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Ted Kennedy has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#131

Post by unalone »

roundsquare wrote: post #83
unalone wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[...] it is right to balance their failures and accomplishments [...] Chappaquiddick is a huge mark against him The terminologies you're using suggest somehow ranking him, or judging him. I don't think that's useful at all. Ted Kennedy is dead. Most likely, I'll never think of him much after today. While he was alive, I never had to vote for him, or vote on his policies. So to me, and I'm sure to you, he is an abstra…

> The terminologies you're using suggest somehow ranking him, or judging him. Fair point, bad writing on my part. Ok, really bad writing. But to go back to the top of the thread, the discussion was about lessons to be learned. The fact that he get got off so lightly does teach us something about how much influence rich/powerful families have. You may think its obvious, but I think its a) a bit of an eye opener though…

Honest discussion? Right now people are just flaming. I don't see much point in discussing the dead at all - it's not going to change a thing about their lives - and I don't see the point in us all gathering round and arguing about how best to judge his life. The way I see it, if we're going to talk about the dead on Hacker News, it should be about the dead's accomplishments and not about the dead person himself.

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#132

Post by nandemo »

unalone wrote: post #50
muriithi wrote: post #44

What I can gather from his Wikipedia page is that Kennedy, like Clinton was a good politician but a consummate womaniser. I have always wondered why citizens expect politicians to be 'moral' and whether 'immoral' politicians are necessarily bad leaders?

America's got a fucked-up sense of morality. Everybody's messed up in one way or another romantically. We have a distorted sense of expectation, mixed with a bunch of weird ideas about what's appropriate and what isn't. There've been many perfect gentlemen politicians that were terrible. I hope one day we start judging politicians the way we would businessmen, wherein personal life matters less than performance.

Just a minor quibble, not meant to detract your point: it's curious that even as you criticize America's sense of morality, you seem to use "gentlemen" as opposed to "womanizer".

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#134

Post by kingkawn »

If still alive he'd be a major force for passing the kind of healthcare legislation that could have liberated Americans from employer-provided insurance as the only option. This would have freed a great deal of energy for risks like starting a business. That he became sick and died now is a a loss of leadership in the effort to make the dynamism of entrepreneurship, among other things, available to more people.

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#135

Post by protomyth »

unalone wrote: post #42
TomOfTTB wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially this one. I'm hesitant to comment on this because this article really doesn't belong here. But the fact remains Ted Kennedy left a woman for dead after driving his car into a body of water. He didn't contact the authorities when it happened, he instead went back to his hotel. When at his hotel (and I take this quote from the Wikipedia entry) he... "According to his own testimony, Kennedy swam across the 50…

Perhaps those of us that like Ted Kennedy weren't the ones bashing Michael Jackson? I'm inclined to forgive people their many, many errors. I see no harm in looking at a man's accomplishments and ignoring his failures. Michael Jackson was a man who changed the entertainment world. Ted Kennedy spent decades fighting for his causes without rest. Each did unpleasant things, but those things don't eliminate the good each…

I have always believed "the end justifies the means" to be a statement of evil, and I guess I see "I see no harm in looking at a man's accomplishments and ignoring his failures" to be uncomfortably close.

The problem I see with that attitude is that it opens up a whole lot of people (who are broadly agreed to be better off unborn) to lionization. Maybe Kennedy did help a lot of people, but maybe someone else would have done more in his position. At the moment that tested his personal beliefs, that required action rather then crafted words, he failed and someone died.

When powerful people can get away with acts that would damn the normal people, I see precious little hope that government will be about what would actually help the people.

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#136

Post by jacquesm »

unalone wrote: post #128
jacquesm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The year you were born in can not be an excuse for ignorance on any level. Yesterday it was 'the holocaust was before my time', now this. There are history books aplenty out there.

I wasn't aware, Jacques, that it was our responsibility to be aware of every tragedy and every death in the history of mankind. I could spend years studying every genocide, every cruelty, going on in the world today, all of which are worse than a single drunk driving accident. I could spend years and plummet into the darker parts of the world. I choose not to. Not knowing who Ted Kennedy is an ignorance that can sure…

Absolutely.

But if someone insists on having a strong opinion on something without studying it and then uses the 'before I was born' argument to be excused I think that's pretty weak.

The fact that a man has died is no reason to drop objectivity about that man.

There was plenty good about Ted Kennedy, there was plenty of bad stuff too. Like almost any human being alive today, I'd imagine.

Some of the stuff he did was at best misguided, at worst criminal neglect. He seemed to have been more protective of his career than of the life of a human being when it mattered most. I know politicians are 'survival masters' but that particular incident should have cost him his career and some jail time at a minimum.

What kind of an example does that set for 'lesser' mortals ?

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#137

Post by gaius »

encoderer wrote: post #100
idlewords wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Civil Rights act and Voting Rights act aren't something you can credit Kennedy with - he was a junior senator. That leaves four pieces of major legislation (or six, if we throw in a couple of increases in minimum wage) in a fifty year career. This seems out of proportion to the hagiography; I would be curious to know how we would be covering this story if his name weren't Kennedy.

But the Civil Rights act took every vote, even if he didn't personally craft the bill. He was a vote for the bill, and more, he was a vote for cloture. And that's no small thing.. At that time, cloture hadn't been achieved in 40 years. And even more, it very nearly killed him. The plane crash on the way out of DC after staying late to vote on the bill left him in a hospital bed for months.

So he knew the plane would crash and stayed and voted anyway?

Or are the two entirely unrelated?

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#138

Post by biohacker42 »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #86
stevoski wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right on. Those of us outside the states just don't care that one of your politicians died - unless he was a competent computer expert. I come here for "Hacker News", not political death notices. Shall I post here when a long-serving New Zealand politician dies?

As an Australian, I care. The influence of America on the rest of the world, particularly insignificant antipodean islands like yours and mine, is massive and the death of Democratic Senator #60 (I'm counting the two independents where they caucus) has potentially large consequences for the power struggle in Washington. That's it's Teddy Kennedy, long-time driver of Health Care reform at a time when that's either the…

The US Electoral College? Possibly the greatest social hack of the 18th Century.

Are you kidding?

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#139

Post by cwan »

larryfreeman wrote: post #10

He did the seeming impossible: he lived up to the reputation of his brothers as their equal. An amazing senator. A very great loss.

An alternative viewpoint from Reason - Ted Kennedy and the Death (Hopefully) of an Era: The controversial senator belonged to a different age, one ill-suited to today's increasingly decentralized world (http://www.reason.com/news/show/135658.html)

Excerpt: "The legislation for which he will be remembered is precisely the sort of top-down, centralized legislation that needs to be jettisoned in the 21st century. [...] Bigger was better, and government at every level but especially at the highest level, had to lead the way. In an increasingly flat, dispersed, networked world in which power, information, knowledge, purchasing power, and more was rapidly decentralizing, Kennedy was all for sitting at the top of a pyramid and directing activity."

Re: Ted Kennedy has died

#140

Post by dangrover »

edw519 wrote: post #104
dangrover wrote: post #35

I was in Mass General Hospital about a year ago on the exact day that Kennedy was. Strangely enough, I found out I had brain cancer too that night. Luckily, mine was not as serious as his. I feel fortunate.

Get well, Dan.

Oh, no, I'm perfectly fine now. I found out a month after they did the craniotomy that it wasn't a big deal.
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