The K.F. Stone Weekly

Ted Kennedy: Of Wickedness and Good Deeds

  

     This past Wednesday I woke up from a semi-shallow sleep; it was about 2 hours before first light. Flipping on the TV, the sound down low, the first word my groggy brain made sense of was "Chappaquiddick." With that single word, I was immediately awake -- and knew precisely two things: that Senator Edward M. Kennedy had passed away, and that the TV was undoubtedly on the wrong  station -- Fox.  For what other TV news channel could be so abysmally classless and clueless as to use a 40-year old tragedy/scandal as its lead in a breaking story about the death of the man known as the Last Lion? 

   Fox, Fox, and only Fox.

   That's just the way it is with the chasidim of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch.  They are oh so terribly sanctimonious and smug when it comes to those who are "not of our faith." But for those who "pray in our church," they can apparently be forgiven for anything from serving divorce papers on an anesthetized spouse (Newt Gingrich) and committing perjury before Congress (Oliver North) to cheating on one's wife (Mark Sanford).  In other words, "When one of our guys get caught doing bad things, we quote the verse Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.  But when it's one of your guys, s'vet dir gornisht helf'n -- viz., Ain't nothing gonna help 'ya . . . !"

   
   About 60 years ago poet John Berryman, in his "Sonnets for Chris" -- which was about an earlier act of adultery -- asked "Is wickedness soluble in art?"  What Berryman wanted to know is whether he could be forgiven -- or redeemed -- for his act of immorality by striving for the artistic heights?  It is, no doubt, a question worth serious contemplation.  It is also quite likely that if one were to address Berryman's question to the boys and girls at Fox they wouldn't have the slightest idea what in the world was being asked. So be it; that's their problem.  Let's leave B'nai Fox to their own devices and discuss this amongst ourselves. I for one am not sure that wickedness is "soluble in art." I mean, no matter how powerful or important Wagner's "Ring Cycle" may  be, it does not and cannot make up for the fact that the maestro was a roaring, wicked anti-Semite.  Or, that despite his many accomplishments on the gridiron -- which many would consider a form of 'art' -- there is no getting around the fact that O.J. Simpson is a very evil, wicked man.     

   So what does this have to do with Senator Kennedy?  What was his art that he should become a subject for discussion? In an article in yesterday's Guardian, Princeton professor and author Joyce Carol Oates -- whose 1992 novella Blackwater was inspired by the Chappaquiddick incident -- rephrased Berryman's question as: "Is wickedness soluble in good deeds?"  Now there's a fascinating question; one that directly impacts on the life, times and accomplishments of the only Kennedy brother who lived long enough to "comb gray hair."  Admitting upfront and making no bones about the fact that Edward Moore Kennedy was a weak, flawed -- and yes, occasionally wicked -- human being, we are thereby freed to examine his good deeds.  Yes, he cheated on a Harvard exam hoping to stay eligible for football.  Yes, in his early days in the senate he was looked upon as a lightweight who got by on charm, a famous name and a great staff.  And yes, he closed down many a bar in Palm Beach and Cape Cod, and was known to be inarticulate one moment, as eloquent as William Jennings Bryan the next.  This fellow who entered the Senate in 1962 at age 30 brought with him a storied name and virtually nothing else.  And now at his death some 47 years later, he leaves that chamber as quite likely the most effective senator of the past 100 years. 

    Ted Kennedy's first senate tutor was Phil Hart of Michigan, who told him "You can accomplish anything in Washington if you give others the credit."  He learned that lesson well.  During his nearly 8 terms in the United States Senate he drafted and shaped more landmark legislation than such liberal giants as Robert Wagner, Hubert Humphrey, Estes Kefauver and Herbert Henry Lehman.  Among the many, many measures that never would have been enacted without Senator Edward M. Kennedy are:

• The 1964 Civil Rights Act, for which he delivered his maiden Senate speech.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• Expanding the franchise to 18-year olds.
• The 1985 legislation that imposed sanctions on the apartheid government of South Africa.  (Despite a filibuster by Jesse Helms and a veto by President Reagan, Kennedy mustered 78 votes to override the veto.)
• Led the fight against the confirmation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.
  
