Ted Kennedy: a survivor’s story
By Dave
March 9th, 2009 | Leave a comment
Edward Kennedy at one time was a name synonymous with “scandal.” Often regarded as a pampered playboy, Teddy languished in the shadows of his brothers, John and Bobby, whose shadows seemed to have been made longer by their deaths in the 1960s.
But over the decades in the Senate, Kennedy accumulated a substantial body of work. Now, as the senator faces his own mortality with the diagnosis of a brain tumor, the staff of the Boston Globe has crafted Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.
In his review, Minneapolis Star Tribune writer Tim O’Brien rattles off a list of scandals, enough scandals to keep the tabloids in business for years. The drinking and carousing, the academic misdeeds, and more:
“Last Lion explores all of these incidents, and it doesn’t give Kennedy a hometown discount. Chappaquiddick (the one-word incident that revolved around the death of Mary Jo Kopechne), the writers say, was ‘a failure of princely indulgence, assuming he could do anything and have others clean up, or something closer to the opposite — the faltering of a grief-stricken and damaged psyche, unable to confront his responsibilities.’ ”
The Globe staff, which probably knows Kennedy better than anyone else could, provides a unique view of the Massachusetts senator, the liberal’s liberal who has forged unlikely alliances and deep friendships with the likes of conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.
No doubt political junkies will love it.
Read more HERE.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:30 am
[...] Kennedy book recently mentioned at DelMio: [...]