_{Regard for Ted Kennedy in death.}

I'm sorry, I didn't know you cared.

I thought you thought Edward Kennedy was a punchline, a joke, a bad example, someone to be afraid to be associated with. I didn't realize you thought of him as "one of the greatest legislators of our time."

All I  seem to remember are endless booze jokes, petty marginalizing talk  and a fixation on his intractable liberalism as though it were a toxic character trait. Did I miss something? Was all this acknowledgement of his effectiveness, compassion and consensus-building airing on another channel, spoken by another politician or brought up by a different late night talk show host than what I saw growing up over the past 30 years?

 I see Democratic and Republican senators at the memorial service for him including Max Baucus, from my own home state, the anti-Kennedy, the shadow, the spineless spindly compromiser to birthers and death panel advocates. I can only imagine what Ted thought about Baucus' handling of the  healthcare bill in the Senate Finance Committee.

There's Bill Clinton, the man who pompously and cynically bragged to Congress that "the era of big goverment is over" - an all-too-clear signal that the Democratic Party had appropriated the talking points of the very things Kennedy fought against. A thumb in the nose to those whom Ted Kennedy worked to give dignity to.

And just look at the somber and respectful tone of the media as they adorn their screens and newspapers with pretty, meaningful graphics filled with both gravitas and enduring respect, as if they had always loved Ted Kennedy. As if they never repeatedly marginalized, condescended and kicked the caricature of him they created over and over again. 

Republicans are even eulogizing him, talking in grandiose terms of all the wonderful qualities he exhibited in his time in the senate. Weren't they the ones who most often used Kennedy as a symbol for what all politicians should avoid? With  teeth bared, didn't they mockingly refer to John Kerry, during his 2004 presidential run, as "Ted Kennedy on a South Beach diet"? Now they're willing to extoll his bipartisanship, his ability to find common ground with others? Now he's not the electoral boogeyman that they hung over all their Democratic rivals' heads to make them prove how much they were NOT like Ted Kennedy?

What is going on here?

I think I know. Congress is in a new era, Kennedy's success can be lionized because he is now so quaint, so non-threatening. There are no forces of principled Democratic leadership anymore. You can gracefully eulogize the dead of your enemy when you are the one who came out on top. You can praise the attributes of your foe after you have claimed victory. Look at the Democratic Party now - rich in numbers, rich in money, but so weak and poor on leadership, ideas, conviction and determination. The system has no larger-than-life enemies anymore.

Bloggers, the occasional principled senator or representative, the journalist with integrity, are all blown across the fractured media and political landscape now and there is no defining core anymore because money has taken its place. We know what the death of Ted Kennedy means. It means there is no longer any example for the Democratic Party to follow. We know that healthcare reform...REAL healthcare reform is  far less achievable because the bloviators and compromisers have taken over the core of ideas and their pockets are lined with healthcare industry and Wall Street dollars. There is no Democratic majority, not in the way you used to think of when Ted Kennedy was still in the senate. Now there is the Establishment Party and the Religious Party. And the common ground they can find will bless the connected and reverant, not the poor, the working class, the discriminated or the vulnerable.

This newfound love of Ted Kennedy is revealing in its exhuberance - the transperancy of the hertofore unexpressed respectful mythologizing is telling us something. There was a reason he was so hated when he was alive and there is a reason he is now so revered in death.

_{Regard for Ted Kennedy in life.}