• The 1988 bill that provided $1.2 billion for AIDS testing, treatment and research.
• The 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act.
• The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.
  
• The Kennedy-Hatch Act of 1997, which provided health insurance for children.
  
• Heightened taxes on tobacco.
• The Kennedy-Kassebaum bill which made health insurance portable for workers.
• Co-sponsored with John McCain the "Patients' Bill of Rights."

   It is frightening to think that Ted Kennedy may turn out to be the last true  public liberal; the last public person who lives, acts and believes that people are inherently good and that government has a positive role to play in our lives.   Despite all his personal foibles and humiliations, his public losses and private tragedies, he has soldiered on.  He has done good.  He has done more than his share to help make this world a better place.  Nonetheless, there will always be those who -- like the boys and girls of Fox -- dismiss him with that single polysyllabic place name: "Chappaquiddick."  They are the ones who would say that wickedness  can never be soluble in good deeds; that "For you guys, once a sinner always a sinner."  To them I say, "Before you congratulate yourselves on your moral profundity, think long and hard. " There are some folks -- like Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts -- who spend the lion's share of a lifetime in engaged in the act of overcoming. 

   Overcoming loss.
   Overcoming tragedy.
   Overcoming foibles, follies and frailties.

   One wonders how, with all the loss, all the tragedy and all the foibles, Ted Kennedy could soldier on for so many decades.  What was it that made him get up each day and do the best he could to make this a better world?  Although no one can ever know for certain, this, according to one of his friends, has always been his defining quality. 

   Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of the dynasty was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a saint.  He was a scoundrel in business, a cheat in marriage and a bigot in foreign affairs.  Nonetheless, he and his wife Rose did provide the world with  remarkable sons and daughters.  No Kennedy has ever lived a useless life.  No Kennedy has ever accepted more than a dollar-a-year for their government service.  No Kennedy has ever had to ask the definition of noblesse oblige.
  
   Because of all he went through in his family, Ted Kennedy became what the great political writer Jack Newfield called "America's grief counselor."  By way of example, Newfield noted that "when two planes were hijacked out of Boston's Logan Airport on 9/11 and 93 residents of Massachusetts went to their death, Senator Kennedy personally called more than 125 family members offering assistance and solace."  One conversation with a grieving father so moved the senator that he sent the man a copy of a letter that his father, Ambassador Kennedy, had written to a friend in 1958 upon hearing of the death of the friend's son.  That note, perhaps better than anything else, provides the key to what, when all is said and done, made Senator Ted Kennedy so utterly unique and irreplaceable -- not to mention the greatest United States Senator of the past century.

    "When one of your loved ones goes out of your life, you think of what he might have done for a few more years, and you wonder what you are going to do with the rest of yours. 

   Then one day, because there is a world to be lived in, you find yourself a part of it, trying to accomplish something -- something he did not have time to do.  And, perhaps, that is the reason for all.  I hope so."
   
   Yes, wickedness can be soluble in good deeds.

   Pacem in terres.
   Gratias tibi ago.
  
©2009 Kurt F. Stone

Some Thoughts on Turning (Gasp!) Sixty

  

   "It's been a long time comin'
    It's goin' to be a long time gone"

   So wrote David Crosby more than half a lifetime ago.  So sang Crosby, Stills and Nash last night at the Hard Rock here in Ft. Lauderdale.  They were great.  They    were note-perfect, their harmonies still as tight as a gymnast's abdomen. But my god!  Crosby just turned 68, Stills, the baby of the group is 64, and Graham Nash is 67.  Weren't they just playing at Woodstock?  Was a generation's "going' down to Yasgur's farm" really forty years ago?

"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

  When we took our seats at the Hard Rock last night I was 59; by the time we got home, I was . . . gasp! . . . 60.  After nearly two hours of communing with the sound track of youth -- of a time when "Don't trust anyone over the age of 30" was the Eleventh Commandment -- here I was, trying hard not to think about precisely how long ago "it" all was. I've got to admit that there were quite a few moments  during the concert when my eyes -- which have required bifocals for more than a decade now -- were bedimmed with tears; tears of joy and sadness, tears of recollection and reflection.      

"Think about how many times I have fallen,
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin'
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten."  

