This is what they do.
I was lurking through Free Republic, as I sometimes do. It’s a sometimes-painful, sometimes-humorous, sometimes-sad hobby that lets me see what’s being discussed (and what’s being ignored) by the Rightwing Fringe. Or at least, by that portion of it gullible enough to believe Jim Robinson when he tells them it takes eighty-five grand a quarter to run a glorified message board.
And today, I saw something that hits the painful-humorous-sad trifecta, at least for me. It's sad, and painfully grotesque, and it's even funny in a "you're so pathetic it makes me laugh" kind of way. The Freepers have found a funny (for them) way to answer the “I Can’t Breathe” movement that’s risen up in the aftermath of the Eric Garner failure of justice.
Read on . . .
Behold, the “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt – the Mary Jo Kopechne version.
Yup. A Chappaquiddick joke. That’s timely humor in Freeperland.
For all those Kossacks who aren’t able to collect Social Security yet, I should explain. Way back in 1969, then-Senator Ted Kennedy allegedly left a party with a campaign specialist named Mary Jo Kopechne, who had once been on Robert Kennedy’s secretarial staff and had been one of his “Boiler Room Girls” during his 1968 campaign. Ostensibly heading toward the ferry landing, Kennedy instead made a wrong turn and ended up on the unlit dirt road that led to Dike Bridge. The car drove off the side of the small wooden bridge (which had no guardrails), and the car went into Poucha Pond, ending up at the bottom, upside down. Kennedy made it out; Kopechne did not.
There have been a lot of theories and accusations about it over the years, especially about Kennedy’s actions in the aftermath. And there have been a host of alternate theories – some of them bizarre – seeking to either absolve Kennedy or condemn him. And it has been a mainstay of the Right Wing, particularly the talk radio bloviators – some long-running joke they never tire of.
Ted Kennedy, whatever his faults and whatever failings he had on that day in 1969, has been dead over five years now. The incident itself, tragic as it was, is over 45 years old. That is still, in GOP-speak, “current” – current enough to buy a T-shirt over, anyway.
This is what they do. This is where they live. The widespread racial injustices, segregation, beatings, lynchings that all happened before (and after) Chappaquiddick. . . these are all the past. You can’t view anything today through the lens of events from “back then” - unless the event is an Oldsmobile going off a bridge. That shit is the wound that never heals.
Except they’re not wounded. It’s just a joke to them. A rhetorical point. They couldn’t care less about Mary Jo Kopechne, and I can only imagine how they’d describe her if she was alive and working on Democratic campaigns (Kennedy campaigns) today. But it’s a jab they can make, a secret handshake of their tribe, where one says some Chappaquiddick joke and the other laughs, instead of saying “Dude, didn’t that happen before the Moon Landing?” It’s a shibboleth for a gross and callous ideological cult.
And that’s not just the distance of years. Eric Garner is a joke to them, immediately framed however they need to frame it in order to both laugh about it and use it as a cudgel against their “enemies”. They see him how they need to, see the cops and their actions however the moment requires. Even if it contradicts evidence and common sense and their own stated beliefs from a moment before, they’ll find a way to believe Whatever Version We Think Hurts the Libs. . . . or whatever version lets them chuckle at what they think is our expense.
When they crack stupid jokes, like their “Pants Up, Don’t Loot!” answer to the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protests, they’re just doing Chappaquiddick all over again. Everything is a hammer, meant to pound down opponents, bash away at other viewpoints, bludgeon back the “other” that would disrupt the beautiful homogeny of their bubble-world. They don’t see people – not Kopechne then, not Garner now. They don’t see real issues, or hurt, or social ills. All they see – their only reality – is political theatre.
And that theatre is Vaudeville.
And the jokes, for that insular audience, never get old.