Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Melissa Lafsky and Mary Jo Kopechne

The Media Research Center points out a truly disgraceful piece written by Melissa Lafsky, published on The Huffington Post, "The Footnote Speaks: What Would Mary Jo Kopechne Have Thought of Ted's Career?"

Lafsky writes:

Mary Jo wasn't a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan. She was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future -- granted, whenever someone dies young, people sermonize about how he had a "bright future" ahead of him -- but she actually did. She wasn't afraid to defy convention (28 and unmarried, oh the horror!) or create her own career path based on her talents. She lived in Georgetown (where I grew up) and loved the Red Sox (we'll forgive her for that). Then she got in a car driven by a 36-year-old senator with an alcohol problem and a cauldron full of demons, and wound up a controversial footnote in a dynasty.

We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.

Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.

Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it.

The insensitivity and just outright inanity of Lafsky's comments is absolutely stunning.

Mary Jo Kopechne is not a footnote. To speak of her in such terms is to reduce the significance of her life and dehumanize her. It's inexcusable.

Lafsky's "logic" is twisted and sick.

Because of what happened at Chappaquiddick, Lafsky believes that Kopechne became the "catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history."

At first, I wondered if Lafsky was being sarcastic. No one could seriously make such an argument, right? No one would be so presumptuous as to channel Kopechne, "the footnote speaks."

I thought her suggestion that maybe Kopechne would have thought that giving her life to set Kennedy's senate career in motion was "worth it" had to be a tasteless joke. It's so over the top that Lafsky had to be kidding. I was missing something.

No. Lafsky means it when she considers the possibility that Kopechne might have approved of Kennedy leaving the scene at Chappaquiddick, not summoning emergency personnel, and failing to report the accident, virtually assuring that Kopechne had no chance of survival.

What an honor for a 28-year-old to give one's life to become the "catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history"!

Kopechne's a hero! Well, not really. She's just a footnote. I guess she's an accidental hero, though her life is still just a footnote, in Lafsky's eyes.

Good grief.

There's plenty of sick stuff on The Huffington Post, but this ranks among the sickest.

______________

Read Lafsky's bio.
Melissa Lafsky is the deputy web editor at Discover magazine, where she writes the Reality Base blog. She was previously the editor of the New York Times's Freakonomics blog, and is a former associate editor at HuffPo's Eat The Press. Lafsky was a practicing attorney at a firm in New York before founding the blog Opinionistas.com, which became internationally known for its relentless skewering of the corporate world. She currently writes for magazines and newspapers, blogs on all things science and otherwise, and is working on a book.

Lafsky can't be dismissed as a fringe loon. As MRC's Tim Graham notes, "she's a major-media-certified pundit."

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