It's Time to Forgive Kennedy for Chappaquiddick: Globe

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»

Senator invited Kopechne's parents over, couldn't talk

(NEWSER) - Though he longed to tell Mary Jo Kopechne’s parents about the 1969 accident that killed their daughter, Ted Kennedy couldn’t find the words on two occasions when he invited them into his home, a new book on the senator says. “When the time came, after plenty of small talk, he said he just couldn’t talk about it,” Gwen Kopechne told the author, the New York Daily News reports. More»

Senator will discuss failed presidential bid, Chappaquiddick

(NEWSER) - After a 6-day auction, Ted Kennedy's memoirs have sold for more than $8 million, the New York Times reports. Assuming the Senate Ethics Committee OKs the deal, Kennedy will discuss his lengthy career, infamous car crash, and failed presidential bid. He’s “walking, talking history,” gushed the book's publisher. 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) - Thousands of constituents and admirers turned out this afternoon to honor Ted Kennedy as a motorcade bearing the senator's body from his Cape Cod home to his brother's presidential library wound through the streets of Boston. Some wept, some applauded as both locals and out-of-towners flooded to say goodbye. "We’re his family,” one Bostonian told the Globe. “We loved him so much, and we’ll miss him so much." More»