   Forty years ago my friends the Toppings offered a choice: I could either go to "some rock concert" in Upstate New York or attend the Berkshire Festival at Tanglewood.  I chose the latter.  I remember thinking at the time, "Hell, I can catch Hendrix,  Baez or Creedence Clearwater any time I want. But Eric Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony?  Beethoven's Ninth? Now there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"

   And so, off to Lennox I went.  Over the past forty years I have on occasion asked myself if I made the right decision.  Invariably, I am torn.  As much as I  do relish the remembrance of Tanglewood -- its beauty and utter civility -- at the same time I think "Ah, what a piece of history you missed out on!"  And history it was, with Crosby Stills, Nash & Young providing the score. It was a time when we really truly believed that our generation could, should and would make the world a place of love, peace and harmony.

   "I think it's time we
Stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look. What's goin' down?"

 Forty years ago the world took an entire generation by the scruff of its collective neck, gave a jolting shake, and set us on a path we thought would lead to a revolution.  To us, the world was fraught with evil: Nixon, Agnew, and Reagan; the Draft, mindless consumerism, the murder of Bobby Kennedy. We really, truly believed we could end war, hunger and poverty; that together we could roll back the dark clouds and restore sun-drenched skies.  All we needed was courage -- and the right message.

"Speak out, you've got to speak out against the madness
You've got to speak your mind
If you dare . . .
But you know, the darkest hour
Is always just before the dawn."

   It is so eerie to realize just how long ago it all was; how back then, a person of sixty was . . . well so incredibly old and out of touch.  I think back to when my own father turned that magic age.  It was back in 1975, and by then, he had already seemed old for a long, long time.  I remember wondering if he ever had been really, truly young. Of course, he and his generation had had a totally different set of realities and experiences including the Great Depression and World War II.  We were the beneficiaries of their struggle; we were the ones who were fortunate enough to go to universities, bum around Europe, thumb our noses at the "Establishment" and see the world through (literally) rose-colored glasses. 

   Experiencing Crosby, Still and Nash last night, I discovered that much of what made youth so exciting, so memorable, so important, is still with me.  The idealistic grounding -- although made a bit uneven by experience -- is still there.  The inability to accept violence, bigotry, duplicity and intolerance still courses through the veins.  Oh sure, I am still accused of having a Pollyanna-ish streak in me; of seeing this harsh old world through those same old rose-colored glasses.  To any and all who hurl this accusation, I gladly plead guilty.  That's just the generation I was born into. In the long run its that idealistic cord which binds this sixty year old to the past, and makes him feel far, far younger than what today's calendar proclaims. 

    There is still so much to be done; so  many wrongs to right, so many, many songs yet to be sung.  And as long as we keep singing, we will never truly grow old.  Oh sure, the hair may thin, the back weaken and the need for licit pharmaceuticals increase; but so long as we have dreams and causes, we will ever maintain our youth.

"Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The ones they picks, the ones you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh . . . and know they love you."
  

  

©2009 Kurt F.Stone

Is There Life After Birth?

 

   "A foolish consistency," Ralph Waldo Emerson famously penned, "is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."  For the nonce, let's take America's favorite philosopher at his word; he pretty much knew what he was talking or writing about. One wonders how Emerson would react to today's crop of " . . . little statesmen and philosophers and divines," those who have raised inconsistency to the level of religious credo and made foolishness -- and far worse -- a prime weapon in the arsenal of public discussion.  How would he have reacted to folks who hold that life begins at conception yet stand resolutely against gun control?  Who are just as staunchly anti-Food Stamp as they are staunchly pro-life?  Who demand that government stay the heck out of the boardroom but be granted full access to the bedroom? 

   My sense is that Emerson would marvel not so much at their foolishness or lack of consistency, but at the fact that anyone would even pay them heed. He would no doubt shake his head in disbelief at how so many supposedly moral, educated people can blithely put so many obstacles before the blind; can actually convince folks to oppose that which is inherently in their best interest.  Surveying and analyzing all that passes for public discourse in the current health care debate, he would likely conclude that for lots of Americans, "Life begins at conception and ends at birth." 

