On the cutting of slack

by Smitty

There is an excellent point raised by a commenter concerning the repeated plunging into the suject of Chappaquiddick.

There is nobody left who really knows exactly what happened that night 40 years ago.

One would think that given the inherent ambiguity in that night's events that commentators could cut Kennedy some slack - particularly in death.

Ah, can't we just forget all of this, in the midst of the moral ambiguity?

No no no no no, a thousand repetitions of no, and again: get stuffed.

Here are the two points I raised last Saturday on the FMJRA post [thanks, Dandapani], with some more elaboration:

• We flatter ourselves as having a justice system that treats citizens equally. I should point out that IANAL, and the following represents a common-sense take on the legal system, as opposed to what one frequently encounters.
  
  • If you're a terrorist thug who's sought American lives currently in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, you are getting more respectful treatment from the American legal system (military or civil) than Mary Jo. Explain the tolerability of this.
  • You can make the argument that the court of public opinion in Massachusetts obviously acquitted the subject, as they kept returning the individual to the Senate for decades. Yet, a Senator's scope exceeds that of his state. I'd be more inclined to say, "Aw, those goofy Mass-hats" if there was not substantial evidence of Soviet collaboration. So not only do we have someone demonstrating a two-tier justice system apparently because of their last name, but that person goes on to engage in what appears to be fishy activity. What else do we not know, and how much better off would we be absent this purportedly illustrious Senate career?
  • Finally, we have a disgusting thought balloon that maybe Mary Jo would have approved of the whole turn of events. I suppose such a hyper-utilitarian-cum-suicidal thought process is theoretically possible. But one wonders if Melissa Lafsky understands that her argument could be seen as an approval of capital punishment. Mary Jo certainly stands convicted of no crime. Yet the thought seems to be that the possibly improved societal outcome of an arguably useful political career, in some way, justifies Mary Jo's death. Those of you on the left: substitute a picture of Mary Jo on the face of someone facing capital punishment next time the cable news networks are in death porn mode, and give me your best shot of righteous indignation about the horror of the death penalty.
• Having flogged the multi-tier legal system a bit, let us turn to this concept of Camel Snot. Screw your horrible, un-American, elitist, intellectually untenable propaganda. To the wall. With a big drill press. Politico calls the vacant seat a "once-in-a-generation opening". A what? Does this mean that generations are a six-year occurrence in Massachusetts? Either:
  • The subject clan is really a superior source of leadership *snort*,
  • The people of Massachusetts are significantly challenged in ways I can't explore without becoming insulting,
  • Or someone is working the poles, IYKWIM

This Camel Snot myth, and the concept of a permanent political class, while certainly a reasonable First Amendment expression, deserves to be thoroughly mocked at all times and in all places by all who consider themselves defenders of the Constitution. For Camel Snot is the antithesis of the Constitution.

Arguably, in ways no one short of the Almighty can calculate, the subject may have atoned for Chappaquiddick. Yes, we should not fall short of admitting that our topic did good things and took care of his state during his career. At the same time, let us not expect the propaganda machine to consider matters of justice or egalitarianism, and do the work of balancing the dialogue for them.

There, see: I talked about injustice and the egalitarian roots of this country, and never mentioned the deceased by name as much as a single time.

URGENT: Dateline -- Martha's Vineyard

Our correspondent Mr. Wrestling IV at Big Hollywood:

Let me get this straight, Joyce [Carol Oates]: Mary Jo Kopechne's life was not as important as Sen. Kennedy's subsequent career? And furthermore, Melissa [Lafsky], correct me if I am misunderstanding you here, but Mary Jo might have felt that her life was worth forfeiting so that Teddy could go on to co-author an education bill, or to destroy the career of Robert Bork, or to protect the rights of women to abort unwanted fetuses?
I seem to remember a certain female reporter remarking, after the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal broke, that she would be willing to perform a "Lewinsky" on Pres. Clinton simply because of his stand on abortion rights. But I suspect that, even for her, suffocating in a submerged car for four or five hours might just be a Martha’s Vineyard bridge too far. . . .

Total body slam! Read the whole brutal thing.

By the way, this is probably a good time to express my appreciation to those readers -- including generous folks in Albuquerque, N.M., Jacksonville, Fla., Depauville, N.Y., and Tequesta, Fla. -- who have recently done their share to help me push the frontiers of rhetorical brutality against idiot liberals and RINO sellouts.

Many readers, who see these demented swine and want to do their part to crush them like ants, have asked me, "Gee, Stacy, what can we do?" And I always encourage them give generously to The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund.

(ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund is neither non-profit, charitable nor tax-exempt. So far as anyone can determine, all proceeds go to help pay the bills of Robert Stacy McCain, his wife and six children who, as luck would have it, are among the umpteen kazillion uninsured Americans that liberals keep whining about. However, because Mr. McCain's children are neither illegal immigrants nor Democrats, liberals don't give a damn about them. Any resemblance between The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund and a so-called "tip jar" PayPal account is probably coincidental. IYKWIMAITYD. Contributions to The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund are not tax deductible, although it's possible you might get a little kickback by way of a free beer if you should ever catch me in a bar with cash in my pocket. And good luck with that. GIVE NOW -- it's for the children!)

In Memoriam: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy

"The victory for Edward Kennedy is demeaning to the dignity of the Senate and the democratic process."
-- New York Times, editorial in response to
Kennedy's first Senate election, 1962

"Kennedy and Kopechne were part of a group of 12 that had come to Chappaquiddick for the Edgartown Regatta and a private barbecue afterward. Half the guests were married men, half were single women in their 20s. Kennedy and Kopechne left the party at some point that evening and ended up driving off the bridge."
-- Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 1994

" 'Accident,' yes. Yet when a man guzzles booze all day and then drives off a bridge, it is certainly not an unavoidable accident."
-- Robert Stacy McCain

"Though Kennedy managed to extricate himself from the car and get back to his motel that night, Kopechne remained in the car until her body was recovered by a Fire Department diver at 8:45 the next morning. To the diver, Capt. John Farrar, it was clear that she had neither drowned nor died quickly. Kopechne survived for some time by breathing a pocket of trapped air, finally suffocating to death when the oxygen ran out. When Kennedy reported the accident to the Edgartown police, it was 9:45 a.m. -- some nine or 10 hours after he left Kopechne in his car."
-- Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 1994

Capt. John Farrar, interview with Howie Carr, 1994:

"Mary Jo Kopechne wasn't a scion of one of American's wealthiest families; she was just a girl from an average, middle class family, whose idealism led her to Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights era . . . We'll never know, of course, what direction her life would have taken, but given her apparent passion for politics, she might have become a powerful political figure in her own right."
-- Paula, The Sundries Shack

"I think he’d be the last person who would want us -- those he left behind -- to be morose and full of bathos. . . . He’d probably have a joke to tell . . . One of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself."
-- Ed Klein, friend and biographer of Ted Kennedy

"On this day, every patriotic American should mourn the death of a liberal activist who diligently labored to continue the Kennedy family's noble legacy of public service. Until the day she died in 1969."
-- Robert Stacy McCain

"This letter which details Senator Edward Kennedy's offer to help the Soviet Union defeat Reagan’s efforts to build up the nuclear deterrent in Europe was unearthed . . . after the KGB files were opened . . .

"Kennedy believes that, given the current state of affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan . . . In this regard, he offers the following proposals to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Y.V. Andropov . . ."
-- Committee on State Security of the USSR, May 1983

"When President Reagan chose to confront the Soviet Union, calling it the evil empire that it was, Sen. Edward Kennedy chose to offer aid and comfort to General Secretary Andropov. On the Cold War, the greatest issue of his lifetime, Kennedy got it wrong."
-- Peter Robinson, Hoover Institution

"Edward M. Kennedy became a laughingstock the old-fashioned way: He earned it."
-- Robert Stacy McCain

Shorter Eleanor Clift

Thank God for historical ignorance!

The city editor at a small daily in Iowa sent a reporter out last week to gather reminiscences of Senator Kennedy. "Be sure to ask about Chappaquiddick," he said, a request that drew a blank look. The young reporter had no idea what he was talking about. When this story was related to me by the editor's wife, who is a baby boomer steeped in Kennedy lore, I thought how relieved the Kennedy family must be that a generation of Americans doesn't automatically reflect on the tragedy that for so long clouded Ted Kennedy's life and career.

As for how this tragedy "clouded" others, well . . . Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Zorn: The Nadir of American Journalism

Weasel Zippers says, "Vomit Alert." Excuse me even for quoting this execrable emetic which the editors of the Chicago Tribune actually had the bad taste to publish:

If we'd had insatiable 24/7 cable news networks in July 1969, the accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a passenger in a car driven by Sen. Edward Kennedy drowned would likely have dominated the national consciousness for months. . . .
Was it just as well that we didn't -- couldn't -- have a media feeding frenzy over Chappaquiddick in 1969? Would the nation have been better off if Kennedy had been shamed into private life? . . .
Or, as I believe, is the nation -- particularly our disabled and disadvantaged residents -- better off for the 40 years of service he was able to render after that terrible night?

And Mary Jo Kopechne still could not be reached for comment.

