Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne and Us

Google Trends this morning is a perfect window into our tabloid culture and the recesses of our depraved minds. While the papers are full of words like “dynasty” and “legacy,” Mary Jo Kopechne, according to Google Hot Trends, is uppermost in our thoughts. Her name comes up as number one in the ranking, and several more places on the list, misspelled. Chappaquiddick shows up high and often, too; once correctly, and then in several illiterate incarnations.

Partly, I blame this discrepancy on the American papers, which are still bent on hagiography. I prefer British obituaries, which tell it like it is. And partly, of course, this is the fault of our vapid tabloid culture. The only surprise today is that Kate Gosselin has been knocked back all the way to number 30. “Michael Jackson alive” is a popular trend. Yeah. Jamming with Elvis.

Finally, there is the issue of the obvious narrative the papers are not stringing together. In my mind, I’ve always equated Ted Kennedy with Chuck Colson, the disgraced Nixon aide who went on to found an admirable Christian organization called “Prison Fellowship.” Public officials who do terrible things and then say they’re sorry (often in a press conference or book) are a dime a dozen. But the ones who do something terrible and then repent indirectly in the form of a lifetime of dedicated public service are rare. Colson and Kennedy are just about the only two I can think of.

Mary Jo Kopechne is on our minds because this narrative about Ted Kennedy makes sense, in some intuitive, appealing way. Kennedy killed a girl. That’s his Rosebud. He made up for it partly by declining the ultimate glory of running for president, and choosing the more humble path—helping the underclass using the slow, steady machinery of the Senate.

Tags: Chappaquiddick, Mary Jo Kopechne, Ted Kennedy

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Hanna Rosin Double X co- editor, reporter, prefer my friends live.

Comments

Chappaquiddick Incident rumor

By: JaquanI | Mon, 08/31/2009 - 00:44

The United States was in great remorse as a United States Senator for Massachusetts Edward Kennedy past away. With this news, many people scrambled to google information about Chippaquiddick Incident. Many people would have given a cash advance to say the least to bury the memory of Chippaquiddick. When people refer to Chippaquiddick – for those too young to remember or just don't recall it – they refer to what is known as the Chippaquiddick Incident, or perhaps they should have called it Chippaquiddick Gate. The incident took place on Chippiquiddick Island, a small island off of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, on July 17th, 1969, around midnight, when Senator Edward Kennedy was driving with Mary Jo Kopechne, took a wrong turn and put his Oldsmobile 88 in the bottom of the tidal channel of Nantucket Sound. Kennedy survived, but Mary Jo did not, and the grim specter of the incident hung over his career for decades, and may have prevented him from reaching the presidency.

The privilege of being a Kennedy...

By: NashvilleCat | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 11:02

...was not afforded to Mary Jo Kopechne. If it had been Ted Kennedy's sister riding in the car and some unknown, unconnected low level male political staffer driving that car, he would certainly not have had the chance to "repent indirectly in the form of a lifetime of dedicated public service." maybe he should have been afforded that chance, but he would have been in jail. That is the way it works in this country, if you are wealthy and connected you answer to a differnt standard of justice. I am thankful for much of the work that Kennedy did in his life, but this tragedy of so long ago cannot be forgotten as we write his obituary. Neither can the on-going discrepancies in this country's justice system.

oh Hanna

By: Alyxherself | Thu, 08/27/2009 - 10:11

I have to say you are one of my fave writers and why I show up to dblx. However, as other posters commented, you missed with this one.

I was shocked to see no mention of Mary Jo, ANYWHERE else on the interwebs, and have never understood the veneration TK has received in the media...while I'm sure he was a great "guy" to those who knew him. Look, there are all kinds of convicted felons out there who "made a mistake" and can never get past it in society, because the have that following them the rest of their lives, what makes ol Teddy an exception? Oh, yeah, it was all made to "go away" and he was allowed to continue with his cushy-assed job.
His political contibutions aside, ok, shouldn't someone say something in rememberance of Mary Jo, that isn't about the death of an old man who killed the girl when he was a douchey drunken overgrown frat boy with an entitlement chip?
The Kennedy men give the impression that they regard women as expendable incubators for a vagina, first for their pleasure and second to push out their spawn. Yes this is a generalization, and no I won't take it back. Someone out there, who has a voice in the media, please speak about the potential of a girl who died in a terible way, far too young, and what she might have contibuted to the world if it had been Ted who drowned instead of her. I'm sorry if this post seems overly sentimental but what if it was one of our daughters?

ps...yeah, that whole thing about misspellings was really...lame...and kind weird. Step back yo.

