ted_joan.jpgNow that Senator Kennedy seems to be getting better and we’re all glad for it, I simply cannot let this journalistic BJ by Tim Curry from NBC News stand.

“His hair was white, his face was puffy and red, but Sen. Ted Kennedy‚Äôs voice still had that stirring resonance that set Democrats‚Äô pulses racing and brought them to their feet.

Kennedy’s speech on behalf of presidential contender Sen. John Kerry that Sunday four years ago at the McKinstry Elementary School in Waterloo, Iowa was one the most exciting performances I’ve ever witnessed.

“In the final hours of this caucus, people having listened to the candidates on the issues want to know: what kind of heart is in this man?” he shouted to the crowd.

Kennedy cited Kerry’s tour of duty in Vietnam and told them of “the heroism, and the Americanism, the bravery and the tenacity… of our candidate John Kerry.”

I thought on that day before the Iowa caucuses that if Kennedy could transfer this exhilaration to Kerry, he just might win the Iowa caucuses.

And Kerry did, thanks in part to the Kennedy magic.”

I’m gonna hurl. “Puffy Red” I wonder where that came from? He’s a real “eloquent” speaker alright, just listen to how he introduced the messiah a while back.

Ooooh, I’ve got goosebumps, don’t you? But stay tuned, Curry pulls out the KY and it gets better.

“Kennedy has the knack of instantly working himself up into a righteous fury, or a good imitation of that.

He sometimes reduces witnesses to incoherence, although I‚Äôve seen two in recent years, Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito in 2006 and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke last April kept calm under the Kennedy onslaught.”

It was a disgrace, that’s what it was. Remember this?

alito.jpg

Yeah, he reduced an honored public servant’s - and incidentally one who didn’t drown his girlfriend - wife to tears. Real fringing hero.

But this is total BS.

“Conservatives will never forget his slashing oratory attacking Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

‚ÄúRobert Bork‚Äôs America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens‚Äô doors in midnight raids,‚Äù he declared on the Senate floor, only minutes after President Reagan announced Bork‚Äôs nomination on July 1, 1987.”

In 2007 Jonah Goldberg wrote of this travesty of our history.

“Kennedy‚Äôs assault rallied left-wing interest groups to the anti-Bork banner for an unprecedented assault on a man the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger dubbed the most qualified nominee he‚Äôd seen in his professional lifetime. As Gary McDowell noted recently in the Wall Street Journal, that time span included the careers of Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, and Felix Frankfurter.

Then-Judiciary Committee chairman Joseph Biden, Kennedy‚Äôs lieutenant in the assault, told the Philadelphia Inquirer not long before Bork was nominated: ‚ÄúSay the administration sends up Bork. I‚Äôd have to vote for him, and if the (liberal interest) groups tear me apart, that‚Äôs the medicine I‚Äôll have to take.‚Äù But when it came time to take his medicine, he ran away like a Kennedy fleeing a car accident. The fact that Biden was about to run for president ‚Äî for the first time ‚Äî probably helped him rationalize his flight from honor.”

In other words, not slashing oratory, simply hacking away at a man of honor and distinction.

Kennedy’s legacy has been to attack anyone who possess virtues he couldn’t fathom if he lived a thousand years. In fact all we need to know about his legacy is still at the bottom of a creek bed.