Second Acts and Redemption

Who decides who deserves a second act?

I am fairly new to American history. Since Ted Kennedy’s death, I have learned a lot more of what he did (or didn’t do) in the accident he caused in Chappaquiddick which directly led to the loss of a life. In a confession video (See AGI’s post for it) he says he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of the accident. That is enough for me to know what he did. Many are glossing over the crime and some even saying everyone makes mistakes. But if a John Doe had made the same mistake as Teddy, he would be rotting in jail for sometime at least with a manslaughter conviction. Instead this reckless human being from a wealthy family got a second act for his “youthful indiscretion.”

Who deserves a second act?

It is one thing to find a nameless blogger at Huffington Post writing that the loss of Mary Jo in the grand scheme of things was worth it because it made a better man of Teddy. But it is entirely another to find a noted author, Joyce Carol Oates writing this in her article in the Guardian, Kennedy’s redemption from the depths :

‘There are no second acts in American lives’– this dour pronouncement of F Scott Fitzgerald has been many times refuted, and at no time more appropriately than in reference to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, whose death was announced yesterday. Indeed, it might be argued that Senator Kennedy’s career as one of the most influential of 20th-century Democratic politicians, an iconic figure as powerful, and as morally enigmatic, as President Bill Clinton, whom in many ways Kennedy resembled, was a consequence of his notorious behaviour at Chappaquiddick bridge in July 1969.

Yet, ironically, following this nadir in his life/ career, Ted Kennedy seemed to have genuinely refashioned himself as a serious, idealistic, tirelessly energetic liberal Democrat in the mold of 1960s/1970s American liberalism, arguably the greatest Democratic senator of the 20th century. His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only “second acts” in American lives, but that the Renaissance concept of the “fortunate fall” may be relevant here: one “falls” as Adam and Eve “fell”; one sins and repents and is forgiven, provided that one remakes one’s life.

[snip]
At Chappaquiddick, having been drinking and partying with young women aides of his brother Robert Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, at this time a married man and a father, slipped away with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped in his car after he took a wrong turn off the Chappaquiddick bridge, lost control of his car which was submerged in just eight feet of water.

Kennedy chose to flee the scene , leaving the young woman to die an agonising death not of drowning but of suffocation over a period of hours. Incredibly, it was 10 hours before Kennedy reported the accident, by which time he’d consulted a family lawyer. The senator’s explanation for this unconscionable, despicable, unmanly and inexplicable behaviour was never convincing: he claimed that he’d struck his head and was “confused” and “exhausted” from diving and trying to rescue the young woman and had gone home to bed.

[snip]
If Kennedy had summoned aid, he would very likely have given police officers self-incriminating evidence, which might have involved charges of vehicular manslaughter or homicide. The local prosecutor was not nearly so outraged by Kennedy’s behaviour as other prosecutors might have been: the charges were “failing to report an accident” and “leaving the scene of an accident.” The punishment: two months’ probation.

Oates says enough incriminating things in this piece but yet, lets Teddy off the hook. She even makes the classic analogy to the famous characters from the ‘Great Gatsby’ (something I was going to do when I started thinking about writing a post on this topic). But what I find most objectionable in what she says is this awful, awful line:

Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?

Ah, the disposable life of a young woman as a sacrificial lamb for the greater good! Notice, however there was no promise of the greater good yet when the actual incident happened. There in lies the contradiction of everyone making excuses for Teddy.

What perplexes me the most is that nobody can answer why Teddy deserved a second act. They are now rationalizing that he was a great senator who did great things, so he redeemed himself. But we didn’t know that he would in 1969, did we? What made him special then? His wealth, his family, his connections?

We either follow the rule of law, or we don’t. If we have one standard for the Teddys in this world, let us apply the same standard to all criminals, and see how many of them redeem themselves. Let us give them 40+ years before we judge them too. See how ridiculous that sounds?

Ms. Oates, life is not a fiction even as you write this:

One is led to think of Tom and Daisy Buchanan of Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby, rich individuals accustomed to behaving carelessly and allowing others to clean up after them. It is often in instances of the “fortunate fall”, think of Joseph Conrad’s anti-hero/hero Lord Jim as a classic literary analogy, that innocent individuals figure almost as ritual sacrifices is another aspect of the phenomenon.

There is no “fortunate fall” for the rest of us and we are not Tom or Daisy Buchanan, either. Stop romanticizing a criminal act.

There is no redemption here, only a wealthy man who got away.