The American Spectator

Martin| 8.26.09 @ 6:55PM

EMK was a nasty piece of work, but it's not surprising he was a wreck around then -- seen both brothers gunned down. A normal 36-year-old who'd behaved so irresponsibly in those circumstances would have got court leniency -- gone to jail, possibly, but not for very long, and would then have rebuilt his life.

Not a nice man, as the Bork nomination and various other things proved, but Chappaquiddick is not quite as inexcusable as it's painted.

martin| 8.26.09 @ 6:56PM

Incidentally, it's requiescat in pace. Subjunctive.

Josie| 8.26.09 @ 7:10PM

If a Republican Senator had pulled a Chappaquiddick it's doubtful he would ever be called the "Lion of the Senate."

Alan Brooks| 8.26.09 @ 7:38PM

Martin has it back*sswards; Teddy boy violated the social contract by setting a bad example. He was given a chance with all his wealth and connections to moveon past his brothers' (who were no saints) deaths. But he blew it by turning his intellect into mush with drugs and drink. Then he got brain cancer, possibly from the alcohol and dope. If Ted went to counseling it didn't do him much good. This a world of Darwinist rewards, Darwinist punishments-- and not even the upper crust are rewarded for making a botch of it.

and BTW I agree with George F. Will's view that corruption is trickle down.

Dan| 8.26.09 @ 7:42PM

Ouch. Well played.

Alan Brooks| 8.26.09 @ 7:47PM

the whole point of all these attacks on Ted is:
Chappaquiddick was as inexcusable as it seems.

Robert Stacy McCain| 8.26.09 @ 8:25PM

Thanks, Martin, I've made the correction you suggested. I took Latin in high school, but our teacher was a dishy redhead, so I had trouble concentrating on the subjunctive.

Of course, that was in the Dark Ages, before the discovery of Dishy Redhead-Motivated Attention Deficit Disorder, which I understand is nowadays treated with drugs . . . But come to think of it, I tried that, too!

Mary Louise| 8.26.09 @ 9:34PM

I think Martin makes some good points, but I do think it was inexcusable. To leave a young woman to die such a horrible death, when because of who you are you hold the power to avail yourself of every means of salvific aid possible, is much worse than if it had happened to an average joe with family troubles.

To his everlasting shame, JFK did the same thing to those he sent on mission to the Bay of Pigs.

I have my own sins to think of, I know that. But I'm not pretending to lead anyone to the promised land of honor and social justice.

I would have given a year's salary to any senator who would have stood up in the well of the senate when Kennedy waxed moralistic and told him to hide his face in shame. Why do you have a face and a conscience of stone, Senator?

As to any good that he ever did independent of the generosity of the taxpayer, he had the means to do it. No Widow's Mite there. And, apparently, he cared so much about Universal Health Care that he killed it when it was proposed by Nixon who even back then thought it disgraceful that a person could lose their home if a family member became seriously ill.

The Nixon era began the hate fest that you see now in congress. How many nominees did Reagan have to put forth before A. Kennedy was accepted for the SC?

Edward Kennedy wanted to live. He wanted to live like every other person his age who suffers from serious illness.

I visited a Nursing Home recently and saw this one tiny woman in a wheel chair propelling it with her legs. Walking while sitting and doing it methodically as if she were exercising. Nursing homes are the most depressing places. Day care centers depress me too. Little kids, two and three years old, already sporting little dark rings under their eyes because nobody recognizes the rights and demands of their Chrysalis.

Say what you want about the G-man; Liddy would have never left a woman to die. When Liddy passes away, which I hope is a long time from now, I'll feel as sorry as I can feel for someone whom I know of but don't really know.

Have you read his autobiography? It's wonderful. Honest and extremely interesting. He's a man for all seasons.

Thomas Hardy wrote in Tess that each year we pass the anniversary of our death without knowing it, and without the slightest inkling of the need to be forewarned, if not forearmed.

Liberal Reader| 8.27.09 @ 12:05AM

McCain --

Your sanctimony makes me sick. You're a phony. Go fuck yourself.

Liberal Reader| 8.27.09 @ 12:08AM

You people cannot wait even a day for this?

You are a bunch of pigs.

Jesus, Mary, I'm surprised at you. And what the hell do you know about G Gordon Liddy. For crying out loud.

You people are pathetic.

Dan| 8.27.09 @ 1:08AM

Mary - I've searched for that Hardy quote and came up dry. It's quite profound - can you provide me with a full version?

Nobama| 8.27.09 @ 2:17AM

Liberal--go the hell away asshole. Better, yet, go drive yourself off a bridge.

pass4sure 70-23| 8.27.09 @ 4:31AM

Agree with your opinic.
pass4sure 70-236
pass4sure 70-291

pass4sure 70-291| 8.27.09 @ 4:39AM

You people are pathetic.
.pass4sure 70-291
.pass4sure 70-284

Mary Louise| 8.27.09 @ 7:05AM

Dan,

I'm not surprised you didn't find it. It's woven in Tess.

