"Kennedy docs show death threats as late as 1985"
That is the AP headline this morning over a story on newly released documents dealing with the life of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of the House of Hyannisport.
Now please read carefully from the second AP paragraph, to which the headline refers:
"The documents showed that on May 23, 1985, the U.S. Capitol Police passed onto the FBI a copy of a letter sent to the Secret Service, ostensibly by a Warren, Mich., resident. The sender, whose name was redacted, declared: 'Brass tacks, I'm gonna kill Kennedy and (President Ronald) Reagan, and I really mean it'."
The crazy Michigan woman didn't kill anyone, but this morning an AP writer and at least one AP editor murdered a fair segment of the media's remaining credibility.
Call it a stupid mistake by two so-called professionals who know full well that many, many readers never go further than the headline and that fewer still go beyond the first paragraph. The quoted paragraph follows a lede also mentioning the threat to Teddy but not the president.
Call it a stupid mistake by two so-called professionals who know full well that many, many readers never go further than the headline and that fewer still go beyond the first paragraph. The quoted paragraph follows a lede also mentioning the threat to Teddy but not the president.
Or perhaps they were aware of the readership studies but somehow secured employment with the world's largest (and once great) wire service with news judgment which holds that a threat to assassinate a senator is highly significant while an identical threat against a sitting president is worth just a throwaway line.
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There's also some fresh documentation that we are quite correct in despising the youngest Kennedy for his cowardice and calculated lies and actions while Mary Jo sucked in that last horrid lungful of sea water. But it is buried deep in the usually unread sentences which, like as not, would be on the dead-tree jump page if not cut altogether.
For instance, the FBI helped Ted buy time to get his story arranged for the fawning reporters who aspired, above all, to be favored Kennedy courtiers.
For instance, the FBI helped Ted buy time to get his story arranged for the fawning reporters who aspired, above all, to be favored Kennedy courtiers.
3 comments:
I'm sorry, but I don't buy that Mary Jo drowned. I was glued to the televisor that Apollo weekend, and I remember her parents tearfully asking for an autopsy that evening, and the very nest day saying that they didn't want their darling girl subjected to that humiliation. My thought at the time was that someone with a Kennedy checkbook showed up overnight.
I think she suffocated, and was still living while Teddy slept it off on land.
Slowly exhausting the oxygen in a trapped air bubble while Teddy called his daddy's lawyers? Beyond horrible.
The American press has no blacker sin on its soul than flopping for the Kennedys like a two-dollar whore as the story of Mary Jo's killing unfolded.
An investigator for Mary Jo's family wrote a little book about it years later. He had an interesting theory on what really happened.
He had photos of the car in the book. I showed them to a retired body man who worked from about '45 to '00, and asked him what caused the damage. Without knowing the car's history, he stated it was a "soft roll", like into a farmers field. I said "would driving off a dock, or into a drainage ditch or some other body of water have done the same damage"? His reply was "no way". I asked about the drivers side mirror being broken off the door, with no other damage there. "Happens when you tie the steering wheel to it to keep the front wheels tracking straight. Tow drivers do it, but sometimes if you whack a front wheel against a curb, it will spin the steering and break the mirror. That's why you should tie it to something else less fragile, but it's handy if the car doesn't have a vent window frame, or you can't roll down the window".
The theory was that Teddy blew a turn on those back country roads, and rolled the car after leaving the road. M J was injured and unconscious, and the possibly drunken Teddy thought he had killed her. He left to get some helpful friends, and they flipped the car back onto it's wheels. Thinking that he would look better if he had driven off a bridge into a pond, they moved to that location, tied a rope to the steering wheel, propped something against the gas pedal, and slapped the shifter into Drive. When the tire hit that bridge edging, it turned, breaking off the mirror, and the car fell into the water. Teddy then had to dive down to recover the rope and gas pedal prop, which probably took a few attempts to accomplish.
What they found when her body was examined was her sweater and blouse was saturated with blood, which could not have occurred from the car going into the water. Also, she did not drown, but died from asphyxiation in a closed environment. Being doused in the water brought her to a level of consciousness, but the air pocket did not keep her alive long enough for her to understand her situation.
So the fool actually killed her in a successful cover-up of an accident w/injuries while possibly DUI. That actually makes it a homicide, although not intentional, but no time limit on the crime. Would be good if one of his helpers made a statement about it some day, just for the record.
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