Thursday, August 18, 2005

Ted Kennedy Story

Andrew Sullivan is on vacation (in p-town appearently although I haven't seen him) and has been lending out his site to various bloggers to fill in the time. Last week was Dan Savage who was amusing but intellectually light and, some would say, a little too gay all the time.

This week is Walter Kim, who is in quite a different vein. Yesterday he dropped a "drunken Ted Kennedy" story in, although I have to say, it wasn't as gratutious as it sounds.

Quick story. In the mid 1980s I went to a fancy Fifth Av. party for Senator Ted Kennedy. There were journalists there and lots of other bigwigs. The only time I'd seen Kennedy before was at a campaign stop in 1979 when he'd been seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He might have won, but I realized at the party that it would have been a terrible thing because he was the drunkest human being I had ever encountered in my life, and chances were that it hadn't just started that night. Sure, he already had this reputation, but it was a vague reputation, all myth and gossip, while the intoxicated wreck in front of me was as vivid and specific as a car wreck. How many thousands of times, I wondered, had such behavior as I was witnessing been quietly countenanced by journalists, and how much other wild, scary stuff pertaining to other movers and shakers who had a shot at ruling the free world, say, had they deftly slipped into their back pockets in return for the right to attend such parties as this one?

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