Ted Kennedy and Mary-Jo Kopechne. What Really Happened at Chappaquiddick?
May 18th, 2008 | By Bock | Category: WorldTed Kennedy might die soon.
What happened, Ted?
If you’re asking who the hell Ted Kennedy is, then you probably belong to Generation Meh, as one contributor here describes it, and you deserve no further waste of our attention. If, on the other hand, you remember Ted Kennedy, or know all about him, then you’ll be aware that this man has contributed greatly to the uneasy peace we experience on this island. You’ll also know that he has been what we Irish like to think of as a great friend to this country, in our Catholic-Israeli kind of way.
Ted, what the hell were you thinking?
If, like me, you belong to a generation whose parents believed Ted’s brother, President John F Kennedy, was a fucking saint, then you’ll be transfixed as you watch this last survivor of Camelot enter his final struggle.
What, Ted? What the fuck went on?
I can’t deny it, this guy seems to have batted on our behalf all his life, and yet, because I’m of that generation, every time I see Ted Kennedy on the TV, I want to know the answer to the question that’s bothered me since I was a kid. I want to ask him, Ted, what exactly happened to Mary-Jo Kopechne?
Isn’t it terrible? What kind of Irishman am I who would question this peerless icon of Irish-Americanism, this man who has challenged the war-mongering idiot Bush, who has tirelessly spoken out on behalf of our people? What a churlish, ungrateful Irishman I am.
And yet. No matter what this man has achieved in the course of his life, there’s always Chappaquiddick. I can’t shake it off, no matter how I try. I just want to ask him the questions: Ted, what happened on that bridge? Did the car really go into the water by accident? Did Mary-Jo really drown?
I can’t help it, but then again, I’m a bad man. A bad, ungrateful man.
Ted, did you really try to save Mary-Jo or did you just swim the fuck away? And why, Ted? Why did you just swim away and leave Mary-Jo to drown?
Senator Edward Kennedy has been lionised in Ireland as a great friend of this country, and so he has been. But the question remains: what really happened at Chappaquiddick?
What happened, Ted? Why did you just swim away?
Why does this matter? It just does, all right?
It just does.
_____________
Here’s one possibility
The Mary-Jo Kopechne incident is not the only criminal and misogynist doings that Kennedy was guilty of. He may be a great elected official, but as a man, he was cruel to women.
Here he is just another drunk from Boston. Unfortunately he has ridden the coat tails of his family name and influence to remain in the Senate for all these years. Whatever good he has done for Ireland is more than offset by the harm he has caused here by being one of the most socialist members of the Senate we have.
A friend of mine had a bumper sticker that says, “My guns have killed fewer people than Ted Kennedys car”.
Bock, you gotta see the irony, and remember, Americans don’t ‘do’ irony very well, the irony appreciation gene is missing over there.
Kennedy, the swimmer -gets a STROKE’…;-)
Nuts
Rhea: That’s where I’m going with this. Are people able to separate the man’s character from his achievements?
Brian: Exactly. It’s good to take the guns out of Ireland but bad to take them out of America.
Nut: That’s a cruel thing to say. Cruel.
Simple. He swam away, concocting his story, confident that the MSM, or anyone else, could be bullied, bribed, or blackmailed. He was right.
It’s only a sin if one gets caught.
That he held such power for so long is largely attributable to his being the last of that generation of Kennedys, none of whom had any talent for keeping it in their knickers, but were lionized all the same. We just know more about him, in real time, than we knew about the others.
You’re right, Bock.
It does matter.
I don’t reckon he’ll ever give up these answers. The Kennedy brand wouldn’t allow it.
They say Robert was the best of them but maybe he was a threatening old-school MCP as well. Take a while for Joe’s dodgy gangster rum-smuggling gene to thin out.
SeaDreams: I’d still like clarity. Perhaps he used his power wisely despite his past.
Medbh: Yes. However, it’s still an interesting variation on the old ad hominem problem.
ProblemSam: He’ll never give up the information, but people can form their own views on it. The best we can hope for now is a consensus on the balance of probability.
Conan: They’re a very flawed family, which is hardly surprising with old Joe’s genes involved. But, while they might have been ludicrously venerated, they aren’t totally evil either, and that’s what makes them interesting.
They are an interesting family, but the men in particular seem to have that womanizing, alcoholic genetic tendency down pat. They also seem to have that murdering gene down as well (Ted, and the two cousins – the FL one, and the CT one too).
JFK’s family: a great friend to this country, in our Catholic-Israeli kind of way.
