Well, not the personal stuff, guess I'm younger than you ;), but the rest. Very nicely written.

Ted was part of every major domestic initiative since the rise of Conservatism. I got to hear his Bork speech today. this is a man who wasn't afraid to lose or be labeled a partisan. For that, and for so much more, I am thankful.

Being a MA resident, what I most admire about Kennedy was his awesome constituent outreach. He really would meet with you one on one, problem solve, advocate. he didn't forget the people he worked for.

JFK mostly because of the effect it had on people I cared a lot about, and I remember MLK because we talked about it in school.

There's a lot of talk about moving the mantle of Camelot onto Barack Obama's shoulders. I think that's a mistake. I think he's entitled to build his own legend and inhabit his own fantasy kingdom -- maybe Narnia, instead of Camelot -- with his family.

In that Chris Floyd piece there's a note about how MLK wasn't assassinated until after he started talking about economic justice.

[...] one perhaps not irrelevant fact that leaps to mind here is that Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated until he started talking about economic injustice faced by all citizens in a militarized state waging unjust wars around the world

What we've seen and heard in the last couple of days reminds us, too, of how Ted approached poverty -- with the same animus an ER doc approaches death.

A man who advocated for the common good knowing it would benefit the common man by offering him advantages previously reserved for the scions of privilege is rare; a family of them is so rare as to defy belief in their existence. The Kennedys proved to us that such a family wasn't a chimera after all.

It hit me hard, and yet my family sort of floated by it, as if nothing in our Orange County beach city could really be altered by anything, anywhere. I wasn't into superheroes or GI Joe--I swam in the Pacific Ocean and played sports and read the newspapers--I was addicted to the news at an early age. Ted Kennedy endured through his worst decisions, and when aroused was formidable, and I respect his better efforts.

RFK's death will always leave me on the wrong side of Wilshire Boulevard...

++++

best chance of becoming a truly egalitarian, great compassionate nation*.

As Sarah noted, MLK was shot after he'd begun working strongly for economic equality; RFK had joined that battle and was reaching out to those left behind and left out of the economic American dream.

Is there a connection there? Were the moves taken by these two men just too frightening to the the power elites? Did their ability to touch and communicate with the poor and underclasses make them too dangerous to remain alive?

*It's possible I didn't think that right away, but close enough to the time of his death that in my memory it's that way. I still find, watching film of the night of his death, I'll begin to try to will it not to happen. Just a momentary attempt to bargain with cold, hard facts. To stop the pain of that realization....