Category Archives: Social Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

More Steyn On Kennedy

7 Comments

At The Corner:

As for the argument that, well, for a rich and powerful man Ted sure did a lot for da liddle guy, include me out. Benign paternalism and droit du seigneur are two halves of the same coin: The former has excused the latter in monarchical societies through the ages. It’s distressing to see so many alleged “democrats” embrace it here.

And the so-called feminists go along with it. It’s OK to abuse women, as long as you allow them to kill their babies.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related thoughts from Matt Welch.

[Update early afternoon]

A commenter over at Matt Welch’s post notes something that I neglected to earlier, on the timing:

They didn’t call the cops for something like 10 hours.

More precisely, Ted Kennedy didn’t tell the cops about driving his car into the water until after he personally saw that Ms. Kopechne’s body had been discovered in his car.

Gee, isn’t that an interesting sequence?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Two Grim Fairy Tales

…come to an end:

Forty years have passed since Chappaquiddick. Immediately after the accident, Mr. Kennedy scrambled to organize the best and brightest to save his career, rather than to save the life of 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.

Before the facts were gathered, as her family was being prepped for a cash payoff, the Massachusetts voter – in “shock” and “denial,” the beginning phases of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s grief cycle – was asked by the senator in a carefully constructed televised speech to look away from his misdeed in the name of his family’s recent tragedies.

In a time of grief, the young senator framed his future as a referendum on Camelot. And the media didn’t call him on it. The fix was in.

The result was Mr. Kennedy needn’t do more than show up for work to atone for his calculated selfishness. Without apology or contrition, Mr. Kennedy crafted a public career in which he spent taxpayers’ money – certainly not his own – to make up for his unspeakable behavior.

As long as he toed the liberal line, this trust-fund Robin Hood was protected by the liberal masses and the mainstream media. Hollywood did its job by not putting his story on the big screen.

Doing to the reputations of Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork what he did to Miss Kopechne only reinforced his value to the Democrat Media Complex as the memory of his brothers’ more authentic Camelot began to fade.

It is interesting that Hollywood never made a movie about Chappaquiddick. You can bet it would have happened if it had been a Republican. Actually, it could make an interesting project for some brave filmmaker out there.