The Ted Kennedy moral whitewash peaks today

By Thomas Lifson

Today marks the high point of Ted Kennedy's memory. The media's lavish coverage of his funeral and burial day will be full of praise for the departed. But underneath the thin coating of whitewash lie some ugly incontrovertible facts which will not go away.

Mark Steyn has penned an unblinking yet witty look at the facts surrounding Chappaquiddick and the media, mocking Kennedy's media enablers and the man they helped. The distinct contrast between the line being fed by the media since Kennedy died and the widely known reality of the man has aggravated me, and I suspect millions of others who resent honoring a man of this moral character. There is an appetite building for the other side of the story, since the one we are getting is so obviously phony to at least half the populace.

Once Kennedy is buried, we will see another battle between the mainstream media and the conservative alternative media over his memory. The story of Kennedy's offer to the KGB to work against President Reagan, 26 years ago, is only now capturing the public's attention. AT contributor Paul Kengor uncovered the KGB documents and published them in his book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. Monday in AT, he will present those documents online and write about the media blackout on his findings first published three and half years ago.

The sugarcoating of Kennedy has started to make a lot of conservatives' teeth ache. The MSM left is going to demonize anyone remembering the dark side, but I doubt they will be able to quell the public interest in this new story. Kennedy is about to be laid to rest on scared ground, in Arlington Memorial Cemetery. As Rick Moran points out today in AT, a single source document is not dispositive. But it is real, and it is suggestive of the dark side of Kennedy. There may well be further informnation coming to light on his past.

Conservatives should prepare themselves to be called monstrous, unfeeling, angry, unseemly, and worse, simply because we refuse to buy into the media manufacturing of a false image for this man. The question of whether or not he conspired with our enemies against the President of the United States is a major issue, and Professor Kengor has presented his impressive documentation, some of which you will see here tomorrow.

The MSM has lost its ability to quarantine a story. They tried to sell the Democrats' line that town hall attendees were Nazis, and only damaged themselves and the Democrats in the process. If the media wishes to demionize those who want to know the truth about the deeply flawed man they are all but canonizing today, I suspect it will not work much better. Face it: wagering your dimisnished reputation on Teddy's virtue is a loser's bet.