Robert Bork has died.

He was 85.

From the above-linked NYT obituary:

Judge Bork, a bear of a man with a scraggly red beard and untamed frizz on a balding pate who liked to eat, drink and smoke for much of his adult life, handled himself poorly in front of the [Senate Judiciary] committee and failed to give doubters confidence. As Tom Shales, the television critic for The Washington Post, wrote of his testimony: “He looked, and talked, like a man who would throw the book at you — maybe like a man who would throw the book at the whole country.”

See that's what I was just talking about: Liberals used to express abhorrence of law-and-order types.

The NYT obit refers to "the notion that the nominee was somehow unfeeling as a judge." Somehow... a notion... Where, oh, where could it come from?!

This [notion] was amplified when, asked by a sympathetic senator, Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, why he wanted to serve on the Supreme Court, Judge Bork replied that it would be “an intellectual feast.”

And that was it, the worst answer ever given to any question in the history of the United States. Intellectual feast! The feast turned out to be a feeding frenzy for the liberal media. Why, they're still picking kinky reddish beard hairs out of their back molars! Burrrrp! Tasty! What a time! And no Supreme Court nominee has said one interesting thing since. Every single one has promised to be a good little judge who would never ever do anything but serve humbly and modestly deciding the cases according to the law.

You think it was interesting that John Roberts said he saw himself as an umpire, calling balls and strikes? That proves my point! I know, Clarence Thomas, "high-tech lynching," but that wasn't about doing the judicial work, so I'm excluding that from the point, which is that they all learned what not to do from Bork. Presidents learned to avoid even picking someone Borkish, so no one was allowed to look weird, speak quirkly, seem like an intellectual with ideas of his own, it would just be bland blandness served atop a steaming pile of blandness. That is: Not tasty! As a live-blogger of nomination hearings, I want to know: Where's my intellectual feast?

ADDED: When C-SPAN put its entire archive up on-line, the first thing I looked up to relive was the Bork hearings:

Live-blogging Day 1 of the Democratic Convention.

4:58 CT: Just setting up a post, to be added to over the course of the evening. Please join the conversation.

6:53 (I'm beginning with recorded material from about 2 hours ago. I'll be catching up.): "Being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare. It's patriotism," says Newark Mayer Cory Booker. He gets a huge ovation that turns into a "U.S.A." chant. They're "U.S.A."ing at the idea of patriotism, presumably. Not taxes. Oh, but paying taxes = patriotism. Or, specifically, being asked to pay is patriotism. Who is the patriot in that grammatical construction? I think it's the folks who are asking other people to pay.

7:11 (Still catching up.): Gov. Bev Perdue sounded hoarse and a bit sick as she vowed to deliver North Carolina to the Democrats. A film about health care. A young man whose parents died in a way that supposedly might have been avoided if we'd had Obamacare. They were both scientists, he says, so I'm not clear why they did not have health insurance.

7:19: The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Congress, Charles Gonzales, uses the motto "e pluribus unum" — out of many, one — to mean that all the people become one, instead of the idea that the states were brought together into one nation. The idea that the people merged into a single entity — that sounds like fascism to me. Oddly, as it repurposes the old motto, it expresses the old fashioned idea of the melting pot.

7:30: White males of the gubernatorial kind — Quinn & Kaine.

7:32: A black speaker wedged in — the mayor of Charlotte — before the next pale male. But it's a big one, so I'll go light on the fast-forwarding I'm using to try to catch up to live. It's Harry Reid.

7:36: Reid wants us to fear the Tea Party. They are "extremists and ideologues who leave no room for reason," and they're taking over the Republican Party.

7:42: Nancy Pelosi is introduced along with all the Democratic women of the House. There's disco music playing. The hell? Then I detect that it's "I'm Every Woman." Again with this creepy merging of individuals into the whole.

I'm every woman, it's all in me
Anything you want done, baby
I'll do it naturally
I'm every woman, it's all in me
I can read your thoughts right now
Every one from A to Z

See what I mean? That's creepy when it's the government. When it's some lady you're having sex with, I guess it's sexy.

