“Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”
Donald McClarey links to Melissa Lafsky’s bit of sheer lunacy. Lafsky touches upon Mary Jo Kopechne’s death and writes:
Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.
Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.
I refer you to Robert Stacy McCain’s full account of what precisely happened that night.
Mary Jo didn’t “drown,” but died of asphyxiation. The passage of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption dealing with Chappaquiddick (pp. 38-43) was researched and written by my co-author Lynn Vincent, who was emotionally traumatized to discover this reality. Mary Jo did not drown, a horrific enough experience, but one which would have killed her in barely a minute. Rather, she remained alive, underwater in Teddy’s Oldsmobile, breathing the oxygen trapped inside an air pocket at the rear floorboard of the upside-down car. So, while Ted walked back to the regatta party at the Martha’s Vineyard cottage and tried to concoct an exculpatory cover-story (as his own cousin, Joe Gargan, later explained), Mary Jo was still alive, frantically hoping for a rescue that never came, until finally she breathed her last.
Mary Jo Kopechne was a dedicated young liberal woman of tremendous potential. This was pointed out by Jimmie Bise’s co-blogger Paula at the Sundries Shack. Mary Jo had gone to Alabama during the civil rights era, having the courage to live out her own convictions. You don’t have to be a liberal to say of her that, at least, she was neither hypocrite nor a coward. Nor could anyone rightly describe Mary Jo Kopechne as a lightweight bimbo, just another bit of womanizer Ted’s incidental arm candy. Had Mary Jo lived . . . Well, the women’s movement was just then coming into its own, and one could easily imagine an experienced Democratic political operative (for that’s what she was) enjoying a long and successful career in her own right.
By the way, you know what was one of Ted Kennedy’s favorite joke topics? Chappaquiddick.
I do not feel the least bit bad saying what a utter craven creep Ted Kennedy was after the Chappaquiddick joke issue surfaced.
Chappaquiddick, it was a matter of choice.
Ouch! Comment by Robert Stacy McCain at Protein Wisdom:
I wonder. If Laura Bush died tonight, would commenters on this blog joke about her running a stop sign and killing Michael Dutton Douglas?
BTW, was Senator Kennedy ever refused communion?
Trollboy:
Are you honestly comparing the two events? Are you honestly comparing someone doing admittedly stupid but accidental with someone getting drunk, then getting behind the wheel of a car, driving the car off a bridge, leaving the scene of an accident, and letting the passenger slowly asphyxiate while they sleep it off? And are you aware of Laura Bush later making crass jokes about the incident?
So do you see how the incidences are different, or are you such a lowlife partisan hack that you’ll make any excuse you can to make a dumb comment?
No serious assessment of Kennedy I’ve seen omitted Chappaaquidick, but most took the stance that his life had to be judged as a whole, and that he became a better person after the accident (albeit slowly) and ended as a much better one than he started as.
As for this “asphyxiation” stuff, what’s the source? I don’t happen to have a copy of “Donkey Cons,” because I don’t collect comic books.
Bush the elder will not be attending the funeral. I guess he figured it wouldn’t be prudent, at this juncture.
Paul, of course I was not comparing the significance of the two events. For the benefit of those whose comment parsing skills are at the Palin/Quayle level, I was suggesting that no public figure should be reduced to the worst event in that person’s life. I was also suggesting–perhaps a bit obtusely–that the attacks on Senator Kennedy bear the odor of partisan hackery, just as harping on the former Miss Welch’s fatal traffic accident, to the exclusion of other events in her life, would be partisan hackery.
Forgive me if I was too subtle.
By the way, was Senator Kennedy ever refused communion?
No, you’re never subtle, trollboy. You’re simply demonstrating once again your partisan “let’s change the subject” mode of argumentation. I mean, if you didn’t possess the ability to throw out ad hominems, non sequiters, and red herrings at a moment’s notice, you’d never be able to write.
Ted Kennedy killed a woman through his actions and then joked about it later. If you can’t muster even a little bit of outraged about that, then you’re an even bigger skuzzbucket then we all acknowledge you to be.
As for the Communion question I don’t know, but if he confessed his sin then he could not be refused the sacrament.
By the way, only Muskrat and trollboy have brought up the strawman argument that Kenendy’s entire life should be judged by chappaquiddick. Nowhere was that asserted in this post. I simply relayed an idiotic post by a left-wing whacko and then a comment by another left-winger about how Teddy joked about the incident. You supplied the rest.