You just summed up my father’s attitude perfectly. I wonder what he really thought about the Mary-Jo Kopechne episode. Or even if he cared. Things like that were never mentioned in Catholic-Israeli households when I was a child.
Right: now I feel rather badly, since he has a cancerous brain tumor. But on the other hand, I believe that you do pay for your sins, in this life or the next…..
If it’s true it’s true. Why regret saying it?
I have to admit that I have grown up annoyed at the American press which constantly tells us how much we owe to the Kennedies.
Personally, I never understood why the young woman’s family stopped an autopsy from being performed on their daughter. Or why they weren’t angrier that Ted called lawyers instead of the police to the scene of an accident. That has never made sense to me.
I have to admit its hard to get passed the image of a young woman waiting in vain as the air is used up in the sunken car.
As far as having the murder gene, the nephew in CT. was trough marrage (Ethels bros son),
and the one in Fl. was a rapest.
Ted Kennedy was and is nothing but a spoiled brat brought up by drunks and moonshine peddlers who believed that his kind are something special, something above all others. Of course when you believe this garbage you’re going to get into trouble.
Well, the man is 76 years of age and unless you’re 77 or more, you’re not really in a position to call him a brat, spoiled or otherwise.
If you are 77, I congratulate you on continuing to keep up with events via the internet.
Hey bolted nut that was hilarious…… and I am an American.
Kennedy got a lot of bad press over the above incident. But he got the ultimate bad press on our beloved Wikipedia last week when they reported that he was actually dead, kicked the bucket, bereft of life as John Cleese said in the Parrot sketch. Trouble was, he wasn’t dead…maybe he was just pining for the Fjords – the Gerald Fjords anyone? It has since been “edited” on Wikipedia – a mere technical point.This isn’t the first time that Wikipedia reported that someone had slipped off this mortal coil only to have to retract when the fucker showed up alive and kicking. Eventually of course Wikipedia will be right – a stopped clock is correct twice a day after all – as Kennedy will die. But he didn’t die last Wednesday Wikipedia, we hold this truth to be self evident.
What are you getting at Bock?
The man is a true statesman, you’ll be hinting at him having JFK bumped off next.
What am I getting at? I’m asking Ted to say what happened. He never explained his actions.
Ted Kennedy is a MURDERER. Imagine GWBush, or any Republican, driving a car, with a pretty, single, PREGNANT staffer, off a bridge after an late night drinking party. Then abandoning the pregnant girl to DROWN while Teddy swims away to construct an elaborate OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE scheme to deny culpability in the MURDER of an innocent girl left to DROWN slowly in a car submerged in less than 10 feet of water. If a Republican were even part of the cover-up, they would be jailed for LIFE.
Here is more data: There was an occupied house less than 200 yards from the bridge and over TWO hours elapsed from the car hitting the water to MJC’ s death. Rescue services, with diving equipment, could have been on the scene in less than 30 min. (small island, remember?) This leaves 90 minutes of TERROR, TORTURE, and DEATH at the feet of the WORST FAT FUCK to ever hold elective office in this country!!! Not to even mention he is also integrally responsible for the evisceration of our borders, assault on our health care, and any other way he can fuck this country of his birth. God must be punishing us to allow this disease masquerading as a human to continue to afflict us. Why won’t he just die, slowly and silently??
Great to see that a Kennedy is still stinging the wasps after all these years
Indeed. There’s a lot of vitriol in Tedhai’s comment.
Stinging wasps? I am Panamanian. Vitriol? Let’s go back to the MURDER of an innocent woman. You know, the violent, involuntary extinction of life. But, maybe Mr. Abdul and Mr. Bock you are both so enlightened you can overlook a such a small thing as murder, combined with an elaborate conspiracy to obstruct justice. Maybe it’s a moveon.org thing, we’ll just overlook this little peccadillo about killing, lies, and conspiracy, because he votes democrat. I don’t know what moral universe you exist within, but in mine, committing murder makes you a murderer, regardless of how you vote or where you worship. Teddy is sure a historic guy. With the exception of John Kerry, I know of no other elected national representative, house or senate, in the 19th, 20th, or 21st century guilty of murder.
Tedhai — You didn’t read this post at all, did you?
Panamanian, yeah right, and the Pope is playing central midfield for Glasgow Rangers.
Everyone at the party took LSD.
Mary-Jo “freeked out” and Ted was driving her home. He was tripping is socks off !
Thats why alot of this isn’t really talked about.
If Ted was tripping, they should say so. It’s the least sinister of all the theories I’ve heard yet, and plausible too. I wouldn’t dismiss it.
