Hyannis Port: The Scene
Greetings from Hyannis Port. Here's a story on the scene here. And, belatedly, as I was on vacation last week, here's my story on John Kerry in this week's dead tree edition that I think pretty well illustrates how Senator Kennedy spent much of the last year (thanks for the shout out, Joe).
While most people have been wide eyed or curious passing by the blocks of satellite trucks and cameras at the Kennedy compound, the crowds -- first for Eunice and now for Teddy -- are clearly wearing thin on a few local residents. "Goddammit, you people still here?" snarled one elderly man in a golf cart, clearly fresh from the greens. A nearby Barnstable policeman (the Hyannis police, overwhelmed, called for reinforcements) directing traffic apologized for him: "Mostly folks around here are really nice. It's like Mr. Roger's neighborhood, generally. I think a few just don't like you paparazzi." Surely, the golfer will be happy to know that most of us will leave tomorrow with the motorcade. And he may be comforted -- or saddened -- to realize that this is likely the last media mob to trouble Hyannis Port for many a-year as with Teddy goes the last of Camelot.
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1
Let me just pipe in and say "nice article" before yet another thread gets hijacked....
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1.2
Speaking of hijacking, here's a bit of tasteless late night craziness to help drive away the blue meanies...
[To the theme song from "Dusty's Trail":]
Let's follow the path of Rusty's Trail
Oh! Rusty's Trail, Rusty's Trail
Possessed with linguistic lack of rest
Led by a hulagate lost and regressedRusty's the reason for our plight
Cheering wingnuts on the right
Only the WordPress Sheriff's hand
Keeps from a-censorin' this trolling bandOh! The going gets mighty rough
But they keep at their grind
It's mass insan-i-ty, that's the state of their mindScherer and Klein are their mainstay
And they won't stop, come what may
Limbaugh and Beck inspire their tale
They know that fiction is what must prevail
On Rusty's TrailOK, off to bed now...
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1.3
F-ingFred:
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I feel honored to have a poem dedicated to my screen name! I appreciate the recognition for my hard work to dispell the far left liberal rat trash from most of the loons who post comments on this site.
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Again, fred thank you. Now you can resume F-ing yourself as well. Have a nice day!
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2
"Goddammit, you people still here?" snarled one elderly man in a golf cart, clearly fresh from the greens.
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I think him and me would get along real good.-
2.1
Cliff, last night they disagreed with me and tonight they agree with you. Accept my most heartfelt sympathies. I got the better end of the stick.
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2.2
F--k.
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2.3
Where's my goddamn rum?
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3
"I think a few just don't like you paparazzi."
JNS: WoW! You are now paparazzi!
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4
Jay Newton-Small:
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Thanks so much for the nice article. -
5
Wat are you all doing there, waiting for Zombie Teddy to eat some brains? There is no news to be found there. For once could you let these people grieve in peace?
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6
I like the Kerry article. I must have missed it when it came out.
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7
When can we expect Time magazine to mention the 25 count indictment against Jacqueline Kennedy's brother James Auchincloss for encouraging child sexual abuse by possessing, duplicating and disseminating child pornography? Answer: About as soon as Time magazine mentions that Obama still has an illegal alien aunt living illegally in my country, to wit: Never.
Had child pornographer James Auchincloss (Democrat, duuuuuuh) been the third cousin of the mechanic for the next door neighbor of the uncle of Sarah Palin's mailman, Time magazine would have had at least a dozen posts on Swampland within an hour of the 25 indictments.
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7.1
It's my country too you idiot and she's got my permission to stay in writing.
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8
One really begins to understand why Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to lead our great country to victory over nations whose misfortune was to be overtaken by rightists.
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9
Hi, first time commenter and I have some questions. Let me say first that I liked and respected Senator Kennedy, so no disrespect is intended. I was just wondering why does all political news coverage need to come to a screeching halt because someone of note died? Has the whole political world just stopped? I saw a similar thing happen with all news when Michael Jackson passed and before that with a variety of stories, like one summer there was supposedly an unusual number of shark attacks and another time a girl went missing under mysterious circumstances. Coverage of every other story seems to suffer when something like this happens. Can the media keep more than one ball in the air without dropping all of them to chase a shiny red one?
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9.1
Well said.
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9.2
Call it "Short Attention Span Theater". We can spend a lot of effort bemoaning the problem and aspiring to do better but the relentless pursuit of shiny objects remains a nearly Universal human frailty. The news folks are simply following the money.
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9.3
d.b. cooper,
I think that in this case it's a combination of editors' horde mentality of 'Huge breaking news! Must throw all available bodies into the the breach!' and the fact that it's August and there's literally nothing else going on.
JNS -
9.4
JNS and Agent Cooper:
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While the vigil at Hyannis Port is typical August doldrums pack reportage (no offense, JNS), the analysis of Kennedy's legacy and the effect of his loss on the debates going on in the Senate right now make this a little more important than, say, helicopter shots of the hearse taking Jackson's body to the autopsy.
