This film shows just how much you can get away with if you have the right connections. If your name is Kennedy or Bush, you are plugged into the elite. There are always people around to clean up your mess. In Ted Kennedy's case, he had Ted Sorenson and Robert McNamara in his corner doing damage control.Ted Kennedy should have been arrested and charged with manslaughter. His privilege as a rich white man ensured that he never got a whiff of jail cell.
shareWhy bring race into this? He was a white man in a country that in 1969 was 87.7% white. His wealth and privilege as a Kennedy had much more to do with it. Had a black politician in, say, Nigeria, or a Japanese politician in Japan, or an Indian politician in India done exactly the same thing, I'd expect an entirely similar result.
I agree that he should have been charged, but even in the most egalitarian societies that have ever existed, there are still wealthy and powerful people, and they use their wealth and power to escape justice that would fall on less privileged people. The US is no exception, I'm sad to say. Given human nature, I'm doubtful we'll ever construct a society where this is not the case.
We can keep striving for a better society without opting for total revolutionary change. Money, fame , race and power should not be the avenue for some to escape the consequences of their misdeeds. Mary Jo Kopechne's family should have sued Ted Kennedy. Lucky for him, he had the Catholic Church on his side to work them over. Not only did he escape from an accident, he escaped justice.
shareWe can keep striving for a better society. And we can achieve a better society. I just don't think we can achieve a truly equitable society. There are always going to be haves and have nots. Some people are going to acquire power over others and use that to make themselves rich. Other people are going to acquire riches and use that wealth to attain power. These people will always display the human tendency to want to protect themselves from harm, even when that harm takes the form of richly deserved justice for their misdeeds.
We are imperfect beings in an imperfect world, limited in wisdom, capability, foresight, even empathy. If all this sounds doomful... Well, look around you and I submit to you that our society, as horrifically flawed as it is would be the envy of 99.999% of people who have ever lived throughout history. Even the poorest people today enjoy comforts unavailable to Roman emperors, and live longer, healthier lives than most people did historically. I think the best we are going to be able to do is make incremental improvements to the society we have. Radical attempts to achieve utopia don't have a good track record of success. That means, even in the best scenario, we'll always have people like the Kennedys. Every generation, people will have to try to hold people like them accountable. Sometimes that will succeed, sometimes it won't.