Kennedy Epitaph

I am moved by the currents of our time and, humbly, add to the growing eulogies of the Kennedy branding.

Never forget the things that are not in the news today:

1. Ted Kennedy was expelled from Harvard - twice. Think about how great he was, at an early age, to be let back in after being caught cheating. Years later, Harvard honored the school's former student. Amazing man. I am sure if you or I were expelled for cheating just once, we would not be able to continue on and be appointed to a job in the DA's office. What stamina and drive.

Kennedy earned C grades at the private Milton Academy, but was admitted to Harvard as a "legacy" -- his father and older brothers had attended there, so the younger and dimmer Kennedy's admission was virtually assured. While attending, he was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England, pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged.

While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked. He passed the bar exam in 1959, and two years later was appointed an Assistant to the District Attorney in Massachusetts' Suffolk County..

2. Managed to kill Mary Jo Kopechne, his partner in adultery, by driving drunk, having taken keys from his driver. The great sailor, then, left her underwater drowning, scratching at the upholstery, and went to his motel to confer about the events and have a nap. The body magically left the state before an autopsy and he was not available to have his blood tested by the police at the scene. 

3. Voted against notifying parents that their child had an abortion. He was gracious enough to vote for the state giving contraceptives to children, of course, in secret. 

4. Voted against requiring a photo ID in order to vote.

5. Voted for partial birth abortion and cloning.

6. Rated 26% by US COC, an anti business stance.

7. Never had a job outside of government. 

8. Voted against school vouchers and twice against school savings plans

9. Voted against oil from ANWR and nuclear power, but in 2007 voted we should include "global warming" in the legislative assumptions.

10.  On the family, the Christian Coalition awarded him a rating of 0%.

11. Voted no upon a bill to reduce gifts to Congressmen.

12. Voted against Roberts and Alito

13.  Within 45 minutes of Reagan's nomination of the brilliant scholar Judge Bork, Kennedy spoke:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is -- and is often the only -- protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."^[10][11] 

Breathtaking: "No justice would be better served than by this injustice."  There is an epitaph fitting the lion of the Senate. You don't want to wake up a Senator.

Who can forget the expelled C student Ted Kennedy crossing swords regarding legal scholarship with the mean Judge Bork?  The young, sad man showing up at an inquiry into Kopechne's death - wasn't that a neck brace he was wearing? How sad. The grand Senator so tired he would be found sleeping in the Senate?  The rhetorical genius who could inspire the crowd with unconnected syllables? 

It is time to let him  go.  Truly, America has lost someone, for sure. A former person who will add something brand new to Arlington Cemetery, the place where heroes and men of honor have long rested. 

Things are different today, so Shakespeare must be altered a bit, if I may be so bold: 

"The confusion that men do lives after them, the evil is oft interred with their bones"