http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2010/08/15/after_teddy/?page=fullThere really is no comparison. And it angers me that sleazebaga like Sarah get attention when a woman worthy of our respect gets very little by most people.
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The Democratic State Convention was running late. Delegates were getting cranky, crammed into the Worcester DCU Center on a Saturday afternoon and delayed by a series of votes being counted by having convention workers stand on chairs and yell out the names of delegates, who then shouted over the din to cast their nominations for treasurer, auditor, and so on. People looked anxiously at their watches and BlackBerrys, pondering flight schedules and parties that should have started already. But they waited, as so many times in the past, for Kennedy.
It was a Kennedy who had been their unofficial leader, patriarch of not only a political dynasty but of all Massachusetts Democrats. It was a Kennedy who was so often the headliner at conventions and rallies. It was Edward M. Kennedy who over decades spoke countless times to Bay State Democrats, whether to advocate for a particular piece of legislation, to vow – as he did in Worcester in 1994 – to beat back the hardest political challenge of his life, or to revel in the presidential nomination of his junior colleague, Senator John F. Kerry, at the Democrats’ national convention in Boston in 2004. When Massachusetts Democrats went to Denver in August 2008 to see Barack Obama nominated, they waited again for Ted Kennedy and were rewarded with a speech that nearly didn’t happen: The ailing senator, pumped up on adrenaline and fighting through the exhaustion and agony of both a brain tumor and kidney stones, delivered a thundering call for health care reform.
But it was Victoria Reggie Kennedy the Worcester crowd was waiting for in June. Once the nominating was over, she gave an emotional tribute to her late husband, Senator Kennedy, speaking about commitment to public service, health care, and equality between genders and among races. She became passionate and driven as she listed his accomplishments, her voice catching slightly when she quoted him directly: “We are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. And we can do it again.” And this Kennedy is, in a very public way, doing the work still – and she plans to keep at it.
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Nearly a year after the senator succumbed to an aggressive brain tumor, Victoria Kennedy – or Vicki, as she urges people to call her – is heavily in demand, and, following the model of her late husband, the 56-year-old seems to meet much of it. Kennedy is a popular commencement speaker, addressing graduates this year at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the University of Maryland, and Harwich High School on Cape Cod, the last an invitation she accepted after being moved, she says, by a letter from four girls asking her to speak. She’s been seen at the US Capitol, nudging lawmakers to approve the health care plan her husband called the cause of his life, or appearing for events Ted certainly would have attended, such as the Rotunda ceremony awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to former Massachusetts senator Edward W. Brooke. And she’s shown up to support friends of Senator Kennedy, surprising his longtime confidant Senator Christopher Dodd when the Connecticut Democrat was honored at a Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey Dinner in Hartford. Particularly poignant was her eulogy for Donald Dowd, a family friend, at Dowd’s January funeral in Springfield.
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