In the wake of the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, many verbal
monuments have been erected to his memory. During the days-long
outburst of love from a truly grieved national media, we were
treated to endless references to his vaunted reputation as “the
lion of the Senate,” a citation of unknown origin. But I prefer a
lesser known but more oxymoronically correct sobriquet; “the
conscience of American progressivism.” Of course, one of the
strangest is the allusion to President Barack Obama as “the last
Kennedy brother,” a pretty risible statement, even were it not
coined by the comical Chris Matthews.
In some ways, though, it’s true that there doesn’t seem to be a
legitimate heir to carry the family torch, such as it has become;
it seems the bloom is off the Kennedy wild Irish rose. So
perilous is the situation, that the dying Teddy himself was
forced to address the looming interregnum. Time will tell whether
Democratic attempts to circumvent the law they themselves crafted
in 2004 when John F. Kerry’s seat was hoped to be vacant will
succeed, but this merely points out that the Kennedy cachet may
be fading with the public.
But there are no two ways about it: the mainstream media is, and
probably always will be, in love with the Kennedy clan in a way
that they could never be with another. Long ago dubbed as
“American royalty,” theirs is a story of which liberal
journalists’ dreams are made. Unlike the puritanical Adams family
which served the nation for nearly two hundred years, the
Kennedys made their mark in only one generation, but it was one
with which the media is truly and hopelessly infatuated. The
Bushes? Hopelessly bland and whitebread, and besides; they are
Republicans, certainly not the stuff of mythical legend like
Camelot.
And yes, the Kennedy legacy does resemble Camelot; a fictional
kingdom in which reside knights in shining armor as well as
rogues; but I’ll leave it to history to decide which were which.
But sadly for some, that Camelot turned out not to be such a
congenial spot for happily-ever-aftering for the kingly Kennedys
as envisioned by their loyal subjects in the media.
For, while liberals love to cite history, they have a convenient
way of forgetting it; especially when it comes to our “royal
family.” It was King John who submerged this country into the
Vietnam War because of his hatred for Communism and who was an
enthusiastic tax cutter. And it was his younger sibling, Prince
Robert, who wire-tapped Martin Luther King and also famously
hounded and prosecuted organized labor thugs. Add to this that
JFK was assassinated by a pathetic Communist sympathizer and RFK
was gunned down by a PLO supporter because of his support for
Israel and you get the picture.
And yet in later years, dauphin-by-default Teddy and his friends
cling to Communist regimes, carry big labor in their back
pockets, and think anyone who favors tax cuts should be
dispatched immediately to hell. And here we must also mention
“last brother” Obama, whose buddy Bill Ayers
dedicated his Marxist manifesto, “Prairie Fire,” to Sirhan
Sirhan whom Ayers considered, along with others, a “political
prisoner.” Needless to say, support for Israel among the last few
Kennedy brothers has been, shall we say, scant.
But as often happens, history can be tinged with irony. One of
the left’s greatest legacies is the notion of entitlement through
victimhood. They have, over the years, turned Kennedy’s
involvement in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne into a tragedy for
Teddy himself; as if it were he, and not that poor young girl,
whose life ended that night so long ago. But as history has its
own sense ironic humor, his post-Chappaquiddick campaign defeat
gave us Jimmy Carter on a platter and thus, Ronald Reagan.
And it was another ironic twist of Kennedy history that served to
benefit the country in a way not intended by the late senator. We
all remember his successful bid to ruin the reputation of Robert
Bork; an infamy he would have surely repeated during the Clarence
Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, were he not hamstrung by his own
involvement with nephew William Kennedy Smith’s rape trial.
Will irony and history combine to sound the final death knell to
the Kennedy saga? In their best “win one for the Gipper” voices,
supporters of the imposition of government-run health care on an
increasingly wary nation have issued the clarion call to “win one
for Teddy.” This tactic recalls the unfortunate Paul Wellstone
memorial service’s numerous exhortations to “win it for Paul!”
Let us hope that the former will turn out as disastrously for
liberals as did the latter, as history does tend to repeat
itself.
