This blog is usually about events in my home town, Greenwich, London. However, the author is in Boston, Mass. at the moment. Although of course I've read and seen reports of the death of Senator Kennedy, I think this report is the best I've seen on the way his death has affected Americans, at least in Boston.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Very nice, Arnie. Thank you! While I hesitated to post anything about Ted Kennedy because it's not about words, after all, I really appreciate being able to talk about it. Glad it was a British poster who started the thread!
I found this article from an ex-senator from Illinois especially moving. Carol Mosely Braun said:
quote:
I had no reason to expect him to be my friend. I was the ultimate outsider in the U.S. Senate: female, black, regarded with suspicion because I had defeated a very popular member of the club to get there. He was the ultimate insider, a scion of one of the most powerful political families in the world, born to great privilege and already a senior statesman by the time I gained admission to that most powerful legislative body. But Sen. Edward Kennedy -- whom I delighted in naming "Tedward" -- reached out to me as a friend and counselor, protector and mentor, and while his death followed a long illness, and was not unexpected, it is nonetheless a shocking and lamentable loss.
Proof, based on what Bentsen once said to Quayle, Michael Jackson is no Ted Kennedy!
I can't think if many politicians here that would receive such posthumous affection. Any, actually. I know little of US politics but from the things on the news since his death he seems to have been a good man. It's the best epitaph most of us can hope for, and one I'd be satisfied with.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
It was not always that way. When Ted Kennedy was elected to the senate to replace his brother John F Kennedy, they had to wait until he was old enough, 30. This happened more than a year after JFK was elected. The consensus at the time was he was a young and inexperienced politician (he had just passed the Massachusetts Bar in 1959. He turned out to be the consummate politician in the way he brought about consensus between the two parties in matters of passing legislation.
What he taught all of us, I think, is that you can make a big mistake, alter your trajectory, and still be excellent in what you do. He may, after all, have been the best politician of all three brothers because he knew how to bring both sides to the table. Because of that, it is Obama's bad luck that he won't be helping him any more.
Thanks for that blog link, Arnie. Kalleh is right. In his early years, Ted Kennedy was thought of as the baby of the family, who didn't have his older brothers' innate abilities or intelligence. Then came the scandal at Chappaquiddick. And yet he rebounded, apologized and spent the rest of his life walking the walk.
No, Proof, thank God he was no Michael Jackson, but I'm glad to see that he's getting the coverage he deserves; as much, if not more, than MJ in the first days.
Wordmatic
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