What? I hardly knew ya’…
A couple nights ago I watched a new film on Netflix: Chappaquidick! It’s a re-creation of that infamous moment in Senator Ted Kennedy’s life when he drove a car off a small bridge near Martha’s Vineyards late at night and the campaign worker with him, Mary Jo Kopechne was drowned.

I was in college at the time and in retrospect the event showed the error of the Humphrey campaign the year before in not picking Sargent Shriver as the Vice-Presidential candidate. But I can talk about this in another chapter. For the moment I simply want to ask the question: after a politician is out of office (whether by retirement or death) is s/he still fair game for critical analysis? In the case of Senator Kennedy, this film is a relatively good interpretation of the events and the political intrigue surrounding them. While there are moments of sympathy and perhaps even empathy, the general tenor of the conversation is that Kennedy not only acted in an unethical manner, he likely also committed more criminal acts than the one which he actually was charged. Moreover his sentence was doubtless lighter in large part because of who he was and the prominence of his family in that particular part of the country.

That this film should appear now is rather fortuitous for me. I have been debating in my mind whether I should publicly take to task the recently retired Member of Parliament from our riding (he did not run in the last federal election). As you might suspect, part of my personal concern is that he is a member of the New Democratic Party and while he was in office I often had serious questions about his ethics never mind his political policies (or support for others’ policies). I had my opportunities to directly address my concerns at the ballot box; from my perspective, unfortunately not enough of the populace agreed with me, so he was re-elected a couple of times.

Now however he is continuing to comment on events and political moments and when I suggested this makes him fair game for criticism, I was told that as he is a private citizen, I should leave him alone. But is this a reasonable request? It was apparent while he was in the House of Commons that he backed every Liberal measure that was proposed including the Emergency Measures Act. Since courts have tossed the validity of that governmental action, I thought he would apologize, especially to all the blue collar workers in his riding that he implied by their support of the Trucker Convoys as being inadequate citizens. There were many other issues that are now being thrown out or significantly revised by the Liberal government and he is now saying nothing. I believe he should be questioned about all this, and how he is reacting to these changes.

Moreover, he is also commenting very positively on the new leadership of the NDP. My analysis of this leadership is that the individual is just slightly off from total utopia of a socialist framework; further, there is a reasonable assumption that the person harbours support for organizations that are anti-Semitic. Never when our NDP MP was campaigning in our riding did this individual suggest that he was in favour of a totalitarian-leaning socialistic government, and he was silent on attitudes towards certain minorities. Now that he is talking openly in support of the new leadership, and has never apologized for the errors that he was a party to supporting in the previous administration, ought he to be publicly questioned and challenged…? If Kennedy is deservedly critiqued after the fact as information becomes more available, the fact that he is dead and can’t respond does not diminish the need & value of such critiques. Therefore it seems that a political leader who is still alive and wishes to continue to comment on matters of public interest should expect to be critiqued and questioned. Such individuals never truly leave the public forum.

I am still contemplating what all I should say and/or do…

In reflection,
g.w.