‘Chappaquiddick’ conjures up a nasty car accident to the American psyche older than fifty. The story of a drunken senator abandoning his lover to a watery death is unknown to Twitterites agog at Tom Cruise breaking up with his wife. The senator in question was Edward Kennedy, the heir to Camelot. The victim was Mary Jo Kopechne. The 1969 incident permanently damaged the youngest Kennedy’s chances to sit in the White House, especially after he told the press.
“When I got to the car. Mary Jo wasn’t there.”
The famous accent said that sentence with conviction, however police divers found Mary Jo Kopechne in the overturned car. A later inquest speculated that the drowned office worker had lived for 2 hours. Ted Kennedy settled with the family and the Massachusetts voters re-elected him to office by a landslide. He was a bad boy, but he was our bad boy.
Some conspiraphiles have attributed the incident to Teddy being drugged by CIA agents, thus explaining his erratic behavior. As much as I faulted that agency for participation in the deaths of JFK and RFK, Teddy does not get a free ride from Chappaquiddick. He fucked up and fucked up big time.
Even if he was set up by the CIA too.
He should have seen it coming.