One hesitates to say that American journalism can't get any worse. We said that after Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair and yet, as if determined to prove us wrong, these elitist nincompoops who've hijacked the news business keep coming up with new crimes against their own profession.

Ed Driscoll has some thoughts, and links some honest commentary by Mark Steyn and a brutally factual American Spectator account of Chappaquiddick by Daniel Flynn.

Still,, even the antidote of such good journalism cannot quell the Zorn-induced nausea. I'm depressed by this evidence that there must not be one Old School journalist left in Chicago. An arrogant intellectual punk like Zorn? Mike Royko would have punched him out.

UPDATE: Not worthy of a Royko punch-out, but this paragraph by CNN's Elliott McLaughlin has a glaringly bad word choice:

In his national address, Kennedy said he was driving Kopechne to a ferry landing because she was tired. He denied "widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct" and also refuted reports that he was "driving under the influence of liquor."

Kennedy "refuted" nothing. I understand McLaughlin's reluctance to use "denied" twice in the same sentence, but "refuted" means to disprove.

Multiple witnesses confirmed that Ted Kennedy had been drinking heavily all day that Saturday. Supplies for the regatta party -- attended by six married men and six single women, incidentally -- included three half-gallons of vodka, four fifths of scotch, two bottles of rum and two cases of beer. And then there is the rather telling circumstantial evidence that Ted drove off the freaking bridge.

On that night, Kennedy was drunk as a skunk, high as a kite, three sheets to the wind. He was hammered, wasted, soused, tanked, blotto, sloshed. He was, in a word, intoxicated.

I'd go so far as to say he was driving while intoxicated, except that rolling an Oldsmobile off a bridge is not really what most folks down home would call "driving."

Nothing he said in his subsequent speech "refuted" the fact that Teddy was drunk, nor will it ever.

The Ted Kennedy Memorial Stand-Up Routine Will Be Continued . . .

Thanks to The Underground Conservative for giving an appropriately respectful name to the performance by that show-biz legend, "Shecky" McCain.

Now, everybody at Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy HQ is grateful to know how much you folks love The Shecky Show. Like Ted Kennedy, Shecky kills 'em every time. (Yeah, we heard your ominous stentorian laughter, Ed.)

But while Shecky's shtupping a cocktail waitress in his dressing room taking a much-needed rest, we bring you some light Kennedyesque entertainment from Stop the ACLU:

Nothing quite so humorous as jokes about a woman that died in your car thanks to your own cowardice.

Hey, no respect, no respect at all, you see? And our old pal Jimmy Antle has a great joke:

Senator Michael Dukakis!

Like the kids say, Jimmy, ROTFLMAO. Anyway, folks, we're going to take a short intermission here, but as soon as Shecky finishes shtupping that cocktail waitresses his much-needed rest, he'll be back for another show.

Meanwhile, remember to tip your waitresses -- they love Shecky, too -- and enjoy this delightful video:

Hey, Darleen, what's with this "Twatwaffle" stuff? Is that kinda like Ted Kennedy's "moral clarity"? A joke, right?

If it was OK for Ted Kennedy to joke about killing Mary Jo Kopechne . . .

Shouldn't everyone emulate the Lion of the Senate?

Newsweek’s Ed Klein (told interviewer) Katty Kay about Kennedy’s love of humor. How the late senator loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes, and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones.

More at Newsbusters, Hot Air, Memeorandum and thanks for the linkage from Paul Zummo at Southern Appeal. In case you folks haven't heard, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy just hired me to provide entertainment as a stand-up comedian at Kennedy's wake.

God bless him, but ol' Teddy was the life of the party, even if he was also the death of partygoers. Hey, did you folks hear this one yet?

Q. What's the difference between Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan?
A. As a young man Ronnie saved girls from drowning!

Oh, I got a million of 'em, folks. I just swam in from Chappaquiddick, and boy, are my arms tired.

I tell, ya, Ted Kennedy gets no respect, no respect at all. Why, when Ted Kennedy came out in favor of abortion, his own mother said, "Oh, now he tells me!"

But really, we need to respect this man's great legacy as a legislator. For instance, in one of his final acts of progressive humanitarianism, even from his deathbed Teddy ordered a staffer to insert an earmark into the stimulus bill, giving a major Democratic campaign contributor a lucrative contract to provide scuba training for congressional aides.

Seriously, folks, appropriate tributes to Ted Kennedy's legacy are a bipartisan obligation. As a matter of fact, the Republican National Committee is now raising money to fund the Edward M. Kennedy Memorial on the national mall in Washington. A leading sculptor has already been commissioned to create a monumental statue of an inverted Oldsmobile . . .

