Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I was reminded of this in a conversation with my dad yesterday and it still cracks me up. Many years ago, one of the Kennedy clan died when the family was skiing in Aspen and played a football game - on skis - on the mountainside. I don't remember which Kennedy it was. It's hard to keep them straight. It wasn't the one who left the hooker to drown, or the one who raped the woman at their compound in Florida, it was the one who was diddling his 15 year old babysitter (such a dignified family, don't you think?). Whatever his name was, he crashed into a tree and died.
A couple days later on the show Politically Incorrect, the panel is discussing it and they're all saying how tragic it is and we feel sorry for the family, blah, blah, blah. And it gets around to Martin Mull. In his unmistakable style, Mull deadpans, "I think it's obvious that the time has come to fire their offensive coordinator. You don't send a guy on a post pattern into a grove of trees." Brilliant.
Comments
Michael, son of Robert F. Wasn't that also around the time when Sonny Bono hit a tree skiing too. And i vaguely remember a third one that winter. Not a good year to ski the tree lines...
Posted by: spyder
| January 18, 2006 9:26 PM
I think you're right, Spyder. I recall thinking at the time that perhaps nature had become displeased with Greenpeace's efforts and decided to take a more ... "active" role in influencing legislators.
Posted by: Jeff Hebert
| January 18, 2006 11:52 PM
Yeah, that's right. After that my parents took up joking about how the trees were out to get us.
After all, it's not the skiing that killed them. It was the trees.
Posted by: Skemono
| January 19, 2006 12:11 AM
Hilarity. I used to love politically incorrect, and I had HBO last year so I was able to watch Bill on Real Time. I had to ie it up, recently however. I didn't always agree with Bill, but it was entertaining and it was always nice to see which actor/celebrities really knew there stuff and which were morons.
Whatever happen to Martin Mull?
Posted by: bourgeois_rage
| January 19, 2006 9:47 AM
Do the Kennedy's make it into the Darwin Awards, I wonder?
Posted by: John Farrell
| January 19, 2006 10:57 AM
Um, Ed,
Mary Jo Kopekne, who was killed in the accident at Chappaquidick, was not a hooker, she was an RFK campaign worker. That's like calling Laura Bush's boyfriend, the one she "accidently" killed as a teenager, was a gigolo.
And William Kennedy Smith, although likely guilty of gross impropriety, was acquitted, and it is not clear that any rape occurred at all (when two extremely drunk people go at it, can we ever really be sure what happened?). As a native Bay Stater, I was taught to glorify the Kennedy's. Although I am by no means their biggest fan anymore, the sheer number in the clan means it is irresponsible to brand them all with the misbehavior of a few idiots. After all, Rory Kennedy, the only child of RFK never to meet him and the sister of the dead skier, not only held the man as he died, but was forced to cancel her own wedding when her cousin JFK Jr. died. Is she a bad person because of her family, or should we sympathize with her because of the tragedies of her life?
Posted by: CPT_Doom
| January 19, 2006 7:36 PM
CPT_Doom:
You're taking a joking post far too seriously, although I honestly did think that Kopechne was a prostitute. I don't know why I thought that, but for some reason I always thought that and was corrected by someone else. Michael Kennedy, on the other hand, apparently really did have an affair with his underaged babysitter and that's pretty heinous, particularly for a married man with children of his own. And at any rate, they really did need to fire their offensive coordinator.
Posted by: Ed Brayton
| January 19, 2006 7:42 PM
Ed,
I've got to agree with CPT_Doom.
Of course, humor is subjective, and it's your site, but I thought your Kennedy post was more offensive than funny.
One man's opinion.
CP
Posted by: Carpundit
| January 20, 2006 10:54 AM