I can cast a spell
With secrets you can't tell
Mix a special brew
Put fire inside of you
But anytime you feel
Danger or fear
Instantly I will appear, 'cause
I'm every woman

Now, that's just scary when it's a whole horde of government women coming at you. What is this "special brew"? Soma? But anytime you feel/Danger or fear/Instantly I will appear... Nancy Pelosi will appear?! I can sense your needs/Like rain on to the seeds/I can make a rhyme/Of confusion in your mind... no, no, no, no that's not what I want to hear from the government!

8:03: Speaking of scary... it's Jimmy Carter (on film). He's well made-up, well preserved, and well modulated. But he seems like a nice man, there, doesn't he? And he tells us Barack Obama and Joe Biden will lead us to a better future.

8:18: Huge storm here! We just lost power for a few minutes. I lost a whole paragraph of snark about Teddy Kennedy. A young Kennedy — Joseph P. Kennedy III, running for Congress — said the spirit of Teddy was with us here today. I had some prime snark! Did Teddy bring this terrible storm that drowned all my Mary Jo Kopechne material?

8:25: NARAL! It's Nancy Keenan, for "safe, legal" abortions, with "dignity and privacy." A woman should not be forced to have an ultrasound "against her will." And "rape is rape." President Obama had "the courage to stand with Sandra Flook" (is that how we're pronouncing it now?). "Women in America cannot trust Mitt Romney."

8:33: I've caught up to Rahm Emanuel. "The American auto industry is not just surviving..." Hmm. He professes to know with "absolute certainty" that something will happen in the future and "land with a thud on the Oval Office desk." Who do you want there? He's saying that like it's obvious.

8:38: It's Obama's little sister Maya and Michelle's older brother Michael. Nice. Lovely. But let's skip the details.

8:45: I'm finally completely caught up. Lily Ledbetter is speaking. This is the question of "equal pay for equal work," but the Supreme Court case she lost was a matter of interpreting statutory language about how soon you need to bring a lawsuit. I feel sorry for her, but I'm also uneasy about her as an icon representing things that are not what the court case was about.

8:48: Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, is able to compare himself to Romney, who was, a while back, the governor of Massachusetts. He's yelling and screaming about the economy. Obama has been wonderful!!!

8:53: "I will not stand by and let him be bullied out of office!" Patrick propaganda.

8:55: Wow, everyone looks really sweaty. Did the AC break down?

9:03: Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley. I have no idea why this man has been given this prominence. Here's his question for Republicans: "How much less do you really think would be good for this country?"

9:07: Time for the keynote address at last. It's Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio.

9:17: Castro seems like he could have been a speaker at last week's GOP convention. He keeps talking about "hard work" and even "rugged individualism." But then he says "Like many of you, I watched last week's Republican convention, and they told a few stories of individual success. We all celebrate individual success, but the question is: How do we multiply that success? The answer is President Barack Obama."

9:22: Castro gets a refrain going: "Mitt Romney says no."

10:00: Michelle Obama is wearing an orange dress that in the close-up looks like a bathing suit. Lots of shoulder and arm display. Her speech goes on and on, filled with stuff that has no relationship to the question of whether Barack Obama should be reelected. He thinks his little girls are important and he's proud of them and eats dinner with them and counsels them about their middle-school friendships. Okay. I phase out. What's the point of all this? Then — this seems near the end — she starts doing this fake stuttering (as if she's talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-g-generation): "A-a-and he reminds me, he reminds me that we are playing a long game here..." (Meade says: "Not 9 holes, it's 18 holes.") "A-a-a-and that change is hard. A-a-a-and change is slow and it never happens all at once but that eventually we get there. We always do. W-w-w-w-we get there, because of folks like my dad." (Earlier in the speech she described her father.) "Folks like Barack's grandmother. Men and women who-who said to themselves, I-I may not have a chance to fulfill my dreams, but maybe my children will, maybe my grandchildren will. See-see-see, so many of us stand here tonight because of their sacrifice...." Arghhhh! This is the same thing we heard last week. It's so earnest. Stage-y earnest. But what does it say? Who should be President?!

10:16: Michelle's speech goes on a long time. I don't really see the point of it. There's a theme of waiting patiently with the expectation that our children or their children will have a better life, but what does that mean for the election? It seems to say that we should reelect Obama despite the lack of economic progress. She speaks of "unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle." Now there's this choked-up quality in her voice as she says she's "Mom-in-Chief," doing what's "best for our girls." It's getting very hammy. Vote for my husband. That's the end. And then the music comes up: "Move your body... move your little hips...." What?!