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Still, the better articles are those like the Kerry profile that explore Kennedy's legacy and effect on his collegues, and how that may play out in the future (did that make up for the "pack reportage" crack, JNS?).
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10
Thank God Teddy helped keep that crackpot Robert Bork off the Supreme Court!
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10.1
Seconded.
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11
Hyannisport is one word. It was wrong when Drudge spelled it "Hyannis Port" and it's wrong here too.
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11.1
What a coincidence!
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11.2
lowellfield,
Sitting in the town, I can assure you it's two words. Everywhere here it's two words. JNS -
11.3
Jay Newton-Small:
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Thank you very much for responding to commentary; it is always greatly appreciated.
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12
[...] story at http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/08/26/hyannis-port-the-scene/ « karen cunagin sypher [...]
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13
OT, but when is Joe Klein going to post some more useless speculation about Afghanistan?
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Can he tell us who Kharzai's barber is going to be?
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Perhaps a description of Holbrooke's workout regimen?-
13.1
The psychic in me says today. Pay no attention to the timeline.
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14
About those crowds staying away: Apparently Ted determined that the Kennedy Compound would become a museum. Can't wait to go, myself.
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14.1
Please say "hi" to all of my tax dollars which were confiscated over a 47 year career of major pork barrel projects that Kennedy and Kerry weaseled out of Washington.
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http://hubpolitics.com/2009/03/13/the-kennedy-pork/
"More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/07/09/in_health_bill_billions_for_parks_paths/
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And not to be out done;
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"Critics argue the provision is a thinly disguised effort to insert pork-barrel spending into a bill that has been widely portrayed to the public as dealing with expanding health coverage and cutting medical costs. A leading critic, Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, ridicules the local projects, asking: “How can Democrats justify the wasteful spending in this bill?''
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Yes ladies and gentlemen, PORK is abundant even in the so-called Healthcare REFORM bill, oh I'm sorry the Health INSURANCE REFORM bill as we are now spinning it from Washington.
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"But advocates, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, defend the proposed spending as a necessary way to promote healthier lives and, in the long run, cut medical costs. “These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,'' said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose healthcare bill includes the projects." -
14.2
Rusty sorry to break this to you but 80% of your tax dollars were used to pay for that huge tax cut for the rich and the rest went to pay for those no bid contracts to Halliburton, KBR and Xe, you know that zealot anti-muslim, pseudo-Christian outfit formerly known as Blackwater. As far as any tax dollars used to for health care, those would be mine.
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14.3
Rusty has a point. In a just system, Park trails and such would come out of State taxes. Politics being what it is though, everyone seems to prefer paying into a larger Federal pool in the hopes of extracting more than they pay in.
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But since Republicans seem to oppose State taxes as vehemently as they oppose the Federal variety however, they actually make necessary the very games they pretend to oppose.
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If you don't like 'pork' then you need to start paying your fair share at the local level. Either that or STFU! -
14.4
"Rustyreturns" must have a memory block somewhere in that tired, worn out thing he calls a brain. "Pork" seems to originate from both sides of the political aisle. I seem to recall that during arguments for and against the recent federal stimulus, that it was pointed out that there were billions of dollars of "pork" projects from both democrats and republicans. And during the six years that republicans controlled the white house, the senate and the house, that they added billions and billions of "pork" projects into almost every piece of legislation that wound it's way through Congress. So, stop throwing rocks at your house of glass!
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15
"I think that in this case it's a combination of editors' horde mentality of 'Huge breaking news! Must throw all available bodies into the the breach!' and the fact that it's August and there's literally nothing else going on.
JNS."Just maybe I am being a little too picky, but there is the health care debate and we just received confirmation in the form of the CIA Inspector General's report of major misconduct by the previous administration involving detainees under our custody and control. A report so damning that it has major political implications for the previous administration, the current one and the United States. It has practical implications for our intelligence agents station around the world as well has our military men and women.
While Michael and Joe and others have written about this report I see no evidence of your editors or anyone else's editor throwing every available body into the breach to get to the bottom of this story. A story, in my opinion that is just a tad more complex and deserving of more coverage than any single person's death.
Don't get me wrong Ted Kennedy's death deserves attention, but camping out side the Kennedy compound? Invading the town? Really? What do your editors expect you to see and report that is news worthy? That his love ones and friends are grieving his loss? Do they not think that even people who could not stand Ted when he was alive do not get the process that the Kennedy camp is going through right now?
Cooper is not the first to complain about the media's very short attention span and need to over cover easy stories and the expense of complex ones and he or she won't be the last. Let's hope your editors finally get a clue.
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15.1
Not disagreeing with you, gunny, but there are some good stories among the dross. JNS's own story on Kerry. This CNN story is pretty good, too:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/27/kennedy.senate.clout/
So there's some substance among the weeds.
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- jnsmall Tonight I finished off the last of the turkey leftovers. As good as it was, I'll happily not eat turkey again for at least a month - 2 hours ago
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