Kennedy Memorial Service Lays out the Contrast Between Dems and GOP: Service to the Nation or Service to the Self

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

It was an Irish wake of the most pitch-perfect sort held for Ted Kennedy in Boston on Friday night: plenty of laughter and song, a celebration, a sense of thanks and gratitude for a full, rich life.

But Edward Kennedy also endured an extarordinary string of personal tragedies that would have turned a lesser man into a barely functioning person.  Yes, he had his years of excess and reckless indulgence, but he never stopped working for the common good; it was what centered a life -- of what one commentator has noted -- Shakespearean proportions of loss.

Ted Kennedy remained the tenacious battler for what would benefit the people of the American nation.  The Senate was his career, his job, his passion, his defining sense of purpose -- and his commitment to improving the lot of all Americans -- not just a select few -- was his mission.

Everyone has their own personal recollections of Ted Kennedy, even those of us who knew him from afar.

I recall a photo of him on a navy ship presiding over the burial of his nephew, the son of JFK, at sea after he and his wife and sister-in-law were killed in a freak plane accident on the way to his cousin's wedding on the Cape.  I remember thinking to myself "how much personal tragedy can one man endure" and not fall to pieces.

And I remember at Yale -- many, many years ago -- when he came to speak to the political union.  Protestors were advocating violence as a solution to a political issue of the time and interrupted his remarks.  Kennedy let them have their say and then -- his voice audibly breaking and trembling -- admonished them that he knew personally the toll that violence takes upon a family and that it was not what our nation was about, nor would it yield anything but loss and pain.  You could have heard a pin drop as he sucked the air out of the room with his spontaneous reaction from the depth of a wounded heart.

But the wake in Boston barely brushed up against the losses Kennedy endured.

Instead, like a good Irish wake, it celebrated the man and the joy of his life -- and what wonderful, dignified, classy, humorous personal reflections they were.

Ted Kennedy was there in the '60s -- which the right wing is till trying to turn back the clock on -- when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and more monumental legislation that increased the range of equality and care for our national community.  Little known, he also championed a reform of our immigration laws that dramatically reduced the bias toward white European immigration and opened American immigration up more to the world.

As Vice-President Biden eloquently and movingly noted, with Ted Kennedy it was never about him, it was about "you."  His life's work was spent working not for himself -- born to the privilege of the Kennedy fortune, mystique and fame -- but to uplift the lives of less fortunate Americans.

In hearing so much about the generous and thoughful personal Ted Kennedy, we learned even more how he represented the best of what Democrats and liberals stand for: service to the nation and to the American community.

It is a far cry from the greed, hate and hysteria of the Republicans who champion only service to the self.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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