I don’t mean to contradict you, but there’s evidence that there was an air pocket in the car, and that Ms. Kopechne was probably alive for some time, and she could have, if immediate help had come, be saved.
No it wasn’t it was a cheap shot, I accept, and I probably shouldn’t have made it. But really, I think you need to step back a bit. You just seem to be taking it all a bit personally and a bit seriously, and your “what joke?” post just seemed to encapsulate the issue.
Oh, by all means, please do.
Come on, guys, can’t we even just consider the possibility that mswas’s sympathy for Mary Jo Kopechne is genuine? I’m sure it’s completely innocent and apolitical, and not meant to be an attack on the late Senator Kennedy. This sort of thing happens all the time. Why, I bet when Al Sharpton passes away, we’ll suddenly be seeing a similar outpouring of innocent and apolitical sympathy for the people who died in Freddie’s Fashion Mart!
Seriously, though, even though I admire Kennedy’s work as a legislator, the Chappaquiddick incident has always rubbed me the wrong way since I first heard about it. It’s probably because I kind of have a hero complex, and even though my normal life doesn’t involve much in the way of heroics, I like to think that if the chips were down and lives were on the line, I would be the kind of person who could step up, take charge, and save the day. I don’t know why I feel like this. Maybe it’s all the video games I play, I dunno. I’ve never been tested like that, and I hope I never will be. Whenever I looked at Ted Kennedy, on the other hand, I saw someone who had been tested for on-the-spot heroics and had been found wanting, not to mention his handling of the incident later on. If I were ever in Kennedy’s position, and I let someone drown like that, I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself. I’d always carry the guilt and shame of my failure, like Sylvester Stallone’s character in Cliffhanger after his friend’s girlfriend fell down the mountain as he was trying to get her across the cable.
I guess part of me is just kind of resentful that Ted Kennedy never looked like he was taking it as hard as I would have. Maybe politicians who wail about regrets over things they’ve done don’t do too well. Jimmy Carter went so far as to profess guilt over adultery that he didn’t even commit, and he didn’t get a second term. But then again, he did beat Kennedy in the 1980 primaries, so who knows.
You know, we should have a Mary Jo Kopechne Memorial Day when the nation could give annual thanks. By her death alone she destroyed any chance that the sleazebag Kennedy would ever become President.
We owe her a great debt.
Yeah, I’ve been floating 'round the boards and noticed a plethora of threads with him doing this sort of stuff, and wondered much the same about his mental/inebriation state myself Boyo Jim. Like you though, I’m loathe to curtail his rantings because a) they’re quite amusing in a sort of scab-picking kind of way and b) at least he is losing the plot here in cyberspace and NOT in RL, we hope.
If not for the fact that it was in the news, would you care about her at all? Consider all that have died in accidents since her drowning that you haven’t mentioned-they haven’t received 1/1000000th of the attention she has, and yet you bemoan the “fact” that she in particular has been forgotten.
Besides the Kennedy connection, what makes her case special?
Perhaps the fact that she was left to suffocate in an air pocket while the man with her who had escaped made no attempt to contact the aurhorities until the next morning? That would be tragic and memorable whoever was involved.
Another factor. The man involved escaped any punishment for what was undoubtedly a crime (probably several). One more thing whoch would have made the story stand out even had Kennedy not been involved.
The man then went on to establish a political career as the champion of the ‘little people’. Another rich irony considering that he and his family had pulled every string to ensure that the death of one ordinary woman was never fully investigated.)
This case would be worth of remembrance even had the man been called McGillicuddy.
It’s irritating that the earlier thread was closed, because I would have liked to address the claims concerning John Farrar, the diver who found Kopechne’s body, and his theories. It is on those theories that Cheesesteak apparently rests his claim that Kennedy’s inaction, post-accident, is what caused the woman’s death.
In the closed thread, Cheesesteak ripostes with Diogenes, saying his own expert (Farrar) is infinitely more credible than Diogenes’s contrary expert, because there is no contrary expert to offer an opinion.
To recap, Farrar said that when he dove down and saw the body, it was in a position where “an air bubble could have formed” and that she could have survived as long as two hours.
It’s not justified to take this analysis as gospel. The primary problem is that the evidence was never subjected to cross-examination; he never had to answer specific questions about his theory. Perhaps he would have conceded that “might” meant one chance in ten thousand. Perhaps we would have admitted that he had no training in accident reconstruction. Perhaps he would have acknowledged that the position of her body could just as easily have been the result of the accident.
Even assuming that Kennedy was perfectly healthy following the crash – that is, that he wasn’t suffering from a concussion and unable to reason clearly as a result – we still cannot build a compelling case to say his post-accident action made him responsible for a death. The accident happened in the middle of the night. Let’s say Farrar is absolutely right: that Kopechne found an air pocket and survived for two hours. Now let’s see what sequence of events gets her rescued in that two hours.
