TEDDY: HIS TROUBLES AND OURS
Avey, John
Teddy: His Troubles and Ours John Avey A little more than a year removed from the incident at Dyke Bridge, Teddy Kennedy has become a Dreyfus in reverse: Dreyfus, the innocent, was sent to...
...He is "bearing up," he is "enduring...
...To Teddy and Gargan and Markham and all those wonderful girls in the boiler room...
...I nodded my assent...
...What Americans do care about are moralistic fads and fashionable causes, especially those that are given vociferous support by the media and the more liberal pulpits...
...Yet the most important piece of evidence pointing to a campaign of rehabilitation is a long, well-written and obviously sympathetic account of Teddy in The New York Times Magazine...
...Quite a fellow, our Teddy...
...Haven't you ever heard of logrolling...
...The polls indicate that the Massachusetts voters are quivering with anticipation to cast their votes for the Great Channel Swimmer...
...Ah, H.L...
...Thomas Jefferson Bilgewater jumped in ecstasy...
...Still feeling argumentative, I remarked that professors surely wouldn't order such rubbish...
...Occasionally, however, he does withdraw, "thinking of those things he's been through...
...Hold on, Bilgewater...
...Astounded at this information, I wasn't prepared for Bilgewater's next revelation: many professors never bother to read the books they "review...
...resign...
...He has served several Presidents and his favorite hobby is skindiving...
...The wound, it turns out, is not a physical one, but one to Teddy's "self-esteem" and "commitment...
...Conrad, looking down upon us, is probably muttering in Polish, wondering if anyone will ever again be able to read his great book with any understanding...
...The apparently bottomless reservoir of sympathy for the Kennedy family has played an important role in his rehabilitation, yet it is not enough to explain the almost total lack of sustained moral outrage against him...
...the conscience of America is slumbering pleasantly after overwhelming evidence has been presented to show that Teddy acted shamefully, perhaps even criminally, before, during and after the Dyke Bridge incident...
...Sitting next to Carl Curtis or Russell Long may be an exquisite torment to a fellow of Teddy's patrician sensibilities, but it beats solitary confinement any day...
...Whether or not the parents of Mary Jo Kopechne have moments of levity is not mentioned by the writer...
...By the time the media are finished with this ploy, the incident at Dyke Bridge will be seen as an example of Teddy's heroic fortitude...
...The writer begins by asking: "How grave is the wound...
...Any one of these would ordinarily be enough to end a political career...
...But, then, they have not "been through" what Teddy has...
...Cynics may claim to see no difference between those two fates, but it is safe to say that Teddy has done very well for himself...
...This is a particularly interesting gambit, for it takes what should be Teddy's great weakness - his association with a disgraceful incident -and turns it into a strength...
...Librarians will realize the nature of this fraud...
...Teddy, who by any civilized rules of behavior should be in a Trappist monastery living out his life in repentance and grief, has days and apparently even weeks of levity and gaiety according to the Times writer...
...Within seventy years we have gone from the stern, pitiless but deeply human vision of Conrad to...
...Whatever it may be, it is contributing to a rise in Teddy's popularity and a steady decline in what might be called the national conscience...
...Professor X favorably reviews Professor Y's book in the Yahoo State Journal of Humanistic Studies, and of course Professor Y reciprocates with X's book...
...Teddy dishonored himself and his family, then called for a vote of confidence from his constituency...
...Yet, after all this, he is back in business, lustily preaching morality to others from the Senate floor, greeted by thunderous applause on campus (that citadel of contemporary morality) and apparently only biding time before he makes his move toward the White House...
...Teddy: His Troubles and Ours John Avey A little more than a year removed from the incident at Dyke Bridge, Teddy Kennedy has become a Dreyfus in reverse: Dreyfus, the innocent, was sent to Devil's Island...
...Since most of them are old maids, every book purchase fulfills a maternal need...
...Students of contemporary morality may well ponder his comeback, for it tells us more about the state of the nation than it does about the state of Teddy's soul...
