Boston Herald

49 years after Chappaquid­dick Was Ted K. really a ‘fun, terrific person’?

- Buy Howie’s book “Kennedy Babylon” and a new edition of Damore’s book with a foreword by Howie for a special low price today at howiecarrs­how.com.

According to his son Patches, Sen. Ted Kennedy was a “fun, terrific person.”

Just ask Mary Jo Kopechne.

Today is the 49th anniversar­y of the famous midnight swim of the “Liberal Lion” — or should I say “Lyin’,” considerin­g his contradict­ory, unbelievab­le, perjurious descriptio­ns of how his brother’s 28-year-old secretary suffocated in the backseat of his mother’s 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont at the bottom of a tidal pond on Martha’s Vineyard.

It was, and still is, the classic example of the golden rule — he who has the gold, rules.

As an illustriou­s American statesman once put it: “Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?”

You know who said that? Ted Kennedy, after the pardon of Richard M. Nixon in 1974. Obviously, anyone who suffered even the slightest remorse for killing Mary Jo could have never brought himself to make such a hypocritic­al statement. But it was a pattern throughout Kennedy’s entire squalid, sordid life — saying and doing things that indicated that he had not the slightest bit of contrition about Chappaquid­dick.

He named his last dog “Splash.”

In 2007, during the controvers­y over alleged American torture in Iraq, Teddy delivered an impassione­d speech on the Senate floor on how similar waterboard­ing is to … drowning.

“Water is poured over him … The gag reflex kicks in, and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to an almost instant plea to bring the treatment to a halt.”

Do you suppose Mary Jo Kopechne felt as if she were being “waterboard­ed” in the last moments of her life? The diver found scratch marks on the roof of the Oldsmobile, where she’d apparently been trying desperatel­y to claw her way out of the submerged death car, as a soaked Teddy trudged back to the party cottage for a nightcap.

As her corpse floated in the car for nine hours, Teddy made 17 calls — including to one of his mistresses, to a brother-in-law, to the compound in Hyannispor­t, to one of Bobby’s lawyers. Finally, after the Olds had already been pulled out of the water, he strolled into the Edgartown police station and wrote out the accident report in longhand, leaving a blank space next to “Mary Jo,” because he didn’t know her last name.

No commemorat­ion ceremonies are planned today at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute — not even in the “Senate Immersion Module,” as it’s known, incredibly.

The Kennedys aren’t what they once were. His son Patches is out of politics, his other son Ted Jr. declined to run for governor of Connecticu­t this year. His nephew Chris finished third — third! — in the Democratic primary for governor in Illinois. For the first time ever, a Kennedy was outspent, big time, by a family even richer than old man Joe’s offspring.

In his definitive book on Chappaquid­dick, Leo Damore wrote that Teddy’s cousin Joe Gargan said that in the moments after the accident, Teddy considered telling police that Mary Jo had been in the car by herself when it went off the dike bridge:

“Why couldn’t Mary Jo have been driving the car?” Gargan recalled Teddy as saying. “Why couldn’t she have let me off, and driven to the ferry herself and made a wrong turn.”

Hey, just seven years earlier his brothers had managed to wiggle out of the Marilyn Monroe scandal. Why couldn’t the runt of the litter do the same with Mary Jo?

In the days before the mainstream media totally became a wing of the Democrat party, Life magazine described Chappaquid­dick perfectly as “the classic rich kid’s stunt — running away from an accident that Dad can fix with the judge.” Earlier this year, a movie was finally released about the scandal.

Don’t expect to read anything about Chappaquid­dick anywhere else today. A year from today, it’ll be the 50th anniversar­y of Mary Jo’s waterboard­ing — and once again the alt-left media will give it a good leaving alone, the better to protect the Liberal Lyin’.

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

 ??  ?? REMEMBERIN­G MARY JO: U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s car is pulled from water on July 19, 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne’s body was found inside. Below, Kennedy addresses the nation on TV about the incident.
REMEMBERIN­G MARY JO: U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s car is pulled from water on July 19, 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne’s body was found inside. Below, Kennedy addresses the nation on TV about the incident.
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 ?? AP FILE PHOTO; BELOW, HERALD FILE PHOTO ??
AP FILE PHOTO; BELOW, HERALD FILE PHOTO
 ??  ?? • FOR MORE NEWS, TURN TO PAGES 19 AND 20.
• FOR MORE NEWS, TURN TO PAGES 19 AND 20.

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