Kennedy spends… how long? … trying himself to dive down and get her out? Half an hour? Fifteen minutes? Again I’ll point out that he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t; if he immediately leaves the scene to seek help and she dies, then you excoriate him for not trying to save her, pointing out how shallow six feet of water is and how he didn’t even try - right? So I assume you agree he has to spend SOME time there, trying to get her.
So then he goes for help. The bridge, 81 feet long and a mere 10 feet wide, leads to a secluded beach. He has a fifty-fifty shot – does he go on or does he go back? In fact, he’s just escaped from a car that overturned under water in the middle of the night – does he even KNOW which way is which? How many minutes does he spend going in the wrong direction?
Now we have the mile and a quarter walk back to the cottage he left, the first place he knows there’s a phone. How long does that take?
Now let’s assume he gets to that phone and immediately calls the authorities. Can he even describe where the accident was? Let’s assume he can; let’s assume that his confused description of a bridge in the dark a mile and a half away inexorably leads to only one possible candidate, and they respond. According to Ferrar, once he was told where the accident was, it took him 20 minutes to arrive. He doesn’t say how long it takes him to don scuba gear once he arrives, or how long it takes him to find the car in the pitch-black night after he’s got the gear on and dives down, but he’s got to do all those things. The bridge had no guard rails, so he doesn’t even know which side the car is on or how far out it went. What’s a fair time to assign to that search?
So – you tell me. Add up all those numbers, fairly, and tell me: even granting every favorable inference so that we get every minute of those theoretical “two hours” – is it really likely that she survives?
Nah, but if you could keep an eye out for mswas’s meds, that would be helpful.
From http://sweetness-light.com/archive/kgb-letter-details-kennedy-offer-to-ussr
Working against the interests and stated direction of the USA – traitorous bastard.
(I need to learn how to delete a post)
C’mon, how many threads to you have to make spewing the same lie over and over again? If you really were so interested in Mary Jo, you’d at least talk about her life at some point, not just rehashing her death and Kennedy’s role in it. Or just make a thread about the fucking Chappaquiddick incident.
The Lord certainly took His sweet time getting around to it. Busy, you think?
This does not answer my question. Out of all the unjust deaths(Not murder-the evidence, if it can be called that, is too damn flimsy to be taken seriously by anyone who doesn’t already have a full on Kennedy hate going on) that have happened before and after, what draws you to this particular case, other than the Kennedy connection? What about this girl in particular makes her death more significant than all the others?
I honestly don’t know. It seems pretty unlikely. But it seems to me that, even if ultimately, Ms. Kopeckne would have died regardless of what Senator Kennedy did, Senator Kennedy had a moral duty, at least, to do more than he did. It was the senator’s fault that she was in the river in the first place…he was driving, and he was intoxicated.
I’d like to think that were I in that car, my companion would do more to try to save me than what Senator Kennedy did, and while the senator didn’t do anything legally culpable, he at least did something morally culpable.
“or taken any drugs, not for many days in fact”
… off her meds, it’s all more clear to me now.
Ding, Ding, Ding!
I believe we have a winner…
Even if he had been a communist sympathizer (which he obviously wasn’t), so what? Is it illegal to be a communist?
Ah, yes. He considered the possibility of discussing detente with a country with which we had normalized relations. What a motherfucker.
Nor, in my opinion, to disregard it. It is evidence, not proof, I grant you.
And was not drunk.
His post-accident action, perhaps not. His pre-accident actions - pretty clearly.
I find the “she would have died anyway” rationale to be less than compelling. He was drinking, he was driving, he drove off a bridge and he made no effort to contact the authorities while there was even a remote chance of saving her life. I don’t see why one should accept at face value Kennedy’s allegations (post-concussion and post-drinking, from an admitted and that time, active alcoholic) about diving to rescue Kopechne but dismiss the police diver who actually found the body. Kennedy was never cross-examined either. IYSWIM.
I find the statements of the sober, experienced, and disinterested police diver to be of greater weight than the drunk, concussed, very much self-serving Kennedy. YMMV.
But the accident was Kennedy’s fault. And it was by no means his call to decide when rescue attempts by the qualified authorities should be discontinued. Or indeed, to decide never even to give them a chance at it.
It is quite like a hit-and-run driver knocking down a pedestrian, allegedly attempting a few minutes of CPR, and then deciding that all hope is lost and leaving the scene and running off to a hotel until you are able to pass a Breathalyzer.
Do you really believe that the person who causes the accident should be given the right to decide when rescue attempts are futile? And when he makes that decision, he should be given the benefit of the doubt when assigning responsibility for a death?
Please note I am saying moral responsibility, not legal. I bow to your superior authority in deciding the law.
Regards,
Shodan
We don’t know he was intoxicated.
But I grant you he should have done more than he did. I don’t think anyone questions that fact. I just dislike seeing that basic fact expanded into “he killed her.” It’s a virtual certainty that no matter what he did after the crash, she would be dead.