Imagine how LSD, or whatever his/her initials were, must have felt, and he/she being taken by everyone at the party, an all – there’s no future in nostalgia folks.
There sure ain’t.
The kennedys are almost all complete slimeballs and ted is a murderer. This sort of power in politics makes me sick to my stomach.
Ted Kennedy’s performance that awful night bespeaks of panic. Premeditated murder over a pregnancy was always possible, but I think negligent homicide the more appropriate charge.There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Clinton was in on the cocaine money train during his governorship, that he covered up the truth of the Murrah building bombing, and was probably fingerable for the deaths of Ron Brown and Vince Foster. Bush et al are certainly guilty of the events on 9/11. The evidence is too voluminous to recount, and is available to us all through the internet. To be blind to this evidence is to exhibit an overweaning addiction to mythological structures. In other words, if you were told your dad was an adulterer, you wouldn’t believe it. If you actually caught your dad in the act, you still wouldn’t believe it. Your need for a mythologically constructed life wouldn’t allow you to believe your own eyes. Kennedy got a pass on the unrighteous death of one innocent person. Bush so far has gotten a pass on the murder of thousands, even though the evidence hides on the internet in pictorial and anecdotal form, in plain sight.
What most people miss is that Mary Jo was dead before the car hit the water.
She was head over heels for the Kennedys, working tirelessly on their campaigns & staffs.
She was one of the boiler room girls. Ever wonder why there were no boiler room men?
But I digress.
Here’s my theory;
Mary Jo excitedly told Ted Kennedy that she was pregnant, and he panicked. His wife, Joan was home
pregnant as well. What a political disaster!! Ted probably told her that he knew a Dr who could ‘take care’
of the ‘problem’. Mary Jo was having none of it. She loved Ted, and being a good Catholic, couldn’t take a life.
Ted suggests that they find a private place to discuss it further. (His story is that he was driving her to the ferry, but that was in the opposite direction) He finds a dark, deserted road,and strangles Mary Jo, and puts her in the back seat. Now he has to get rid of the body. This is where Ted gets the help.
Remember, there is no evidence that Ted Kennedy was ever in the water. They roll the car down the embankment, into the dark water, and leave. They call some lawyers, and begin to strategize about the story. Kennedy also talks to Mary Jo’s family before talking to the police.
The trooper’s report is that they find the car in 8 ft of water, upside down. All the doors are locked.
If Kennedy were in the car when it entered the water, how did he get out?
Mary Jo’s family has her body taken out of state,and cremated. No autopsy is performed. A police diver states that Mary Jo’s body was too bouyant for her to have drowned. The funeral director states that it looks as though she were strangled.
An autopsy would have determined if she were pregnant, and if there was water in her lungs.
No water= no drowning.
I have to wonder what Ted Kennedy said to Mary Jo’s parents to get their cooperation. Was he going to drag her name through the mud, expose her as a pregnant party girl, who had been passed around the Kennedy compound?? If Ted were tagged with her murder, he could have easily said it wasn’t his child, and that she was blackmailing him. There were no DNA tests in 1969. While he would have been found guilty, Mary Jo’s reputation would be forever stained.
Whatever she was, whatever she did, she did not deserve to be murdered.
Women didn’t do well around the Kennedys. Look at what happened to Marilyn.
What most people miss is that Mary Jo was dead before the car hit the water.
I’d say that’s because – just like you – they have no evidence for it.
Ah, for fuck sake, let the man’s corpse cool down first, will ya?
Cynical Joe
“Ah, for fuck sake, let the man’s corpse cool down first, will ya?”
I don’t like the term “corpse”, I prefer the term “carcass”.
The nutty American rag the Weekly World News occasionally does articles about the ghost of Mary Jo Kopechne, stating that the ghost has been stalking Ted Kennedy ever since the incident.
Cynical Joe — How about checking out the date of this post before getting on your high horse?
I hope this bloated, piece of shit traitor, choked on his own saliva. Rot in hell u piece of garbage. Karma baby. I cashed in…I had him in the death pool
to the author…maybe theyll let you suck his dead dick, bitch
I hope he lived a daily replay of his murderious past. He should burn.
This site has regular commenters from the US, thoughtful, interesting , intelligent people. But occasionally we get this kind of thing and it reminds us that there’s another, uglier side to America. I leave Mary Jo’s comments in place to show the kind of idiots that are out there spitting venom, rolling around in their own stupidity and hatred. Any similar comments will be deleted.