10:26: An unusually young woman comes out to do the closing prayer, and it goes on for almost 4 minutes. "As a young woman of faith and a leader...." Who is she? The executive director of Blood: Water Mission. I don't really understand what that is — and I did Google it — so I'm left assuming that the Democrats are simply hot to reach out to young women. 

Did you hear about President JFK and the 19-year-old? They took lots of baths where they played with rubber duckies.

Mimi Alford tells her tale, and she didn't call it rape, even though some of her friends prompted her with that word. She says that even at the point when the President overwhelmed her and took her virginity on Jackie's bed, she felt "the thrill of being desired." After that first encounter he was "attentive.. gentlemanly ... [and sometimes] seductive." Their "sexual relationship was varied and fun, and we spent an inordinate amount of time taking baths together, turning his elegant bathroom into our own mini-spa."

The only discordant note was the yellow rubber ducks, which a friend had sent him. Every time the President saw those ducks, he’d become irresistibly playful.

We named them after his family members, made up stories about them, and often set them racing from one end of the tub to other. It was part of his charm that he was a serious, sophisticated man with extraordinary responsibilities, yet willing to be completely silly.

Sounds like they had a fine time together. She was sleeping over all night when Jackie was out of town:

I was so pleased with myself at being chosen by the President that I didn’t feel self-conscious at all about wearing the same clothes at work two days in a row.

If my office mates noticed, I didn’t care. I felt invulnerable, as if I were cloaked with the President’s power.

What a trip. A power trip. Too bad for those other women (and men) who were not chosen. Did Alford wait until these inconvenient women passed away to preen about her powerful chosen-one status?

It shames me to admit that I don’t recall feeling any guilt. In my 19-year-old mind, I wasn’t invading the Kennedys’ marriage; I was merely occupying the President’s time when his wife was away. If he wasn’t troubled, why should I be? It was hardly by chance that in the 18 months I knew him, I never once met his wife.

Isn't it funny that the "19-year-old mind" came up with exactly the same set of trite justifications that almost every lover of a married man/woman comes up with if they don't want to admit they know it's wrong?

As the summer wore on, I was pulled deeper into his personal orbit. But despite the increasing level of familiarity between us, I never rose above being the obedient partner in our relationship.

Even in our most intimate moments, I called him Mr President. To do otherwise would have seemed inappropriate.

Inappropriate... and way less sexy. And speaking of obedience, there's the dirtiest story, the one where she gives a blow job to Dave Powers, the President’s special assistant after JFK whispers to her "Mr Powers looks a little tense — would you take care of it?"

I don’t think the President thought I’d do it, but I’m ashamed to say that I did.... Perhaps I was carried away by a spirit of playfulness.

Later, she realized it was sordid, and JFK apologized, but nevertheless tried it again, asking her to "take care of my baby brother" — that is, Teddy.

Over at The New Republic, Timothy Noah, absorbing the blow-job incident, calls JFK a "monster."

What do you think?
	Noah's right, he was a monster to do those things.
	It's complex, and JFK isn't around to tell us what domination and submission games they played.
	She was an adult, she consented, and she was callous toward Jackie (and her coworkers).
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: "The rubber swan is mine" is a punchline from Vaughn Meader's "The First Family" album — a big hit comedy record at the time — in a segment in which Meader as JFK explains whose bath toys are whose. (Thanks to Hagar in the comments for the tip.) (I note that "schwanz" is slang for penis, so I wonder if Meader was in on the joke of JFK with his toys in the bath.)

Senator Kirk.

Replacing Senator Kennedy.

... Mr. Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, and his sons, Edward M. Kennedy Jr. and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, had urged Mr. Patrick to appoint Mr. Kirk, who worked for Senator Kennedy in the 1970s, and later served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee....

Mr. Kirk, 71, is chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston. Several friends and associates described him as low-key and laconic, a shrewd political strategist who could have run for office himself but decided he preferred a behind-the-scenes role.

Film critic writes a book about snark — called (duh!) "Snark" — and there's nothing to do about it, except...

