Ted Kennedy

As we are all aware by now, Massachussetts Senator Edward Kennedy has passed away at the age of 77. The coverage of his passing has been respectful to the point of nauseating. It is certain that politically he was a forced to be reconciled with and that he made fast friends with political opponents.

Senator Kennedy has been profiled as a champion of the "little guy" and a force for bipartisanship. I am not inclined to ascribe the state of American political discourse to him alone. Senator Kennedy did however contribute to the coarsening of political discourse, along with many others. His speech on the floor of the Senate opposing Robert Bork was an abomination. While one is free to judge the former Judge's legal opinion, Senator Kennedy took it further. He brutally assassinated Judge Bork's character by asserting that he would force women to have back alley abortions and would resegregate America. He was wrong in these statements and he knew it.

As for his championing the "little guy". At the risk of being insensitive, would a little guy have gotten away with no jail time if they had driven into a river,left the scene and left someone to drown? To be brief, as we know, Ted Kennedy drove his care into the Chappaquiddick River, fled the scene as Mary Jo Kopechne drowned inside the car. He did not report it to the authorities until ten hours later.

It is not my place or anyone else's to judge him in his passing, but we as a society are responsible for seeing that justice is served in the living world. There is no doubt that the family name and influence kept him out of jail and in the Senate. His sentence? Two months, suspended sentence. And he kept his day job.
If a "little guy" not named Kennedy had done the same? Well, I think we all know.

I sincerely hope that Ted Kennedy like all of us found peace and redemption and can rest peacefully for eternity. Principally he lived in service of his fellow man. His legacy would be far the more impressive if he had insisted that justice be served for the tragic demise of Ms. Kopechne.

Ted Kennedy should have gone to jail for manslaughter and been expelled from the Senate. We would've been deprived of forty more years in the Senate, but the Republic he loved and justice would have been better served for his absence.