Ted Kennedy — monster

Humor is an interesting thing.  Every few years studies come out saying humor is about power, humor is about the unexpected, humor is about the human condition, human is about the eternal battle between id and ego, etc.  There are many studies as their are grants.  One thing I do know, for sure and certain, is that humor is quite often a mask for rank cruelty.  Indeed, I’m willing to bet that every single one of you has been on the receiving end of an incredibly cruel or insulting statement, only to have the other person, when you protest, taunt you by saying “It’s just a joke.  What’s the matter?  Don’t you have a sense of humor?”

It turns out that Teddy Kennedy had that kind of sense of humor when it came to Mary Jo Kopechne.  As best bud, Time magazine’s Ed Klein explained on a hagiographic radio show, Teddy Kennedy thought Chappaquiddick — you remember that place, where Mary Jo Kopechne died, alone, cold and in the dark after Kennedy ran away to take a shower and talk to his buddies? — was just an endless source of fun (h/t:  Hot Air):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaiTipTtbak[/youtube]

It’s actually a little unfair to point only to Kennedy as someone completely lacking in human decency.  Aside from the fact that he was Joe Kennedy’s son, which has got to screw you up, he’s actually part of an entire world view that sees the “little people” merely as props, put there to amuse and elevate the Leftist “great ones” of the world.  No where does this reveal itself more clearly than in an obscenely misguided HuffPo opinion piece in which the author suggests that Mary Jo Kopechne, were she to give voice today, would express gratitude for the chance she had to die so that Kennedy could live on as a liberal lion:

We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don’t know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.

Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.

Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.

Rick Moran accurately describes the mindset driving someone to speculate that a murder victim would feel grateful for the privilege of having been sacrificed:

[I]t does highlight the liberal mindset quite well, don’t you think? To left wing fanatics like Lafsky, human life does not belong to the individual, but to the higher cause of the collective good. For Lafsky, of course Kopechne would, if she had a crystal ball and been able to see the future, have sacrificed herself on the altar of social “progress” rather than live a full life filled with friends, family, kids, and a fulfilling career.

What a despicable thing to write.

Despicable is pretty much the word I would choose to describe the statist mind.