   The current bugle oil about "death panels" -- in which federally-paid functionaries decide who lives and who dies, who receives medical treatment and who is cast adrift -- is just that: crappola.  And what's worse, just about everyone tooting this tinny old horn knows its crappola -- well, perhaps not Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or Dick Morris. By now it should be abundantly clear that this preposterous charge is being made at the behest of a medical insurance industry whose two favorite words are laissez and faire, and a ton of politicians and hired mouthpieces who make Polly Adler look like a vestal virgin.

   One group that has yet to weigh in on this whole "death panel" lunacy are the medical ethicists -- those whose job it is to weigh moral values and judgments and  then apply them in practical clinical settings.  Medical ethics is a fairly new field; its creation largely a response to two horrific cases of abuse:

• The ghoulish experiments of the Nazis that became a focus of the post-World War II "Doctors' Trial," and
• The "Tuskegee Syphilis Study," a project conducted between 1932 and 1974 by the U.S. Public Health Service on black men in rural Alabama.
  

   Unbeknownst to -- or totally ignored by -- those  megaphoning this notion of government underwritten "death panels" is the world of the I.R.B. -- the "Institutional Review Board."  These boards, made up of doctors, scientists and laypeople, are governed by Title 45 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Part 46. They are further defined by the National Research Act of 1974 and regulated by the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP).  Any institution that wants to do medical research must have one of these boards.  Everyone appointed to such a board must first successfully complete C.I.T.I. ("Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative") and receive proper certification.  And believe me, its not easy. 

   I know of what I write.

  I have been a member of the Cleveland Clinic Florida I.R.B. for the past 15 years, and have successfully completed the C.I.T.I. course several times.  Over these past 15 years I have been privy to hundreds and hundreds of discussions on cutting-edge research and compassionate-use medical procedures, always with an eye to protecting patients' rights, and making sure that everything is spelled out in words that lay people can easily grasp. There are so many layers and levels of protection as to make the "death panel" rant a virtual impossibility.  We take our work very seriously; protecting patients' rights is both our moral and our legal responsibility.  In a sense, we are the modern, hyper-extension of the Hippocratic Oath.  Now, I cannot claim to know that every single I.R.B. in the United States works with the same utter seriousness of purpose as ours at Cleveland Clinic Florida. I mean we do have some of the planet's most gifted physicians, and our staff director Donna Simonovitch is, quite simply, as good as they get -- the best in the business.

   Personal prejudice aside, we take patients' rights -- patients' lives -- very, very seriously in these United States.  In the world of the I.R.B. the beginning premise is that the better informed the patient is about treatment options, the more intelligently involved he or she and their families can be in their own care.  The "death panel" fear which the Limbaughs, Palins, Becks and Grassleys of the world are trumpeting is not only a gross distortion of the truth; it is an out-and-out lie meant to scare the bejesus out of the unlettered masses, all the while doing the bidding of their well-heeled masters.  That these well-heeled masters encourage them to spread such vicious lies is perhaps understandable.  After all, there are hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars at stake.  That many have bought into these lies -- i.e. that Barack Obama and the Democrats don't give a tinker's damn about the lives of the sick or elderly -- is not only maddening; it shows just how far out of touch with reality some people really are.
 
   Hey guys: Respecting life means having the ability and courage to discuss death.   Considering a living will or contemplating a D.N.R. ("Do Not Resuscitate") order can often provide enough peace of mind to make whatever time one has left even more content and peaceful.  It in no way disparages or denies the utter sanctity of human life.     
 
   Those spreading lies about government-financed "death panels" are the same folks who put Terri Schiavo's name in the ears and on the lips of countless millions. They are the ones who believe that the perquisites of the powerful  -- themselves -- must be protected at all costs. And if in order to do so they find they must resort to lies, deceptions, fear-mongering, racism or worse . . . well, that's all just part of being the power elite.  Right?

 

   WRONG! 

   Those of us who see this noxious claptrap for it really is must push back; must use the weapons we have in our arsenal to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number.
 
   And please, spread the word that no one -- I repeat, no one -- is going to die before their time.  
  

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

SHOYN GENUG!!