His "Rosebud"?!

By: ste4ve | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 16:50

If his last name would have been Kopechne and her last name would have been Kennedy, Chappaquiddick would have been his life sentence in jail. And as long as we're going with the "if's," if Rosin's last name had been Kopechne and Mary Jo her sister, I doubt seriously the absurd Colson/Kennedy two-sides-of-the-same-coin analogy would have entered her incredibly feeble mind.

Kennedy

By: talluahfeeneyh | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 15:34

It is nice to know that people remember Mary Jo. It is also appropriate to note that while some believe Ted was dedicating his life to the "good cause" to make amends, he was also a public drunk and womanizer way into his 60's. He also kept himself occupied getting his young relatives out of jams. i.e. the nephew charged with rape in Florida. Let us not forget his initiating the despicable custom of using smear tactics in the senate confirmation process.

Alkali's comment

By: PIffle_dragon | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 15:14

Yeah, and slavery was considered find too at one point. Even if you are correct, which I doubt, it's still wrong in any meaningful sense of the word.

So much wrong in this post...

By: ceptri | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 14:58

First of all, calling people who misspell a person's name or an Indian place name "illiterate" seems about as snobby as a professional writer can get.

Second, working your whole life in a soup kitchen is a "lifetime of dedicated public service" not someone who lives the extremely lucrative and pampered life of a US Senator.

Third, he didn't "declin[e] the ultimate glory of running for president" he got beat (badly when you consider the money they each spent) by Carter who figured out a better way to run in a primary.

What an absolutely terrible post.

talk about mixed emotions

By: Vville222 | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 14:50

As a child in Mass in 1969, I knew vaguely about Mary-Jo Kopechne. My parents, staunch Democrats, understood that Kennedy had done something deeply, morally wrong by leaving her in the car and not reporting the accident. Reading the wiki account now, I'm chilled by the role status and power played in the lack of consequences in this case. I do believe that it would be dealt with much more harshly today.

On the other hand, with Kennedy gone who speaks for the liberals of this country? My sense of loss today is similar to the way I felt on hearing of the death of Paul Wellstone; however in that case he left a legacy much easier to celebrate.

It's not about Kennedy

By: alkali | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 13:54

Why was Kennedy excused for Chappaquiddick in the 1970s? It's not because he was a Kennedy; it's about changing views of drunken driving. Hard to believe now, but there was a time, not long ago, when driving under the influence was thought of as not particularly bad and even potentially comic.

By way of example, parents of a friend of mine once recounted that in the 1970s they threw a New Year's Eve party. A guest wanted to leave but was blocked in by another guest's car. The guest whose car was in the way, who was very drunk, went out to move his car. After a few minutes it became clear he had just driven off somewhere. This was considered hilarious at the time. Now, of course, it's horrifying.

In the early 1970s, the dispute about Chappaquiddick was between people who thought it was just an accident (whatever the role of alcohol), and nutters who thought that Ted Kennedy had deliberately killed someone and was covering it up. Given those choices, one could actually make the case that Ted Kennedy was treated worse than you might expect at the time because of his family name.

It's hard to say what to think of Chappaquiddick now. If someone drove drunk today and their passenger was killed, we'd consider that a very serious moral wrong, because we would expect them to have been aware of that danger. The same is not quite true of the early 1970s. (By way of comparison, in the late 1960s, my mother-in-law smoked several packs of cigarettes and had a few cocktails almost every day of her pregnancy. If someone did that now, it would be considered bizarre, but I certainly don't hold my mother-in-law to those standards.)

Fixing Hanna Rosen

By: PoergieTirebiter | Wed, 08/26/2009 - 13:36

Odd, Ms.Rosen's headline for Sullivan is strikingly different.

What Do We Really Think About When We're Thinking About Kennedy?

I too object to her wholly insupportable and egocentric use of we. It could have been fixed by a subtitle like: "Am I the only person on the planet who’d equate Ted Kennedy with Charles Colson?"
by Hanna Rosin

I’m glad Ms.Rosen found a number of like-minded obituary hounds. But the fact that she found adjectives like illiterate and butchered to be useful, should have given her pause. And it's feeble analogies like her Colson absurity that give comparisons to Shinola such an enduring quality.