A guy in my comedy class wrote a hilarious sketch about U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy at the gates of Heaven. Without exposing the sketch, which I feel like could easily be on stage, it also included the hard-to-forget tidbit, or "incident" (I love it when politicians do something horrific it's an "incident," whereas with regular folks it's a "crime") about Ted Kennedy leaving the scene of an accident where a young woman, a campaign worker named Mary Jo Kopechne, had drowned in the passenger seat beside him in the Summer of 1969. Kennedy and Mary Jo were returning from a Fourth of July picnic. He was much older than most of the people at the picnic, and married.
The evening before Mary Jo's body was discovered, Kennedy had driven his car off of a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Kennedy managed to escape from the submerged car, and fled the scene. Mary Jo drowned by suffocation. It was determined that she may have survived had the rescue effort been more immediate. Instead, her body was found the following morning by a diver whom was alerted to the submerged car by two amateur fisherman, per Wikipedia.
Truthfully, outside of having read Black Water, a Joyce Carol Oates novel that fictionalizes the 'incident,' and gets inside the head of Mary Jo Kopechne whom tells a first person, stream of consciousness tale as she is drowning, I didn't know much else about Ted Kennedy. In the sketch I learned that he helped usher in the American with Disabilities Act, and various other important pieces of our country's legislation that have helped people of color, people with AIDS, etc.
Still, though, when I think of Ted Kennedy, I think of Black Water. And of how awesome of a writer Joyce Carol Oates is. She has been criticized by some for being too prolific-- as if there is a such a thing!-- (with an exclamatory break in a sentence like that being of JCO's style)-- though I suspect those critics are just jealous. I also suspect Mary Jo's family is thankful to JCO and those whom refuse to let the story of their daughter rest as easily as Ted Kennedy's life, which continued effortlessly minus the speed bump that was Mary Jo Kopechne.
did you know that he is the one responsible for initiating Cobra?
ReplyDeleteno, i didn't, but now i do... thank you. COBRA is great, and helps many people, including myself. wasn't it initially started to help reservists, or was it an extension of the FMLA act? also, after reading today's NYT story on him I feel bad for writing this, though prior to his death i was not too aware of him outside of the fact that he is the senator in the Black Water novel. i just feel like he left someone to die in that car. but yes, he has also helped millions upon millions of Americans, too....
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