"According to his own testimony, Kennedy swam across the 500-foot channel, back to Edgartown and returned to his hotel room, where he removed his clothes and collapsed on his bed. Hearing noises, he later put on dry clothes and asked someone what the time was: it was something like 2:30 a.m., the senator recalled. He testified that, as the night went on, "I almost tossed and turned and walked around that room ... I had not given up hope all night long that, by some miracle, Mary Jo would have escaped from the car." Back at his hotel, Kennedy complained at 2:55 am to the hotel owner that he had been awoken by a noisy party"

So he's complaining about the noise keeping him up while this woman's still at the bottom of the sea. The next morning (again from Wikipedia)...

"By 7:30 am the next morning he was talking "casually" to the winner of the previous day's sailing race, with no indication that anything was amiss.[2] At 8 a.m., Gargan and Markham joined Kennedy at his hotel where they had a "heated conversation." According to Kennedy's testimony, the two men asked why he hadn't reported the accident. Kennedy responded by telling them "about my own thoughts and feelings as I swam across that channel ... that somehow when they arrived in the morning that they were going to say that Mary Jo was still alive"

And the final kicker, he didn't contact the authorities until the body was found and the woman probably survived the crash. One last quote...

"Earlier that morning, two amateur fishermen had seen the overturned car in the water and notified the inhabitants of the nearest cottage to the pond, who called the authorities at around 8:20 am.[14] A diver was sent down and discovered Kopechne's body at around 8:45 am.[15] The diver, John Farrar, later testified at the inquest that Kopechne's body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. He interpreted this to mean that Kopechne had survived for a while after the initial accident in the air bubble, and concluded that

"Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring, and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim's side within twenty-five minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car."

So had he contacted the authorities she could have lived. And for all that he got a suspended sentence because he's rich and has a powerful family. I won't demonize the dead but I'm not going to sit by and let people lionize him either.

How is it that people can bash Michael Jackson after unproven accusations but let Kennedy off even though he admits to everything laid out above?

I'm inclined to forgive people their many, many errors. I see no harm in looking at a man's accomplishments and ignoring his failures.

Michael Jackson was a man who changed the entertainment world. Ted Kennedy spent decades fighting for his causes without rest. Each did unpleasant things, but those things don't eliminate the good each did.

If Justice is not an ideal you hold than you wouldn't agree with me on that.

Justice is not the same as revenge, and often quite the opposite. In this particular case, especially in hindsight, I find it hard to imagine a heavy-handed prosecution and jail time having been a good idea.

Look, I think that Ted deserved punishment for what he did. Of course he did. At the same time, I can't blame him for using connections to get out of that mess. I'll be totally honest and say that if I fucked up big-time, I'd do everything I could to avoid years in prison for it. Not because I think people should get away with killing people, but because years in prison is a terrifying punishment. So while I kind of wish he'd been given more than a slap on the wrist, I don't hold it against him that he wasn't punished.

To suggest that he wasn't changed by what he did, however, is ludicrous. I'm certain he was haunted by that incident for a long, long time, and that it changed who he was as a person. Certainly the Ted Kennedy that died today was not the Ted Kennedy that once abandoned a dying woman.

We all grow up and leave our tragic youths behind. Some youths are just much more tragic than others.

In my experience that is a fallacy. Besides he was a politician - they know all about expected response. I don't think anyone here can make a statement like that.

(I know nothing about him, but it was a pretty sick thing to do. He certainly deserved a worse punishment)

(I'll ignore the "he was a politician" quip, which proves nothing and says nothing.)

That wasn't meant in the way you probably read it. Being a politician is a skill just like any job

As I said I don't know much about the guy, but in my experience of people in such a position (a public post) there is a difference between real change and the change we see :)

I'm just saying: only a few people (i.e. the close family) really could make a statement like that :)

The problem I see with that attitude is that it opens up a whole lot of people (who are broadly agreed to be better off unborn) to lionization. Maybe Kennedy did help a lot of people, but maybe someone else would have done more in his position. At the moment that tested his personal beliefs, that required action rather then crafted words, he failed and someone died.

When powerful people can get away with acts that would damn the normal people, I see precious little hope that government will be about what would actually help the people.

I'm hesitant to jump into this and try to balance this myself, but Chappaquiddick is a huge mark against him.

The terminologies you're using suggest somehow ranking him, or judging him. I don't think that's useful at all. Ted Kennedy is dead. Most likely, I'll never think of him much after today. While he was alive, I never had to vote for him, or vote on his policies. So to me, and I'm sure to you, he is an abstract celebrity.

I gain nothing by judging him on Chappaquiddick. How do I balance that against his push for health care? What does the one have to do with the other? Nothing: I can judge each on its own merits. As it happens, the health care debate is far from over; Chappaquiddick is an ancient tragedy.

When I think about a life that's just died, I see no wrong in thinking about only the good. That's not to say I'll go about pretending Ted Kennedy was a hero of mine. It just says that I won't pretend that I'm using his death as a moral lesson, and so won't pretend that I care much about his murky past or that I see any value in damning a dead man.

Fair point, bad writing on my part. Ok, really bad writing.

But to go back to the top of the thread, the discussion was about lessons to be learned. The fact that he get got off so lightly does teach us something about how much influence rich/powerful families have. You may think its obvious, but I think its a) a bit of an eye opener though most people won't admit it and b) good to be reminded of it.