I'll try to find it and post it here.

Tim| 8.27.09 @ 8:29AM

Lib
I understand why you're mad; but please, Jesus and Mary aren't swear words. Thanks.

Mary Louise| 8.27.09 @ 12:07PM

Jeremiah,

I’m not sure why you’re “surprised?” You wrote that what I had written would have better been written in German; wordsmith, prescription writer that you are, and Nazi that I am. You also, on more than one occasion declaimed me and others as racists who had just now, and at long last, crawled out from beneath our rocks. Per your “inflammatory rhetoric” the dead mean something to you, the living, however, not so very much.

The real reason you shouldn’t be surprised is that I’m from the same clan (feel free to change that to Klan, if it would sooth your superior moral nerves a bit) that exhumed Formosus. Yes, we dressed him up and cut off his two petrified fingers. This was no dalliance with necromancy or other black art, to us he was alive. Yes, he was “reinstated.” In my view, a Church that refuses to excommunicate when it is proper and meet, just isn’t worth belonging to.

I’m from the same clan (see prior paragraph: ditto) that dropped the casket of Pope Alexander, en route to wake or burial, can’t remember which, and began sword fighting because a few words were “exchanged.”

I know Liddy because I listened to him during the years he was on in my area. I know Liddy was appalled at the murder of Mrs. Weaver, despite his detestation for the mindset of her husband and his kind. These, taken together with his detailed autobiography, allow me to know him to a decent degree. Though I will concede that my “he never would have” could more accurately read I don’t think he ever would have.

I re-read my post and there’s isn’t anything written that I should feel ashamed of. As I mentioned, I have enough things to feel ashamed about but that post isn't one of them.

This isn’t about Kennedy, heaven and hell. I don’t believe in any one of them. What I do believe is that some of us -one of that some and sum could easily be me- will one day know the difference between returning to God and returning to non-existence, with the Presence of God nowhere to be found. The sun and the rain shining and pouring no more on the good and evil alike.

Don’t try a game of moral ascendancy with me because you’re bound to lose. Come back with rational dialogue or move along to the sites on your side that have long wanted to gouge out conservative eyes and pour salt in those empty orbs.

I stand with Klavan and those who understand truth, single-standard and justice. Republicans beware!

Make no mistake, you and yours have sown the wind and you’re going to reap the whirlwind no matter your double-standard, frayed nerves or wailing.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/lwnqkh

Mary Louise| 8.27.09 @ 7:11PM

Dan, give me through the weekend to find it for you. If memory serves, it's not really a quotable quip. It's part of the narrative surrounding the death of Tess' illegitimate son, Sorrow.

Hardy goes on; he took many paragraphs to descibe the Wessex (I think) heath in Return of the Native. So, if knowing the exact wording is important to you, check back.

Missy| 8.27.09 @ 8:17PM

Dan, why do you care so much?

Dan| 8.27.09 @ 11:25PM

Missy - The phrase struck a chord with me, as it echoes a thought that's been with me for years. It would be nice to have it articulated, as I've stumbled with it time and again. Mary - I appreciate the effort, and I'll check back.

Missy| 8.28.09 @ 4:29AM

That's interesting, Dan. I recognized your name, I just wasn't sure if someone was troll goofing on Mary Louise.

S.L. Toddard| 8.28.09 @ 7:57AM

Hm. Is the word "bore" considered offense now?

Mary Louise| 8.28.09 @ 1:03PM

Missy, thanks for having my back, so to speak. I appreciate it.

Josie| 8.29.09 @ 1:03AM

Bore offensive? No--but Toddard is.

Mary Louise| 8.30.09 @ 9:16PM

Dan, after finding section in my copy of Tess, I found it online too. Begin at Chapter 14, and work your way through Chapter 15 for full context and effect.

Here’s specific text you’re after:

**So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. In spite of the untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers, she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them alive. What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"? The eye of maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things

"By experience," says Roger Ascham, "we find out a short way by a long wandering." Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then? Tess Durbeyfield's experience was of this incapacitating kind. At last she had learned what to do; but who would now accept her doing?

If before going to the d'Urbervilles' she had vigorously moved under the guidance of sundry gnomic texts and phrases known to her and to the world in general, no doubt she would never have been imposed on. But it had not been in Tess's power--nor is it in anybody's power--to feel the whole truth of golden opinions while it is possible to profit by them. She--and how many more--might have ironically said to God with Saint Augustine: "Thou hast counselled a better course than Thou hast permitted."

She remained at her father's house during the winter months, plucking fowls, or cramming turkeys and geese, or making clothes for her sisters and brothers out of some finery which d'Urberville had given her, and she had put by with contempt. Apply to him she would not. But she would often clasp her hands behind her head and muse when she was supposed to be working hard.

She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her undoing at Trantridge with its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby's birth and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would had disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation? She had Jeremy Taylor's thought that some time in the future those who had known her would say: "It is the--th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died"; and there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to be her terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know the place in month, week, season or year.**