After this past weekend, even *I* am suffering from Kennedy Fatigue, but I wanted to make a few last observations about the last seven days and the next few months to come.
First, I was a bit unimpressed with the way the media turned Teddy’s ex-wife Joan into a non-person. We heard over and over again about how his second wife, Vicki, was the true love of his life, how she deserved so much credit for his personal turn-around, and how brave and strong she was being through all the public wailing and rending of garments. I have no qualms with that at all, because I agree with pretty much every single point. But Joan Bennett Kennedy was the woman who had to put up with him through the drinking and the carousing, the tragic years of his brothers’ deaths, the brutal shame of Chappaquiddick, and even made the effort to put on a smiling face for the doomed 1980 primary campaign. And though it seems to me that Ted and Joan only managed to bring out the worst in one another, she deserved a little more kindness last week.
Though the media seemed not to notice, she was, in fact, at the memorial service and the funeral. In the picture above, she is being greeted by Joe Biden after the funeral mass — all of the Senate colleagues who served with Teddy for any length of time would have known Joan socially from the earlier years. This ABC online news story is the only one I found that had much to say about her in the context of the public mourning or about her personal life now. A few years ago, she was in pretty desperate straits, having gone back to drinking and having been involved in a few embarrassing incidents that compelled her children to try to exert legal guardianship over her, but she’s in better shape now. I hope that Teddy’s passing lets her find a bit of additional peace in her own life.
Here’s Jack Nicholson studiously not talking to anybody at the funeral. I would just like to invite you to imagine the wild and crazy times that Teddy and Jack must have had together back in the day and then consider why nobody is speaking to him. I’ll bet Vicki didn’t give Jack a hug.
Rank sentimentalist that I am, I have always loved the song “The Impossible Dream” from the musical “Man of La Mancha”, even though it has been permanently branded as the World’s Biggest Cheeseball by the entire entertainment world. Still, it had not occurred to me to associate the song with Ted Kennedy until Brian Stokes-Mitchell sang it at the JFK Library memorial service. Here’s the inevitable YouTube clip of that performance:
John Kennedy and his White House years are forever associated with the musical “Camelot”, thanks to some very clever PR efforts from Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Over time, I think the Kennedys probably don’t want Teddy’s legacy too closely linked to the story of Don Quixote, the crackpot knight who tilted at windmills, but the lyrics of “Impossible Dream” really turn quite poignant and hopeful when sung in the context of Ted Kennedy’s terrible and magnificent struggles:
“To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear the unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go.To right the unrightable wrong,
To love pure and chaste from afar,
To strive, when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star.This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far.
To fight, without question or pause,
to be willing to march into hell
for a heavenly cause.
And I know, if I’ll only be true
to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest.And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.”
I don’t think I’ll ever hear that song again without thinking of Ted Kennedy.
For the next few weeks, we, the citizenry of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, will have to endure the struggle between all the Teddy-wannabes as they sort themselves out for the special election in January to fill his seat. There’s a minor secondary struggle over appointing a temporary fill-in until the election, but nobody who has any real designs on becoming the next junior senator will have anything to do with that appointment, since they will be expected to sit out the January vote. Since it seems likely the legislature will overturn their own shortsighted 2004 law and let the governor appoint someone, it will undoubtedly be some long-time hard-boiled Democratic pol who has nothing to lose by being a benchwarmer for three months OR it really will turn out to be Vicki Kennedy, who has no interest in running but might be obliged in the very short term. The January election, though, will be entirely dependent on the political whims of Joe Kennedy, Ted’s nephew and a former congressman himself. There are several up-and-coming Dems who could use this opportunity as a big stepping stone, but if Joe runs all bets are off. It will be interesting, but also infuriating, to follow the local political news for the next few months.
