Rising Above Privilege

Senator Edward Kennedy, the last of the nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, has left the U.S. Senate for good. Born of a scoundrel of a father, who amassed a personal fortune through illicit but obviously forgivable enterprise, he inherited some of his father's attributes, leaving many of the lesser-quality ones behind. Joseph Kennedy, in his role as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain during WWII found Nazi Germany admirable, and Jews rather less valuable.

The inheritors of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's genes fell notably short of their roots, for they appear to have been, on the record, indisputably humanitarian, concerned with social justice and dedicated themselves to the alleviation of the plight of the indigent, victims of racism, and those born with mental and physical handicaps. They genuinely stirred themselves in an effort to make their country a finer place for all its citizens.

While, at the same time, not neglecting other pursuits, of an entirely personal nature, some of which did them no credit. The Kennedy clan, with its aura of drama, glamour and patrician entitlement, fascinated Americans who clamour for their own brand of royalty. Americans have accepted celebrity in lieu of royalty, and appear satisfied with that choice. And the Kennedy family did indeed represent social and political celebrity.

Each of the children of Joseph Kennedy made their own choices, steered ambitiously by their father's aspirations for them. They managed to rise above privilege in their service to their country, but not above entitlements due them as America's first family. Their tawdry personal lives represented a special kind of failure, a melding of the aristocracy with Hollywood, a reality which only made them more popular in the public mind.

As for Edward Kennedy, his long years of service in the Senate pursuing an agenda of social justice serves as his epitaph. Other, unfortunate episodes of his life are best forgotten, but they refuse to go softly into that dark night with him. Much as his public service elevated him as a superior man of extraordinary talents, his private peccadillos leave an unsavoury reputation that he himself burnished; sometimes inadvertently, occasionally deliberately.

His hard drinking and womanizing drove his first wife to alcoholism and a severing of their relations in a sad collapse of a sad marriage. His sense of personal responsibility was placed front and centre when he demonstrated a colossal lack of same under a bridge in Chappaquiddick. That personal disaster coincided with the monumental event of an American astronaut setting foot on the surface of the moon, taking a fortuitous back seat to that celebrated adventure.

He allowed himself well into his three-score years to represent a behavioural template for his impressionable nephews in drunken carousing and womanizing. Bred to a certain contempt for a strait-laced inheritance. On the other hand, this fallible, charismatic man felt compelled to bring in legislation that would have the effect of more adequately humanizing the politics of his country. His colleagues held him in esteem for his ability to transcend partisanship and to garner bipartisan support as a proud patriot.

His balance sheet is only slightly tipped toward what-might-have-been.