Kennedy Cancer

The deification of Teddy from the press has arrived. Like a lot of things, if that cut both ways for Democrats and Republicans it would actually be fine with me. When Reagan got Alzheimer's we had to have a lot of time spent in the press basically saying "that explains a lot of what he did in office", and an awful lot of the farther left press saying essentially "he deserved it".

There is an odd connection in the Reagan / Kennedy comparison, because Kennedy essentially traded his very real shot at the Presidency for a night out with a young secretary that ended in her death. If Chappaquiddick doesn't happen, then I wonder if Carter to Reagan ever happens? We will never know, but given the Kennedy mystique, I think anything short of the death of the young lady under suspicious circumstances, and Teddy makes it to President. Teddy made his choice and this history happened. It is heartwarming to hear the press talk about him "surviving a car accident"--in fact, so well that by his official story he could swim to the mainland and call the authorities in the AM.

I'm a Christian, so I certainly hope I don't get what I deserve, and I hope Teddy doesn't either. We all die; cancer, Alzheimer's, accidents, heart attack-the list is long and nothing all that fun to dwell on. We all die of something--we don't get to pick, no matter our power attained in life, we find that some things are beyond our control. Some level of "remembering the good times" is to be expected from the MSM, but the press certainly didn't avoid "the rough spots" for Reagan at the time of the Alzheimer's announcement. Iran Contra, deficits, etc. I'm not saying that they should have ignored the rough spots. Reagan was flesh and blood, just like Kennedy, but I don't recall Reagan ever saying anything like this, as Kennedy did on Robert Bork:

"The President, should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate, and impose his reactionary vision on the Supreme Court.

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens."

Aside from the well known boozing, womanizing and death of Mary Jo Kopechne, Kennedy has always played hard-ball politics. AT LEAST as hardball as anyone on the right. Again, I don't have a problem with that, it is just a fact. He managed to have Robert Bork defeated, he worked very hard to have Clarence Thomas defeated with every technique he could come up with, reasonable and over the top. He played very hard, and his hardness has often been returned in kind. That fact ought to be included in the stories along with his kindness. I assume he has been kind, at the very least to those he liked, and no doubt, in some cases to others. It is also clear from the record that this man is not one that has failed to "give punches".

So far I haven't heard any nut job from the right talk about "he deserves a painful death" as MANY from the left have for Reagan, Bush, Cheney and others. I suppose someone will do that, since there are certainly right-wing nut jobs as well as left wing ones, but I hope they are very few and far between. We all get to face the grim reaper in one form or another, the long lists of folks from the left that like to heap painful death wishes on Republicans is something that I find reflects especially badly on those of that stripe. Disease and death happen and only the most ultimate of fascists try to make them ideological issues (as in the left with AIDS/Reagan).

One of the VERY common things that the press loves to do is to try to arouse people's emotions against Republicans. "If it was HIS son or daughter killed in Iraq, THEN how much would he support the war"? Somehow one never reads in the MSM how the parents of Mary Jo Kopechne might feel about a sitting US Senator that left their daughter in a car under water, where all the evidence we have says that she died over hours, breathing her last in an air bubble while that US Senator tried to come up with the right lie to keep his career alive. The feelings of of her parents are forfeit by the MSM for what they see as the greater cause of liberalism. It is also basically top secret that John McCain's son is in Iraq -- and he supports the war.

The other common emotion is "how would they feel if THEY didn't have health insurance, maybe they wouldn't be so greedy and vote against national health insurance THEN!". Guess what, in England there would be no treatment for Kennedy under their plan. It would be hospice time. Will the MSM be looking into that very much? If Kennedy was forced to live under the health system that he supports, he would not be treated. Emotions might be quite different--and maybe even more removed from the picture since people might realize that National Health is just a "trade off", not some huge "sure win for all".

How do I feel about Kennedy now that I know he is dying? It doesn't make much of a difference to me, since I know I am dying and I knew he was dying as well all along-- neither one of us knows when. This information likely increases my chances of outliving him, but there are no guarantees. I wish him peace with God, as much remaining time as can have reasonable quality for him and as pain free a death as possible. Finding out that we liked the same Scotch wouldn't even make me agree with him politically, a reminder that we are both going to die is even less likely to so so.