Ted Kennedy Part II: Pale, Slim Hands

A Political Par-tee!

He was called the last and the least, an attitude firmly grounded on the morbid deification of his brothers. Perhaps it’s hard to appraise his value. Few people have had to perform publicly with as many ghosts as Ted Kennedy.

Ted never really escaped

The White House was his, until he abandoned a young girl to drown in his overturned, submerged car.  And then OJ'd his way out of it. After that, the only thing they would trust him with was an incumbent-for-life senatorial position. Massachusetts loved him.  Everyone felt so lousy about his murdered brothers, what else could you do?

Surprisingly, he performed well – which is either a testament to Kennedy’s innate political savoir faire, or evidence of what kind of job it really is.

O them ghosts

Ted had a hard-earned reputation for womanizing and boozing – not exactly a career-killer, but one that keeps you off Pennsylvania Avenue. It was impossible to tell whether he cared, or was just going through the motions ... Something, unprincipled and painful, kept pushing him on.

He had everything and, in a way, very little, choke-collared by historical expectations, and perhaps, when alone, subject to late-night nightmares of slim, pale hands.

‘In our sleep, pain that cannot forget' - Aeschylus

                                                                                                                                                                                  

Ted Kennedy Part I: He Crosses the Bridge

Ted.... Mary Jo

You’d think a country that is as cranked up as the United States would refuse to give anyone, let alone a politician, a second chance. Europeans despise second chances, flailing the injured with the cool detachment of a still vibrant class system.

Part of the American ethos dictates that a loser doesn’t necessarily have to remain a loser. Down the road to success you’re bound to get in a few accidents. Pull yourself up pal.

On July 18, 1969, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, leaving a woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die in the submerged car. Experts believe that she lived up to four hours in the overturned vehicle. While she slowly asphyxiated, Ted dozed in a drunken sleep in a nearby hotel.

Seven days later he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury and received a suspended sentence. He gave the dead girl’s parents about $90,000. The next year he was reelected with 62% of the vote.

As the 1960s reached conclusion, dark forces, skirting the chronological perimeter for the last nine years, finally stormed the walls. For the most part, the ramparts held, supported, incredibly, by flowers and guitars. But nothing lasts forever, not even Time. In the later half of 1969, the evil that men do hit the headlines, shrieking through drifting waves of saffron and billows of tie-dyed shirts like lost V2 rockets. My Lai came on deck. Charles Manson. Brian Jones. Chappaquiddick. Altamont.

 A watery grave

But Ted Kennedy survived to become the second longest-serving U.S. senator in U.S. history. And he knew how to party hard. In 1989, European paparazzi caught Ted having sex on a boat. Numerous magazine articles profiled his sociopathic womanizing and impressive drug abuse.

In 1980 he ran for president. A few people brought up Chappaquiddick and Ted said aw, forget it, I quit. He made a great speech declaring “the dream never dies”, crawled off to Boston, and then never made that mistake again.

When Ted died in 2009 at age 77, President Obama gave the eulogy. Ted was praised as a great guy.

There’s nothing wrong with second chances. It takes guts to forgive, but it takes a lobotomy to forget.

Or maybe you just have to party, really, really hard.

But Ted never forgot.1969 held him under the waves, his destiny forever entwined in the floating, flowing hair of Mary Jo Kopechne.

Bobby Kennedy near the Vanishing Point



Bobby: near the vanishing point

Shortly before he died, Bobby Kennedy was photographed (May 24, 1968) alone on an Oregon beach with his dog close by. The photograph was taken by Bill Eppridge. It made the cover of Life magazine the following month.

Kennedy has his back to us in full flight. He’s neither running to something nor away. He’s cradled in ghostly aspic, protected for the moment.

Already he is outdistancing Freckles the dog, who will soon weary of the sun and sea and sit and watch as the man thins into the blue surf and sky.

Notice that Kennedy’s feet no longer touch the ground: they no longer need the ground. The tide has already buried his footprints.

The next time we see him (June 6, 1968), once again through the lens of Bill Eppridge, he is in a coma on the floor of a kitchen in the Ambassador Hotel, a bullet in his brain, and he’s struggling to lift his head but already he's alone.

It’s obvious to me that the two photographs are out of order.

Somehow Bill’s camera has slipped a sprocket and the last image we should see, that we must remember, is that of a spirit ascending. So that’s the way I play it.



Reverse the order...

Time can be so arrogant. It remains for us to make patterns that make sense to the soul. Einstein said that hours and minutes are more flexible than warm rubber. In the Big House, there are no clocks.


For Bobby Kennedy is still on the beach, but it's far from Oregon, near the Vanishing Point, where clouds sail.