...favorite hobby is skindiving...
...Sure they will," Bilgewater insisted...
...It has not been precisely what one would call a Pilgrims' Progress...
...Refuse...
...John Avey is a mortician and soldier of fortune working in Washington, D.C...
...Nobody, apparently, knows the troubles he has seen...
...If anyone seeks to discover the progress, of morality in the twentieth century, he could do worse than to re-read Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim and then read the material from the Kennedy television cop-out...
...You see, librarians are like Catholics...
...Everything is upside down but curiously serene...
...it is not for the man of sense to dispute with such animal...
...What is it about Teddy or about us that makes it impossible for us to treat him with the proper mixture of pity and scorn he deserves--and, perhaps, in his heart of hearts, really even wants...
...The article, "Can Kennedy Survive His Reputation," contains all the essential elements of the New Teddy revision...
...There is a macabre fascination about all this...
...The plight of left-handed Puerto Rican midgets could become a national crusade if given the proper exposure...
...The kid's got it...
...Instead of the sustained and fervent display of moral outrage, we are witnessing what might be called the Rehabilitation of a Candidate, 1970...
...It's a great gimmick...
...The conscience of France was finally awakened after overwhelming evidence showed that Dreyfus was wrongly accused...
...Fans of Teddy - if not fans of justice - will be glad to learn that Joan and Ted (she never calls him Teddy) are getting along just fine, thank you, and that it was really a great blow to Ted but he has come through it a better man, etc...
...For the first time it has been confirmed that despite many moralistic pronouncements, the overwhelming majority of the American people simply do not care very much about moral questions...
...Teddy managed to pull off what might be called the hat trick of political disaster: he offended the woman voter's sense of family sanctity, proved himself to be either a bad liar or a good Machiavellian in his attempts to explain away the incident and disgraced himself by reading Ted Sorenson's transparent and contradictory apology over nationwide television...
...Teddy, the guilty, will in all probability be sent back to the United States Senate...
...Here we have for the first time what will be a recurring theme in the rehabilitation campaign: Teddy as a sort of secular saint, his psychic wound a political version of the stigmata...
...Won't they refuse to comply with your scheme...
...They are determined as to the facts they will believe and the opinions on which they will act...
...Same damn thing goes on in colleges...
...Teddy would not do that to us...
...A recent article in a women's magazine dealt with Joan Kennedy and her reactions to the incident...
...Mencken, wouldst that thou were alive at this hour...
...Conrad's hero dishonored himself and spent the rest of his life wandering in search of repentance and atonement...
...The writer, evidently shaken to the core by such a thought, hastens to assure us that he doesn't really believe it...
...what...
...Hell, they're part of the fraud...
...Since any such series will be obsolete in a year or two, then Trivia can issue a new series...
...They can pamper and fondle their latest reference set, without having to go through the pains of bringing another bouboos americanus into this veil of tears...
...All they can think about is 'proliferate, proliferate.' Hell, they're biblionympho-maniacs: they can never say no...
...What does it all mean...
...The public seems to be content with inflicting upon Teddy nothing more serious than a lower rating in the polls...
...In the midst of the Times magazine article, we are even threatened by the unthinkable: Teddy may run for the Senate, win, and then...
...Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull...
...the plight of Mary Jo Kopechne, her parents, elementary decency, truth and, yes, honor, seems to be too much of a burden for the public to bear for longer than a few weeks...
...It is my guess that the incident at Dyke Bridge may well serve as a landmark (or, to be more consistent, a watershed) in the history of American public morality...
...At this point, one does not know whether to laugh or cry...
...Exactly five years after Trivia quits publishing the series, -Retread Press will re-release it as an 'Oldie but Goodie' at three times its original price...
...Publishers merely titude less than respectful to the young prince, but it is not exactly tar and feathers...
...Admittedly, this is evidence of a public atGreat American Series In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle...
...It is history seen through the eyes of a Catch-22 Character...
Vol. 4 • November 1970 • No. 1
