Anyway, any formal get together like this that has lots of pomp and circumstance surrounding it is going to be interesting to me. I know there are some out there who are thinking “I bet if Teddy was a republican you wouldn’t have watched all of this shit.” Not true at all. Of course, we’ll just have to wait until Gerald Ford dies for me to … What? He’s dead? Really?
Hoookay then, I guess we’ll just have to wait until Ronald Rea … what? Ronnie died too? Ohhhhh … that’s so sad.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding! I kid because I care.
I was there, glued to the TV, for every second of Ronnie’s funeral. I watched on C-Span as people filed past his casket and watched the memorials and funeral services. That was great stuff. I think Reagan put on the third best funeral of my lifetime. Here’s my list of best celebrity funerals of my lifetime:
1. Pope John Paul II. I mean come on, they brought the body out strapped to this big board or whatever and held him up for the crowd. Nobody is going to top that. Nobody.
2. Princess Di. The Brits really know how to do these types of things.
3. Ronald Reagan. Lying in state then heading back to Cali for the funeral. Lots of Hollywood types. The whole thing was impressive.
4. Teddy Kennedy. Anytime you get Yo-Yo Ma and Placido Domingo to perform, then you’ve put on a pretty damn good funeral.
5. Princess Grace. Again, royalty knows how do these things right. And, Princess Grace was freaking gorgeous.
I don’t know if Michael Jackson’s funeral comes next or not cause I decided to stop thinking about this topic. He probably does though.
Anyway, I remember watching Nixon’s funeral with my dad. His was pretty basic is probably way down the list. At one point, one of my step-sisters, in her usual, annoying way, blurted out “Why the hell is Bill Clinton there at a republican’s funeral?!” Before I could say anything dad quipped “For the same reason that I’m watching it. To make sure they burry that crooked son of a bitch.”
Back to this week. The first thing that I was fascinated by this week was watching on Friday when they brought the casket out of the Kennedy’s house to place it into the hearse and take it to Bahston. What I found myself wondering was if Teddy’s remains had just been kept there at the house for three days.
I mean, did they clear out the extra fridge in the garage and stuff him in there? Or did they just turn down the temperature in the wine cellar and keep him in there? I guess they might have just propped him up in his easy chair with a cigar in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other and left him like that.
My mother assures me that they probably took the body to the funeral home to do all that stuff that they do there. Then, they probably brought the body back to the house on Friday for all the official festivities. I guess that’s possible. OTOH, it’s also possible that his body wasn’t even in that casket. I mean, they didn’t open it and show us, did they? Come on conspiracy theorists! I know you have your hands full with death panels and Obama’s secret army bullshit, but help me out here, will ya?
Anyway, I enjoyed watching the ceremonies. I enjoyed hearing the stories told by the politicians and family members. Some were funny, some were sad and others where actually kind of inspiring. Both the memorial and the funeral mass were a great celebration of life.
Some people will whine that it was “political” or whatever, but they were going to bitch about something anyway. Which is fine. As I said after Robert Novak died last week, I don’t subscribe to the social rule that says you have to pretend someone was perfect or even a good person just because he just died. Oh sure, maybe you don’t go out of your way to trash him, but you don’t have to say that you loved him or even respected him if you didn’t. It would be nice if we based our complaints on facts, but oh well. Also, it’s not like libruls were quiet and thoughtful after Reagan died.
Well, this post is getting pretty long. I guess I’ll just say that I consider Teddy to be a great senator, but I don’t know that I can all him a great man. But, I will say that in the last 10 years or so, he did come close to being the man that he could have been all along. There was lots of good and lots of bad to him. Some people will never forgive the bad and some will only see the good. But, that’s pretty much the way it is for any politician, I guess.
Rest in Peace Ted Kennedy. You lived a hell of a full and amazing life.
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