Oh, yeah, and my good buddy Van Helsing offers this thoroughly appropriate suggestion:

C'mon, don't I even get a rimshot from my drummer for that? The name's "Shecky" McCain, folks, and I'll be here all week. Remember to tip your bartenders and waitresses. Try the veal.

ENCORE: Thank ya, folks! It's great to be back here at Teddy's wake, I tell ya. But it's hard work, because everybody's a comedian nowadays, y'know what I mean? Take that Richard McEnroe at Three Beers Later . . .

Hey, give me a fourth beer, Richard, and I might take your wife up on that offer. Wait a minute, I just got another look at her. Better make that five beers, Rich.

But seriously, folks, isn't time we paid Ted Kennedy the kind of respect he deserves? Think of all he's done for the American people. And the Vietnamese people. And the Cambodian people.

Really, I mean this sincerely, from the bottom of a mass grave of innocent Cambodian civilians slaughtered by the Communists with Ted Kennedy's help.

Speaking of help -- and Rich McEnroe's wife -- I tell ya folks, my wife, she gives me no respect at all.

"Why are you always doing that blog stuff?" she says.

"Because people hit the tip jar," I tell her.

"You mean they give you money?" she says. "Why would people give you money for telling tasteless jokes?"

"Tasteless jokes?" I said. "Really, honey, why do you have to bring Rich McEnroe's wife into this?"

Ba-da-bing! I'll be here all week, folks . . .

INTERMISSION . . . but there's more Shecky to come. Please tip your waitresses, as we keep telling Shecky.

Finally, I decided to write aboutsomething other than my penis . . .

While I hate to disappoint my loyal readers, who enjoy nothing so much as a TMI discussion of the Speedo Monster, the Alabama Hammer, otherwise known affectionately as "Ralph," there comes a point at which this subject begins to bore even me.

However, if my fellow bloggers and journalists don't stop yakking about their packages -- this means you, too, David Harsanyi! -- it will be time to pass the torch to a new generation, as they say, and I'll allow my teenage son to start guest-blogging on the topic, "Some Traits Are Hereditary (Including Arrogance)." Don't say you haven't been warned.

Meanwhile, we move on, to discuss a subject of endless fascination, why July 19, 1969 was the defining moment in the career of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Chappaquiddick).

Read the whole thing, because you wouldn't want to read more about something else, would you?

UPDATE: It's as if Little Miss Atilla were daring me to whip it out. And, quite frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if Cynthia Yockey hates the penis as much as a lesbian should. A reminder, ladies, I do have a digital camera. IYKWIMAITYD.

UPDATE II: Continuing to distract from the tragic finale of tragic finale of OediPOTUS Wrecks -- Smitty's magnum opus of Hope-us -- now some damned Wisconsonian jumps into the foreskin forensics, as does Fisherville Mike. And trust me, there is nothing on earth about which I want to think less than Ed Morrissey's equipment. Still, you've got to love Ed's oblique shot at Sully:

Let me try to explain this in small words for people who like to give “awards” for hysteria but still demand to see Sarah Palin’s gynecological records. . . .

Brilliant, Ed. Not as brilliant as OediPOTUS Wrecks, but nonetheless brilliant.

Satire? No, it's The Onion

'Kennedy Curse' Claims
Life Of 77-Year-Old
Tumor-Riddled Binge-Drinker

Chappaquiddick, in brevis, and an exegesis of the infamous 'incident'

Right Girl sums it up:

The death of Mary Jo Kopechne was an accident, but his actions at the time of and in the weeks following the accident were beyond the pale. Poor, scared rich kid gets strings pulled to make the whole thing go away.

She's got much more, so you should read the whole thing, but in two sentences she has accurately distilled the essence of the narrative arc. Excuse me, however, for betraying my Bible-thumping roots, as I indulge in what evangelicals call exegesis of the text.

"Accident," yes. Yet when a man guzzles booze all day and then drives off a bridge, it is certainly not an unavoidable accident. The idea of Chappaquiddick as a "tragedy" whose main victim was Ted and the "Kennedy legacy" -- which is the manure load Ted's MSM hagiographers are now peddling -- is debunked by two stubborn facts pointed out yesterday in our Kopechne Day remembrances:

