Ted Kennedy exemplified all of privilege's promise and all of its detriments. In him, the inspiring mix of soaring rhetoric and devotion to public service encouraged by the unyielding faith of his mother gave way to frustrating and self defeating episodes inherited from his shrewd but profligate father. That portrait, so publicly etched, is the real lesson of the Kennedy legacy.
For along with their genuine attractiveness was a repellence of equal proportion, a dichotomy borne from power's temptation to encourage inbreeding and fealty to the mythos writ upon the nation's psyche. But within this particular myth is actual heroism and betrayal, glory and despair, death and resurrection.
It is compelling in the dramatic sense, the one preferred by the media and those who favor a simple telling of a complex story. But the reality of the Kennedys' service to the citizens of this country cannot be denied, whether by their incessantly obstructionist detractors or by their own liability.
They were equal parts ambition and altruism, a reflection of America itself. But in a culture that enjoys cleaning its claws on scandal, a veritable cottage industry arose from their hijinks, which at times threatened to obscure any of their good works and turn their once adoring public towards snide contempt.
They had it all and lost much. Being human, the Kennedys had no choice but to pay the price of admission regardless of their status and were thus regularly felled and foiled. And in recent years, almost everyone's become an Oswald, a Sirhan, a Kopechne, murdering their heroes and in turn being themselves left for dead. It's all too easy to sit back and judge history with the effortlessness with which we navigate the remote or surf the gossamer web, taking history for granted and rendering life itself suspect if unaccompanied by easy profit or dumbed-down accessibility.
The Kennedys ultimately defied that tendency. Their charitable and legislative efforts have improved the lives of millions of people, as well as being instrumental in adding a new dynamism to an old game, one which energized the masses and introduced intoxicating feelings of pride and vigor into the dull desert of politics.
What Ted Kennedy managed to do was hang on. Having navigated through many a morass, he was, in the end, able to do more good than the average politician and less bad than the average wealthy, powerful paterfamilias. Eventually he succeeded where his lionized brothers failed: he survived the Kennedy curse long enough to see the birth of a new era, one that promises the kind of hope and change his brothers only dreamed of.
And our country is better for it.
Taylor Marsh: Ted Kennedy's Foreign Policy Idealism
Domestic issues pervaded Teddy's mission, but also his image at home. However, he was intensely interested and engaged in world matters.
Teddy needn't have worked a day in his life, he could have hidden in the south of France after Chappaquiddick, and told us all to jump off a bridge, but he chose to fight for the "least among us", which he did brilliantly. I asked a rethuglican acquaintance to name one of Teddy's social accomplishments that he disagreed with, and he could not, it was merely the lockstep mentality of that crowd that told them anything Kennedy is bad, bad, bad.
We have lost our last true Champion, Obama will be sorely tested now. We have to hope for another true Champion to rise now, or we are all in trouble.
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I feel such a great loss as I was in high school when his brothers were killed so I have known of him all my life. Now who will be our champion? I don't see anyone standing up...
To say that Ted was a complex man is woefully understating the reality of who he was.
You are one of only two commenters to whom I subscribe. I have been an avid and ardent reader since the onset of HuffPo. The other is an old friend, a Kennedy friend as well, with whom I have had argumentative and near friendship rending discussions regarding the 3rd generation with whom he is friends.
I grew up in Brookline, the Kennedy childrens' birthplace. I met Jack in '60 in Brookline. I was nearly 15. I met Teddy in '62, one-on-one, campaigning on a street corner, alone save for a kid with a clipboard. I was at Bobby's victory party at The Garden in '64 with members of the elite, oddly. I was an interloper of sorts. Bobby spoke at my brother's Milton graduation. On that Friday in '63 I was a mile away from their birth home in Brookline. That night in August '64 I was again literally within walking distance of that house when i saw the TV over the bar announce Teddy's plane crash. Yes, I was way underage then. I met John Jr. at Melon's on the upper east side one night.
Having read and watched so much today, virtually nothing of which I was not aware, your piece is the best, most cogent, most sincere, most truly honest that I have read.
Thanks, from one who knows.
Jim
Yet, HE was a man of GREAT service to OUR country, Steven, with ALL the compassion and goodwill toward others that conservatives, and particularly the judgmentally self-righteous, CLAIM through their ample and hypocritical lip-service - to possess.
I'm sure plenty of right-wing preachers would tell me, being an atheist, I couldn't possibly analyze such things accurately, but it seems to me (as the old saying goes), He's got more (Jesus) in his little finger...
I have been trying to formulate an analogy between Mr. Weber's American myth description of the caricaturization (is that an actual word?) of the Kennedy family and the Greek's tragic hero, Heracles. I can see it in my mind's eye but, of course, cannot find a satisfactory articulation. I'm just wondering what the distant future holds for the stories told about the Lion of Liberalism.
As usual, your eloquence is exceeded only by your insight.
(I only hope you would reconsider taking your commentary to television as well, so as to reach millions more people that sorely need a counterbalance to the drivel they endure each and everyday.)
This current myopic morass of media malaise has entrapped our spirits for too long.
It is easy to blame "ClusterFoxNews" (and justly so), but the truth is that most of the rest of the televised media is only 2 degrees closer to "true north". Steven does not seem to realize that we NEED to hear his words, perhaps as much as he NEEDS to say them.
Thanks