Kennedy anecdotes

Obituary: Edward M. Kennedy

As James Sterling Young, the director of a Kennedy Oral History Project at the University of Virginia, said the catchphrase of that era was: “Most people grow up and go into politics. The Kennedys go into politics and then they grow up.”

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Less than a month after turning 30 in 1962, Mr. Kennedy declared his candidacy for the remaining two years of his brother’s Senate term. He entered the race with a tailwind of family money and political prominence. Nevertheless, Edward J. McCormack Jr., the state’s attorney general and a nephew of John W. McCormack, then speaker of the United States House of Representatives, also decided to go after the seat.

It was a bitter fight, with a public rehash of the Harvard cheating episode and with Mr. McCormack charging in a televised “Teddy-Eddie” debate that Mr. Kennedy lacked maturity of judgment because he had “never worked for a living” and had never held elective office. “If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy,” Mr. McCormack added, “your candidacy would be a joke.”

CLASSIC RUSH: "...do look to me like Senator Kennedy done changed his position on offshore drilling"

Senator Kennedy is vacationing off the coast of the south of France and he's got a young nubile, very limber and flexible young woman with him, scantily clad in a nice bikini. We know this because paparazzi were taking pictures from neighboring boats, and the New York Daily News published the pictures, and there were a series of four pictures. The first picture shows them cavorting out there on the boat. The second picture shows us the scantily clad, nubile, very flexible and limber young woman diving in the water off the edge of the boat. The next picture showed Senator Kennedy jumping in after her -- which was a first for Senator Kennedy to go in the water after a woman -- and then the last picture showed them back in the boat making... uh, "having intimacies," let's say. The pictures made the rounds, and they showed them to Howell Heflin, a Senator from Alabama. He was a huge guy, and he looked at the picture and said (rare Howell Heflin impression), "Well, I do declare! Ha! Why, it do look to me like Senator Kennedy done changed his position on offshore drilling."