• Mary Jo didn't "drown," but died of asphyxiation. The passage of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption dealing with Chappaquiddick (pp. 38-43) was researched and written by my co-author Lynn Vincent, who was emotionally traumatized to discover this reality. Mary Jo did not drown, a horrific enough experience, but one which would have killed her in barely a minute. Rather, she remained alive, underwater in Teddy's Oldsmobile, breathing the oxygen trapped inside an air pocket at the rear floorboard of the upside-down car. So, while Ted walked back to the regatta party at the Martha's Vineyard cottage and tried to concoct an exculpatory cover-story (as his own cousin, Joe Gargan, later explained), Mary Jo was still alive, frantically hoping for a rescue that never came, until finally she breathed her last.
• Mary Jo Kopechne was a dedicated young liberal woman of tremendous potential. This was pointed out by Jimmie Bise's co-blogger Paula at the Sundries Shack. Mary Jo had gone to Alabama during the civil rights era, having the courage to live out her own convictions. You don't have to be a liberal to say of her that, at least, she was neither hypocrite nor a coward. Nor could anyone rightly describe Mary Jo Kopechne as a lightweight bimbo, just another bit of womanizer Ted's incidental arm candy. Had Mary Jo lived . . . Well, the women's movement was just then coming into its own, and one could easily imagine an experienced Democratic political operative (for that's what she was) enjoying a long and successful career in her own right.

However, such are the mind-fogging powers of liberal orthodoxy that not even feminists -- who, of all people, ought to be denouncing the MSM's disgusting veneration of this privileged swine, Ted Kennedy -- will grasp these key facts as the bedrock truth of what Chappaquiddick really meant.

Instead, in story after story, we see dishonest passive-voice references to this "incident." Call it an "incident" or an "accident," but at all costs, avoid describing it as vehicular manslaughter or anything else that might attribute agency and responsibility to the responsible agent, the man behind the wheel. The New Republic covered itself in shame yesterday by publishing a Kennedy remembrance by Bill Clinton's Lewinsky apologist, Sean Wilentz, which featured this classic exercise in moral idiocy:

For many years, [Ted] did not understand how the incident at Chappaquiddick in July 1969 foreclosed the possibility that he would ever succeed JFK to the presidency or fulfill the promise of RFK's presidential campaign in 1968. . . .
The disgrace of Chappaquiddick helped cost Kennedy his position as Senate Majority Whip in 1971 . . .
He also carried the weight of a collapsing marriage, as well as of the public's lingering outrage about Chappaquiddick. . . .

So, according to Wilentz, the most important thing about the "incident" was its impact on Kennedy's political prospects, which Wilentz externalizes as the responsibility of those muddleheads who constitute "the public," and whose "outrage" so unforgivingly lingered.

The passive voice of willful ignorance enables Wilentz to avert his eyes from the scene of the crime, where the declarative-sentence facts might lead to a genuinely honest and enlightened historical understanding. And yet such liberal "intellectuals" wonder why we laugh at them.

By popular demand: Michael Kelly's'A Sober Look at Ted Kennedy

Michael Kelly was a brilliant journalist who was killed during the Iraq war. At least a dozen readers have urged me to link this February 1990 GQ article by Kelly:

Edward Moore Kennedy works harder than most people think, and this morning he is working very hard at a simple but crucial task. He is trying to face the day. It is 9:30 A.M, September 26, and Kennedy is in Room 138 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to introduce a bill to lure new and better teachers. This kind of thing is ice cream and cake for any practiced politician, a simple piece of business that will provoke few tough questions and at least a few approving editorials. But for Kennedy it seems a great challenge, and no fun at all. He hastens tonelessly through his prepared statement like a court stenographer reading back testimony to the judge. He passes off most of the perfunctory and easy questions to the other politicians and education-Establishment figures joining him, and he stares into space as the other men do the job. When he goes to the podium to introduce his fellow speakers, he walks with a nervous, cautious shuffle, like Steve McQueen after he's been let out of solitary in Papillon. When he holds out the piece of white paper to read the introductions of men he's known for decades, it flutters and shakes in the still air.
Up close, the face is a shock. The skin has gone from red roses to gin blossoms. The tracery of burst capillaries shines faintly through the scaly scarlet patches that cover the bloated, mottled cheeks. The nose that was once straight and narrow is now swollen and bulbous, with open pores and a bump of what looks like scar tissue near the tip. Deep corrugations crease the forehead and angle from the nostrils and the downturned corners of the mouth. The Chiclet teeth are the color of old piano keys. The eyes have yellowed too, and they are so bloodshot, it looks as if he's been weeping. . . .

You can and should read the whole thing, including the account of Chappaquiddick. Yet I think those first two paragraphs tell an important story in themselves, and that I shall have more to say on this subject.

Understatement of the day year century

"I'd say Stacy seems to be taking Teddy's death rather well."
-- Bob Belvedere, Camp of the Saints

Bill O'Reilly is an obnoxious douchebag

"Talking Points Commentary," Aug. 26, 2008, with my notes in italic:

• Early this morning Ted Kennedy died from brain cancer, leaving behind a 46-year-record legacy in the U.S. Senate.

