Kennedy's FBI Files

The FBI under the Freedom of Information Act released some of its files on the late Edward Kennedy, the long serving member of the Senate, considered the most effective senator ever. He is a historic figure. He was a leading voice for American liberalism, and as such was never popular with the right-wing. One right-wing newsletter this morning, after scanning over the files, focused on what they could find that gave a voyeur's glimpse of Mr. Kennedy's private life, and the morning right-wing electronic acid sheet concluded that the great man was a man-whore, a man who slept around, who drank too much and who enjoyed the company of two many women.

The files the FBI released yesterday on Edward Kennedy dealt mainly with threats on his life. Mr. Kennedy was a magnet for all kinds of kooks, malcontents, nuts and insane persons who wanted to do him harm. Besides reporting on the many threats against Mr. Kennedy, others are pulling from the files, for what ever reason, the bile that they can to make a headline that can drive a story, that can draw eyeballs to themselves and to their output. Why? To carry on a political assassination of the man in the grave? To toss dirt on his reputation?

In the play Julius Caesar, a great man has been assassinated. Shakespeare wrote these lines for his character Mark Anthony to deliver at the funeral -- "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with --."

In this case let it be with Mr. Kennedy. It is left to those among us who remember the good that Mr Kennedy did, to remember him for the good that he did.