Ted Kennedy Dead At Age 77
Not surprisingly, ABC News had their hagiographic obit largely pre-written:
Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy, the youngest Kennedy brother who was left to head the family’s political dynasty after his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, has died at age 77.
Known as the “liberal lion of the Senate,” Kennedy championed health care reform, working wages and equal rights in his storied career. In August, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — by President Obama. His daughter, Kara Kennedy, accepted the award on his behalf.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, known as Ted or Teddy, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent a successful brain surgery soon after that. But his health continued to deteriorate, and Kennedy suffered a seizure while attending the luncheon following President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
ABC then attempts to spin Kennedy’s passing as an advertisement for socialized medicine:
For Kennedy, the ascension of Obama was an important step toward realizing his goal of health care reform.
At the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, the Massachusetts Democrat promised, “I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate when we begin the great test.”
Sen. Kennedy made good on that pledge, but ultimately lost his battle with cancer.
Chappaquiddick isn’t referenced until about two thirds into the second page of the obit.
Kennedy and Chappaquiddick accounted for one of the many recent nadirs of the MSM in January of 2003, when the editors at the Boston Globe allowed this passage to see print:
“If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age,” wrote the Globe’s Charles Pierce. The quote was recognized as the worst of the year at the MRC’s DisHonors Awards in 2004.
Expect similar mythological prose from much of the legacy media in the coming days.
Update: The Wall Street Journal adds:
For much of the year, Mr. Kennedy spoke regularly about the health legislation with lawmakers including Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), his best friend in the Senate. In recent months, however, he was in touch with fewer and fewer people, and by the end he wasn’t involved in details of the negotiations.
Mr. Kennedy spent almost 47 years in the Senate, making him the third-longest serving senator in the chamber’s history, after Sen. Robert Byrd (D., W.V.) and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R., S.C.). The 91-year-old Mr. Byrd is still serving, but like Mr. Kennedy, he has been ailing and rarely voted in recent months.
Massachusetts holds special elections to fill its Senate vacancies, and the state is strongly Democratic, so Mr. Kennedy’s successor might not alter the Senate’s balance of power. Under state law, the election can’t take place for at least 145 days, which would leave the Democrats shorthanded until then. But before he died, Sen. Kennedy had asked Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law to give Gov. Deval Patrick, a fellow Democrat, the ability to appoint an interim successor.
Still, Mr. Kennedy was influential at the highest levels of government until the end. He was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor in May 2008, becoming ill just when he would have enjoyed his greatest power in decades, with large Democratic majorities in Congress and a president who admired him. In July, Mr. Obama awarded Mr. Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
His legislative accomplishments stretch to his early days in the Senate. He played a key role in 1965 immigration legislation that overturned rules favoring immigrants from Western countries; Title IX, the 1972 law aimed at ensuring equity between men and women’s educational and sports programs; the post-Watergate campaign rules of 1974; the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; several minimum-wage increases; and President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act.
Mr. Kennedy’s influence was felt in other ways as well. He has assembled a widely admired staff over the years whose alumni have gone on to make their mark, including Stephen Breyer, a Supreme Court justice, and Melody Barnes, Mr. Obama’s domestic policy adviser.
In March, Mr. Kennedy came to the Senate floor for a final time, leaning on a cane and accompanied by his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D., R.I.), to vote for a $5 billion bill he sponsored to expand public service. He was greeted with a spontaneous ovation, handshakes and embraces from colleagues of both parties.
Of the nine children of Joseph P. and Rose Kennedy, the lone survivor now is Jean Kennedy Smith, a former ambassador to Ireland.
Update: Roger L. Simon is “Thinking about Teddy Kennedy from Europe.”
Update: The starboard half of the Blogosphere reacts; the Anchoress has a thorough roundup of links.
funny, first thing i thought of was mary jo
… as if taking my money to give someone else health care is nobel or good
Yes, Teddy Kennedy is dead and an American disgrace can now be forgotten. His shameful behavior at Chappaquiddick that would have been considered manslaughter in any other state, has been an embarrassment and a scandal that has been ignored by too many for too long. He was treated with deference and given a pass all the years, despite his continued womanizing and chauvinist behavior in Washington.