Paul, you’re right. You never said Kennedy’s life should be judged by CHappaquiddick. It was just the only thing you talked about here after he died. It was other commenters on another post that made remarks about him being despicable, human trash, a murderous debaucher and wanting to spit on his grave. Since it’s hard to spit on only the bad parts of someone’s grave, I took that to be a judgment of the man’s life as a whole. You yourself never said those things.
Well I do think it is significant, and there is a pretty major difference between what happened there and what happened with, say, Laura Bush. I was willing to let it go, and frankly I was happy to issue no comment at all in the wake of his death, but Lafsky’s comment was fairly disgusting.
Paul, we agree on something. Lafsky’s comment *was* disgusting.
Of course there was more to Kennedy’s life than Chappaquiddick. Let’s see, there was his offer to work with the Soviet Union. There was his awful “immigration reform bill which started the flood of illegal immigrants and drove down the wages of the working poor. There was the waitress sandwich with Cris Dodd, these was him being caught screwing a lobbyist under the table in that same eatery.No wonder Teddy was the liberal lion. This this much regard for his wife and kids, as well as his country, leftists should wear his picture over their alleged hearts.
Ok, I’ll play. Lets judge Ted Kennedy by more than just Chappaquiddick. Lets include the academic dishonesty that got him kicked out of Harvard, the serial drunkenness, the infidelity that destroyed his first marriage, the flagrant lies he used to destroy the reputations of opponents like Robert Bork, and the never ending demagoguery.
By any measure his life, seen in totality, is one of shame and dishonor.
He did provide one service. In Kennedy you could not find a better example of liberal hypocrisy. Kennedy was a man of wealth and privilege that used his family connections to great effect in order to further his own fortunes and escape responsibility for his actions. His family connections got him back into Harvard after he was expelled. Those same connections helped him avoid service in the Korean War. He whored out his family name shamelessly in order to keep his political career alive.
In my younger and more naive days I thought liberals were supposed to vehemently oppose such use of hereditary wealth and status. The fact is that despite all their self-righteous propaganda liberals are quite comfortable with the shameless exploitation of wealth and privilege as long as it serves their ends.
MYOB also exemplifies this hypocrisy perfectly. He will be the first to attack a woman like Laura Bush by attempting to draw a parallel between her accident, an incident for which she took full responsibility, and Kennedy’s craven cowardice in the death of a young woman, an incident he sought to cover up, never took full responsibility for, and used as the punch-line of a joke. Despite the fact that Ted Kennedy traded on his wealth and status more than George W. Bush MYOB had no problem excusing the former while railing against the latter for his wealth and status. But hey, we all know that MYOB is also human trash. I am sure that in Kennedy he saw a kindred spirit.
Joel, I have read enough of your writing to know that you are not stupid; I must instead conclude that you are a whiny, petulant liar. Senator Kennedy’s conduct at Chappaquiddick is inexcusable, and for you to suggest that I have excused that conduct is palpably false. Neither have I attacked Mrs. Bush; indeed, my impression of her is generally favorable.
My comments here have been directed to the readers of this blog–I raised the question as to whether they (and you in particular) would hold a Republican to the same critical standard that you apply to my fellow Democrats. I suppose it’s the hit dog that hollers. Please remove your head from your ass before commenting.
MYOB,
I have read enough of your comments to recognize in you an individual of low character and questionable moral standards. I do think there is a possibility that you may be stupid as well.
You know very well why you brought up Laura Bush’s accident. You were trying to deflect criticism of Kennedy by saying “hey look, Republicans do it to.” You were, at least on some level, trying to point to an equivalence between the two incidents. Otherwise, there would be no relevance to even mentioning Laura Bush’s accident. Now, I will grant that your regular violation of the rules of logical reasoning may indicate an inability on your part to understand the point I just made. As I said before, you may be stupid.
What I think is at play here is yet another example of your shameless hackery. Once again you are trying to score cheap points by attacking another woman. I would be disowned by my family if I associated with someone possessed of your lack decency. As Paul stated above, you are widely recognized as a skuzzbucket. A better man, a term I would never apply to you, would have the sense to avoid sites where he was not wanted.
So, in case you really are too stupid to get the message, NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE!
Give it a rest trollboy. Your entire purpose on this blog is to ask stupid questions and to raise idiotic arguments. For you to call any other human being whiny or petulant is the ultimate pot and kettle moment.
If you say so, Paul. I suppose I just have a Jane Goodall-like fascination with your kind.
John, you are the ape under observation not Paul.