Not since Senator Ted Kennedy went on prime time television in a neck brace to spin the reasons for the Chappaquiddick accident have I felt so manipulated by a politician as I did by Hillary Clinton in her testimony before the House Benghazi Committee. As it turns out these two incidents have more in common than one might think. If you remember, Kennedy had a great problem with the facts. He protested that he thought he was driving to the Chappaquiddick Ferry that night, which anyone who is familiar with the area knows is in the opposite direction from the Dyke Bridge and over a paved road rather than the bumpy dirt road which led to the beach, his intended destination with Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy said he was “confused.”

Likewise, Secretary Clinton in her testimony played loose with the facts by simply never responding to them, claiming “confusing” and “conflicting” information surrounding the events. But then why did the administration immediately concoct a wild story about the Benghazi incident being a response to a video, when they knew right away it was an Al Qaeda terrorist attack and said so out loud and in e-mails and phone calls at the time? Why in the days after did Mrs. Clinton tell grieving relatives of the fallen that the attack was in response to a video when she has been documented as knowing otherwise? The most logical explanation was that the video story was used to protect the president, in the heat of the 2012 re-election campaign, from any evidence that might contradict the “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive” mantra. The administration, including Mrs. Clinton, was not at the mercy of “confusing” and “confllicting” information as she testified. This was a deliberate cover-up, all the more embarrassing because it was a political smoke screen employed at the expense of the dead and their relatives. These are the facts and they are disqualifying for Mrs. Clinton. She fears this and is therefore refusing to discuss them.

But what about the media? Stepping back, there are ancillary forces that allow such people as the Clintons and the Kennedys to escape accountability, despite Mrs. Clinton’s meaningless favorite phrase of “taking personal responsibility.” The Clinton’s and Kennedy’s are among America’s royalty, firmly entrenched in Democrat politics and in much of the public mind. Both families have suffered difficulties and painful losses. In the case of the Kennedys, the tragic deaths of four of Joseph and Rose’s children, two of whom were assassinated. Mrs Clinton had to suffer the public humiliation of her husband’s philandering in the confines of the Oval office and then experienced the tantalizing pain of being edged out by the first black President of the United States. In the case of both Senator Kennedy and Mrs. Clinton, there was and is a sense of entitlement, some of it due to “American royalty” but much of it due to victimhood, the great weapon of liberalism. “I suffer. You owe.” Denying “the first woman president” her destiny is simply too dangerous for any member of the media to be blamed for upending her quest. There will be no Woodward and Bernstein here, because Clinton is a Democrat no one wants to trash the narrative of breaking the highest of all glass ceilings.

After Chappaquiddick, Senator Kennedy came close to winning the Democrat presidential nomination in 1980. But for a late start, he might have won it, despite his own heavy drinking amd womanizing. And Hillary Clinton? It seems most of the media, as they did in the case of Barack Obama’s 2008 candidacy and beyond, are turning away from any unbiased coverge which would hold her accountable. Why? Because the facts don’t seem to matter any more. It is all about “optics” and “narrative” and her “performance.” And so the media will continue to tell the story of “the smartest woman in America.”  They will also turn their backs on those who have been permanently wounded by lies and deceit.

Jay Haug is a freelance writer who lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. You may contact him at cjcwguy@gmail.com