Thursday, January 15, 2009

Sweet Thug

Sources: Kennedy Hopes To Bring Obama In To Campaign - Subheadline, WCBS television news story, January 13.

Caroline Kennedy is a thug.

She, of course, doesn't look like a thug. She's not a felon, a sociopath or a violent menace to society.

She's a political thug. And those people are not uncommon in the world of superpower politics. Welcome to the club, Caroline.

Kennedy is leveraging every ounce of power she possesses to sit in Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. From the beginning, it has been an embarrassing spectacle.

The news from WCBS that Kennedy is going to use the future president of the United States to win appointment to the Senate is no surprise. It's likely been happening for weeks with an assist from Mayor Napoleon Bloomberg. As we get closer to Hillary Clinton's confirmation as Secretary of State, Kennedy wants everyone to know Barack Obama is for her.

This unimpressive, painfully inarticulate woman has coasted through life with barely a care about New York state and it's political atmosphere.

For her, voting is a nuisance. For her, holding a real news conference to answer serious questions is demeaning. For her, financial disclosure is an invasion of privacy.

The media has described Kennedy's unseemly quest for a Senate seat as a "campaign" in the traditional sense of the word. It's not. What Kennedy has launched is an intimidation scheme aimed squarely at one man: Governor David Paterson.

If Governor Paterson succumbs and appoints her to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat he will expose himself as the 98-pound weakling of New York politics. He will be a governor who allowed the Kennedy family to kick sand in his face and browbeat him into doing exactly what they covet, which is always power.

Caroline Kennedy's political thuggery is anchored by her surname. The only reason she's not treated as a laughable, fringe Pierre Rinfret-type contender for the Senate is because she's a Kennedy. That obvious fact is lost on millions of New Yorkers. They don't care.

New Yorkers don't care because the Kennedys are supposed to be "American royalty." They're "Camelot." Right. In his act, the late comedian George Carlin changed one letter in "Camelot" for accuracy purposes. He replaced the "a" with a "u."

History exposes this bunch as one of most wretched and reprehensible political families to ever shame America with their destructive presence. Since she's running only on her name, Governor Paterson needs a refresher course on Caroline Kennedy's family.

* Grandfather Joe was a Nazi sympathetizing, bootlegging, serial adulterer who forced his daughter to get a lobotomy.

* Father John was a feckless, philandering, pretty boy speechifier, and the Soviet Union knew it. They started building the Berlin Wall seven months into his presidency, which he didn't have the guts to stop. He compromised national security by sleeping with spies, had the infamous "Dr. Feelgood" at the ready to medicate him and nearly dragged our country into a nuclear war because of his known weaknesses.

* Uncle Bobby was Senator Joe McCarthy's ruthless lawyer, approved the wiretapping of Martin Luther King and, shocking for a Kennedy, cheated on his wife Ethel with Marilyn Monroe. Joe DiMaggio made it a point to blow the sainted Bobby off at a Yankee Stadium pre-game ceremony because he knew he was a snake.

* Brother John was an "adrenaline junkie" woefully unqualified, while injured, to fly the plane that killed him, his wife and his sister-in-law. If he crashed on land he could have also killed innocent people on the ground.

And there is Uncle Teddy, the driving force behind the Sweet Thug's intimidation scheme. His amoral life has many chapters, and Chappaquiddick defines it.

When I was a U.S. Senate staffer, I worked on the fourth floor of the Russell Senate Office Building. Kennedy's office was on the third floor.

One early morning I got on the elevator to get a cup of coffee. It stopped at the third floor, and in walked Ted Kennedy with an aide and his two Portuguese water dogs. I knew the name of one of the dogs already - Splash.

Kennedy leaned over, rubbed the dog behind the ears and in baby-talk said, "good Splash, are you a good Splash, good Splash." I wanted to throw up because I thought about Mary Jo Kopechne's family.

A splash is what happened to Kennedy's car when he drove it off the Dike Bridge. A splash that killed Mary Jo Kopechne.

So this is the family name Caroline is using in an attempt to intimidate Governor Paterson and parachute into the United States Senate after a life of leisure and indifference. New Yorkers should be repulsed by what the Sweet Thug is trying to pull off.