Sen. Ted Kennedy dies
 

U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy dies at 77 - Capitol Hill- msnbc.com

The Kennedy family has always been surrounded by unfortunate circumstances. Whatever contributions Sen. Ted Kennedy has made will always be marred, in my mind, by the Kopechne incident. I could never get past that.

I wonder how many times he will get called, a Liberal Lion, in the next few weeks.

I've already seen this phrase a few times and I've known of his death for under 10 minutes.

Sorry for the threadjack... I just thought it was odd.

I hope this can somehow knock loose the impasse on healthcare in the US.

I'm sure the whole chappaquickdick[sic] incident would have ended differently if he had a cellphone to call for help. It was an odd moment and I'm sure panic really determined his actions that night and not some kind of malicious intent.

Ted, you were my favorite Kennedy, You did so much for this Country. RIP.

He lived a life to be proud of.

He was 77 years old... how old does someone have to be before it is no longer a "tragedy"?

This is not an unfortunate circumstance... he was old. Old people die, that is what they do, hell, I am looking forward to it myself one day.

You're the only one that said tragedy.

I do believe Grancy was talking about him not reporting his accident in which someone was killed as the unfortunate circumstance.

Another politician dead. He led a long life, good for him. Not everyone gets to.

I'm moving on.

RIP, funny man.

:( I think he ended on the plus side of the karma scale. RIP, Ted.

crap.

first michael jackson now this. does it make me a bad person if i dont fucking care? because i dont.

my sentiments exactly...

For me the Kopechne tragedy is something I can't forget, but in the overall checks/balances scheme of our government and life, Ted Kennedy played an important role and like jewels said, I also put him on the plus side. His death also reminds me of how the Kennedy family's political power has changed from the time JFK, RFK, and TK were all on the top rungs of political power.

There was a young Senator from Mass,
Who tried to get himself some ass,
But before he could pound her,
The fool went and drowned her,
And so his future became past!

(see on a men's room stall in Hyannis, MA)

Well, the inevitable has finally happened.

At least I know what will be on local TV for the nest week or two, Kennedy retrospectives.

RIP Mary Jo Kopechne.

Ted Kennedy appeared to truly care about social change in the US.

RIP, Senator.

Rest in peace, Ted. I disagreed with your politics about as much as I agreed with them, but you always stood up and fought like hell for what you believed. For that, you earn my respect. As for that..."other thing"...well, let's just say that that's now all so much water under the bridge? You can take all of that up with Mary Jo now. As was mentioned earlier, you came out ahead on the kharma scale.

lol, you guys are terrible.

Er ... I really don't know who ted kennedy was so ... yeah I really don't care.

If we held all of our politicians (instead of just the ones we don't like) responsible for the deaths they've caused the world might be a better place.

Jeez, filtherton. If we did that our jails would be riddled with them. I dont know that we could call the House to session in the Big House.

besitos to you Ted. I loved you.

:lol:

http://www.jasoncoleman.com/Media/Images/tedvwsmall.jpg

Vigilante, ROFL! That's such poor taste. I love it.

Hehe. I was thinking to myself "too soon?" but fuck it. I was rolling so I had to post it.

I didn't like Ted Kennedy, either for his politics or his personal life.

However, when I take everything about him into consideration, all I can say is that for the rest of my life whenever I hear the word "Senator" my first image will be Ted Kennedy. Both the good and the bad.

Ted only outlived Eunice by a couple of weeks or so.
I'd rather mourn her for her contributions, than his.

RIP, Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

He was certainly loved by many and had an extraordinary life dedicated to public service. With the family he came from, he could have done anything but chose to make the lives of others better.

He made mistakes but that is life. I think sometimes those critical of him and others of achievement are so because they have done nothing, and certainly have never made mistakes.

I for one will mourn Ted Kennedy. The Chappaquidic thing was a long time ago, and it was a different time, and he was a different man.

Ted Kennedy was a great senator. He fought for civil rights, for people's right to education, for their right to vote, for their right to have affordable health care, and many other rights. He was a supporter of art, culture, and tolerance, and was a lifelong Catholic who nonetheless stood for a firm separation between church and state.

His strengths were professional and very public, and his flaws were personal, and mostly private.

He worked his entire career with professional integrity, a willingness to cross party lines and compromise, and a willingness to forego political glory in order to achieve necessary results. What is more, he always stood up for what he believed in, even when it was not popular. More than his party, more than his career, more than the dollar value of his campaign war chest, Ted Kennedy loved and tried to serve the People of the United States of America.

I wouldn't wager even one dollar that there is a senator left seated right now of whom the same could be said.

May his memory be a blessing.

I despair for my co-workers, here in England.

When talking about this news, I joked "I hear he's to be buried at sea off a bridge", and not one of them knew it was a joke.

