing in front of our judicial system just as anyone else would have to. He failed the life test of responsibility.
Ted Kennedy was an indulger. He was not an evil person, but he surely was not admirable. His liberal views are not romantic, they were clueless. He took a shot at the Presidency, assuming all was forgiven, only to find that one must pay his dues to society to BEGIN to gain back respect. He never really showed that he understood that his ‘power’ was really bequeathed to him because of the tragedies that befell his older brothers. He seemed to never be able to see beyond the Kennedy compound and understand the real world. At least that is my view.
I grew up nearby Kennedy properties in Northern Virginia. I went to school with many of the Camelot groupies and the DC power families. These people are just normal people who had a lot of media glow around them, which gave them license to do things others could not or would not. The whole Camelot facade is a media driven, groupie mesmerized public relations gimmick. There were no super human saints, no Arthur’s or Merlin’s or Lancelot’s. It was all a myth. These people were not intellectually superior or better or more morale. At the core, the Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations were just Americans trying to deal with problems large and small. None were more evil or pure than the others.
In fact, you can see how the ‘myth’ was simply used to dupe the masses by the way some are trying to dust it off today to pass the liberal disaster of government rationed health care for all:
Democrats are hoping that the memory of Sen. Ted Kennedy will revive the Democratic Party’s flagging push for health care reform.
In other words, liberals are hoping they can use this man’s death to guilt people into thinking government rationed health care – where panels of bureaucrats decide who is worthy of saving – is something they should just let happen. This ploy is cynical, opportunistic, vulture-like and sick.
Instead of worrying about how much this black sheep of the Kennedy clan wanted to inflict another disaster on America, we should be focused on the millions of average Americans who want to keep their current health care, pay less for it, cover those who need and want insurance, and remove barriers to choice (i.e., no pre-existing conditions, insurance pools for individuals and small businesses, the ability to sell insurance across state borders, etc).
Anybody who runs around singing “Ding dong, Ted is dead/ Let’s discard our healthcare instead!” is truly an inside the beltway fool. Why would we all throw away our life saving, quality of life enhancing health care simply because Ted Kennedy passed away (God rest his soul)?
We can remember and mourn the fact that the good die young (especially in Camelot), but let’s not get out of control.
John and Robert Kennedy’s lives were snuffed out way to early by someone else. So was Mary Jo Kopechne’s life. We need to keep the entire life of Ted Kennedy in perspective as we remember him, and it has nothing to do with health care reform.
Really, his life was very much a tragedy, it needn’t have been as he had many gifts, which he chose to drown in alcohol.
Here comes the Wellstone Deathfest II – “This Time it’s Personal!!!”
“Ding dong, Ted is dead/ Let’s discard our healthcare instead!â€
heh – that’s a good one.
He was a drunk then and he remained a drunk probably to the last. And a danger to everyone around him. Camelot was a myth of gigantic proportions. Jfk and rfk were both womanizers and adulterers. The media hid all this from the public telling us ad nauseum about how wonderful this family was which shows they were carrying the water for the democrats even back then.
I get really tired of hearing buying insurance across the country ignoring state sovreignity. The call for this is going to come back to bite us. State sovreignity is probably the only thing that will save us from Obama and not a good idea to do away with it or weaken it. Insurance is regulated by each state.
I’ll go along with insurance pools but I thought we already had them.
Why would insurance compaies insure someone who discovered a catastrophic illness after years of not getting coverage even when offered by their employers. This could cost insurance companies billions. Congress already made them cover these illnesses after 255 days on group plans. And another thing, insurance companuies, at the end of the year, compare premiums received and cost going out and raise their premiums accordingly. This means everyone in that group will have to pay more for people who could not or would not get the coverage offered.
While everyone else on the group saved and sacrificed to have coverage these people waltz in and want to bypass all the premiums they would have had to pay if they had followed the rules. To ask the insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions from day one will put insurance companies in the red. How long do you think they will stay in business while working in the red? They are in this for profit you know. Government has intruded in private industry too much as it is.
I handled health insurance for my company for decades and I have seen these people try to get someone else to pay for their carelessness. Also if someone changes jobs and gets on the new group plan, if they had health insurance at the old job the pre-existing condition is covered from day one.
I am not familiar with individual policies although I have heard people are turned down for some of these. Why not give individuals the same rules as groups have? However I have also heard individual policies don’t cost as much as groups and don’t have the same fancy coverage.
I like the idea of catastrophic policies with high deductibles. These are relatively cheap certainly cheap.
Another note on the above post. When I said insurance is regulated by individual states I should have added that a company has to be licensed by that state. A company of any kind cannot do business in any state unless they are licensed by that state. That is, in part, how states get their revenue. It would be absolute chaos trying to make other states adhere to the rules of another state. That is opening up federal government intrusion and probable takeover.
I wonder how many people forget we are not actually one country but a uinion of 50 states and each state has its own constitution and laws. They do not clone each other.
Barbara…….I don’t know all the answers either. But before I turned 65, I paid $285 a month, PPO, for catastrophic coverage. I pay $102 a month, PPO, catastrophic coverage for a daughter who is 28. The policy has been between $95 and the now $102 for the last 5 years. My property taxes yearly are greater, my homeowners insurance is about the same. I do have a savings account, to pay the first $3000, if a major occurrence happens. I had no problem finding an agent that would sell a policy to me, the individual. It’s really no different then finding a person to sell homeowners insurance of car insurance.
It will be quite interesting to see what the good people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts choose now that they are freed of the shackles of the Kennedy mob. Let’s not forget that the family fortune was founded on illegal gains during Prohibition and up until his death, Ted K tried to manipulate the democratic process by attempting to have state law changed in order to make it easier for the Democratic governor to appoint someone to his seat rather than the constitutional provision that a special election be held. A view he didn’t hold when Kerry was running for President and the governor was…..Republican. I will only remember him has a partisan divider and will forget that he was a murdering, adultering drunk.
There are very few people in the entire US history that damaged the country more than “Uncle Teddy”.
His immigration bill of 1965 , if I am not mistaken, opened the door to the balkanization and bastardization of our population.
His every bill weakened our country one way or another.
One has to wonder if what he was doing to the country wasn’t related to his irish background and the payback to the anglo-saxon US majority or to his “progressive” philosophy.
Watching the Democrats exploit this is just nauseating. They have no shame.
The sun shines brighter on the Constitution and Bill of Rights now that Ted Kennedy has passed away. May his family realize no suffering from their loss.
Pete Stark just called the moderate democrats “brain dead” this is going to be a “fun” fall.
I remember watching a Saturday Night Live skit way back when Kennedy was running for Pres. It was a debate between Kennedy and Carter each with a group of supporters participating. Kennedy would get up and make a stirring, passionate, logically consistent point, the opponents would sit for a few minutes speechless and dumbfounded then suddenly start chanting in unison Chappaquiddick! Chappaquiddick! Chappaquiddick! Chappaquiddick! After a few seconds of this Kennedy would hang his head and shamefully shuffle back to his seat.
Of all the hours of SNL I watched from 79-85 that is one of the few skits I can remember.
I’m watching the Kennedy funeral. It is a very sad sight to see Kennedy’s first wife standing there, behind second wife, the Mother of his children all but ignored.
I was amazed to hear CBS this past week refer to Ted Kennedy “went to Harvard” but some how they left out the part of Ted being expelled for cheating