If there was one saving grace of the unfortunate Mary Jo Kopechne, it was that through her death, we managed keep a degenerate out of the White House.
Unfortunately, this morally bankrupt man, through name recognition, managed to be a hero to the Progressive Socialists, Liberal Marxists, and Democrats; a fact that exposes their insincerity and causes more than enough reason to justify mistrust of their motives.
So long Teddy, the wrong one died on that night when you were drunk and drove into the water, and you were too cowardly to save the young girl you took advantage of; yea, you will have a big debt to answer for in the next few hours and the Kennedy Bootlegging Money isn’t going to help you this time!
*gag*
Here comes the phony canonization of Ted Kennedy to help push 0bamacare.
Not really sure how to feel about this guy. Let’s think..a man who inherited great wealth and privilege. A man kicked out of law school for cheating. Never worked a real job except politics. An alcoholic and husband who hugely cheated on his wife. In the 70′s and 80′s was the most notorious womanizer in D.C. while still married. A man who was drunk and rode his car off a bridge with a women he left behind to slowly drown. And President Obama looks up to him and admires him??
From Boston.com
“After nine schools on two continents, [Ted Kennedy] entered Milton Academy in 1946 and maintained mostly midlevel grades, including in Spanish, a subject that would trouble him again at Harvard College, where, in 1951, he asked a friend to take a Spanish exam for him. A proctor recognized the substitute and both students were expelled, but were told they could return to Harvard if they showed evidence of “constructive and responsible citizenship.”
“He entered the military draft, and Private Kennedy met a more diverse group of people at Fort Dix, N.J., than he would have in Cambridge. His father helped arrange an assignment, during fighting in Korea, to NATO headquarters in Paris.”
Expelled from Harvard, then given a cushy job while in the Army, Senator Kennedy, we hardly knew you. America has too much of a permanent ruling class. Our modern aristocracy is not worthy of the many powers and privileges they grant themselves.
I remember that at L.com we debated over that article (especially its last line) by Charles Pierce. His article, which has unfortunately been long unavailable free online, in fact painted a pretty ugly picture of the Kennedy family, especially the Kennedy men, and in that regard, all the commenting Ldotters were amazed that the article appeared in the Boston Globe. Its last line came off (to me) like intentionally creepy irony as much as like anything else, and seemed expressive of its lib author’s genuine struggle with (a) cognitive dissonance and (b) worry about his lib audience turning a deaf ear. Basically I thought that, on the whole, the article didn’t deserve the MRC’s DisHonor Award.
Ted Kennedy was a Politically calculating COWARD and was protected by the the same media which supports and protects the Obamanation now and the Dems and the Kennedy Mafia after he left a woman to die in his car and RAN AWAY. I for one dont give a rats arse that he is dead
I know I’m supposed to be more gracious to the dead, but I’m glad he’s gone. Not because of his politics, mind you, but because of Chappaquiddick. May God have mercy on his soul.
I guess I’ll be skipping the news tomorrow, and possibly for some time. Ugh!
I sincerely hope he gets to heaven a half hour before the devil knows he’s dead.
Personally, I think he’ll need the head start.
Kennedy IMO was the most calamitous politician this country has seen in my lifetime.
Edward Kennedy did an enormous amount of damage during his life. It would have been better that he had never lived. Senator Kennedy often inadvertently hurt those he wanted to help. But I am not God. We mere humans cannot judge his soul. Kennedy inarguably had good intentions.
We must now make sure that Barack Obama does not use Kennedy’s death to push his health care proposals through Congress. They remain senseless and destructive. It would be foolish to turn them into the laws of the land out of some warped sense of “honoring the passing of Senator Kennedy.” The country is still suffering from the welfare legislation resulting from paying homage to the memories of John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Let’s not make things worse.
Sleep easy now, Mary-Jo. Finally.
The man was a murderer and the only reason he spent the rest of his life in the Senate instead of in prison was because his last name was Kennedy.
Under the health-care plan he was so determined to pass, Senator Kennedy would have received “end of life” counseling instead of the (expensive) treatments which allowed him to fight off the brain cancer for over three years.
