Words Failed Kennedy on Chappaquiddick

Senator's remorse was real and his good works atoned for inexcusable behavior

(NEWSER) - Ted Kennedy's behavior after the Chappaquiddick crash was inexcusable, but it's time to accept his atonement, the Boston Globe writes in an editorial a week after the senator's death. Kennedy's remorse was genuine, as shown by his actions toward the end of his life and his words in an upcoming memoir; it probably spurred him toward great accomplishments in health, education, and civil rights, the paper notes. More»

Senator writes openly of his worst moments

(NEWSER) - Ted Kennedy tells of his anguish after Chappaquiddick in a memoir to be published this month, reports the New York Times, admitting that he "made terrible decisions" in the accident that killed his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. In True Compass, Kennedy deals unsparingly with the low points in his life, telling of his self-destructive drinking after brother Robert was assassinated, but blasting the "false, bizarre, and evil theories" about his life written in some books and tabloids. More»

Camelot replay overshadowed real accomplishments, redemption

(NEWSER) - The Kennedy “legacy” is not pretty, precisely because it requires so much media “airbrushing” to stay intact. “One of the many dreadful aspects,” Christopher Hitchens writes for Slate, “is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and ‘torch passing’ rhetoric in general.” But even the venomous pundit saves his harshest words for Ted Kennedy's hagiographers. More»

(NEWSER) - You wouldn’t know it from the tearful plaudits in the "echo chamber of the mainstream media," but Ted Kennedy was no hero, Howie Carr writes for the Boston Herald. Kennedy was actually a ruthless partisan—he accused Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork of wanting "segregated lunch counters”—and lived a sheltered life disconnected from the working class he supposedly championed. More»

(NEWSER) - On the weekend of his inauguration, John F. Kennedy gave his youngest brother a cigarette case engraved with the words, “And the last shall be first.” Fifty years later, that prophesy has come true, writes Richard Lacayo of Time. The "long shadow of Chappaquiddick" may have kept Ted Kennedy out of the White House, but "as the Romans understood, there can be Emperors of no consequence—and Senators whose legacies are carved in stone." More»