Senator Ted Kennedy – 1932-2009 by R.J. Matson, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Buy this cartoon
“Kennedys Never Complain”
No observation by Joseph Kennedy Sr. had as much lasting influence as a similar dictum: “There’ll be no crying in this house.”
The “House” he had in mind, I am certain, was the House of Kennedy. He repeated this admonition to all of us, and he pronounced it with the force of moral law, and all of us absorbed its import and molded our behavior to honor it… To understand the profound authority of this charge to us is to understand much about my family.
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.
Well, it’s all over. The fat lady sang the aria, Coakley-the-patsy conceded and Dems lost Teddy’s seat to a Repuglican. Huh.
It’s bound to be gnarl after rehashed gnarl over at GOS for days, but I’ve hung out in Boston. I know Massachusetts. They love them some Kennedys, even Caroline could’a won this hands-down, they (with Rahm still calling shots, don’t bet he’s not still got his tentacles everywhere) ran the weakest they could find. And lost, as they intended to do all along.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I LIKE my government divided. It’s just that after GWB, we were fairly desperate. So we gave them 2/3 in the House. 60 in the Senate. And the White House. After a year, we see how non-effective that was. So yeah. I’m back to my usual ‘House Divided’ screenplay, where they’re so crippled by their partisan bullshit that they accomplish nothing at all. Because sometimes it’s better to have nothing at all than anybody’s ridiculous partisan agenda.
Wow. Just wow, since it’s so absolutely mind-boggling they could have lost Kennedy’s seat. I know that nothing in politics happens by accident, and I’m highly suspicious of coincidence across the board. What does this mean for November???!
National attention is focus on the Ted Kennedy seat erection. Yes, I said erection because stifling government and sending a negative message to Mr. war monger peace prize recipient is appropriate. Beyond that the video says it all.
I get complaints. Alot of complaints about not staying “on topic”. It is part and parcel of an attempt to report the death of the empire. This amounts of just about every human action being deliberately turned into something self destructive by the power that be.
Back in August, barely 2 months ago, Senator Hatch (R-UT), displayed a graciousness and a spirit of bipartisanship, rarely seen among the Party of NO.
Senator Orrin Hatch on Ted Kennedy’s Life
The Situation Room — Aug 26, 2009
BLITZER: […] the issue that was the most important to him, health care for the American people, you were — you’re a member of the Finance Committee. […] And since this was so important to your good friend, Senator Kennedy, I’ll ask you directly, Senator Hatch — are you willing to get back into those negotiations with the Democrats right now in memory — in honor of Senator Kennedy?
You know how important health care reform was for your friend.
Like millions of my fellow citizens, I am reflecting after the death of Ted Kennedy. Death is an egocentric experience for the survivors. Indeed, rituals such as funerals, wakes or in the Jewish religion “sitting Shiva,” is really about nurturing the souls of those left behind. That is also true when it is a public figure or celebrity that has died. We may never have met them or knew them yet they touched us nonetheless. The Kennedy family understands this better than anyone and is well practiced in rituals that not only honor the dead but comfort the living.
Among all of his other accomplishments, Ted Kennedy can be remembered since Katrina and the federal flood happened as a legislator who proactively did what he could to help New Orleans’ and the rest of the Gulf Region’s people after the catastrophe.
In 1979-1980, Ted Kennedy made his one and only bid for the U.S. Presidency.
I have often wondered why Ted Kennedy did not just hold his fire until 1984, when there would’ve been no Democratic Party Incumbant President standing in his path to first overcome. But despite this, Kennedy did poll very well during 1979. And before he even declared his candidacy seemed to be the “frontrunner” in the race initially by a healthy margin. That is until he did an TV Interview in 1979 with Roger Mudd of CBS News.
In the interview, Kennedy neither made any “gaffes“, nor did he say say anything remotely as stupid as George W. Bush or Sarah Palin ever did. But yet the U.S. News Media succeeded anyway in manufacturing a controvesry by declaring and pontificating about how “Kennedy could not answer the simple question of why he wanted to be President.” As the news stories from many sources then ran wild on this meme, and later jokes by various comedians followed, Kennedy’s once promising Campaign, to put a genuine Liberal of true Integrity back into the White House and remake this Country, just evaporated away in a matter of a couple of weeks. By a few weeks later the polls had completely reversed and the renomination of Jimmy Carter was a foregone conclusion (and the Media was all too happy then to brand Ted Kennedy as “a loser“).
But a closer examination shows that Kennedy merely answered the question in a thoughtful, unhurried, intellectual manner — which had always been the style of the Kennedy brothers in many interview situations. Both John and Robert Kennedy would also often give slow, reflective, pensive, thoughtful responses to questioners in a variety of casual interview situations.
TED KENNEDY once said that his own legislative record was one he’d love to run against. A number of people tried, of course, and lost. But then, they weren’t Ted Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy spent 46 years in the Senate hewing pretty steadily to his course while others trimmed or just plain bailed out.
He remained committed to a brand of New Deal and postwar liberalism that, even when it had lost some of its luster and had run up against a conservative tide in politics, still had much to offer the country.
All right, I don’t fully grok what a DFH is in political terms. I only learned what those letters actually meant around 5 months ago.
But still.
No offense to anyone, but all the “do _____ to make Teddy proud!” touched something off in me.
I have to laugh (in sort of a double-entendre-like fashion) to think of what folks would tell others to do in my memory if I kicked the bucket. All this talk about Ted put me in a Tom Sawyer’s funeral kind of mood, you see.
Ok, want to read something insufferably pompous to a DFH like me?
Ted Kennedy was a flawed human being.
Well, who gets to judge that? The human being who has no flaws? And who might that be?
Sure wouldn’t be me. Can’t touch that, as MC Hammer once said.
Really. Fuck that shit. Seriously.
Me, I’d be happy for someone like … oh, Peter Guralnick, who wrote a two-volume biography of Elvis Presley — to write about Ted Kennedy’s life without that shit about being a flawed human being and moralizing.
His bio of Elvis was the kind of bio where you don’t judge at all because you’re so amazed by the story itself, and Guralnick doesn’t get in the way of that.
Anyway, barring some really talented biographer who actually knows the craft of biography, I’m not going to judge Ted Kennedy’s morality or personal life.
Not that I’m not curious … I’m as susceptible to gossip as anyone. Heh.
What a brilliant screen he was, though, for a certain generation of us to project our highest aspirations and watch them turn into mandalas of golden light.
(“Did you get a hit?”)
Maybe this isn’t a DFH eulogy, maybe it’s my attempt as a female to do a gonzo eulogy. Now that would be a laugh.
There’s been rumblings lately among some on the other side of the health care debate that neighbors should take care of each other, and I couldn’t agree more.
You see, Ted Kennedy was my neighbor. He was your neighbor, too.
When my two children were born with autism, a developmental disability, Ted Kennedy was there speaking out about the need for head start, a program that my son used to help him make eye contact and understand that he could communicate his needs with words, and not just with crying: http://www.tedkennedy.com/jour…
Today there will be a lot of looking back at the life of Senator Kennedy. There is a lot to look back upon there can be no doubt. Sen. Kennedy was a human, just like all of us, he had his faults, and he had his high points. What made him special is the time he put in for public service. It was the true idea of Noblesse Oblige. He came from power and wealth. He could have chosen a path where all he did was increase that wealth and live a fat, happy life. Instead he chose public service. He not only chose to serve but put as his guiding principal the idea someone had to stand up for the little man, the working folks of this nation who did not have the same benefits of wealth and family power.