QFT. It was interesting today, listening to Orrin Hatch talk about Ted Kennedy. It says a lot that he was able to form such strong friendships with people he disagreed with so vehemently. He was a great politician from a time long gone, and they really don't come like that anymore.

He's been physically dead to me since they diagnosed his tumor. He's been politically dead to me since Jimmy Carter whooped his ass in 1980. And he's been non-existent to me since Chappaquiddick.

Amazing how someone so apparently worthless could, at the same time, be one of the most influential senators in American history and one of the most respected as well, on both sides of the aisle.

I apologize. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to form my own opinion about the man.

Nothing wrong with forming your own opinion, I'm just saying it wasn't very constructive. Forming your own opinion doesn't mean no one will challenge it ;) If all Ted Kennedy was is the way you summarized his life, the response to his death would be quite different from what it actually is. Dislike the guy all you want, but that doesn't make his accomplishments and stature - most of which has come after 1980 - go away.

I summarized what Kennedy meant "to me," and I think the keyphrase in my original post was "to me." I said it three times - "to me." How is that challengeable? I didn't say anything about what Kennedy meant to the Senate, or what Kennedy meant to the grand scheme of American political history, or what he meant to any segment of society. I summarized what he meant "to me," which was not much.

Since when are opinions sacred? Geez. You're challenging SM's opinion on your opinion by claiming that opinions shouldn't be challenged.

I just said it was how I feel, and SM said it was challengeable. How do you challenge how someone feels? I never liked Ted Kennedy, and I don't like the Rolling Stones or chicken salad, either. How do you challenge that? Tell me that I'm wrong, and I actually do like them?

I'd say you never had my grandmother's chicken salad and that if you'd tried a few other recipes, you might have found some you could tolerate. And the Rolling Stones are an iconic band with sounds that stretch far into various genres of music and that if you sat down to listen to more of their stuff you might find something you like.

See what I did there?

You are so my hero.

it's kinda strange reading this thread.

to remain vaguely on topic at the outset, i live in massachusetts these days: local media are all over this like white on rice. so i'm already vaguely irritated about the spectacle. on aesthetic grounds, because of it's bizarre-o mix of the maudlin and tastelessness.

but it also turns out that i have alot of friends who knew ted kennedy as an actual human being and for them, and others who knew him in real life, and his family, it's hard not to feel sympathy. in the way one feels sympathy for any actual human beings who pass through this aspect of the cycle of things.

as for people's relations to the imaginary teddy kennedys, their own private tks, the one they cobble together from interacting with various spaces of grouphate, which has been a cottage industry in conservative circles for years and years--i hope you're having fun with it.
but what are you going to do now that your imaginary tk is gone?
it must be like losing a favorite toy, one of those you liked to hit and throw around and get mad at. i would expect that folk might be a little sad about this turn of events--for themselves of course, because obviously having an imaginary tk to punch about and dispise is all about the people doing the hitting.

i don't say this out of any sense of moral outrage. i just think the construction of the imaginary tk as Villian non-pareil by the right has been an odd thing. people like having Villians around, i suppose. they help provide a sense of direction, of purpose.

Sorta like the way certain groups did all Iran-contra all the time when Reagan died, I suppose..........

i dunno, sir. i don't remember seeing quite the same level of Officially Sanctioned Vitriol when reagan died.
maybe i wasn't looking in the right places.
it's possible.

speaking for myself, i detested the reagan administration.
but it never occurred to me to piss all over his image at the time his death.
you'd think it'd be easy at some moments to separate media-image from human being somewhere behind it.
but hey, maybe these are just my personal limitations.
and maybe because of them i missed out on some fun.
it's happened before.

RB, I'm surprised you don't see the vitriol on your side of the aisle, so to speak. I find myself posting less and less in politics-related forums because I increasingly find that my interlocutors (of any stripe) are unable to understand that there is such a thing as a legitimate alternative point of view that isn't immoral/stupid/bought/evil/[insert epithet here]. The level of discourse is increasingly at the level of "you guys are poopyheads, yay for my team" - without noticing or even acknowledging that the things the alleged poopyheads are doing are also being done by the speaker's ideological allies.

I see no reason to subject myself to vilification over my political views, most of which I think are pretty reasonable, well-thought-out, and often unacceptable to many members of either of our political parties (being suspicious of those who want or have authority and power can do that, you know). I have no desire to be regularly called anarchist or authoritarian (yes, I have been called both, though never by the same person - yet). But one thing this experience does leave me with is the knowledge that there is more than enough nastiness out there to go around. (and you might be surprised to learn that my impression is that lefties are nastier, and with less provocation, but it's only by degrees.)