In 1998, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, at age 84. She was given six months to live. Under her employees’ retirement health care system, she received essentially hospice care. She died three months after the diagnosis.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most dangerous types. However, if it is diagnosed early and proper treatment is applied in a timely manner, it has a relatively low mortality rate.
Unfortunately, my mother’s health care did not want to pay for routine screenings for such things. Using essentially the same “cost/benefit analyses” that would be applied to all of us… under the plan Senator Kennedy and the President advocated.
The experiences of my mother, and Senator Kennedy, should tell you all you need to know about the efficiency of “fairness” and “nationalized health care” over the sort available to, well, U.S. Senators.
Of course, Senator Kennedy was a longtime advocate of disarming the American people, as well. While employing what amounts to a private army of “security officers”, all armed, many with criminal records, and some of whom were noted for routinely and stupidly violating existing “gun control” laws (like the infamous incident in which one tried to enter the Capitol Building with an Uzi SMG under his coat- this was long before 9/11). Add in his support for the IRA going back to the 1970s, and it could charitably be said that Senator Kennedy had no real objection to people having guns- as long as he, personally, got to pick the people who would have them.
Then, of course, there was his longstanding support for practically any dictator or revolutionary he could find, as long as they were at least ostensibly Marxist. Whether it was Castro or Qaddafi, Allende or Ortega, he didn’t care what they did, to us or their own people, as long as they had a clever quote from Marx or Engels to justify it. More recently, he was cheer-leading for Chavez and Zelaya. Senator Kennedy was apparently only interested in “democracy” if it had the word “people’s” tacked on in front of it.
I agree that Senator Kennedy was the “liberal lion of the Senate”. I simply maintain that he also represented everything that is dark and ugly at the core of modern American “liberalism”.
clear ether
eon
I don’t care if this does seem callous, but this is a great day for America…
Is this the only way to get rid of the stink in washington?
“Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, known as Ted or Teddy, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent a successful brain surgery soon after that.”
So his brain surgery netted no more than 15 months of extra life. I can only wonder what his chances of getting this stay of execution would have been under Obamacare’s calculus of death?
I didn’t have a single good thing to say about the man when he was alive, so I’m not going to start just because he’s dead. But I won’t continue to pile it on anymore, either. He’s dead. The evil he’s done on this Earth is over.
Mary Jo
It is totally disgusting that he was respoinsible for the death of Mary Jo and walked away clean from the law.
You or I would still be rotting in jail
Something tells me if Mary Jo had escaped from that car despite his apathy and negligence, she wouldn’t give a damn about Ted’s work as a legislator.
Well, Obama has tried everything else to shove this horrific ObamaCare down our throats so he might as well further diminish himself by trying to captilize on Kennedy’s death.
But that still won’t address what has Americans most concerned. That is, Obama’s constant lying, staggering arrogance, dangerous narcissism and astounding incompetence.
Obama clearly wants to put as much of the private economy under government control as possible to create his nanny state utopia where he is the boy king.
Let’s continue to stand strong against Obama in every way and get Congress out of the hands of Pelosi and Reid in 2010.
Obama is a smug, smirking con man. Nothing more
When I said the piece on ABC news and how they associated the health care reform to Ted kennedy’s death, I wanted to scream. The liberal media at it again. Who is running these programs and brain washing Americans into thinking that we can afford Healthcare for ALL Americans. They are delusional. But the sad fact is that people actually listen to the mainstream media; they are like the rats following the pied piper.
God took his sweet time ridding us of this creeep.
I wonder what sin the contry committed to deserve watching Ted Kennedy live high and mighty as his HMO monster killed thousands…
Kennedy did such damage to the contry from 1962 on thar everyone shames their credibility in praising him. How can anyone trust Joe Scarbourgh to defend the country, the people or the constitution if he is goinf to praise a man like Ted Kennedy>? Just a quick review:
For a hundred years Republicans were trying to get voting rights and civil rights when it came through it was so poisoned that Berry Goldwarer could not vote for it and it nullified the antigerrymanddering provisions of 49 state constitutiion so that in 1972 after the greatest defeat in history the democrat contrrol extended to impeaching Richard Nixon and cuttig off supplies to South Vietnam snatching defeat from the 1073 victory and killing over three million indochinees.
in 1966 repealing the immigration controls that were put into place in the nineteen twentids.