On the other hand, there are positive lessons to learn from his efforts in the senate.

My point is that its important to learn all the lessons if your going to try to look at someone's life and learn them at all.

Edit: Also, I'm not really a huge fan of treading softly just because someone has died. I'm not going to go around and bash the guy, but I think its good to have an honest discussion (at least here on HN, obviously not in other situations).

spking: Implying that Ted Kennedy didn't fight hard every day of his life in politics is as cruel and stupid as suggesting that a man can't grow up after a reckless youth is as cruel and stupid as a reaction to a man's death being "Good riddance." While I find the bickering on both sides to be tasteless, akd isn't being a douche the same way you are.

The issue I'm talking about isn't whether Ted Kennedy is good or bad. The issue is that he was a man who spent a lifetime doing what he thought was right, and that it takes a fool or a sociopath to look at a lifetime and spit at it. There's a difference between being critical and being destructive. Your attitude is the latter.

If you're going to attempt to put me down, can you at least attempt to be clever with it? The only thing worse than negativity is bluster.

Think of all the ineffective or downright hateful businesses you give your money to because there is no practical alternative: cable and internet providers, health insurers, banks, credit cards, ticketmaster, airlines, big box stores, domain registrars...

Credit cards facilitated online shopping and the internet as we know it. As someone whose taken credit cards, I hate giving up the 2.x%, but it's well worth it. Many businesses wouldn't be possible without credit cards. They're massively convenient. And AMEX totally washes the consumer's hands of fraud and damaged goods.

Business does well. Even the above cross-section of "downright hateful companies" are still pretty good businesses. And the scummiest ones are scummy because they're in bed with government. Cable/internet local monopolies, health insurers with the tax code, and banks with the... well, that's a long discussion and you've probably heard some of it.

Government branches can't go out of business. When they do poorly, they always say it's because they don't have enough money, and they get more. Business has a natural check on it - people have to like it enough to use it. You could skip airlines and take a boat or train or horse, you could use only cash and keep it in your mattress, you could use other alternatives. You don't, because those companies aren't perfect, but they do a pretty good job. I wish I could just "not use" the IRS, I wish I could just "not use" TSA, I wish I could just "pass" on going to the DMV and giving them money for a sticker or laminated piece of plastic.

No private sector company that isn't in bed with the government or run by powerful violent criminals is as nasty as the DMV, IRS, or TSA to its customers. And they don't go out of business.

At the University of Pittsburgh, Sodexho is the exclusive provider of on-campus food. The food and service have since gotten better, but my freshman year, Sodexho had a policy of hiring many ex-convicts for their food service positions. I ate at the sub place on campus a lot because it was close to my dorm and decent enough. The full-time workers there were two men 70+ in age, though maybe the hard living had aged them beyond their years. They had faded ink tattoos visible on their arms and had clearly recently been released from prison after near-lifetime sentences.

I cannot express how much these men hated their jobs. They hated their customers. Every time I ate there and made the mistake of looking them in the eye, I could tell that they wished death upon me and everyone that ever ate a sub made by their hands.

Since then, I have eaten in the private sector, and while every worker is not happy, they are usually at worst indifferent. Never has an employee wished death upon me with malice and hatred like those two sub shop workers.

A Senator going out into the world to work on problems without government behind them would bolster their worldview. Perhaps after two terms in the Senate, a mandatory one or two terms off, then the Senator could run again. But definitely, lifetime politicians are a big potential problem. It certainly seems like they become more brazen and aristocratic over time.

edit: so it's immoral to drink and womanise or something? He was using those words in a perjorative manner. I complain and get downvoted, is this Church Day or something?

Hm, all this talk is making me thirsty .. (grabs beer)

o The Civil Rights Act of 1964

o The Voting Rights Act of 1965

o The COBRA Act of 1985 (ever lost a job and still managed to keep your health insurance for 18 months?)

o The Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990

o The Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993

o Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996

That leaves four pieces of major legislation (or six, if we throw in a couple of increases in minimum wage) in a fifty year career. This seems out of proportion to the hagiography; I would be curious to know how we would be covering this story if his name weren't Kennedy.

And even more, it very nearly killed him. The plane crash on the way out of DC after staying late to vote on the bill left him in a hospital bed for months.

Or are the two entirely unrelated?

Also keep in mind that today's healthcare debate is one that he has been fighting for 50 years (along with many others), and that whatever does happen, whenever it happens, will have more of his fingerprint on it than Obama's.

I'm evaluating his accomplishments with a bias to what he did in his later career, when he was presumably at the peak of his influence. And there the answer seems to be 'was skillfully co-opted by the Bush administration'.

I do agree that he was tireless in pushing health policy. I just don't think he was effective - but maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised by what comes out of the health reform meat grinder in a few months.

You're incorrect if you think that the peak of his influence was in his later career, when the glamour of the Kennedys had largely passed, and the House, Senate, and White House were controlled by Republicans. The peak of his influence was in the 60s-80s, but from that day onward he has been pushing health policy, and although he didn't get the ball to the top of the hill he's pushed it farther than anyone else.

To say that he was ineffective because the goal wasn't accomplished on his watch is like saying that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was not an effective suffragette because she died 20 years before women got the vote.