Mary Jo Takes One For The Team

Apparently from the way Sen.  Edward Kennedy’s passing and subsequent funeral was treated by the media, he was as big a star as Michael Jackson! I haven’t seen a U.S Senator’s death treated with so much reverence and affection since Jesse Helms died. My 9 year old son, watching a little of the show (very little) on TV with me, assumed it must be President Kennedy that was being buried, since it resembled President Reagan’s funeral to him (he still remembers me forcing him to watch that at age 4).

The rosy and heartfelt depictions of “Teddy” this week have seemed to me like intercepted transmissions from an alternate universe, where infidelity, drunkenness, cowardice, and saving your own sorry ass at all costs are virtues. Alec Baldwin even went so far as to assert that Sen. Kennedy might have been as great a legislator as Rep. Barney Frank. While that might seem ridiculous to the people in Massachusetts who keep voting for Barney year after year, I just took it as the usual hyperbole that mourners indulge in while grieving the death of one of their heroes. But a couple of statements by Teddy’s apologists took me aback: (more…)