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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Wow! Roger Simon Lays It On The Line About Kennedy

No mincing words here.

From Roger Simon:

Thinking about Teddy Kennedy from Europe

Having spent about two years of my life living in Europe, I am not a complete stranger to observing events back home from afar. As a very young guy I watched the Chicago Convention on the BBC from a tiny London flat and felt jealous and out of it. Now I am amused. I was informed of RFK’s death by a security guard at the Brussels City Hall who had just heard the news and wanted to make sure the American nosing about knew about the latest tragedy in his country. I remember being shaken.

That was a different day and a different Kennedy. Nobody can be surprised about the death of Teddy, who has been sick for some time. I met the man once, back in the eighties, when on a movie assignment in Washington, and he was quite friendly and affable – almost oddly so. Of course, even then I was aware of (and disturbed by) his dark past, more than most because I was at six degrees of separation form the event. A literary agent of mine – a well known woman at the time – had been one of the women at the party with Teddy and Mary Jo Kopechne (1940-1969). I would try to probe her about what happened, whether Kennedy had been drinking, etc., but she would never speak about it, as if sworn to some kind of secrecy.

I put in Kopechne’s birth and death dates because, from the perspective of these many years, they surprise me. She was within days of her twenty-ninth birthday, older than I expected. Teddy himself was thirty-seven. These were not teenagers out on some drunken spree, who can be (somewhat) excused for their actions, but adults. Kennedy left the scene of a fatal accident for which he was at least partly responsible. Then he used his extraordinary power to get off, spending the rest of his career in pseudo-remorse, playing the most liberal of Senators. It was always an act to me, even when I agreed with him politically. This was not a life well lived.

3 comments:

  1. roger better keep his opinion to himself if he comments at lgf. apparently nothing critical can be posted about a sentator who has done so much that has harmed america....

    I wont comment on his soul. may he r.i.p

    but I wont be a party to whitewashing his career or the deeds of his life because he's recently departed.

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  2. I'm with you, Rumcrook.

    I won't comment on his soul either. The way I see life, fallen creation is such an effrontery to the human soul that I am not surprised at anything people do in reaction. I do believe we can find meaning in life if we choose to do so, and we can become good people. But, I also believe that finding the way our of the desert is not only an individual deed, but a corporate one. Some people don't have a good support system. Also, some people start life deeper in the desert.

    It would seem that, in Ted Kennedy's case, he may have started life deeper in the desert and he had a bad support system.

    He was, in short, a mess, and everyone knows it.

    So, I'm not going to say a bunch of false kiss-ass words about him either. I will say the same things I would have said a year ago.

    And yes, you are right he harmed America.

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  3. Bad ideology
    Taken too far

    But still the last of that breed who loved america.
    Really LOVED the place.
    There ARE no more.

    They despise it
    They despise us

    ReplyDelete