30
Aug
2009
Reasons not to Revere
It’s hard to forget the fury of my aunt in the summer of 1980, watching her watch Ted Kennedy challenge a sitting president for the Democratic nomination.
“He’s a killer, a cheat, a drunk – why should his name give him the nomination?” she screamed. I’d make the silly mistake of asking if she was torn in the election between her home-state senator and a president she’d worked hard to elect just four years earlier. As it so happened, she’d turned against the youngest Kennedy during the Chappaquiddick scandal.
“He just let that poor girl die,” she exclaimed when I asked what Chappaquiddick was. I was still in elementary school in 1980. I’d heard the name of the place, and I’d heard it related to Senator Kennedy, but I’d never known what happened there back when I was still an infant.
Before I could ask additional questions, my aunt was off to the races telling me every offensive thing Ted Kennedy had reportedly done, including attempting to cheat his way through school and cheat his way out of a marriage. Long story made short: my aunt couldn’t stand Ted Kennedy.
Years later the summer of 1980 incident ran through my head as I stood next to Ted Kennedy at a function at Georgetown University while his nephew was a student there. There were stares and whispers from the students crossing his path – but all were smiling. I contrasted their smiles with my aunt’s scowl and marveled at the opposition of reaction, wondering how much age played a part in one’s assessment of the man.
Maureen Callahan’s article in the New York Post today confirmed the role of age in how one views the last surviving son of Joe Kennedy. Women in their twenties are even more ignorant of Chappaquiddick than those of us who were infants at the time, and my generation clearly remembers the William Kennedy Smith trial, while they likely do not.
How lucky for him to have an entire generation of liberal Democrats who don’t know there are big reasons not to revere him, despite the multitude of legislation with his name on it. Five days is more than enough time to dedicate to the life and times of Edward M. Kennedy. May he – and “Camelot”, whatever that might have been – rest in peace.