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Trivial Pursuits => History => Topic started by: pmcd9 on August 26, 2009, 03:02:11 pm
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Posting a thread about Ted Kennedy couldn't possibly result in a flame war could it?
Here's (http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090826/us_time/08599191875800) an article praising him.
Here's (http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/08/26/ted-kennedy-healthcare-purgatory/) a less glowing report that admittedly I didn't read in it's entirety.
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Wow. Jeez.
Shit.
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Actually, dude pulled about a year and a half after that diagnosis, which is pretty good. Like him or not, his suffering is complete and it's fair to let him have that in peace.
QFT. His folks got to say goodbye, and he certainly had time to put his affairs in order.
Requiescat in pace
Edit: The thread Ash linked to took an awesome trip to Borneo. Made me can folks a bunch more times.
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Regardless of how one feels about him, it's pretty incredible how Chappaquiddick is only briefly mentioned in most of the items I've read or heard, and usually in the same breath with something like "although he was no stranger to controversy, he was the greatest man of the 20th and 21st centuries." Equally troubling is that he was a close friend of Orrin Hatch.
Really, I don't mean to be starting anything. Whether you like him or not, he was obviously an extraordinary person.
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I don't know jack about the guy but I my vague understanding is that he was instrumental (at least as a figurehead) in the current healthcare reform thing, do we think a surge of death related good will going to improve the chances of the dems getting that through? I'm assuming his death wouldn't have a negative affect since he couldn't possibly have been that active in the bill in anything but spirit.
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I know almost nothing about Teddy Kennedy. I have only a vague concept of him existing in the aura of the standard Kennedy family mythology claptrap, plus a whiff of potential moral ambiguity that's also de rigueur for the clan.
A close high school friend's dad died of brain cancer, and from what I heard, it's basically one of the more horrible ways to go, and the sort of death you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. I'm all for Ash's suggestions of his suffering being complete for that reason.
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I'm from Massachusetts. Damn near everything good that got done for Massachusetts in national politics during my lifetime was either Ted Kennedy's doing or strongly backed by him. The rest of the nation went "hurr hurr drunk Chappaquiddick" but the dude got shit done.
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Dude tried to make the world a better place despite having more than enough money and more excuses than basically anyone to not do good with his time.
If there's a heaven, dude is probably on his way and... insofaras that goes, Godspeed.
The thing about Chappaquiddick is... like... if there's any human being alive when I was also alive where something that awful could have been a conspiratorial set-up to curtail his power on the public stage, it's Ted. Scoff if you want but the dude's brothers were murdered in excessively complicated and shady assassination plots, one of them while running for President and one of them AS president.
One imagines the preserved head of Prescott Bush from a secret bunker under Yale or Cinderella's Castle telling a general:
"Yeah, we killed the first two, killing this one would be a little... obvious, don't you think? Just ruin him."
Other than the disembodied head, it almost sounds plausible but only for Ted Kennedy.
Rest in peace, flawed awesome guy.
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I lived in Massachusetts for over a decade but I guess I wasn't paying attention, because I had not much more than Smells' 'vague Kennedy plus moral ambiguity' idea of him. But listening this morning to some detailed reports of what he accomplished, I have to say, if anyone ever redeemed himself, it sounds like it was this guy.
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I mean if you're going to bring up conspiracies, what a well timed distration this might be for another untimely demise (http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/middle-east/2807079/Iraqi-leader-dies).
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Prescott Bush was such an asshole.
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What the fuck, Massachusetts?
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The problem with a nation of contrarians is that... yeah.
Sure, they rise up when things are getting bad and turn things around.
But, also, when things are starting to look up, they... rise up and turn things around.
Here we are now, I suppose, entertain us.
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What the fuck, Massachusetts?
As Jon Stewart so eloquently explained (http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-january-18-2010-david-walker) the democrats chose a terrible terrible candidate.
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You know Massachussetts already has a universal health insurance law at the state level. I feel like they're all "Fuck you, we've got ours" to the rest of the country.
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So I heard on the radio that Brown is opposed to gay marriage, but somewhat for abortion rights. Which just blows my mind. But then again, last November, if I recall correctly, just about every measure that sought to limit abortion rights or define life was voted down and every measure that attempted to grant homosexuals the right to marry or form civil unions was also voted down. I don't mean to start a debate on either issue. It's just kind of strange to me.
You know Massachussetts already has a universal health insurance law at the state level. I feel like they're all "Fuck you, we've got ours" to the rest of the country.
That would be awesome if this was a question on exit polls.
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But then again, last November, if I recall correctly, just about every measure that sought to limit abortion rights or define life was voted down and every measure that attempted to grant homosexuals the right to marry or form civil unions was also voted down.
See, this is what drives me apeshit right now. Glenn Beck and other conservatives keep screaming "Obama and the liberals are trying to TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE! I DON'T RECOGNIZE MY COUNTRY ANYMORE!!" Which has been incredibly effective in rallying their base, and scaring the shit out of stupid people. But it's altogether not based in reality. When I ask people "Which parts, specifically, of the Constitution do you believe are being trampled on?", I don't get an answer. So far as I can tell, the Obama administration and the Dem-controlled Congress really haven't accomplished much, at least not much from a crazed left-winger's perspective.
Andrew Sullivan posted this list of what would have gone down if the country had in fact been run by liberals for a year (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/the-gulf.html). But not a one of those things has happened.