Personally, I am saddened by the death of Senator Kennedy. I made the mistake of posting something to that effect as my Facebook status this morning.
The first of my friends to comment painted a nice, eulogistic picture of Senator Kennedy arriving in Heaven to find three brothers waiting for him. Then someone else pissed me off. She wrote, “And we’ll all just forget about the girl at the bottom of the water. Somehow only celebrities get to be beautiful in their remembrances.”
This evening, I read a rather good AP article by Calvin Woodward and Glen Johnson (available here), on the Austin Statesman website. Then I saw the reader comments. Apparently a fair number of people are hung up on the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
Senator Kennedy carried those bricks for 47 years, as is only fair. It’s also only fair that his memory will ever be linked to Kopechne’s death, and to his arguably craven actions that night. (For the record, until I’m in a similar situation, I don’t feel qualified to judge him for swimming to safety, then running away. But I can see the argument.) But this attitude I have seen today, this notion that we should not mourn the man, angers me.
Imagine your most embarrassing memory. The worst mistake you made. Chances are high that you were young at the time. Probably even odds that you were drunk. Now imagine you live another 47 years, and that when you die, people choose to only remember you for that one event. You will forever be defined and remembered for your biggest mistake. How frustrating to you is that thought? I would bet almost everything I own against the assertion that you, whoever you are, will have accomplished all the things Ted Kennedy accomplished. But I still think stigmatizing your memory with one of your mistakes is unfair.
And Chappaquiddick wasn’t even Ted Kennedy’s only mistake. The question, “Why do you want to be President?” must have haunted him every night for twenty years. He challenged an incumbent President of his own party, lost, then had to watch Carter lose the election by 440 electoral votes. And as mistakes go, drunkenly driving a car off a bridge and leaving your companion in the car as it sinks is a doozy. It’s not like, say, molesting a child, but I guess if you’re an irrelevant, psychologically decaying pop star, people are only allowed to say nice things about you when you die. Of course, if you didn’t have a woman in the car with you at the time, then no harm, no foul, and you get to be President, right?
Senator Kennedy’s sins are many, I am sure. I am sure because mine are many, and he and I belong to the same species. But he served for 47 years, served us all, and championed marginalized citizens. The Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, OSHA, Children’s Health Insurance Program, immigration reform, even the fight against apartheid inSouth Africa
The first of my friends to comment painted a nice, eulogistic picture of Senator Kennedy arriving in Heaven to find three brothers waiting for him. Then someone else pissed me off. She wrote, “And we’ll all just forget about the girl at the bottom of the water. Somehow only celebrities get to be beautiful in their remembrances.”
This evening, I read a rather good AP article by Calvin Woodward and Glen Johnson (available here), on the Austin Statesman website. Then I saw the reader comments. Apparently a fair number of people are hung up on the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
Senator Kennedy carried those bricks for 47 years, as is only fair. It’s also only fair that his memory will ever be linked to Kopechne’s death, and to his arguably craven actions that night. (For the record, until I’m in a similar situation, I don’t feel qualified to judge him for swimming to safety, then running away. But I can see the argument.) But this attitude I have seen today, this notion that we should not mourn the man, angers me.
Imagine your most embarrassing memory. The worst mistake you made. Chances are high that you were young at the time. Probably even odds that you were drunk. Now imagine you live another 47 years, and that when you die, people choose to only remember you for that one event. You will forever be defined and remembered for your biggest mistake. How frustrating to you is that thought? I would bet almost everything I own against the assertion that you, whoever you are, will have accomplished all the things Ted Kennedy accomplished. But I still think stigmatizing your memory with one of your mistakes is unfair.
And Chappaquiddick wasn’t even Ted Kennedy’s only mistake. The question, “Why do you want to be President?” must have haunted him every night for twenty years. He challenged an incumbent President of his own party, lost, then had to watch Carter lose the election by 440 electoral votes. And as mistakes go, drunkenly driving a car off a bridge and leaving your companion in the car as it sinks is a doozy. It’s not like, say, molesting a child, but I guess if you’re an irrelevant, psychologically decaying pop star, people are only allowed to say nice things about you when you die. Of course, if you didn’t have a woman in the car with you at the time, then no harm, no foul, and you get to be President, right?
Senator Kennedy’s sins are many, I am sure. I am sure because mine are many, and he and I belong to the same species. But he served for 47 years, served us all, and championed marginalized citizens. The Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, OSHA, Children’s Health Insurance Program, immigration reform, even the fight against apartheid in
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