September 4th / 6th, 2009
"Kennedy Shouldn’t be Lionized"
Those of us brought up in polite society are taught from an early age
never to speak ill of the dead. Besides, people who live in glass houses
shouldn’t throw stones at other folks, living or dead. But after watching
endless hours of tribute to the late Ted Kennedy, I was offended by the
lionization of an over grown frat boy who should have served his time not in the
Senate, but in prison.
Kennedy’s offenses are numerous beginning with his expulsion from Harvard
for cheating. Teddy, who was accepted to the University only because he was
a Kennedy, paid a friend to take an exam for him. But the expulsion didn’t
last long because daddy Joe had his baby son back in Cambridge two years
later. It would establish a life long pattern of how Ted used family
connections to fix his mistakes and keep him out of trouble. The most famous of
those incidents occurred in 1969.
After attending a party on Chappaquiddick island with women other than his wife,
Kennedy (who had been drinking) mysteriously left without his driver, and
got behind the wheel himself, saying he had to take Mary Jo Kopechne ( a
staffer to brother Bobby) back to her hotel. Not long afterwards, Kennedy
drove off of a bridge, and the couple found themselves trapped in their car
which was partially submerged in the pond below. Teddy swam to safety after
he claimed to have attempted unsuccessfully to rescue Kopechne. But instead
of calling for help, Kennedy returned to his hotel to begin crafting his
story. He did so with the help of a brain trust of close friends who he
called from the hotel. According to Sarah Gallick (aka Nellie Bly) in her
book “The Kennedy Men”, by 9am the Senator had placed seventeen long distance
calls to various individuals before calling the police. Over ten hours had
passed since he left his companion to die. And here’s the real tragedy.
Kopechne didn’t drown. According to testimony from John Farrar, the diver who
recovered Kopechne’s body, she had managed to survive by way of a small
air bubble in the submerged car, but her oxygen ran out after two hours. An
inquest later revealed that had Kennedy gone for help immediately, local
rescue workers would have had Kopechne out of the car within 25 minutes from
the time of the call. Teddy escaped with a suspended sentence for leaving
the scene of an accident when he should have been charged with murder and
sentenced to life in prison. But he was a Kennedy brother, and Kennedy
brothers don’t go to prison. Kopechne’s parents could have pursued a civil
action against the Senator, but Teddy paid them $90,000 and arranged for his
insurance company to chip in another $50,000. Case closed.
Teddy’s other offenses pale in comparison to the 1969 tragedy, but they do
provide insight on the continued and continual arrogance of the man. An
entry in H.R.Haldeman’s diary details a incident told to Henry Kissinger by
socialite Christina Ford. While attending the opening of the Kennedy Center
in Washington, D.C., Kennedy propositioned Christina to have sex with him
that night. She refused saying that the press would find out. Kennedy
replied, “the press will never touch me”.
Famed journalist Dominick Dunne, who passed away on the same day as
Kennedy, wrote of another incident which took place in 1972 at a Manhattan
debutante ball. Wrote Dunne, “young guests at the party were appalled by Teddy’s
tit and fanny pinching, and his drinking”.
And then there were the wild ‘80’s when Teddy and his drinking buddy,
Senator Chris Dodd did everything to just about everybody and got away with
it. Two famous incidents (reported by Michael Kelly in GQ, and detailed in
Andrew Clymer’s bio) took place at La Brasserie, a noted D.C. restaurant. On
one occasion, Kennedy grabbed a waitress half his size and threw her down
on the table, sending plates and cutlery all over the floor. Teddy then
threw her onto Dodd’s lap while Kennedy proceeded to forcibly rub his genital
area against hers. The other incident at La Brasserie occurred in 1987 when
a different waitress walked into a private room and found Kennedy with his
pants down on top of a young, blonde lobbyist. And the fun continued.
