I’ve always been curious about the Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne drowning, so of course that’s where my mind went last night when I read about his death.

What? Is that bad, or is that normal!? I’ve only been following the news closely this last year, remember; it’s like a crash course of the history of the world. Excuse me when I don’t know everything about every politician in the White House. I read that he did a lot of good with health care, and did some other great things, too.  CNN seems to have a balanced story about him here, including all his positives, which are legion; they are also honest enough to at least mention Chappaquidick (unlike the spurious writeup the LA Times did on him last month, with not.one.mention of the drowning. And the Times website STILL totally sucks, after their new “updo”, as it won’t show me that link now)  Anyway, back to the mystery.

So last night I spent a couple of hours reading all the links I could find on what really happened  with Teddy and the tragic story of Mary Jo. Briefly, there was a party of a bunch of married men and single women who had worked on the Robert Kennedy campaign. This isn’t necessarily scurrilous, as Wash DC has the highest number of single women – read the stats.

Edward Kennedy was going to drive Mary Jo home from the party, drank too much, and the car tipped over, upside down, into the pond. He got out, presumably through the open window on the driver’s side, but poor Mary Jo drowned. He reported the incident the next morning, about 9 hours later. The obvious explanation is that he was drunk, didn’t want the police to test him, and so he delayed reporting it until after he had talked with his lawyer, etc. But there were a lot of questions raised in the many sites I read: Was she pregnant? Why did he delay? Why was he seen at this time in dry clothes? Did he really try to save her, as he claimed, and was he then able to swim the channel, as he claimed,  back to town?   Read more »