I don't have a lot more to say about Ted Kennedy, the man, or his legacy (although I am planning to comment on selecting his replacement and also on the media funeral hoopla, which did indeed rival the coverage of you-know-who -- that's why this is not exactly the last word...). But I did feel a tad lonely taking a middle-of-the-road approach last week, arguing there should be a quest for the right balance between the late senator's personal misdeeds and the good that he did as a legislator. However, over the course of few days, several other progressive bloggers did show up with a similar viewpoint. I want to highlight what I thought was a spot-on analysis by Melissa McEwan from the liberal blog Shakesville, looking back at TK from a feminist perspective:
He'd made a terrible bargain with himself, too.
Teddy's legacy, then, is complicated. A man of privilege, who used it cynically for his own benefit. A man of privilege, who used it generously to try to change the world. And maybe to salve his own conscience. Even as he believed fervently in the genuine rightness of his endeavors—and certainly would have, even if there wasn't a scale to balance.
I have no tidy conclusion. It is what it is.
Read the whole thing -- she makes an excellent point about the travesty of the William Kennedy Smith case, which I did not mention last week. There's also a very good post and a round-up from Matt Bastard (if that indeed is his real name) on the tortured mixed legacy of the last Kennedy brother.
This is an ancilliary point, I guess, but there's an argument that I've made for a long time here at Attytood that the model for journalists to break the mold of mindless objectivity is to be passionate about ideas and core principles -- but to keep a jaundiced eye upon individual politicians and their parties. What better proof than Edward Moore Kennedy, deeply flawed champion of worthy causes?
He is not the great man that everyone is making him out to be. He murdered a woman, got kicked out of college twice for cheating and drafted the worst legislation that flooded our country with illegal immigrants and crime. He used his family name and fortune to keep himself out of jail. Term limits for Senators and Congressman!— Taxpaying Voter- Don't worry, Will! You are not objective in the least.— buggpop
- Good. I don't want to be...I just want to be fair.— will
- I think in J schools they teach you how to report the news stories. Mindless objectivity is really better than mindless bias that leads to telling a story with your opinion of the truth as opposed to the real truth.— sarah89
- Any one of the things that Ted Kennedy did would be enough to destroy a Republican Senator. The Governor of South Carolina flew off to South America for a fling and you guys are calling for his head. Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge and killed a Pennsylvania girl and you call that a misdeed. Kennedy takes his nephews out of a drinking binge and a woman gets raped and that's a misdeed too? You really have a warped sense of priorities and that has never showed up more than in this post.— Mickey0123
Comment removed.- "I just want to be fair." Do you believe that you're succeeding? Can you honestly say that if everything else was held constant, except that Kennedy was a conservative Republican, that you'd have treated the story the same way?— legatus
Teddy was and will continue to be the face of the Democrat party in America. If they're comfortable with that, well then that's just fine with me.— ocjones- "Can you honestly say that if everything else was held constant, except that Kennedy was a conservative Republican, that you'd have treated the story the same way?" Of course not -- did you not read what I wrote about consistent values? I believe that as a legislator that Kennedy fought for good things for America -- more rights for the handicapped, gays, etc., not to mention health care for all -- which is why I would write posts questioning how to balance the good he did as a lawmaker with the awful he did in his personal life. It's hard to compare a real person (Kennedy) to your hypothetical example, but if it had been a lawmaker whose agenda was such that I viewed it as harmful to America, obviously the posts would be different. Still, that does not mean I would not be fair. As you probably know, my book about Reagan has a lot of negative about the impact both of Reagan's 1980s policies and the policies that Norquist/Bush/Cheney/etc. pursued in its name. That said, the book also praises Reagan for being pragmatic when need be and for his legitimate concerns about nuclear weapons. If you read the reviews on Amazon.com you'll see that both liberals and a few conservatives describe the book as, dare I say it, fair and balanced. I think I've been the same attitude toward TK -- certainly I've been more negative than 95 percent of the "objective" journalists on TV.— will
I wonder who he'll make waitress sandwiches with in H3LL?— Mr. Smith- as a non-baby boomer, all i can say i never got the infatuation with the kennedys. didn't we fight a war with england to be rid of people like this? from the father pallin' around with hitler and having his daughter lobotomized right on down to today. don't get it.— eaglesfillthesky
- Ok conservatives, how about Strom Thurmond and his black daughter that he refused to acknowledge while working feverishly to deprive blacks of equal rights in this country. The difference between the conservative Republicans and the liberals like Kennedy is that Kennedy was not a moral hypocrite like so many of the Republicans, Gingrich, Sanford, etc. it just goes on and on and on.— citizenkane
- Citizenkane, if you read the piece by blogger McEwan, it basically tags Kennedy with exactly that level of moral hypocrisy, but in the exact reverse of Thurmond (i.e., pushing for equal rights for women while denying them to Mary Jo Kopechne and to William Kennedy Smith's accuser.— will
- Strom Thurmond = good comparison to Teddy Kennedy.— Mr. Smith
- It's incredible to me how savage people are in their assessment of Ted Kennedy - as if they know EXACTLY how things played out at Chappaquidick. What he was thinking, how he responded, what his motives were... Generations have been raised believing this was, more or less, murder. The authority with which people talk - make that spew - about this event is total B.S. I am just trying to picture what kind of man I would have become had I lost my oldest brother to war when I was 12; my sister to a plane crash when I was 16; my next oldest brother to an assassin when I was 31 and my last brother to an assassin when I was 36. What if I had survived a plane crash at 32 that claimed the lives of two others and then spent five months in the hospital with a broken back? What if my 12-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer and had to have his leg amputated? What if my wife had three miscarriages and became a chronic alcoholic by the time I was 37? And what if I got wasted, took a wrong turn onto a dark road and skidded off a bridge with a young woman who used to work for one of my brothers - and I couldn't save her? I have never tried to convince anyone that Ted Kennedy was an excellent senator or that he would have made an excellent president but I do remind people who call him a worthless, unconscionable murderer that he endured more pain than perhaps any American of the 20th Century save Tom and Alleta Sullivan. So who are they - these people who feel Ted Kennedy got away with so much in his 77 years; these blowhards who would have devoted 50 years of their life to public service in spite of their nine-figure trust fund? They are the best example of the worst of America.— Ollie Brown
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
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