One night in 1991 while staying at the Kennedy retreat in Palm Beach,
Teddy took his son Patrick and nephew William Kennedy Smith out drinking. The
two young men picked up girls and the party moved back to the Kennedy
compound where Teddy walked around in nothing but a shirt. William took his “date”
to the beach where she claimed that he raped her. Before the tide had
changed, Teddy had his fixers start spreading dirt about the young woman,
setting in motion an eventual verdict of not guilty for William. And this,
despite the willingness of two other Smith victims (one a medical doctor) who
were willing to come forward about previous attempted rapes, but who were
not allowed to testify.
Given all these accounts of Teddy and the women with whom he had partied,
it’s not surprising that my only brush with the Lion of the Senate also
involved a Kennedy gal. Having worked on a number of public policy initiatives
in the early 1990’s, I was hired by the Democratic National Committee and
the White House to produce an educational video documentary about the
Social Security system. I completed the script, filmed all of the interviews,
and was readying to shoot my on camera introductions at the Dems studio in
D.C. when I received word that someone else would be anchoring the segments.
This seemed a bit unusual since I was hired in part because of my on camera
experience. I assumed that my replacement would be some high level
statesman, perhaps even President Clinton himself. Instead, I was replaced by an
air-headed hottie with no experience in journalism or television, and no clue
about social security, or the scope of the video project.
I asked discreetly what in hell was happening, and an embarrassed
spokesperson said, “She’s a ‘friend’ of Kennedy and Dodd”. I felt like I had been
thrown onto a table and raped. But like so many other Kennedy victims in
the past, I was well paid to accept my fate and keep my mouth shut. The girl
was bad on camera, the video suffered as a result, and I don’t think it
was ever distributed.
Last week I listened to hours of testimony in praise of Ted Kennedy from
people with short memories. Senator Orin Hatch spoke of how great Teddy was,
but I guess Hatch forgot what he had said about Kennedy during the Palm
Beach scandal. “I wouldn’t trade life with him for ten seconds. I’d rather
be poor and in the condition I’m in, than trade with Ted”. CNN contributors
also gushed over Teddy’s life and glazed over his crimes, bringing to mind
Ted’s boast to Christina Ford over 30 years ago that “the press will
never touch me”. And President Obama called Kennedy “a true leader who
challenged us all to live out our noblest values”. Please, someone hand me a barf
bag. These shills should have heeded Teddy’s own words which he spoke at
his brother Bobby’s funeral in 1968. “(he) need not be idealized or enlarged
in death beyond what he was in life”. The same should hold true of the
youngest Kennedy brother now.
Yes, Ted was a champion of the downtrodden, and a crusader against the
influences and power of health insurance companies. And it was his impassioned
plea to Congress in 1964 that helped to pass the Civil Rights Act in honor
of his slain brother Jack. But lots of people work for the public good
without committing crimes. The late Jack Kemp worked for housing reform and
never left a woman to die in a car. Barry Goldwater was a champion of gay
rights and recognition for native Americans, but he never groped women in
bars. Colin Powell has been an inspiration to millions of soldiers and
civilians, but he never pimped girls for his son or nephew. If you want to honor a
real hero, then lionize former Senator Birch Bayh. Bayh and Teddy were among
the five passengers riding in a plane that crashed in 1964. Bayh was
thrown from the wreckage and risked his life amidst the flames to go back in
and pull Kennedy out to safety. But Teddy never paid that act of bravery
forward, not at Chappaquiddick, and not even in political terms. He could have
been a force in defeating the nomination of Clarence Thomas, for example.
But because of his own lack of morals, Teddy sat almost silent during the
Anita Hill hearings, unable to come to the aid of a woman who had been
sexually abused by a powerful man. Former Kennedy aide Richard Burke is quoted
by Gallick as saying Teddy’s silence during the hearings was, ”a classic
portrait of a man whose private conduct was forfeiting his public usefulness”.
For all of these reasons, Ted Kennedy’s legacy should be a lesson in how
not to live our lives. He might have been a lion, but if so, he was a
cowardly one.
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