... snark.

First [David Denby] references one of [Wonkette's] male associate editor’s posts about Chelsea Clinton and suggests that the “young women” who wrote it must have some catty jealousy issues, with their vaginas. Then he writes that we made fun of Ted Kennedy on the day of his brain tumor surgery, citing a post about something else entirely that was written seven months before Kennedy even got cancer. Damn those bloggers, always trying to ruin other peoples’ reputations with false information!

Snort.

"Why Women Continued to Support Ted Kennedy."

By Eleanor Clift.

Organized women's groups overlooked a lot to stand by the senator from Massachusetts. Feminists who proclaimed "The personal is the political" made an exception for Kennedy.

And for Clinton. Face it. Liberal politics always came first for the so-called women's groups, which is why they are not really women's groups at all.

Did you watch the Teddy Kennedy funeral?

I happened to catch a few minutes of raw feed on C-SPAN showing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver standing around in one of the lulls. But I find it hard to imagine many people watching this long, drawn-out event and think it was pretty weird that there was so much TV coverage. I'll stick to the written word.

Here's the AP:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was laid to rest alongside slain brothers John and Robert on hallowed ground at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday evening, celebrated for "the dream he kept alive" across the decades since their deaths.

Did they fact check that the ground is holy? At least they put "the dream he kept alive" in quotes and don't assert that he kept a dream alive, whatever that means. (Cue the comments about how he didn't keep Mary Jo Kopechne alive.)

In life, the senator had visited the burial ground often to mourn his brothers, John and Robert, killed in their 40s, more than a generation ago, by assassins' bullets.

"He was given a gift of time that his brothers were not. And he used that time to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow," Obama said in a eulogy that also gently made mention of Kennedy's "personal failings and setbacks."

As a member of the Senate, Kennedy was a "veritable force of nature," the president said. But more than that, the "baby of the family who became its patriarch, the restless dreamer who became its rock."

Those left behind to mourn "grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good he did, the dream he kept alive" Obama said inside the packed church.

It sounds like Obama gave a good speech. Must I read the whole text? I'm not going to watch the video. As I've said, I'm sticking to the written word on this one. The only thing that makes sense of all this attention to the old man's death is that it takes us back to the 2 assassinations, long ago, events that commanded long, drawn-out attention.

Today, Google redoes its logo to celebrate...

... no, not Teddy Kennedy — how would you do that? — Michael Jackson!



It's his birthday, you know.

He was murdered.

Teddy wasn't murdered. Teddy Kennedy died of cancer at the age of 77.

It's absurd to use Teddy Kennedy's death to push the health care bill.

First, a collection of clips:

Speaking of naming the bill under Ted Kennedy, we have a State-Run Media montage here, day two: pushing health care for Kennedy. Here we have John King of CNN, Jessica Yellin of CNN, Roger Simon of Politico, David Gregory at NBC, David "Rodham" Gergen at CNN, Brian Williams of NBC, Kelly O'Donnell at NBC, and Kiran Chetry at CNN all talking about the passing of Senator Kennedy and health care reform.

KING: There was a change in the political dynamic after President Kennedy's assassination. Will there be a change in the health care dynamic after his passing?

YELLIN: Senator Kennedy's death will inspire his colleagues in Congress to find a way to pass health care reform.

SIMON: If President Obama wants to carry the torch that the Kennedys had passed to him, President Obama's going to have to pass health care.

GREGORY: ...as the result of the Senator's death, because he was such a champion for health care.

GERGEN: This may open a new window for Barack Obama to bring Democrats and Republicans back to the table in Teddy Kennedy's memory.

O'DONNELL: Democrats are saying respect for Kennedy could change minds now. National sorrow has created political momentum before.

WILLIAMS: I received an e-mail today that said, "In lieu of flowers, let's pass health care reform."

CHETRY: To honor his memory, could lawmakers find the inspiration to reach across the aisle and get health care reform passed?

It's absurd to expect the death of a 77-year-old political figure, who was known to suffer from a fatal cancer, to be anything like the response to the sudden, violent death of a 46-year-old President. Even assuming both men were equally beloved and even if the older man had also been President, the emotion cannot be anywhere near the same.

