the Kennedy clan

[winterbadger]

sujata posted the result of one of the latest LJ memes, the "in the year you were born" one, in her journal. It included the following sentence:

Senator Edward Kennedy escapes injury when the car he is driving veers off a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island.

The compilers of those lists have a wicked sense of irony. If Ted Kennedy had been able to run for the Democratic nomination in 1972, I think there's a very strong chance he would have been the 38th President of the United States. To say that Kennedy escaped injury at Chappaquiddick is only true in the most literal sense. I imagine that at many points since then he's wished he hadn't escaped. Which is not to take away from his distinguished career in the Senate since then, but it's got to be bitter wine to him when the thinks of the days before June 1969. Let no one watch the lives of the Kennedy family and say that the tragedy of Sophocles and Euripedes is dead.

Comments

[sujata.livejournal.com]

I marvel that I hadn't stumbled across your journal before, in reading those of my friends. You're fascinating! And something of a kindred spirit, which of course makes me biased, but I make no apologies for that. =-)

You are absolutely correct. Ted Kennedy escaped injury only in a physical sense. We're never going to know what really happened in that accident. I often wonder if Ted Kennedy, himself, knows what really happened. It's so easy to be left totally dazed and confused in an automobile accident, even an ordinary mostless harmless fender-bender. How much more shaken up and lost he must have been, tumbling off a bridge! What if he hit his head and didn't remember, at first, that he had someone else in the car with him? Then too, there's an even worse possibility: he may have been able to get himself out of the car, but unable to rescue his aide.

I know I, for one, would feel just as you suggested he must feel: wishing he'd been the one who died, and that the girl had lived.

Fate has an even wickeder sense of irony than the compilers of the "what happened the year you were born" lists, though. Two previous Kennedys aspired to be President; one was elected and assassinated, the other was killed before an election could be held. Which makes me wonder...if not for the Chappaquiddick incident, might Ted Kennedy also be dead now?

The dead girl may have saved his life. How's that for irony? :-/

[meepeek.livejournal.com]

It's been pointed out to me that his inability to ever run for president is what has made Ted a more forthright Senator than he would otherwise ever have been. He has less to lose than most politicians, since it's unlikely his state will ever vote him out, and since he doesn't have to worry about how it will reflect on him when he runs for president...

I find it unreal that they only mention his escaping in that meme, when the rest of that fiasco was one of the pivotal moments in his life, and potentially American history, since he was like to run/win if it hadn't happened.

[redactrice.livejournal.com]

"Let no one watch the lives of the Kennedy family and say that the tragedy of Sophocles and Euripedes is dead."

I've always felt that way about the Kennedy saga. In his late years, papa Joseph was striken with a stroke or something else that left him speechless and in a wheelchair but still in possession of his mental faculties. Thus bound, he lived to mutely witness the deaths of both John and Bobby and the Chappaquidick incident. If that's not Greek-tragedy-style retribution from the gods for his earlier hubris, I don't know what is.