Also leaving behind a 28-year-old civil rights activist in an Oldsmobile he drove off a bridge while drunk.

• Unfortunately, there have been some vicious postings on the Internet about Senator Kennedy and they are disgraceful.

I think this is a reference to this "Talking Points Commentary" about Kennedy being "posted on the Internet." "Vicious" and "disgraceful"? Couldn't have said it better myself!

• If you're a religious person, you know that personal judgments should be made by God alone.

Unless you post negative things about Ted Kennedy, in which case God has deputized Bill O'Reilly to condemn you as "vicious" and "disgraceful." Moral Consistency [TM] is a registered trademark of Bill O'Reilly LLC; patent pending; all rights reserved.

• All of us are flawed and none of us have the right to demean a public servant who has just died. . . .

Saddam Hussein should have tried that "public servant" defense before they hanged him. Obviously, the Bill O'Reilly Principle here is that, once somebody becomes a "public servant," this negates whatever First Amendment rights you might otherwise have.

• There is no question that the Chappaquiddick incident where a young woman drowned in his car haunted Kennedy throughout his life.

Classic use of passive-voice construction to obscure Kennedy's active agency in the euphemistically described "incident." Also, as noted previously, she didn't drown, she asphyxiated. But you, Bill the Bozo, wouldn't know anything about the facts of this case, because your "talking points" were prepared by your underpaid 26-year-old staffers while you were playing racquetball at the health club. "Vicious" and "disgraceful."

• Kennedy was responsible for some excellent legislation . . .

When you've got the kind of wealth and privilege that can turn an open-and-shut case of vehicular manslaughter into a misdemeanor "leaving the scene of an accident" charge, it's a piece of cake to get yourself elected and re-elected to the Senate for 46 years, during which time, yeah, you might be "responsible for some . . . legislation." Anyone who's willing to accept Bill the Bozo's judgment as to what constitutes "excellent legislation" should avoid becoming involved in politics, or even voting, and for that matter, you probably shouldn't operate heavy machinery, either.

• Talking Points believes the Senator was well-intentioned in public policy . . .

Also "well-intentioned": Robert Mugabe, Timothy McVeigh, Pol Pot, Charles Manson . . .

• Like him or not, he was a patriot . . .

Who conspired with the Soviets to undermine Ronald Reagan's policies during the Cold War.

• . . . who was well thought of by many conservatives.

Name one. You can't. There aren't any.

Because you, Bill the Bozo, are not a conservative. You are an obnoxious douchebag and we understand that you are bound by the Douchbag Honor Code, which requires douchebags like yourself to say nice things about fellow douchebags when they die.

So if you, Bill the Bozo, get run over by a bus tomorrow, this means that Geraldo Rivera will be obliged to denounce me as "vicious" and "disgraceful" when I write "postings on the Internet" reminding people what an obnoxious douchebag you were.

On the other hand, if Geraldo Rivera gets hit by a bus tomorrow, this means that when the Grim Reaper comes for you, Bill, there may not be a douchebag sufficiently obnoxious to defend you.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was 'a special pile of human excrement'?

Frankly, I never thought of the fat drunken lecherous senior senator from Massachusetts either as "special" or particularly "human," but . . .

Andrew Breitbart Unleashes
A Torrent Of Invective
Against Sen. Ted Kennedy's
Legacy On Twitter
Early this morning, news broke that Sen. Ted Kennedy had passed away after serving in the U.S. Senate for nearly 50 years. Soon after, conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart began a sustained assault on Kennedy's memory, tweeting "Rest in Chappaquiddick."
Over the course of the next three hours, Breitbart unapologetically attacked Kennedy, calling him a "villain," "a big ass motherf@#$er," a "duplicitous bastard" and a "prick." "I'll shut my mouth for Carter. That's just politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement," wrote Breitbart in one tweet.

(Note to self: Carefully study Breitbart's "Torrent Of Invective" Twitter technique. Emulate. Practice. Improve. If you can't out-invective Breitbart, go back to Mary Jo Kopechne riffs.)

Kopechne Day: A Solemn Tribute

"Mary Jo Kopechne wasn't a scion of one of American's wealthiest families; she was just a girl from an average, middle class family, whose idealism led her to Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights era . . . We'll never know, of course, what direction her life would have taken . . ."

UPDATE: Unfortunately, today's tributes to this courageous woman are in danger of being overlooked because some people are engaging in partisan politics:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office sent an email to reporters at around 2:30 a.m. today, just hours after his death, calling for the passage of health care overhaul. “Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” the statement read.

(H/T: A Courageous Woman Who Believes in Racial Equality.)

