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).
"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?