"For those who remember, there's no forgiving the incident that took the life of Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign aide left to drown in the waters of Chappaquiddick Island. The moment embodied an era that was mercifully ending. For a long time a rich and powerful man in the public eye could reasonably expect that women would simply be playthings, and that private sins would remain just that: private. That was changing in 1969. Feminism was moving toward the mainstream, and the image of a Kennedy leaving a woman to drown seemed to epitomize the inequality of the sexes. But always Kennedy managed to muddle through and even grow in stature, to become known as a Great American. Some Americans—men and women—are infuriated by this. If you're not sympathetic to Kennedy's politics, you'll note that he had a staggeringly privileged life, and got away with something he shouldn't have. It's easy to tally his other failings. In 1980, when he ran for president, his wife Joan dutifully stood by his side, but it was clear from her body language that the marriage was in trouble, and soon after the campaign ended, so did the marriage. Joan was one of many political wives who have been subjected to the humiliation of publicly pretending to be in a loving marriage that was a sham. Kennedy was a rogue, and his escapades, fueled by alcohol, were well documented. He was single through much of the '80s and into the '90s, and his risky behavior blew up on him one night in Palm Beach, Fla., when a bout of drinking ended with his nephew William Kennedy Smith being charged with date rape. A sensational trial followed, after which Smith was acquitted. But there was no escaping that Kennedy, the scion of the family, had damaged himself further. Even he knew it, saying at one point that he recognized "the faults in the conduct of my private life."So you would think, but....
"For some women, reverence for Kennedy stopped with Chappaquiddick. The rest of us have a very different view: Kennedy had the gift of time to make amends, and we were the beneficiaries of that.”Let's just call feminism dead at this point, all the credibility - what little there was - is now gone. Technorati Tags: Ted Kennedy
August 30, 2009
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Liberal Madness
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