Pretend you don't see this.

In the interest of good taste, I've been staying away from the whole grimly unfolding Senator Kennedy saga. I'll only pause for a moment to wonder why not one of his benighted generation could die in an unsympathetic or non-mediagenic fashion. Given their demonstrated proclivities, what are the odds of an entire cohort of this noted family of substance-abusing, philandering demagogues escaping jealous husbands, cirrhosis of the liver, ruptured aneurisms while sharing a bed with someone of tenuous morals, or Herpes Simplex 1, 2, 12, and 14 through 25, inclusive? Instead, the Evel Knievel of Chappaquidick appears headed for a grim end, one which I wouldn't wish on... well, even a Kennedy.

There have been darkly humorous side effects, however.

A David Broder column reprinted in the Indy Star the other day contained the line

"In his 46 years in the Senate, Kennedy has probably touched more people, in more cherished ways, than any other public figure."

...and before I could stop, I heard myself mutter "They never proved that in court!"

More locally, the Bolshevik wing of the Democrat party has been unmoored enough by the (as they see it) tragedy that they feel forced into public proclamations of their historical ignorance:

Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of innocent people in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere have died because of the policy of perpetual war we have lived in under Republican rule for the last 40 years.

Because we all remember how those noted GOP dictators, JFK and LBJ, used the might of the Republican-dominated Congress under neocon strongmen John McCormack, Carl Albert, and Tip O'Neill to wage unconscionable wars...

Lord, please make my enemies ridiculous. Thank you.