The murder of John Kennedy was a profound shock that had the power to reconfigure our minds. It made us want to find something positive to do in response. The death of a sick old man, who had had more than the usual allotment of years, is sad for those close to him, but otherwise is an utterly normal event, sad only in the way that it is sad that we are all mortal.

There is nothing to be done about it. It is absurd to use that phenomenally mundane event to push and prod us to take political action.

"I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself."

"And he would ask people, 'have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?' That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too."

That is a quote, not from one of Teddy Kennedy's enemies, but from Ed Klein, who was a close friend.

Listen to the audio:



It's apparent that Klein imagines that joking about Chappaquiddick was an endearing trait.

(Thanks to Fred4Pres for the tip.)

ADDED: All the funniest comedians wear a neck brace.

AND: If Teddy always "saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things," then that's an open invitation. Despite his death, we can make all the Teddy Kennedy jokes we want. If anyone should see fit to criticize us, they need to know: Teddy wouldn't have wanted it that way. Don't defile the memory of the man by drawing the line on humor.

"I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill, with..."

I'm listening to the old Dion song this morning:



No, it's not because I'm trying to come up with a verse about Teddy Kennedy... or that I picture him — accompanied by angel-harp music — walking into Heaven with various beloved dead political heroes. (Get a grip, people, Teddy lived to a ripe old age and died in the normal course of things, which is the best any of us can hope for. He was not cut down in his prime like Abraham, Martin, John, and Bobby.)

It's because I need to pull this comment just buried under the "Third Man" post and elevate it to the heaven of today's front page. It's a comment about lost commenters — a song parody. And please, write new verses for that song. The collection of beloved old commenters who have wandered off is longer than Trooper, Titus, and Palladian. And they haven't died. I'm picturing them not in Heaven, but drinking and talking late into the night in some bar over on Atlantic Avenue.

"Rightbloggers Observe Kennedy's Passing Pretty Much the Way You Would Expect."

Roy Edroso exposes those awful right bloggers — including me — for the edification of Village Voice readers.

That time Teddy Kennedy called Obama "Osama bin Laden."

What Ted Kennedy said about Robert Bork.

Teddy Kennedy's death will be used to rekindle the old argument that we need to shut up and hurry up about health care reform.

So I assume.

But now the Democrats are short a vote in the Senate, and Democratic Governor Deval Patrick can't just appoint a new Democratic Senator for Massachusetts, despite the fact that Kennedy himself, less than a month ago, urged state legislators to change the law of successsion and give Patrick the power to appoint a Senator, because back in 2004, anticipating that John Kerry would win the presidency, Kennedy was instrumental in getting state legislative change designed to wrest the power from the Massachusetts governor, when the governor was the Republican Mitt Romney.

So there are 2 questions: 1. Is the death of Teddy Kennedy a sufficiently powerful event to counter the opposition to the health care bill? and 2. Is the death of Teddy Kennedy a sufficiently powerful event to overcome the embarrassment of changing the Massachusetts law back to what it was before it was changed to thwart a Republican?

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man..."

"... who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'"

Edward M. Kennedy, Address at the Public Memorial Service for Robert F. Kennedy, June 8, 1968.

Teddy Kennedy is gone.

"He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.... Born to one of the wealthiest American families, Mr. Kennedy spoke for the downtrodden in his public life while living the heedless private life of a playboy and a rake for many of his years. Dismissed early in his career as a lightweight and an unworthy successor to his revered brothers, he grew in stature over time by sheer longevity and by hewing to liberal principles while often crossing the partisan aisle to enact legislation. A man of unbridled appetites at times, he nevertheless brought a discipline to his public work that resulted in an impressive catalog of legislative achievement across a broad landscape of social policy."

Caroline's real reason.

How can royalty have such a mundane failing?

Meanwhile, Ted didn't like being portrayed as semi-dead.

Caroline Kennedy withdraws??

She could have had the job if she'd wanted it, but Teddy's health has turned her against it? That doesn't seem believable.

UPDATE: ?????

"Edward and Caroline Kennedy Share Tight Family Tie."

NYT headline. My thoughts, in order:

1. Loosen it up!



2. Today's not the best day to be throwing your weight around trying to get a governor to fill a vacant Senate seat.