I grew up in a home where the Kennedy name was never uttered unless the word Chappaquiddick was in the same breath.  (And no, for you youngsters out there, Chappaquiddick is not the name of a game Harry Potter & Co. play at Hogwarts).  To this day my mother has not forgiven Kennedy for Mary Jo Kopechne's drowning.  More than the tragedy itself, it seemed to confirm suspicions of a dark side to Camelot.

Chappaquiddick still resonates for enemies of the Kennedys.  And there are a lot of them.  And they're on the internets.  As the Daily News reports:

Google's Hot Trends page measures the fastest-rising searches that its users are making, and as of noon Wednesday, online users seemed less interested in the breadth of Kennedy's innumerable accomplishments over a 47-year career in the Senate — and more interested in the40-year-old scandal.

In all, nine of the top 50 Google searches on the morning after Kennedy's passing were related to the Chappaquiddick incident - a sad reminder of the fateful night that continued to follow the senator throughout his long career.

I have no personal memory of the incident, of course — it occurred eight days after my birth — and thus no residual outrage over it.   But for boomers of a conservative bent, it represented the excesses of blind ambition and privilege over justice, and, like I said, it seemed to finally expose the slimy underbelly of Camelot.

Given the turbulence and trauma of that time, it seems petty now to dwell on the dirt, but because the myth of Camelot endures to this day, and with Barrack Obama — who was constantly compared to John F. Kennedy on the campaign trail — in the Oval Office, and Michelle Obama — who is constantly compared to Jackie — presiding over the New Camelot, it remains a sore spot for those who remember it differently.

The truth is, the Republicans will never have a Camelot of their own, and their nose is forever out of joint about it.  You have only to look at the reason for the Kennedy Renaissance in the last few years, as the nation slogged through the reverse-Camelot of another of its would-be dynasties, to understand why.  The Bushes are the right's answer to the Kennedys, the anti-Kennedys in fact: a dim, dull, cartoon sitcom version of America's Royals.  The supreme insult after the injury of a shattered dream and a broken world.

Because the Kennedy Triumvirate towered over anything in American politics that has come along since, the right will be busy debunking the myth of Camelot.  For them Chappaquiddick is key.  It would be foolish to argue that Kennedy's negligence was in no way responsible for Kopechne's death, and that his political ambitions weren't the cause of the botched cover-up.  Kennedy himself called his behavior after the accident "irrational and indefensible and inexcusable and inexplicable."

Of course Chappaquiddick doomed his '72 White House bid.  But an argument could be made that Kennedy's shining senatorial career would never have happened without the tragedy of Chappaquiddick.  Which is precisely why the right, in its attempts to dismantle Kennedy's legacy, will fixate on Chappaquiddick.

The right was ready and waiting, of course.  The nastiness began mere moments after Kennedy's death was announced, as Dominic Holden at the Slog noted, with wikipedia edits like these:


The media hasn't hesitated to use the death to get its usual digs in, either...

 
The Senator's demise has already been variously tied to the demise of health care reform and a force re-energizing the effort which was his life's last cause. 

We can only hope that Congress honors Kennedy's lifetime of service with the tribute of real reform on health care.  But regardless, the battle over his legacy will likely get ugly.  Those who want it one way or another might do well to remember that life and fate don't work that way. 

Is it Camelot or Chappaquiddick? 

It's both.