I hope the young folks will forgive us geezers for thinking of all the Kennedy boys today. They were a huge part of our lives.
I had hoped Senator Kennedy would live to see a health care reform bill signed. If Congress does pass a decent bill, I hope they name it after the Senator.
Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
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“The Lion of the Senate” is gone. And with him, a true progressive voice. If you look at almost any legislation that was passed that actually helped people in the last 40+ years, if his name wasn’t on it, his signature surely was.
Let us hope that others will take up the battles that have yet to be won. Maybe his passing will energize the undecided and cowardly members of Congress that he left behind and that they will pass a great health care bill. And if it is great, his name certainly ought to be on it. That, would be a fitting tribute. But please, don’t pass some piece of dreck legislation and slap his name on it. That wouldn’t be fitting at all…
Yes, he had his foibles, but then, don’t we all?
R.I.P Ted. You done good. You will be missed. Sorely missed.
I had the same thought, that the health care reform bill (as long as it’s useful) should be named after Ted. He’d been advocating it for 30 years, after all. For much of that time he was the proverbial lone voice in the wilderness.
And it must be said that, for all his faults as a man, he was no hypocrite who judged others, and then went off in private (or public) and did worse. For every person who mentions Chappaquiddick there is the Barney Frank-style answer, “And how many dead in Iraq, because Junior needed to best his daddy?” Both are sins, but at least Edward M. Kennedy did a lot of good, too.
I don’t want to take anything away from what should be a celebration of a life well–lived, and the mourning of the loss of a great fighter.
This is a discussion for another time, but I think we need to start to think about it. Who’s the next in line for putting forward the Liberal/Progressive causes in the Senate?
Feingold? Dodd? Boxer? None of them carry the gravitas right now that Edward Moore Kennedy did. Can they? And if not them, who?
Any ideas? Perhaps maha can write a post on it later this week and we can share our thoughts.
I too am thinking about the Kennedy brothers today. At least Ted lived to a ripe old age. If they really want to honor their memories they will create a national law to prevent any more of these nitwits from showing up at public events with a loaded gun on display, no matter what the state. Call it the Kennedy Law. And NO, no one is going to take their guns away or is advocating a police state. But these idiot asshats need to be stopped.
I was too young to live through the lens of you older folks or my parents and see the Kennedy’s for all their youthful vigor, but I’ve always felt envious of having politicians you could be proud of. I joined the Peace Corps, at least in part, due to JFK. In regards to Gulag’s second question, I don’t think there is another person in the Senate today. John Kerry? Goodnight. John Feingold? I don’t see it. Maybe Dick Durbun, but pawn for the insurance agents of America. The best we have is Barack Hussein Obama. Perhaps he is good enough…
I hope the young folks will forgive us geezers for thinking of all the Kennedy boys today. They were a huge part of our lives.
They were more than a huge part of our lives – they were a symbol, and in reality more symbolic than actual, of a time when optimism and idealism were alive and strong, an era that is long over. This country has spent forty years trying to rewrite history, that the actual nature of the Kennedy’s, and the sixties – never existed.
Imagine! “Public servants” going into office to…. Serve the Public. To paraphrase a recent Attorney General, the idea today “renders quaint”.
I was too young to live through the lens of you older folks or my parents and see the Kennedy’s for all their youthful vigor, but I’ve always felt envious of having politicians you could be proud of.
The true shame is the possibility of having that experience has been taken away from all the generations that followed. The real tragedy is that a generation that had so much potential to transform the nature of life on the planet in ways that would have benefited all instead succeeded in pretty much trashing it, having finally decided, rather than “Make Love, not War”, to “Make Money, THROUGH War”.
Perhaps in a different time and under different circumstances Obama would be effective. I don’t see it happening now. The main thing he is showing me is our system is so far gone it is beyond the possibility of reform. Its a near miracle we got an Obama in the first place, and he is unable or unwilling to advocate for the necessary reforms. History teaches us what inevitably comes next, after a while, and it is not pretty.
Its also important to remember that the Kennedys were very much hated by segments of the public in the sixties – the same segments that have evolved into the modern GOP. After all, two of them were assassinated. These are the segments that have been attempting to rewrite the history (and legacy) of the 60’s ever since.
Here’s Roger Simon on Ted:
“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.
Perhaps when I used “foibles,” I used too weak a word. He made a horrible, stupid mistake which tragically cost a young life. But, before that horrible incident, and after, he was a champion for the regular person. And for that, he’ll be remembered as a traitor to his class, as was FDR.
“Yeah, Rog, he was “…in psuedo-remorse, playing the most liberal of Senators.” WTF?
If “this was not a life well lived,” what will be said of Roger when he passes? What did Simon ever bring to the table besides a hunger for attention?
I keep forgetting who Roger Simon is; and, don’t have a clue why he is important to any one.
I cannot think of the Kennedys without thinking of all of them. One retrospective I saw delineated all the tragedies Ted went through. It just showed what a great man he was to bounce back and go back to his job of helping the less fortunate. I was 16 when JFK was assassinated; and, it changed my life forever. Five years later, Martin Luther King was assassinated. A few months later, Bobby was gunned down. It was a difficult period. Would anything be normal again? But, now, I can say we were blessed because Ted lived 77 years. I agree with Maha’s first statement, “Thank you, Senator Kennedy.”
And, I agree with Sunny Jim, let’s make it illegal to have guns within miles of any sitting President. This would not be taking the guns away from the gunowners, just telling them to leave the gun home in this particular instance.
I had the same thought, that the health care reform bill (as long as it’s useful) should be named after Ted.
I agree with you, joanr16.. It would be a shame if they foisted an insurance/ drug company give away on the American public and tried to disguise it as meaningful by attaching Kennedy’s name to it. I wouldn’t put it past them though.
[I]if they foisted an insurance/ drug company give away on the American public and tried to disguise it as meaningful by attaching Kennedy’s name to it….
Yep, my fear exactly. If his name is used as cover, it’ll make the insult of a bad bill that much worse.
For now, though, I’m content to be reminded of all the important legislation Ted Kennedy worked for. Watching last night’s News Hour on PBS was like a happy little trip in the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody. What a towering figure he was on behalf of the poor and the middle class; history will remember him as the great genius of the legislative branch of government. His biography made me realize that, without Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate, we’d be just another Third World country with skyscrapers.
Joan,
Even WITH Ted, we’re just another 3rd world country with skyscrapers – and nuclear warheads. No wownder we scared the crap out of the rest of the planet in the Bush years.
Other countries must look at our health care policies and think we’re a backward bunch of inbred yahoo’s. And I’d be hard-pressed to argue their point.
Aug 26, 2009 