UPDATE II: Time to acknowledge some of the many bloggers who have joined today's commemoration of Mary Jo Kopechne's life:

• Skepticrats
• The Daley Gator
• Daily Pundit
• No Sheeples Here
• Carolyn Tackett's Closet
• Jules Crittenden
• Bit's Blog
• The Western Experience
• A Conservative Shemale
• Gold Plated Witch on Wheels
• The Sundries Shack
• At the Point of a Gun
• Wyblog
• Reaganite Republican
• Underground Conservative
• Once Upon a Krischel
• Ed Driscoll
• Kuru Lounge

If you have posted a Mary Jo Kopechne tribute that I haven't linked, please link this post in your tribute post, and e-mail the URL to me. I'll try to update later.

UPDATE III: Obi's Sister tries very hard to conjure up sympathy for Ted Kennedy. Well, it's the thought that counts.

UPDATE IV: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please be sure to visit The Sundries Shack, whose memorial to Mary Jo Kopechne inspired this post.

You may be surprised to learn that such remembrances are "an orchestrated movement" by "ghoulishly insensitive right-wingers." Which means that liberals consider it "sensitive" to forget Miss Kopechne and "ghoulish" to remember she died in an Oldsmobile that a drunk drove off a bridge. Well, I never understood liberal logic, but I do understand two things:

• Bill O'Reilly is an obnoxious douchebag; and
• Liberals are exploiting this occasion to try to push through legislation that would do for the American health care system what Senator Kennedy did for Mary Jo Kopechne.

Readers ask me, "Gee, Stacy, what can we do?" You can give generously to The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund.

(ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund is neither non-profit, charitable nor tax-exempt. So far as anyone can determine, all proceeds go to help pay the bills of Robert Stacy McCain, his wife and six children who, as luck would have it, are among the umpteen kazillion uninsured Americans that liberals keep whining about. However, because Mr. McCain's children are neither illegal immigrants nor Democrats, liberals don't give a damn about them. Any resemblance between The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund and a so-called "tip jar" PayPal account is probably coincidental. IYKWIMAITYD. Contributions to The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund are not tax deductible, although it's possible you might get a little kickback by way of a free beer if you should ever catch me in a bar with cash in my pocket. And good luck with that. GIVE NOW -- it's for the children!

Liberals exploit opportunity, rename it, 'Mary Jo Kopechne Health Care Bill'

No sooner had the "fat drunk who killed Mary Jo Kopechne" reached room temperature than Ted Kennedy's only rival for senatorial shamelessness, Kleagle Robert Byrd, sprang into action:

Byrd said he hoped healthcare reform legislation in the Senate would be renamed in memoriam of Kennedy.
"I had hoped and prayed that this day would never come," Byrd said in a statement. "My heart and soul weeps at the lost of my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend, Ted Kennedy."
Byrd's wistful statement focused on the work accomplished with Kennedy during decades together in the Senate, and called on the healthcare bill before Congress to be renamed in honor of Kennedy.
"In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every white Gentile American . . ."

(Hat tips: Memeorandum, Gateway Pundit.) BTW, we've had problems with the editing process here lately, and that last quote might be slightly garbled.

However, there are no garbles in the ongoing stream of tributes to the late Mary Jo Kopechne who, today, is receiving the fitting obituary remembrance she was denied 40 years ago. It's enough to touch the heart of Ann Coulter.

UPDATE: Thanks to Bob Belvedere for this image:

We do hereby declare and proclaim August 26, 2009, to be MARY JO KOPECHNE MEMORIAL DAY

UPDATE II: Because so many have been inspired by this tribute to Miss Kopechne -- as well as by my farewell remembrance of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's foreign-policy legacy -- some readers have asked the question, "But Stacy, what can we do?" And therefore, I urge you to give generously to The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund.

(ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund is neither non-profit, charitable nor tax-exempt. So far as anyone can determine, all proceeds go to help pay the bills of Robert Stacy McCain, his wife and six children who, as luck would have it, are among the umpteen kazillion uninsured Americans that liberals keep whining about. However, because Mr. McCain's children are neither illegal immigrants nor Democrats, liberals don't give a damn about them. Any resemblance between The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund and a so-called "tip jar" PayPal account is probably coincidental. IYKWIMAITYD. Contributions to The McCain-Kennedy Kopechne Memorial Health Care Fund are not tax deductible, although it's possible you might get a little kickback by way of a free beer if you should ever catch me in a bar with cash in my pocket. And good luck with that. GIVE NOW -- it's for the children!)

Mary Jo Kopechne could notbe reached for comment

What? You expected me to pass up this one last opportunity to use that line?

