Thursday, August 27, 2009

Am I the only one?

Ted Kennedy has died. Am I the only one who is glad that the Kennedy family reign is coming to an end?

Good grief, America's 'royal family' certainly acted as though laws and morals didn't apply to them. Joseph Kennedy, the patriarch, was notorious for his womanizing. His money, that bought most of the Kennedy family's place in politics, was earned by shady stock market dealings and bootlegging during Prohibition.

John F. Kennedy was easily the biggest womanizer in presidential history.

Ted Kennedy was expelled from Harvard for paying someone else to take an exam for him. Then he entered the service and his father paid to make sure he didn't see battle in the Korean War. He was then allowed to reenter Harvard. Interestingly, the Kennedy family gives a lot of money to Harvard.

I remember Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. Ted was drunk and was driving a woman (not his wife) home from a party. Ted ran the car off a bridge. The car landed upside down in the deep water. Ted got out of the car, swam to the surface and left without even telling anyone about the accident until the woman's dead body was discovered. It was proven that the woman had found an air pocket and probably lived a couple hours after submerged in the car. If Ted had gone immediately to a nearby house for help, there was a very good chance the woman would've survived. For this, he received a 6 month suspended sentence.

All that is just the tip of the iceberg. But many, many people choose to ignore all that and set the Kennedy family up on a pedestal. Truly, I don't understand.

Morals and actions still matter to me when I look at public figures. When I exercise my privilege to vote, I look at a person's life and lifestyle as well as their political leanings. I can't separate their talk from their walk.

......end of rant.....

2 comments:

Tracy said...

I want to know why it was OK for him to change the appointment rules so five months had to pass so a Republican governor couldn't appoint someone to a seat but that one of his final acts was to get that rule changed so that a Democratic governor can immediately appoint a Democratic replacement to his seat to help the Democratic Senate pass Obama's stuff.

No one, not even a Kennedy, should be able to have it both ways!!

Jean said...

I'm with you. I've ALWAYS wondered what people saw in the Kennedys. I finally decided that people needed an 'American royal family' so they created one in the Kennedys. Why them, I don't know (for all the reasons you mentioned). And all the clan's (ahem) shortcomings were forgotten, or glossed over, or just not mentioned ... which, sadly, condoned the behavior and allowed it to continue on thru several generations.

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In the autumn of my life, I am very content.

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