Ted Kennedy

Monday

Josie Cox

The real Kennedy men

Long before the #MeToo movement shattered the careers and reputations of people like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey; long before Jeffrey Epstein and R. Kelly were locked up for committing heinous sex crimes; and long before we’d become familiar with names like Monica Lewinsky and Virginia Roberts Giuffre, there were the Kennedys. In very basic terms, that’s the premise of Maureen Callahan’s book Ask Not — a title that riffs on JFK’s inaugural address — which salaciously chronicles how men from three generations of one of America’s most exalted families spent their lives perpetrating violent misogyny and psychological abuse without suffering so much as a polite slap on the wrist.

Kennedy

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

The top ten worst modern presidential campaigns, ranked

The decline and fall of the Ron DeSantis campaign has led several people within the commentariat — which these days means anyone online with the ability to type a thought and hit send in even a semi-coherent way, despite lack of experience, background or the skill to even qualify as a volunteer — to weigh in on how awful, how terrible, how wasteful has been the DeSantis effort to run for the presidency. The effect is amusing, in part because it has led outright idiots to claim that if only DeSantis had refrained from criticizing Donald Trump at all, or if only he had criticized Donald Trump more, he would have succeeded.

Tuesday

Bill Kauffman

How to restore civility in politics

Batavia, New York When I toiled in the world’s greatest deliberative body back in those carefree days before 9/11 and COVID-19 had given the state an excuse to try to make Every Man a Caitiff, an old US Senate hand told me a story about the crone who ran a little newsstand perhaps a punted football’s distance from the Russell Senate Office Building. It seems that the aged proprietress had been the paramour of James Eastland, the law-and-order worshipping, segregation-championing Democratic senator from Mississippi who never met a civil liberties violation he didn’t like. Eastland, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was well regarded within the Senate, however, and considered a fair dealer by his colleagues. One of them was Sen.

civility

Sunday

Dominic Green

Review: Chappaquiddick – Ted Kennedy and the Fall of Dickarus

They called Ted Kennedy the Lion of the Senate. He spent most of his time stuffed, satiated and asleep, and the rest of it on the prowl for young flesh. He also had a hand in numerous pieces of legislation. But the only thing he will be remembered for is leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to die at Chappaquiddick in 1969. Judging from Jason Curran’s carefully constructed and brilliantly played Chappaquiddick, Ted Kennedy deserved nothing less—and a lot more than a two-month suspended sentence. The Kennedys were a mafia. Ted was their Fredo Corleone. The family bailed Ted out when he was caught cheating at Harvard, then slid him into JFK’s empty Senate seat when JFK moved to the White House. The killings of JFK and Bobby left Ted as the head of the family, and in the crosshairs.