In the Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn argues that Chappaquiddick would have turned out much differently if it had happened in the era of 24 hour news:
If we’d had insatiable 24/7 cable news networks in July 1969, the accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a passenger in a car driven by Sen. Edward Kennedy drowned would likely have dominated the national consciousness for months.
Special programs every night devoted to nothing but pundits bickering over the depths of the 37-year-old Kennedy’s responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, 28.
Town-hall-style chat shows every afternoon in which ordinary Americans issued their verdicts and sentences before the evidence was in.
Probing interviews every morning with experts offering their views on whether Kopechne would have survived had Kennedy quickly gone for help.
(…)
“Politically, Kennedy wouldn’t have survived that kind of media bombardment,” said Bruce DuMont, president of Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications and host of “Beyond the Beltway,” a national weekly talk-radio show. “It wouldn’t have just been a spotlight, it would have been a heat lamp. On him, on all the investigators, on everyone connected to the story.
On the surface, it seems that Zorn has a point. Just look at what happened to the likes of Elliot Spitzer, James McGreevey, Larry Craig, Rod Blagojevich, and Mark Sanford — all of whom committed offenses that were arguably far less serious than driving a car off a bridge and leaving your passenger behind. In today’s media climate, a politician who drives under the influence of alcohol and causes an accident can pretty much kiss their political future goodbye.
It would’ve been a far different outcome from 1969, when Kennedy got a slap on the wrist and managed, one short decade later, to come within inches of beating a sitting President for the 1980 Democratic Nomination.
But is that such a bad thing ?
Zorn seems to think so:
Or, as I believe, is the nation — particularly our disabled and disadvantaged residents — better off for the 40 years of service he was able to render after that terrible night?
The momentary satisfaction of destroying Ted Kennedy for his failings would have had a significant price. Something to keep in mind when the next fallen figure, Democrat or Republican, stumbles into the heat lamp.
Echoing Melissa Lafsky, author Joyce Carol Oates seems to agree with Zorn:
His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only “second acts” in American lives, but that the Renaissance concept of the “fortunate fall” may be relevant here….Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?
One is to think that the life of one young woman is worth more than the career of a one man. Especially when you’re talking about a man who, the hagiography notwithstanding, had much to answer for. This was the man who tried to make his own deal with the leader of the Soviet Union in order to undercut the President of the United States. It’s the man who took to the floor of the United States Senate to spread lies about a Federal Judge.
Yes, if Chappaquiddicak had happened today. Ted Kennedy would’ve been savaged. He likely would not have gotten the sweetheart treatment in Court that he ultimately received.
But, is that such a bad thing ?
It’s clear that Kennedy never paid the price that a normal citizen would have in his situation. And isn’t being treated equally what the Kennedy’s always talked about ?
H/T: QandO
