Ted Kennedy's Memoir: If I Did It

When it comes to our senior senator nobody can do a better job than Boston's very own, the one and only Howie Carr.

Boston Herald (via Powerline blog) :

Kennedy walks thin line between write and wrong
By Howie Carr  |   Wednesday, November 28, 2007  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Columnists

The very least Ted Kennedy can do is dedicate his autobiography to Mary Jo Kopechne.
So the senior senator is getting an $8 million advance for his memoirs - who says crime doesn’t pay?
And how about that quote his new publisher included in the press release, with Ted mentioning his lifelong “front row seat at many key events.”
Which raises the question, if Ted was in the front seat, who was in the back? Sorry, I can’t help myself. But even if you couldn’t read a Chappaquiddick reference into almost anything he says (water boarding, anybody?), the fact is Teddy has indeed had a “front row seat” for most of his life.
The problem is, he’s still missed most of the action because so much of the time he left his front-row seat empty while he was waiting in line at the beer stand for a refill. And at age 75, how much can Teddy really remember anyway?
Teddy’s payday is coming from the publisher Hachette, which bought the company that put out my book last year. I’ve made Hachette a fair amount of money, and now a lot of it goes to Ted Kennedy. But then, Ted Kennedy’s been picking my pocket, and that of every other taxpayer in the country, ever since we got our first paychecks.
What will the title be? “If I Did It” - already taken. A book about his brother was titled “A Thousand Days.” Teddy could call his “1,000 Happy Hours.” Another JFK book was “PT 109.” Teddy’s most famous seagoing vessel was Rose’s 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont - doesn’t quite jump off the page as a title, does it?
The Hachette editor said, “The senator’s book is not about the money,” which, as everyone knows, means it is about the money. Remember when Newt Gingrich was supposed to get a huge advance (about half the size of Teddy’s) from Rupert Murdoch? Oh, what a scandal. Somehow, I doubt Teddy’s “windfall profits,” to coin a phrase, will greatly trouble the blowhards who thundered against Newt.
Ted is “expected to write candidly about his personal history,” which must include Chappaquiddick. And we’ll get just as much “candor” about Mary Jo as Bill Clinton offered about, say, Juanita Broaddrick, or Kathleen Willey.
Teddy’s taking a beating in cyberspace. They paraphrase the line from “Animal House” - fat, drunk and stupid apparently is a way to go through life. They rewrite cartoon lyrics - who lives in an Oldsmobile under the sea? Sponge Ted Square Pants!
It’s odd, though. You can find Teddy’s Chappaquiddick address online, but the Roger Mudd CBS interview seems unavailable. Surely Ted could, you’ll pardon the expression, dredge it up. Those 125,000 or so words he’ll be expected to produce will go a lot faster if he starts pasting whole transcripts into the text.
Maybe the book should include a Web site where potential buyers could whet their curiosity about the man who was named after his father’s pimp, as Hunter S. Thompson once put it.
Could we also have audiotape of Jerry Williams’ famous radio interview with Teddy after he tried to force the man he called “Rudolph Murdoch” to sell this newspaper? He finally terminated the interview by telling Jerry he didn’t have to put up with his “dribble.”
This is one of those books where you’ll be able to tell how good it is by thumbing through the index. Forget buying it if any of the following persons or subjects is missing:
“Waitress sandwiches... Harvard, cheating... Au Bar... Marilyn Monroe... theft, 1960 presidential election... Fiddle and Faddle... John Tunney.”
Maybe there’s a bright side to Teddy’s big score. If my publisher will pay him $8 mil, maybe for my next one I can get... 200 large. As his brother Jack once said, a rising tide lifts all boats.
But not Oldsmobiles. [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph