The death of Ted Kennedy

Nothing has made me as ambivalent as the hoopla over the death of Ted Kennedy. Diane Sawyer purred the inevitable news on a special edition of Good Morning America. Chris Cuomo was, as always, borderline retarded, reporting – if you can call it that – from the family’s compound, his staged reverence about how darn tight knit those Kennedys are cringe worthy even by his standards. Thank God Robin Roberts was ‘on assignment’ that week. Unfortunately, George Stephanopoulos and his unique ability to combine breathy and snide, was not.

My back-and-forth goes something like this. Ted Kennedy was born a millionaire and he died a millionaire without ever having held what I’d consider a real job. Ted Kennedy took an unpopular stand against the defense of marriage nonsense and refused to get behind legislating discrimination. Ted Kennedy killed a woman and not only got away with it but did so while remaining in the U.S. Senate. Ted Kennedy was one of the few politicians who voted against Bush’s war. Ted Kennedy was a drunk. Ted Kennedy never forgot a birthday, or an anniversary or the names of your children. Ted Kennedy was waited on his entire life and never had to worry about the basics: food, shelter, clothing. “At least he didn’t spend decades in the senate passing really damaging laws,” a friend’s husband said. I agree. And yet, it seems that looking out for those born into circumstances not quite as cushy as his – which means pretty much everyone in the country – was really the least he could do.

When it comes to the rest of the family I have no ambivalence whatsoever. In all fairness it’s not really their fault. It’s the television people, as usual. Although it pains me to do so, I concede that NPR was no better. The commentary was without relent. Look at what they’ve all done, look at the causes they’ve embraced, look at what fine young humanitarians they’ve turned out to be, and they love to sail, and they love to hang out at the compound with family, and they love to go to exclusive schools and get married to the well connected and have children. “This family is all about giving,” one of the anchor monkeys said, his voice marbled with awe. All of which brings us to wonder who among them – in Diane Sawyer’s words – are the emerging leaders? According to the history books I read as a youngster, our forbearers left England hungry for freedom of – and from – religion. That turned out to be a joke, and so too, apparently, did the quest to get out from beneath a monarchy. Although I was briefly hopeful when Caroline Kennedy got laughed out of the running to replace Hillary Clinton.

On Saturday morning, morbidly curious, I turned on the funeral but by the time the friend I was going to breakfast with showed up I’d switched channels and was watching a sewing show hosted by a woman with a deformed face. I’d had enough, listening to one expensively dressed, impeccably educated spoiled brat after another speak about what a noble thing it is to look out for poor folk. Again, given the fact that they’ve been burdened with no real responsibilities, it’s kind of the least they can do. I went to breakfast, silently thankful to have missed Obama’s eulogy, during which I feared he would seize the opportunity to gleefully lick the billion-dollar ass of the family whose patriarch ‘passed the torch’ to him at the convention last summer. Torches make me uneasy. Announcing the passing of a torch assumes you’re holding one, which assumes you’ve either taken one by force or that it’s been handed to you because it’s rightfully yours. The Kennedys seem like the sort of people who would be very fond of torches, passing and receiving.

In spite of my ping-pong feelings about the senator, I sympathize with Ted Kennedy’s children. It’s no fun when your pops dies, regardless of who that man was, regardless of who nested on his family tree, regardless of the monetary value of that tree’s trunk, its leaves and its branches. I think Ted Kennedy championed the same causes I would champion if I were a senator. At the same time, to live above and beyond the law and to waltz into scenarios most people will never know, I think he traded heavily on his family name, a name whose mystique and resonance baffles me at times and infuriates me at others.