There will be a lot of hateful glee expressed on the right wing blogs today regarding Ted Kennedy’s death. If not from the owners and front page writers on those blogs, than from most of those who post their vile comments there about the news that Ted Kennedy has died. They will make much of the scandals that dogged his life, and how his brand of liberalism was outdated and dangerous, and that while never wishing anyone ill (no, they would never do that, would they) the country is better off now that he is dead. A very few, like Nancy Reagan, who worked with Senator Kennedy in the fight for stem cell research, will be gracious and generous, but they will be in the minority.
This is hardly unexpected. Ted Kennedy became a polarizing figure, and a particular bogeyman among the right. If not for his brothers’ horrific assassinations, I doubt he would have felt compelled to expend the energy to remain in the Senate all these years. He was a deeply flawed individual, like most of us, and, in truth, he was likely not prepared to assume the mantle of a powerful political faction when his brother Robert was gunned down in 1968 while running for President. We will never truly know what those two ghastly events did to change him both for better and worse, throughout his life. But I would not have wished such a fate on anyone.
In response to what is likely to be a raucous litany by the hatemongers that make up the right wing media circus of all his many sins, let me leave you with these words by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, and a man who knew Ted Kennedy far better than most of us who are not members of his immediate family, regarding Ted Kennedy’s legacy of service to his country:
Most Americans will never know how many things Ted Kennedy did to make their lives better, how many things he prevented that would have hurt them, and how tenaciously he fought on their behalf. In 1969, for example, he introduced a bill in the Senate calling for universal health insurance, and then, for the next forty years, pushed and prodded colleagues and presidents to get on with it. If and when we ever achieve that goal it will be in no small measure due to the dedication and perseverance of this one remarkable man. We owe it to him and his memory to do it soon and do it well.
Imagine, forty years of fighting for universal health care coverage for all. Coverage for everyone regardless of whether they were white or black, poor or rich, blue collar or white collar, young or old, healthy (at the moment) or desperately ill. Forty years of perseverance in the face of constant defeats and disappointments. Let us make his final achievement the accomplishment of this worthy goal he set for America some forty years ago.
