There will be a tribute for Ted Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention tonight. It seems only right and proper that we should also remember one of Ted Kennedy’s victims, Mary Jo Kopechne. Read about her below and see photos and a video.
The democrats are preparing quite a show in Denver for the next few days. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to put on the show. Hollywood stylists, script writers, film makers, actors, television personalities, lighting experts and who knows who else, have all been enlisted to create the production. It will be grand, indeed.
On tonight’s schedule is a Tribute to Ted Kennedy. Senator Edward Kennedy is referred to as the ‘Lion of the Senate’. He is the patriarch of the Kennedy family and is credited with making it possible for Barack Obama to be where he is today as the democratic nominee for the presidency.
As everyone knows, Teddy Kennedy has been diagnosed with brain cancer and has not been seen around much. But we hear that he and his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, have made their way to Denver and will attend the DNC National Convention tonight for his tribute. Everyone is gushing about it. Film maker Ken Burns has produced a short film for the occasion. One woman gushed that there won’t be a dry eye in the house. A man gushed that he is a great senator and has dedicated his life for the good of the country. Words like ‘courageous’, ’statesman’, ‘leader’, ‘American icon’, ‘legend of the political left’, are used to describe him. Gushing tributes all around.
People talk about what a difficult life he has had. Could someone PLEASE explain that to me? What difficult life? I realize he’s had some deaths in his family, but who hasn’t? He was born with unlimited money and power and has used it throughout his life to get whatever he wants and to avoid responsibility for any of his behavior.
He has enough power and money that he was able to get the Pope to give him an annulment from his wife of many years and the mother of his children, thus, ensuring his path to heaven …. at least as far as his divorce and remarriage is concerned.
He has enough money and power that when Mary Jo Kopechne died in his car, he could come up with a far-fetched story claiming he couldn’t save her in 5 feet of water even though he was able to swim 500 feet across the channel. He didn’t report the crime until a day or so later. He not only didn’t spend a moment in jail, he kept his seat in the Senate and has been re-elected to the Senate repeatedly every since. All he had to do was put a neck brace on and go before the American people and talk about how her death affected HIM and all was forgiven.
Sorry folks, but his name is forever linked with the name of Mary Jo Kopechne. I suppose he has enough money and power that those around him choose to believe his every utterance, choose to speak of him in grandiose terms and choose to forget that he has lived a life of exceptional cowardice, gluttony, narcissism, immorality, dishonesty, childishness and self-promotion.
Take a moment and read (or listen to) his speech after he left Mary Jo Kopechne to die in his submerged car on Chappaquiddick Island. Read what he has to say in his own words, with a neck brace around his neck for good effect and see why there are those who haven’t forgotten his history and don’t view him as the great statesman he would like to be his legacy. Just because he’s lived longer than some, doesn’t make him a better person.
By his own statement, he and his family had participated in the sailing event on the island for 30 years, yet he accidentally drove off the bridge because it was dark and the bridge has an odd angle to it. He’s driven the roads on the island for 30 years, yet he’s not familiar enough to navigate them.
He was comforting Ms. Kopechne and other Kennedy campaign secretaries because they were so upset over the death of Robert Kennedy. That’s all. Nothing more. His wife would have been there, but she wasn’t feeling well.
And, he adds, he doesn’t like the fact that people implied he might have been driving drunk or conducting himself in an immoral manner! He had been at the party and had simply been comforting these ‘girls’ and was simply giving Mary Jo Kopechne a ride.
His conduct and statements over the few hours after he allowed Ms. Kopechne to drown in his car is simply inexplicable. He says he can’t explain it because he doesn’t remember it. His doctors told him it was shock. Yet, he can tell us how he felt as the water rushed into the car, how he got to the surface and how he repeatedly dove down to try to rescue Ms. Kopechne until he thought he would drown again.
He remembers clearly that he walked back to the party and got his cousins and friends to come help him. The only reason he told them not to tell anyone else was because he didn’t want to scare the other ‘girls’ who were friends of Ms. Kopechne. His only concern was for them.
He had been much too exhausted to rescue the ‘girl’ he was escorting, but for some inexplicable reason, he dove back into the water, swam across the 500 foot channel, walked to his hotel and slept till the next morning.
The next morning he called his family attorney who convinced him to report the accident. This was after some fishermen had reported to the police that they had seen a car upside down and submerged in the water.
That all makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If he says it, it must be true.
The one thing in the speech that rang true, he said:
This last week has been an agonizing one for me and for the members of my family, and the grief we feel over the loss of a wonderful friend will remain with us the rest of our lives.
It was all about him. Awfully inconsiderate of Mary Jo Kopechne to die in his car like that and leave him to have to salvage his marriage and career.
The diver who retrieved Ms. Kopechne’s body from Senator Kennedy’s automobile said that she had survived the crash and had round an air bubble in the car. She had lived, breathing that air bubble, until the air was gone. Then she drowned.
Joan Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s wife, attended Mary Jo Kopechne’s funeral with him. The dutiful wife stood by his side. She miscarried a baby a few days later. Of course we’re told that one of those things didn’t have anything to do with the other. By the time Kennedy paid the Vatican for his annulment from Joan, she was broken, kept from view and drowning herself in alcohol. Another one of Ted Kennedy’s victims?
Ted Kennedy will be honored by the democrats tonight. Its only fitting that his victims are remembered as well.
August 25th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
check out this site on teddy by Howie Carr a noted journalist and radio show host in boston
http://fatboy.cc/index.htm
August 25th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
and the obligatory
“mary jo was not available for comment on this post.”
the libs are all about their faux heroes.
