Lest we forget-----a friend reminded me of Mary Jo's death, drowning in Kennedy's car under the Edgartown bridge -----with this writing as though Mary Jo were able to speak. Of course those of us who remember, know she stopped speaking that night----the night she died in Kennedy's car.
"Hello. My name is Mary Jo Kopechne.
I would have been 65 years of age this year. Here's a brief refresher.:
When Sen. Ted Kennedy was merely just another Democrat bloating on Capitol Hill on behalf of liberal causes, it was perhaps excusable to ignore his deplorable past. But now that he's become Sen. John Kerry's leading campaign attack dog, positioning himself as Washington's leading arbiter of truth and integrity, the days for such indulgence are now over. It's time for the GOP to stand up and remind America why Sen. Kerry's chief spokesman had to abandon his own presidential bid in 1980. It's time to say my name - MARY JO KOPECHNE - out loud. Republicans have deluded themselves into thinking that most Americans already know the story of how this "Conscience of the Democratic Party" left one of his young campaign workers behind to die in the waters underneath the Edgartown Bridge in July 1969, after a night of drinking and partying. But most Americans under 40 have never heard my story. They do not know the details of how Kennedy left me and swam to safety, then tried to get his cousin Joe Garghan to say he was behind the wheel. Those young voters don't know how I, trapped inside Kennedy's Oldsmobile, gasped for air until I finally died, while the Democrats' leading Iraq war critic rushed back to his compound to formulate the best alibi he could think of.
Neither does Generation X know how Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard on his ear 15 years earlier -- for paying a fellow student to take his Spanish final. Or why the US Army denied him a commission because he cheated on
tests. As they listen to the Democrats' "Liberal Lion" accuse President Bush of "telling lie after lie after lie" to get America to go to war in Iraq, young voters don't know about that notorious 1991 Easter weekend in Palm Beach, when Uncle Teddy rounded up his nephews for a night on the town ...an evening that ended with one of them credibly accused of rape.
It's time for all of us - but, especially the Republicans - to state unabashedly that they will no longer "go along with the gag" when it comes to Uncle Ted's rants about deception and moral turpitude inside the Bush White House. The entire Democratic Party, not to mention the State of Massachusetts and (especially) Sen. John Kerry, should be ashamed to have this national disgrace as their pokesman. And the GOP needs to say so out loud. Please - Pass this around the Internet to wake up memories of me. America needs a reminder of Mr. Kennedy's lack of ntegrity and, by extension, the lack of credibility in the Democratic Party.
I remember all of this. It's time the rest of you remember, too." |
