Senator Kennedy has died

[33girl]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Have we forgotten Roger Mudd so easily?

I was going to say "I love Roger Mudd!! What did he do??" So I wikied it. I really did live in a Republican household, because I have no recollection of this interview and I'm old enough to remember it. (By that I mean the 'rents weren't even paying attention because they were already on the Reagan train.)

When people say it is hitting them, I think they mean the whole passing of the concept of a family dynasty like the Kennedys - who we have never had anything else like in the US - rather than anything EMK did (or didn't do) in general. My mom was a mess when Jackie died, and I didn't understand it at all. Now I do.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by 33girl

When people say it is hitting them, I think they mean the whole passing of the concept of a family dynasty like the Kennedys - who we have never had anything else like in the US - rather than anything EMK did (or didn't do) in general. My mom was a mess when Jackie died, and I didn't understand it at all. Now I do.

Yeah, this probably plays a massive part in the whitewashing of the historical record, too - and like I said, I don't blame anybody for doing it (and that's beside the fact that his transgressions largely took part in a different era, especially for the media), and he really was an amazing dude (whether or not you liked him).

An interesting back-and-forth I saw earlier today basically proves this via example - one pundit labeled him the ultimate champion for the underprivileged, while the other basically said Kennedy started the "entitlement complex" that nearly dragged under welfare, the VA and grossly bloated US budgets for decades.

Both are likely true. I can't even think of the last American figure who so starkly displayed both the purest white and darkest black sides of the coin. He's an absolutely fascinating case study.