   By now, we have all the seen media clips of the so-called "grass-roots teabag protesters" hectoring, screaming, debasing, threatening and otherwise disrupting Democratic town hall forums across the country.  By now, we are all painfully, angrily aware that, far from being an organic, bottom-up rebellion made up of "average Americans voicing real concerns" about the future of health care in America, these boorish, uncivil protests are being stage-managed by highly professional lobbying firms with unlimited financial resources at their disposal.  And, as much as we may disparage the tactics, demeanor and dishonesty of what's going on, it is all perfectly legal; it is all covered by the First Amendment.

   But just because something is legal -- like converging on a town hall meeting and shouting down an elected official, calling him or her a liar, a scoundrel or a traitor -- doesn't make it right or tolerable.  To my way of thinking, there are -- or at least should be -- limits to what's acceptable; a place where we all draw a line in the sand. One of these limits, one of these lines is likening the President of the United States and members of the United States Congress to AdolF Hitler and the Nazis.

   To this I shout out SHOYN GENUG!! Enough already!

   Over the past weeks and months, we have seen more and more placards, and heard more and more commentators comparing President Obama to Hitler,  labeling his programs as fascistic, and warning of dire consequences unless he is stopped in his tracks.  

   On July 30, Orly Taitz, the dentist/real estate agent/attorney who is leading the so-called "Birther" movement took her case to the "Colbert Report."  Taitz started speaking in defense of Major Stephen Cook, who said his orders to deploy to Afghanistan were "invalid," because "President Obama wasn't born in America."  After listening to Taitz's defense of Major Cook, Colbert said,

   "It's good for the country for the soldiers to be questioning their Commander in Chief." 

   Whether or not Taitz understood that Colbert was being both sarcastic and ironic is debatable, because she responded, 

   "Well, I think that if in Nazi Germany, the soldiers and the officers would have questioned the orders that came from the commander in chief, maybe 65 million people wouldn't have died."

   To which Colbert, not believing what he had just heard responded,

   "Thank you.  So few people are willing to compare the Obama administration to Nazi Germany.  It's refreshing to hear that."

   One could only wish that what Steven Colbert was hearing was rare.  But it's not:
 
   At a recent protest held outside the Ft. Collins offices of Representative Betsey Markey (D-Colo), a woman protesting Democratic plans for health care reform was photographed holding up a sign of a Swastika, with the president's name below it, encircled and crossed out by a red line.  The clear implication, of course, is that President Obama is a Nazi, though in the protester's defense she did add a question mark.  Similarly, at a town hall meeting in Texas Representative Lloyd Dogget's district, one protester carried a sign emblazoned with the Nazi S.S. symbol, a second with a cartoon of the congressman sporting horns, and yet a third, a tombstone with Dogget's name on it.   The other day, out on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Representative Frank M. Kratovil, Jr. was met  with protesters -- one of whom  who had the tasteless brass to place an effigy of the congressman hanging from a noose just outside his office.  On August 6, Rush Limbaugh told his ditto-heads that "Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Hitler's playbook," and asked "What are the similarities between the Democratic Party  of today and the Nazi Party in Germany?"  His answer, in part:  

   "Well, the Nazis were against big business -- they hated big business.  And  of course we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism.  They were insanely, irrationally against pollution . . . . They were against cruelty and vivisection of animals, but in the radical sense of devaluing human life, they banned smoking. . . . It is liberalism that's the closest you can get to Nazism and Socialism . . . . Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate."

   SHOYN GENUG!!

   One wonders whether it has dawned on the likes of Rush Limbaugh and such sponsoring organizations as FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, or  Conservatives for Patients' Rights that they are making it look as if the entirety of the Republican Party -- and not just a gullible gaggle -- is made up of nothing but "wing nuts," Luddites and other assorted "Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton." (For those not familiar with this latter allusion, see Marat Sade).  If this be the case, it's fine by me; occasionally one does reap what they sow.    
  
   To all those being goaded by radical right organizations into doing their bidding; to all those who persist in comparing Democrats to Fascists and liberals to Socialists; and, to all those who find the leap from "Barrack Obama" to  "Adolf Hitler" to be measured in microns  and not temporal dimensions I say precisely two things:

   Shame on you!  and

     "SHOYN GENUG!! 

    Enough already!!

 

©2009 Kurt F. Stone