As for Ted Kennedy, well, let's face it, he did manage to get into the position he was in, and got away with things he shouldn't have gotten away with, merely because of his family. I don't find that immoral - you take your opportunities in life, that's how things are. The lying and sanctimony were annoying, but again, he's a politician, so I'm not sure we should expect all that much different. And we should give him his due: over the years he became very very good at his job -- all the evidence is that he knew how to be a Senator, including all the dealmaking and constituent service, as well as or better than anyone else. If you tell me he was well-regarded by friends and family I'll take your word for it, but that's not terribly informative of how to evaluate his public life, is it? I mean, I'm sure Leonid Brezhnev and Augusto Pinochet both had loving families and adoring friends, but we wouldn't evaluate them based on that, would we? The adulation is quite over the top, though. Maybe we idealize the Websters and Clays because of the glow of history, but it seems to me that Ted Kennedy just wasn't in that category.

Personally, I thought the two best presidents of my lifetime were Clinton and Reagan. But that's a subject for another post.

the vitriol i've definitely noticed. from all sides. my impression is that the root cause is that there's no agreement about premises, so there's little in the way of discussion, much less debate. it turns out that i haven't found much of anything compelling from cookie-cutter conservatism--but i know a bunch of folk who are conservatives with whom it's possible to have lovely conversations about any number of things including political questions. and i know alot of left people who are assholes.

in my experience, i've found it much harder to have a conversation with the more limbaugh-influenced conservatives that i know. there seems to be less room for integration of, say, personal experience or history and political viewpoints when folk adopt--it's more about repetition. you learn the script it seems. sometimes i listen to conservative talking heads for a while if i know i'm going to see any of these folk because i'm interested in the extent to which i will end up having already heard the conversation i'm in before it starts. it usually works out that i've heard quite alot of it. i find that depressing, and not just because i disagree with the politics. it's the lack of imagination that bugs me, really. that in a world as complicated as this you'd settle for that sort of thinking. i don't get it.

messageboard politics discussions can be interesting for the information and sometimes for what folk say, but at the same time i think they're spaces for folk to try things out at times--you know, float a line see what happens. so they can be pretty grim. especially if there's a contentious issue at hand and the discussion isn't going anywhere. and i'm not as into the game as i once was.

as for ted---i should say that i am among those people who personally isn't terribly moved one way or another about his death. i never had a particular interest in or committment to him as an image or person. i just didn't. chappaquidick didn't surprise or disillusion me--it's self-evident that there is a law for the wealthy and a law for everyone else. so it was an example amongst any number of them. around here, alot of folk really admired kennedy, shared alot of his views, thought he was a great senator. again, i was never particularly interested. call it a quirk.

at the same time, it's way way too easy to rehearse all the Officially Sanctioned Reasons Why Ted Kennedy Was A Bad Person. alot of the conservative talking heads that benumb these days got their start contributing to the construction of him as pinata for rightwingers.
it's tiresome.
it's offensive because it's tiresome.
and you couldn't do that nonsense around here because there are many folk around who knew the guy.
i was not one of them.

or it's tiresome because it's offensive. Depends on your angle of approach, I would imagine.

As for the Limbaugh people, I suspect they are more or less intellectually lazy -- he gives them, in an entertaining way, bite-sized nuggets to confirm their existing sentiments. It saves them having to do some work to think things through. In the final analysis the joke is on them because he really is an entertainer first and everything else second. He actually was kinda funny the couple of times I listened to him. But I sure wouldn't look to him or any other talk show host for reasoned, well-developed discourse.

There's plenty of intellectual laziness around on all sides, it's just that on the left it doesn't mainly come from talk radio, it comes from other sources. Again, a lot of this depends on where you look at what you're attuned to.

I'm so extremely impressed by all the great bills Ted passed while in Government. I believe he did alot for people less fortunate than himself and I am pleased so many other middle class and lower middle class people realize this also. It's impressive just how many have been lighting candles and saying good bye to him during this time while he is on his way to repose.

God bless Teddy and Peace to his Family.

Does ANYONE here ever think what an amazing country we could have become if John and Jack had not been asassinated? I'm old enough to remember them and the possiblities therein. I think the USA would have passed on several Wars we've had to endure (for nothing but dead kids) and become so hated worldwide.

John and "Jack" were one and the same. I assume that you meant his brother Bobby?

Er, ok...Bobby. Mea Culpa. I guess I did a boo boo there.

Thank you.

You were what, 8 at the time? Did you really make such an effort to wipe him from your memory banks at such a young age?

I was an incredibly astute 8-year old. I still am.

I'm sure that you were an incredible something at 8 years old...and still are. I'm not sure that "astute" is the adjective that I'd have chosen. The first syllable perhaps. :D

Hey, old buddy, long time no see. How's yer sister? :suave:

Which one? I have two.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...istmas2002.jpg

Oh, yeah. Kennedy. Ummm, er uh, this picture was taken near the shore, but not where Mary Jo drowned. Different shore.

Nice eulogy by Obama this morning.

For something completely different...

Look, it's little Ted Kennedy...still in short pants.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...tedkennedy.jpg

nice camera he's got there. too.

Thanks, Ms. Media.

Your a peach.