Hated Ted for 40 Years has a point, Kopechne could have been saved – if she wasn’t been driven by a self-important imbecile who knew he had something bigger than jail in store for him in his lifetime. He wanted to complete the legacy of one of he worst Presidents the United States ever had, his practically fascist (according to Ayn Rand in 1962) brother John – who marked the final evolution of American Progressivism into a full blown Bismarckian cult of state. America, and by extension the world, is better without him.
The way he called his lawyers before the police just shows what kind of man he was: a Kennedy, who by birth has a ‘manifest destiny’ to fulfill.
Progressivism? Bismarckian?
What the fuck are you talking about?
Would you care to rephrase that in jargon-free language we can all understand?
None of us were there. We can neither be Judge, nor Jury.
Sorry if I got jargon-heavy. I tend to get a little angry when discussing the legacy of JFK and his inner circle, as well as that crafty freak LBJ and the Kennedy brothers who created a myth around John to further their own careers and sinister visions for America.
Now, I’ll be fair. Kennedy, like FDR believed he was a true democrat. While many aspects of their regimes had fascism written all over them, it might be unfair to label them fascists. Yet, Kennedy was as good as Mussolini in coming off as a strongman and a possessor of fascist traits that can go down well with any electorate. His obsession with fostering crises in order to whip up populist sentiment demonstrates the dangers of infatuation with fascist aesthetics in democratic politics. Ted Sorenson (who chaired the committee to write JFK’s book Profiles in Courage, which Kennedy only partly oversaw – yet of course he accepted the Pulitzer prize alone) counted sixteen ‘crises’ in Kennedy’s first eight months in office. Kennedy created ‘crisis teams’ that could short-cut traditional beaurocracies and even the rule of law and the democratic process to ‘get things done’ the strongman way. Some people like Henry Fairlie and Gary Wills (hardly right wing critics) dubbed the Kennedy administration a ‘guerrilla government’ for its abuse and contempt for traditional government. In fact, Otto Strasser, the left-wing Nazi who helped found the movement said in an interview that Kennedy’s abuse of authority and crisis-mongering certainly made him look like a fascist. His attitude towards the steel industry is a case in point.
Everything about Kennedy’s politics conveyed a sense of urgency. He ran on a ‘missile gap’ that never existed and governed based on a heightened state of tension with the Soviets that he laboured to create. He constantly spoke the language of ‘danger’, ’sacrifice’, ‘courage’ and ‘crusade’. His first State of the Union address delivered eleven days after his inauguration was ‘a wartime speech without a war’ according to one commentator. We think that duck and cover drills were a hallmark of the 1950s, but it was during his administration that the extreme paranoia so laughed at today reached a height. Various agencies competed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to turn schools and hospitals into fallout shelters. His administration distributed 55 million wallet sized cards with instructions on what to do if the missiles rained from the sky.
The nationalistic appeals to unity and the creation of crises were matched by Kennedy’s desire to transcend ideology in favour of cool pragmatism. He told Robert McNamara that ‘every problem could be solved’ by technocratic means (a position adopted by Bismarck and a hallmark of Nazi thinking). The Third Way was the peak of ideological sophistication under that man. His famous declaration: ‘ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country’ can be seen as a fine patriotic turn of phrase – or the dark shadow of fascism creeping up once again to consume the individual (the most vulnerable minority) into the collective. It could be the best warning of the slavery to come, like Adlai Stevenson’s (an admirer and associate of Kennedy) series of essays stating that Americans needed to transcend ‘the mystique of privacy’ and reject ‘the supermarket temple’ – words used by every fascist, Communist and totalitarian minded person in their visions for social change.
Kennnedys private and personal life was a disaster .Like many people.
The work he he did his political life is unsurpassed. He was a multimillionaire who fought for civil rights, poor people, womens rights and generally the people at the bottom of society.
I love the way he brought out the true coloursof right wing lunatics. as witnessed in some comments here.
John Wayne: You seem to have fallen for the Kennedy myth hook, line and sinker. While this is unfortunate, your timing suits me because I planned to address this anyway.
Kennedy was transformed into an all-purpose martyr after his death for causes he did not subscribe to. He was turned into a martyr for the religion of big government due to the manipulations of the Kennedy circle and to the (very cynical) machinations of LBJ who all harnessed it for their own purposes.
