:: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 ::
Justifying Ted Kennedy's negligent homicide
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Posted by Nicholas Provenzo at 9:39 AM
Speaking about the political career of Senator Edward Kennedy and Kennedy's role in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, Hufffington Post columnist Melissa Lafsky offered the following:
We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.
Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.
Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it. What we are being asked to swallow is that the victim of negligent homicide would somehow consider their homicide "worth it" because their killer had a prolific political career--a career defined primarily by their support for the forced transfer of wealth from those who earn it to those who do not.
It was a horrific injustice that Kennedy never received more than a slap on the hand for his role in Kopechne's needless and preventable death. It is all the more horrific that Kennedy would now be celebrated for it. But notice Lafsky's claim here: even the most cowardly and despicable acts can be forgiven if altruism is one's aim.
If you ever doubt the wickedness--the outright willingness to justify anything in the name of the self-abnegation that is altruism--remember the life of Ted Kennedy and the moral claims of those who would attempt to lionise him.
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