Before Mary Jo, there was Joe.

Even before Mary Jo Kopechne died, there was the patriarch Joseph Patrick Kennedy Senior.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to attend a Fourth of July neighbourhood party on the bank of the Delaware River. It was a day-long 'happening', replete with platters of delicious food, and bustling with many home-crafted amusements for the numerous children of working class families of mixed Irish, Polish, and German ancestry. Several generations jostled verbally and physically with good cheer and great kindness. I felt quite comfortable and welcome in this environment where Catholic and Democrat culture dominated.

Later that evening the discussion turned to politics; Reagan was in his second term of office. The owner of a local general store, a man in his sixties who had listened to commiserations about the failure of the Democrats to rally 'round and present a strong candidate like say, JFK or RFK to counter the Republicans said quietly: "Joe Kennedy had a lot to answer for. If anyone should have been shot, it was him." Oddly, this remark did not provoke any protest; clearly this man had uttered this opinion before and his neighbours either shared it or couldn't offer any strong arguments in opposition.

Information about the Kennedy clan trickled out after the deaths of Joe Sr in 1969, matriarch Rose Fitzgerald in 1995 and Rosemary in 2005. In particular, shameful details regarding the factors that led Joe to subject his daughter to lobotomization ultimately hold up to scrutiny the values this man held. A revealing quote from president Roosevelt, asked when Joe was rewarded with an appointment to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as the inaugural Chairman, why he had chosen such a crook. "Takes one to catch one," replied Roosevelt.

By all accounts, Joe was a devout and traditional Catholic; his actions demonstrated he was also a charming, smooth, amoral and ethically depraved financial operator and political opportunist. Did his irrational and omnipresent fear of Communism allow him to justify to himself why he encouraged his daughters to date the odious Joe McCarthy?

There have been a few opinion pieces that suggest circumstances surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne transformed Senator Edward Kennedy into a crusader for social justice who was admired and respected by many.

I believe that Joe Kennedy's children and to a certain extent, his grandchildren were damaged by the toxic heritage of testosterone-fuelled, high-risk-taking behaviours passed on and sanctioned by the patriarch. But I also think that in reaction to the inherent hypocrisy and the great harm done, most of his progeny consciously chose to redress and redeem Joe's terrible legacy, armed with a sense of duty and animated by an acute awareness of the sources of the family wealth they've enjoyed.

The brilliance, the generosity and the dedication of the Kennedy's individual and familial commitment was - and still is, as the work of Rory Kennedy demonstrates - constant and far-reaching. One has to wonder if Eunice Kennedy Shriver's high-profile involvement with the Special Olympics was a gentle way of reminding Joe that he was directly responsible for the permanent condition that afflicted Rosemary.

Missing the point.

Good grief. Are 'murricans as jaw-droppingly stupid as one would conclude after reading the comments posted here. Perhaps they're not missing the point, it's just too close for comfort?

Eric Zorn wrote a reflection on Chappaquiddick that analyses the monster in the room - current media practices that produce the intense feeding frenzy that follow any such event.

If we'd had insatiable 24/7 cable news networks in July 1969, the accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a passenger in a car driven by Sen. Edward Kennedy drowned would likely have dominated the national consciousness for months.

Special programs every night devoted to nothing but pundits bickering over the depths of the 37-year-old Kennedy's responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, 28. Town-hall-style chat shows every afternoon in which ordinary Americans issued their verdicts and sentences before the evidence was in.

Probing interviews every morning with experts offering their views on whether Kopechne would have survived had Kennedy quickly gone for help. Live remotes all day and night from the bridge, the Kennedy compound, the Kopechne home and the streets of Edgartown, Mass., near the accident where random pedestrians would be asked for their views of Kennedy's failure to report the accident to police until the next morning.

I've had the opportunity of meeting many US citizens. None shared the mean-spirited and willfully ignorant attitudes on display in the comment section after Zorn's piece. I can only hope that a minority of extremely rabid and stupid are motivated to comment in the delusion that their repeated and constant shrieeeking will drown out sensible and rational voices. In that, they show they can dutifully follow FOXNews and its imitators.

Vicious, Vindictive Vultures

You remember the Vulture Culture, don't you?

Here is deBeauxOs's definition of it:

It's a loose alliance of fetus fetishists, religious fundamentalists, neocon rightwing authoritarians and women-haters that have come together in one MASSIVE shriek-fest for the purpose of re-criminalizing abortion. Some of them engineered last year's fiasco, The Pill Kills! campaign.

They're at it again. LifeShite sights a kill:

The director of the pro-life group Citizens for a Pro-Life Society (CPLS) is calling on pro-lifers across America to respectfully urge Cardinal Sean O'Malley of the Boston Archdiocese not to allow the passing of notorious pro-abortion advocate Sen. Ted Kennedy to be honored with a public Catholic funeral.

And other vultures begin to circle.

Vicious, vindictive, and absolutely despicable. And sooooo christian.

ADDED: If you'd like to counter the fetus fetishists' cruel campaign, I'll save you from a visit to those odious sites. Here is the contact info for Cardinal O'Malley.

phone: 617 782-2544
email: sdiago@rcab.org

Did Republican President Ronald Reagan have to mind The Fetus©™ when he died?

This post at Canadian Cynic made us think about that juxtaposition thing.

"Raphael Alexander" commented here at Unrepentant Old Hippie, in a thread about Senator Edward Kennedy's death:

There’s going to be a kind of awkward conversation when Teddy runs into Mary Jo Kopechne up there… would make a good Family Guy skit.*

So, we have a question for The Fetus©™ fetishists and other rightwing fundamentalist christian zealots, like this dim bulb who commented at Sarah Palin's Facebook page:

"good riddens If he makes it into Heaven (& I doubt he will with his stance on abortion) I hope that God makes him babysit all the aborted children for eternity. God have mercy on his soul."

In response to this vapidity, someone responded: "...What kind of person thinks that babysitting is a form of punishment? Do they dole out punishment in heaven?"

So, did Republican President Ronald Reagan have to mind The Fetus©™ when he died? After all, when he was governor of California, he signed in 1967 the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which was enacted to counter the thousands of illicit and often fatal 'back-room abortions' performed in the state every year.

SoCons and RepubliCons: fuelled by hate, smart as a bag of hammers and afflicted by religious zealotry disorder.

*R.A. was thoroughly spanked for his inane comment by the way. Again.