Allahpundit is in a bit of a quandary as he reports on the seeming incongruity of columns by liberals such as Henry Rollins and EJ Dionne bringing up Mary Jo Kopechne and Chappaquiddick:

I’m not sure how the politics work here. My sense is as follows: The media’s allowed to mention Chappaquiddick in its obits of Teddy in the interest of completeness, but references should ideally be buried near the end of the piece under plenty of “health care was the cause of his life” pap. Kennedy is not, however, to be “attacked” by conservatives intent on reminding people that progressives’ newest secular saint left a woman to drown in his car, as this would be disrespectful to the dead (Teddy, that is, not Mary Jo).

Most of the time this is true, but maybe some liberals do have a moral compass.

Of course the post’s comments are all about Chappaquiddick, and some ask why Kennedy was continually re-elected. I was in my mid-teens and lived in Massachusetts when it happened. Sitting here 40 years later I don’t recall every detail of what people said, but there was a sense of shock. Lip services was paid to the idea of an inquest, but in the aftermath of his brothers’ assassinations Ted probably could have gotten away with almost anything. Things started to calm down and people’s attention spans were consumed elsewhere. When it came time to vote, typical reactions I remember include “shame about what happened to that girl” and “it’s between him and his maker” – and then the lever for Kennedy was pulled. After a few years it devolved into something humorous. A typical joke was “Hey did you hear the QE2 ran aground off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard? The divers found one of Ted Kennedy’s cars.” When the William Kennedy Smith/Palm Beach scandal broke, a famous joke was that Smith supposedly told the young woman in question “Better make love to me tonight or I’ll have my Uncle drive you home.”

And so a man who was probably guilty of manslaughter got away with it, at least in this world. Ted delivered, and we looked the other way in some sort of Faustian bargain, all the while telling jokes to relieve our troubled consciences.

*Update: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air reports that Ted himself used to make jokes about Chappaquiddick, and adds this sobering point:

If nothing else, it puts to rest the notion that Kennedy’s remorse balances out the undeniable cowardice of his actions at Chappaquiddick. Even allowing for the best possible spin on his actions that day, what kind of person jokes about an incident that left a young woman dead in the back of his own car?

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