Sen. Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77.
The man known as the “liberal lion of the Senate” had fought a more than year-long battle with brain cancer, and according to his son had lived longer with the disease than his doctors expected him to. . . .
A hardworking, well-liked politician who became the standard-bearer of his brothers’ liberal causes, his career was clouded by allegations of personal immorality and accusations that his family’s clout helped him avoid the consequences of an accident that left a young woman dead.

Michelle Malkin says:

There is a time and place for political analysis and criticism. Not now.
Yes, there will be a nauseating excess of MSM hagiographies and lionizations -- and crass calls to pass the health care takeover to memorialize his death.
That’s no excuse to demonstrate the same lack of restraint in the other direction. Not now.

OK, I'll risk the Boss's umbrage and explain why I've so often used that "could not be reached for comment" line I stole from Ann Coulter.

It has often been written that Mary Jo Kopechne "drowned." She didn't. The cause of death was asphyxiation -- there was an air pocket inside the overturned car, and Mary Jo lived long enough to breathe the last remaining oxygen in that air pocket. And while Mary Jo was breathing her last . . . what did Ted Kennedy do?

Well, among other things, he began trying to concoct a cover-up story: "Why couldn't Mary Jo have been driving the car? . . . Why couldn't she have let him off and driven to the ferry herself and made a wrong turn?" His own cousin, Joe Gargan, talked Ted out of attempting to get away with that.

Kennedy beat the rap. Multiple witnesses have testified that Kennedy had been drinking all day. It was a clear-cut case of vehicular manslaughter, but he was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

The media will forgive liberals anything. Just look at the passive-voice construct in his obit: "an accident that left a young woman dead."

Forgiven by the media, liberals are shameless about such things. And so, in subsequent years, Americans were often subjected to the shameful spectacle of Ted Kennedy, the Chappaquiddick swim champ, lecturing us in moralistic tones about this, that and the other.

Whenever Kennedy would inflict his pompous self-righteous liberal moralizing on us, I'd always hear Ann Coulter's immortal words: "Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment."

And so I've used that line for the last time. And the knowledge of that finality is the only sadness I feel about Ted Kennedy's death.

UPDATE: Carol at No Sheeples Here has a fitting tribute to the kind of Irish drunk who gives Irish drunks a bad name.

UPDATE II: Jules Crittenden reports from Boston, where they love them some Irish drunks:

Regarding Kennedy himself, they don’t exactly need to fire up the hagiography. Ted Kennedy’s image enhancement has been a life-long project that only requires the bow of a national funereal extravaganza. Served in the Army, 51-53, didn’t go to Korea, overcame a Harvard cheating scandal, slid into his big brother’s seat, held for him till he was old enough, dodged responsibility in the death of Mary jo Kopechne, though whether he dodged consequences is debatable.

I'm just grateful the old fraud finally had the decency to die, so that the torch could be passed to a new generation of decadent overprivileged swine.

UPDATE III: I have no idea why some of the commenters here are complaining that I have failed to be appropriately reverent toward the Kennedy mythology. It's not as if there were any shortage of media reverence out there:

In the quiet of a Capitol elevator, one of Edward M. Kennedy's fellow lawmakers asked whether he had plans for a family Thanksgiving away from the nation's capital. No, the Massachusetts senator said with a shake of his head, and mentioned something about visiting his brothers' gravesites at Arlington National Cemetery.
In his half-century in the public glare, Kennedy was, above all, heir to a legacy -- as well as a hero to liberals, a foil to conservatives, a legislator with few peers.

"Heir to a legacy"! Or, as Time magazine calls him, "The Brother Who Mattered Most." Well, he certainly was the one who mattered most to Mary Jo . . .

UPDATE IV: I'm called a "gutless little coward" by an anonymous blogger, but apparently I'm enough of a role model to be linked and quoted by a new blogger with a dilemma: "My first night blogging and Ted Kennedy dies. I don’t have much good to say about Kennedy," says A Conservative Shemale. NTTAWWT.

Prominently featured on her blogroll: Ace of Spades. NTTAWWT.

UPDATE V: Bob Belvedere is appropriately mournful, and my heart was stirred by this touching tribute from Reaganite Republican:

[T]his man was a complete and utter fraud as leader of any kind . . . oft-tipsy Teddy was a comprehensively irresponsible and selfish fake.

Uncork the champaign, says G.J., who recalls Ted's career as a clandestine pro-Soviet subversive:

This letter which details Senator Edward Kennedy’s offer to help the Soviet Union defeat Reagan’s efforts to build up the nuclear deterrent in Europe was unearthed by a Times of London reporter in the 1990s after the KGB files were opened.
It got little or no attention, however, until the publication of Paul Kengor's book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

Drunken Commie-loving traitor, R.I.P. And I hereby declare this Mary Jo Kopechne Memorial Day.