You bringing ‘right wing lunatics’ whom Kennedy supposedly showed up into the picture is amusing – it reminds me of the reaction of the left immediately after his assassination by a Marxist. After his death in Dallas, on cue it seemed to be characterised as ‘the city of hate’. The young Dan Rather heard a rumour that some Dallas schoolchildren had cheered when they heard the news of Kennedy’s death. The rumours were not true, and the local Dallas CBS affiliate refused to run the story. Rather ran around the network and reported the story anyway. Dan Rather wasn’t the only one to immediately point the finger at the political right – within minutes, Kennedy aides were blaming deranged and unnamed right-wingers. One headline proclaimed that the murder had taken place ‘deep in the hate of Texas’. But when it became clear that a deranged Marxist had done the deed, Kennedy’s defenders were dismayed.
‘He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights,’ Jackie lamented to Bobby Kennedy when he told her the news. ‘It’s – it had to be some silly little Communist’. Somehow, the image did not conform to the Kennedy showmanship – after the war JFK would spend hours lip-synching Churchill speeches on the’ I Can Hear It Now’ album narrated by Edward R. Murrow.
Yet Kennedy mythmakers set about creating the fable that he died battling ‘hate’ – established code, then and now, for the political right. The story became legend because the left were desperate to imbue Kennedy’s assassination with a more exalted, politically useful meaning. The liberal establishment, led by the New York Times, the even the pope denounced the ‘hate’ that claimed John’s life. Earl Warren summed up the conventional wisdom (as he could always be counted on to do) when he theorised that the ‘climate of hatred’ in Dallas – code for heavy right wing Republican activity – moved Lee Harvey Oswald to kill the President.
How could a card-carrying Marxist murder this liberal titan? Oswald’s Marxism sent the left into deeper and deeper denial (their only choice other than to abandon anti-anti-communism). And so, over the course of the 1960s, the conspiracy theories spread, and the Marxist gunman became a patsy. ‘’Cui Bono?’’ asked the Oliver Stones then and ever since. The military-industrial complex, allied with the dark forces of reaction and intolerance of course was the answer. Never mind that Oswald had already tried to murder a prominent right-wing spokesman, Edwin Walker, or that he had an ‘extreme dislike of the right-wing’ according to the Warren Commission.
Indeed, over the years a legend grew up around the idea that if only Kennedy had lived, America would never have gotten bogged down in Vietnam. It seems to be the central conceit in books like Arthur Schlesinger’s ‘Robert Kennedy and His Times’. Yet even Robert Kennedy admitted that his brother never seriously considered withdrawal and was committed to total victory in Vietnam. JFK campaigned on a fictitious ‘missile gap’ and was determined and successful in moving to the right of Richard Nixon on foreign policy. A mere three and a half hours before Kennedy died, he was boasting to the Forth Worth Chamber of Commerce that he had increased defence spending on a massive scale, including a 600 percent increase on counter-insurgency special forces in Vietnam. The previous March, John had asked Congress to spend 50 cents of every dollar on defence.
Now, John Wayne also alludes to the idea (another myth, in fact) that Kennedy was an un-alloyed champion of civil rights. In fact, the myth veers sharply when it comes to reality on issues of race. Supposedly, if he had lived, much of the racial turmoil of the 1960s could have been avoided. The truth is more prosaic. Yes, Kennedy pushed for civil rights litigation, and he deserves credit for it. But it was hardly breaking with the past. In the supposedly reactionary 1950s, Republicans had carried most of the burden of fulfilling the American promise of equality to blacks. Eisenhower had pushed through two civil right measures over strong opposition from Southern Democrats, and in particular Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson – who fought hard to dilute the legislation. Again, Kennedy was on the right side of history, but his efforts were mostly reactive. ‘I did not lie awake worrying about the problems of Negroes’ he confessed.
‘Camelot’, a phrase never used to describe Kennedy’s tenure when he was alive, has become a catchall for every gauzy memory and un-fulfilled wish of the Kennedy presidency.
Every major piece of legislation in my life time that supported rights for the underdogs in American society has had Kennedys name attached.
Compare that with the Republican support for aparthied, Pinochet, Marcos, the Shah and Duvallier………………………….the list is endless.
thesystemworks………………….go away and hide.
is it Karma now? Or not?
What exactly is the “legislative legacy” of Ted…or for that matter John or Bobby?
Most of their leanings were aristocratic. John opposed civil rights and tried to defame MLK with Bobby’s help. Bobby did nothing of note in his entire career.
Ted talked loudly, but was unable to accomplish almost anything.
In fact, if he had died instead of Mary Jo, history would not have changed one iota.
Last of whore mongers, rip Teddy boy…
Another stupid comment from a person in the United States. What is wrong with those people? Have they lost the ability to argue logically?
What a bunch of idiots you all are……..I m getting drunk on Ron Taylor Fatso Beer and Protrusion Chips!!!!