http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/howie_carr/2014/03/carr_hooray_justice_is_servedCarr: Hooray! Justice is served!
But Kennedy-style justice is ... different
Sunday, March 2, 2014
By:
Howie Carr
Of course Kerry Kennedy was acquitted.
How many times have you read the headline: “Ethel Kennedy Appears in Court for (fill in the name of this month’s family defendant)?” A couple of days later the inevitable follow-up headline appears: “Kennedy Acquitted.”
After the jury found her not guilty Friday on drugged-driving charges in Westchester County, N.Y., Kerry Kennedy said, “I’m just very, very, very grateful that justice was done.”
And she should know something about justice, because she runs the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
She’s a “human rights advocate.” Nice work if you can get it.
Kerry is one of the Beautiful People. She once wrote a book titled “Speak Truth to Power.” From what we know now about her, a more appropriate title might have been, “Slur Truth to Power.”
Oh sure, over time the Kennedy family M.O. has evolved. The clan’s drug of choice used to be Chivas Regal, now it’s Ambien. It used to be just the Kennedy men cheated on their spouses. Now it’s the women too — Kerry got caught with a polo player.
(Her lawyers described her as a “devout Catholic,” which by Kennedy standards, she may well be. After she dumped her polo player boy toy, Kerry penned another book, “Being Catholic Now.”)
But like all Kennedys down through the ages, she couldn’t pass the field sobriety test. And of course the traditional thick-Irish-brogue priest appeared as a character witness. Somewhere, Msgr. Jeremiah P. O’Mahoney of St. Edward’s Church in Palm Beach must be smiling.
And naturally the family’s bloody shirt was waved. Her father, “Daddy,” was murdered when she was 8 years old. “He was running for president.”
Her uncle, JFK, was the president who famously said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
Her other uncle, Teddy, never became president, because he famously found out that a rising tide does not lift all Oldsmobiles.
Her lawyer was Gerald Lefcourt, who took time out from his usual practice of defending Black Panthers, rap moguls, crooked Albany pols and junk-bond billionaires to represent the former Mrs. Andrew Cuomo.
In a raspy voice that makes her sound more like Ethanol than Ethel Kennedy, Kerry thanked her hired guns, saying, incredibly, “Most people don’t have access to that and we need to take a hard look at our criminal justice system in the United States to make sure that it really is just and that everyone, everyone in our country has true access to justice.”
Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
Rudyard Kipling wrote that “There comes a night when the best get tight.” With the Kennedys, it seems to happen more and more often in the morning. But what’s the big deal? Oh sure, Ethanol Kennedy rear-ended a truck, blew out a tire and then rode on the rim of her Lexus SUV wheel for miles on an interstate before finally slamming into a guard rail.
But unlike her uncle, she didn’t drown anybody. Unlike her brother, she didn’t cripple anybody. On a Kennedy-family scale of 1-to-10, this fender-bender barely rated a 2.
Friday morning, as Ethel and Ethanol walked away from the bank of microphones in front of the Westchester courthouse, a reporter yelled out a final question: “What are you going to do now?”
“Celebrate” Ethel replied.
Another Kennedy beats the rap! Neck braces on the house!