August 25th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Good thing this happened or he might have been PRESIDENT (gulp!). Does this make Mary Jo a HERO? Mary Jo, hero–great rhyme.
August 25th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Kate – its sad that the best the dems can come up with for a hero is Teddy Kennedy. They obviously have a lack of heroes in their party.
Edward – I don’t know what kind of person Mary Jo was or would have been. She never had a chance to live long enough for anyone to find out. She met Edward Kennedy.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
ed here’s the deal.
mary jo was someone’s hero. i bet she meant the world to her parents and others who loved her as well.
she was a faithful democrat. hardworking. bought the party line. but obviously she wasn’t very valuable was she ed?
instead of herorism from teddy — fighting to save her at his own peril, she was left to die while a coward ran away worried about his own sorry skin.
i wondered if anyone in that convention hall tonite even though of mary jo as uncle teddy waddled to the podium.
i sure did.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
[...] [...]
August 26th, 2009 at 7:04 am
[...] many however, he will be most remembered for his involvement not in the Senate but rather over the Chappaquiddick incident in which his name will forever be linked to the 1969 death of a young campaign worker [...]
August 27th, 2009 at 3:29 am
not once was he remorseful for his actions — not once; I hope he’s enjoying hell.
August 29th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Most writers have the essential component of the Kennedy-Chappaquiddick saga wrong. The knee-jerk Kennedy haters call him a “murderer”. The facts indicate otherwise. Murder ~ NO! Manslaughter ~ probaby YES!
Mary Jo Kopechne did NOT drown. She in fact suffocated. The woman perished while trapped in the submerged Oldsmobile sedan while under water in a dark tidal pond. It was long ago figured that Kopechne survived for at least an hour or more after the crash by breathing from an air pocket. No matter how it’s sliced, that has to be a tough way to die.
With a little detective work it has been figured that the real Chappaquiddick story was fundamentally different from the extensive lie promoted by Kennedy himself. Facts strongly suggest that Kopechne disappeared from the party at an earlier time. She’d mentioned to more than one person that cigarette smoke and the stuffy atmosphere at the cottage were making her feel ill. It was figured that Mary Jo Kopechne after making her way outside, found the unlocked Oldsmobile 4-door sedan, laid down across the back seat and fell asleep. There was no conspiracy or plot involved. It was a matter of simple happenstance.
Later that night, the routinely drunk Teddy Kennedy left the party with another woman, got behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile and aimed the car in the direction of the beach road. Kennedy, with one other person in the front and another laying down on the back seat only made it as far as the narrow Dike Bridge. With his driving skills impaired, Kennedy lost control and drove the car off the bridge and into the Chappaquiddick – Poucha tidal pond.
Perhaps it was the cold ocean water that helped Kennedy sober up enough to escape along with the front seat passenger. It is held that at the time, Kennedy did not know that another person was in the rear of the car. He made it back on foot to a point where contact was made with political minions. Somehow, the operatives got Kennedy over to the main island of Martha’s Vineyard, where he was checked into a motel. Records later showed that numerous phone calls were made back and forth from Kennedy’s room telephone during the night. He was later seen, in the early morning, having breakfast at the restaurant while casually chatting with other guests.
Meanwhile, sometime after dawn with the receding tide, police discovered a partially exposed Oldsmobile sedan next to the bridge. Upon closer examination, the body of a young woman was found in a corner area near the rear window of the car. Artificial respiration, as it was known then, was carried out, but Mary Jo Kopechne could not be revived. Noticed at the time, was that no water could be found in the woman’s lungs. Early on, it was figured that Kopechne had not drowned but instead had suffocated. Despite Massachusetts state law in such a case, no autopsy was ever performed on Mary Jo Kopechne’s body to discover the true cause of death.
Kennedy’s later contrived story had him at the risk of his own life “diving repeatedly in an effort to save Miss Kopechne”. At the time, innumerable Massachusetts residents, including me, were outraged. Political stooges had taken depraved actions of the drunk miscreant Teddy Kennedy and spun the homicidal debacle into a performance of heroism.
Despite all, the contemptible Kennedy was elected again and again to the United States Senate by the people of Massachusetts. To this day, I have been unable to find anybody who even admits to having voted for Kennedy. In life and now death Theodore Edward Kennedy was on every level, a despicable human being. Hopefully through the sobering light of time, the actual facts will be accurately weighed.
In the meantime, the entire federal election system along with congress and senate requires a good strong enema. This nation needs to return to the procedure of a true representative republic operated on actual democratic principles. Perhaps with Kennedy’s final flush through the sewer pipe of history, that much needed cleansing can now begin.
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Get real! That family has suffered more traumatic loss than any other you can name. Give it a rest neocon. Ted had his faults like anyone else and people in the public eye are held up to closer scrutiny than the rest of us;
People like you screech from their cyber perches and judge the public figures who have done countless selfless acts of good to their fellow man. What have YOU done lately besides criticize one of them? HMMM?
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Joe Kennedy taught his boys. They learned well. John – cheated on his wife. Robert cheated on his wife. Teddy – drunk most of the time cheated on his wife. Well done Joe. Your boys listened, learned well and upheld the Kennedy name. Camelot – I think not. More like Drunk-a-lot with their own belief in their greatness. John and Bobby became greater in death than they ever could have in life. Teddy proved how they would all end. Drunk and shaming the very hand that financially fed their lives…the American Public. Not wishing anyone dead – but America is a safer place now that the Clan is no longer with us. God bless America.