Going beyound his jonor term is just boo much for a comment.
The wicked old liberal of the East is dead!
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
No matter what the crime
But if indeed you own ‘em
They’re not released by time
A crime done while drunk driving
Is crime still after all
Compounded by conniving
To cover up the fall
Into the cold dark water
With passenger inside
A mother’s loving daughter
On Teddy’s drunken ride
Oh yes he claimed his sorrow
He sobbed with feigned remorse
But that was on the morrow
The fix would run its course
The Senate’s elder lion
Was Camelot’s last fling
The last surviving scion
Of Joe the bootleg king
Who gets him now’s a mystery
Whose afterlife will own him
We’ll leave it up to history
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
Ted Kennedy never saw a Tax he didn’t like.
The Ted Kennedy I remember most, aside from the TV accounts of his survival and Mary Jo’s death and his boozing episodes, was when he “spoke” to a trade group meeting I attended in the 1980s. He was difficult to understand, since articulation wasn’t only fuzzy, it was delivered at a midrange bellow or worse. When done, he was red-faced, bloated and a caricature of Senator Phoghorn.
For us in Russia communism is a dead dog, while, for many in the West it is still a living lion. Alexander Solzhentsyn
Why do we wait so long to open the comments on this article?
“…countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar”
WS 400 years ago
Steve,
“Why do we wait so long to open the comments on this article?”
It wasn’t deliberate. There was some sort of bug that had temporarily hosed all the comments on this blog for much of the week. Thankfully, the problem seems to be solved.
“But before he died, Sen. Kennedy had asked Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law to give Gov. Deval Patrick, a fellow Democrat, the ability to appoint an interim successor.”
Nothing could highlight better the fact that Kennedy for all his years in the Senate had no desire what-so-ever to serve the People than this. In 2004 when there was a Republican Governor in Mass. he argued to change the law to take the power of appointment of a successor away from the Governor, he said the power should reside with the people through a special election. Then before he dies, when there is a Democrat Governor, he want the law changed back to give power back to the Governor of the state.
This man did not serve the people, he served the party and the people where lemmings to be manipulated in his mind. The shear fact that he was able to stay in office for 40+ years proves that he was largely correct than he was a grand manipulator.
Sad that a nation thinks it necessary to honor him in such a way, a man which proved till the end that he did not serve them, but rather the democratic party.
And a burial at Arlington?
One good thing about Teddy finally going to his reward, which, if there is any justice, will be a one way trip to hell, is the fact that it highlights what a bunch of moral and mental midgets the next generation of Kennedys are.
Also, maybe, althought it is doubtful, just maybe, the people of the Peoples Republic of Massachusetts will now prove they are not serfs of the Kennedy Fief by voting for someone not named Kennedy or supported by the Kennedy Clan.
And so the socialist-left in our country, including Obama, will rename the Obama health plan to include what they believe is a bonus; calling it maybe the Obama-Kennedy health care plan.
What joy. This is certain to more quickly kill the Obama health care bill, which is already dying (favored by less than 43% of Americans and falling), by the obviously shameful association of the Ted Kennedy name with Chappaquiddick.
New name for Obamacare now Chappaquiddick-care. You need healthcare and the Obamaites turn and run away leaving you to die. In honor of Ted Kennedy????
Ted Kennedy: Chappaquiddick Incident
Senator Edward Kennedy’s name will be forever blighted by the incident at Chappaquiddick Island where an aide to his brother died in his car.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6094161/Ted-Kennedy-Chappaquiddick-Incident.html.
How appropriate for the always forever misguided socialist Barrack Hussein Obama and his communist minions.
” His logic…was deniable”.
He voted in the late 60′s to TAX social security…I will not forget it…
Ted is Dad. There is A GOD. I lay here disabled at 46 years of age. I’ve had two orthopedics surgeries in the last 25 days. I am now able to use my left arm and my right hand is starting to work. Thank god obama-care has not passes yet. As I lay here I have been having dreams of hearing that ted K has died. Now I know when I go to meet my maker all I have is one question and if you cannot lie in this place then show me both directions, the question is, which way is the senator Ted Kennedy, I will know then, to follow the opposite path and that will lead me to eternal peace.