We won’t have a more dramatic moment all week than Ted Kennedy’s speech. I was stunned — I figured he’d wave and say a couple of words. Instead, he delivered one of his patented stem-winders.
If his health continues to improve, it’s easy to imagine his returning to the Senate next January, as he vowed to do.
In my latest for the Guardian, I try to explain what it’s like for Ted Kennedy to be one of our senators rather than a world and national symbol — and how it feels to be preparing for his passing.
Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson writes that Sen. Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Though the prognosis is uncertain, this is truly bad news both for the Kennedy family and for Massachusetts.
According to Johnson’s story, the usual course of treatment is radiation and chemotherapy, with survival ranging from less than a year to five years or more. Obviously it’s way too soon to tell whether Kennedy might be able to return to a vigorous and effective Senate career, but it’s a real possibility.
Sen. Arlen Specter, for one, has served while battling various forms of cancer, including a brain tumor, since the early 1990s.
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Sen. Ted Kennedy has fallen ill, and Media Nation extends its best wishes. Meanwhile, there are signs of early media confusion over what’s wrong.
The Boston Herald reports that Kennedy experienced “stroke-like symptoms.” The Cape Cod Times, whose account of Kennedy’s illness is otherwise thorough, makes no mention of the nature of the senator’s illness. (Those two links via Universal Hub.)
By contrast, the Boston Globe, relying on an anonymous “official briefed on the situation,” tells us that Kennedy suffered a seizure, then a second as he was being transported by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital.
Not that the Herald and the Globe couldn’t both be right.
Instant update: The Herald’s Casey Ross has more details, and describes Kennedy’s “stroke-like symptoms” as “mild.” And the AP, among others, is also using the phrase “stroke-like symptoms.”
Unexpectedly, it’s turned into Charlie Pierce Week here at Media Nation. Why? Because conservative media critic Tim Graham is smearing Pierce with a five-year-old lie — a lie that Graham had a hand in spreading in the first place.
Pierce has a story in the new Esquire on the presidential campaign. Graham doesn’t like it very much. Fair enough. But Graham, writing for NewsBusters, begins with this:
Charles Pierce is the infamous Boston Globe writer who tried to insist in 2003 that if Mary Jo Kopechne had survived Chappaquiddick, she would enjoy all the senior citizen benefits provided by Ted Kennedy’s beneficent policies.
Graham links to an old item at his own organization, the Media Research Center, which later bestowed on Pierce its “Quote of the Year” for what it considered his extreme liberal bias.
I’ve written about this several times before, and I don’t feel like doing it again; just read this and this. As you will see, Graham deliberately misconstrues what may be the single meanest thing ever written about Ted Kennedy (by a liberal, anyway), strips out the irony and sarcasm, and then pretends that Pierce is tastelessly using Kopechne’s death to praise Kennedy.
Since the record has been corrected several times, Graham is no longer mistaken. Now he’s lying.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would base his or her vote on what a Kennedy says. (Especially this one!) Still, it’s pretty interesting that both Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy would endorse Barack Obama on the same weekend.
Caroline Kennedy’s choice, which she reveals in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, is all the more impressive because she submitted it before last night’s South Carolina blowout. For all she knew, her op-ed was going to appear on a very good day for Hillary Clinton — that is, the day after a narrow loss in South Carolina and bulging leads in most other states. Whatever the opposite is of inevitable, that’s how Obama was starting to look, and Kennedy endorsed him anyway. As it turns out, she looks prescient.
As for Ted Kennedy, I have to assume his endorsement has been in the works for some time, and that he’s been waiting for the moment when it would have maximum effect. With Super Tuesday coming up on Feb. 5, and with Massachusetts being a part of it, now’s the time. I’m surprised by Kennedy’s choice. The Clintons have always been wildly popular here, and Kennedy seemed to have enjoyed a good relationship with them. Did something happen? Or does he simply find Obama too impressive not to support?
With Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick also supporting Obama, that’s the trifecta for the state’s top three elected officials. House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s endorsement of Clinton isn’t looking all that significant right now.
Predictions, always futile, have been especially so this year. But I can confidently predict this: The next few days are going to be the roughest of Clinton’s campaign, regardless of whether she has a happy Super Tuesday or not.
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