Ted, Finally at Peace
Believe it or not, I actually had a couple of friends (no doubt the only people reading this drivel) express shock that I hadn’t weighed in on the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. My buddy Feats McGee went so far as to call into question my manhood. “No balls,” I believe were his exact words. Now, Feats spends enough time using phrases like that when he watches me tee off (you golfers out there will get the reference), so I didn’t need him busting my family jewels when it came to political writing. But the criticism is valid concerning the Senator. Back in the day when I was doing these little pieces for the high school and college papers, I regularly took shots at the man known simply, as Ted. I thought he was an overbearing blowhard who drank too much, screwed around too much, lived off the Kennedy name and embarrassed the office of United States Senator. The guy was the original Teflon! He survives cheating on a Harvard exam, the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, being his nephew’s own personal pimp, etc. I mean, let’s be honest; if you didn’t know the guy, you would swear he’d been the pledge-master at Delta House and the United States Senate was his own personal fraternity. And none of the above has anything to do with politics. It’s pretty safe to say that the Senator’s political philosophy and mine were polar opposites. I remember hammering his “The Dream Will Never Die” speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention. I wrote something youthful and mildly tasteless about Mary Jo and Camelot dying but the rest of us being stuck with Ted. Then there was his speech against Judge Robert Bork during Bork’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. A self-absorbed speech laced with falsehoods that would make Pete Rose blush. So I can understand why some out there were a little curious why I had let this pretty momentous occasion go by without so much as a "Rest in Peace". Part of the reason, for me anyway, was obvious. You couldn't open a paper or a magazine without reading about him. And there were no shortage of television specials, as well. I figured there wasn't a whole lot, if anything, that I could offer. Having said that, isn't it a little embarrassing as a country that there was galactically more crap written about that idiot Michael Jackson than a United States Senator who (love him or hate him) served for 43 years?
But as hard as it is to believe, I grew to like the Senator. Not his policies, which I think were wrong and sometimes dangerous, nor the whole Camelot myth, which couldn’t die fast enough for me. I started to appreciate his hard work and his genuine wish to do good (however wrongheaded I thought his means to those ends were). I think part of that had something to do with my maturation process, as well as the Senator’s. He seemed to like himself and the people around him more, during the last decade or so of his life. His work ethic can never be questioned during the last 25 years, and based on anything you read he was a well-respected and well-liked member of the Senate (not an easy task in that ego-driven club.
You could argue that the turning point was losing to Carter in the 1980 primary; you could argue it was the realization that the country was never going to be as liberal as he was. Or maybe it was the self-described peace and contentment he attributed to his second marriage. I haven’t the first clue. But I am persuaded by George Will’s assessment: “He lived his own large life and the ledger shows a positive balance.” Rest in peace, Ted.
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