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Ted Kennedy has died
- Mystalic 17y agoThis may not be tech, but the impact he's made is bigger than any one industry.
- ironsam 17y agoSo the computing industry as a whole? He's made more of an impact than that?
- fretlessjazz 17y agoTo comprehend the breadth of this man's persona, ask yourself "what do I do each day to help other people?" The man never stopped.
- CamperBob 17y agoI volunteer as a lifeguard.
- fretlessjazz 17y agoAt 10,000 swimming pools at once?
- patio11 17y agoThe comment was probably in reference to the incident at Chappaquiddick rather than a suggestion that one would be more effective at saving lives as a lifeguard than as a Senator wielding enormous influence. In the version of events most favorable to Kennedy, he suffered a tragic lapse in judgment (failing to summon aid) which compounded the results of an unfortunate auto accident, and a young woman drowned as a result. The version which is more charitable to the truth and less charitable to Kennedy: He was drunk driving late at night on an isolated road with a young woman who was not his wife. He got into a car accident, which involved his car falling into the water with the two of them in it. After extracting himself from the car, he went home, went to sleep, woke up, talked to his political advisers, then called the police and informed them that there had been an accident. For normal Americans, that would have resulted in an investigation followed by manslaughter charges. Kennedy was never a normal American. He got off with a wrist slap after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. The whitewashing of this incident has always been a stitch in the craw of his political opponents. His political supporters say some variant of the following every time it gets brought up: mistakes were made, it is long in the past, nothing was ever proven, and now is not the right time to mention it. I'm sort of unsure about the etiquette myself. What's the polite way to say "Ted Kennedy was a man who did many things unrelated to causing the death of his paramour in the cause of protecting his political career"?
- fretlessjazz 17y agoThanks for your clarification and insight:) Being born in 1981, I'll write my previous comment off to generational ignorance. I appreciate your thorough and thoughtful response.
- patio11 17y agoI was born in 1982, you geezer.
- jacquesm 17y agoThe year you were born in can not be an excuse for ignorance on any level. Yesterday it was 'the holocaust was before my time', now this. There are history books aplenty out there.
- unalone 17y agoI wasn't aware, Jacques, that it was our responsibility to be aware of every tragedy and every death in the history of mankind. I could spend years studying every genocide, every cruelty, going on in the world today, all of which are worse than a single drunk driving accident. I could spend years and plummet into the darker parts of the world. I choose not to. Not knowing who Ted Kennedy is an ignorance that can surely be forgiven.
- jacquesm 17y agoAbsolutely. But if someone insists on having a strong opinion on something without studying it and then uses the 'before I was born' argument to be excused I think that's pretty weak. The fact that a man has died is no reason to drop objectivity about that man. There was plenty good about Ted Kennedy, there was plenty of bad stuff too. Like almost any human being alive today, I'd imagine. Some of the stuff he did was at best misguided, at worst criminal neglect. He seemed to have been more protective of his career than of the life of a human being when it mattered most. I know politicians are 'survival masters' but that particular incident should have cost him his career and some jail time at a minimum. What kind of an example does that set for 'lesser' mortals ?
- byrneseyeview 17y agoI avoid driving them home while drunk and then abandoning them underwater. I also try not to pat myself on the back for using my family connections to get into a position where I can spend other people's money on my pet projects. So far, the New York Times hasn't said anything nice about me. On the other hand, I can sleep at night.
- mynameishere 17y agoHis greatest influence on history, without comment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act...
- anigbrowl 17y ago. (edit: I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it. You don't have to upvote it but it isn't meant as a comment to be downvoted either, just an acknowledgment).
- sho 17y ago
- sho 17y agoWhat? I was showing him how to do it! Man people sure are happy on the down-arrow today.
- unalone 17y agoThe period is common practice on some sites. I think it originated with Metafilter? It loses something when comments are voted up and down and not shown in descending order, but the sentiment is still nice.
- sho 17y agoOh, I see, thanks for the explanation. My character was U+3000, "ideographic space", in case anyone's interested.
- jcl 17y agoWhat value does an empty comment add to the conversation?
- sev 17y agoThis man's presence was earth-shattering. His legend will be even more so. The world has a lot to learn from him. RIP
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- idlewords 17y agoWhat is Ted Kennedy's lesson for the world? From my perspective, the guy was a career politician and part of an unpleasant dynastic trend in American government. How would the world be different had Kennedy not lived?
- spking 17y agoExactly. I'm so sick of politician worshipping by the left and the right. Did Ted Kennedy ever have a real (i.e. private sector) job in his entire life? No. He was a drunken womanizer who spent other people's money. Good riddance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kennedy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kennedy
- akd 17y agoI'm as sick of politician hatred by the peanut gallery. Think back 250 years in this country's history, when blacks were slaves, non-landowners couldn't vote, and women weren't sent to school. The difference between that world and today's world is due to the efforts of politicians and activists. Do you think that Johnson's Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were not "real" accomplishments?
- spking 17y agoInteresting that you went straight for the "peanut gallery" categorization because my opinion happens to differ from yours. I paid just over $38,000 in Federal, state and local taxes last year. I simply don't like people (like Ted Kennedy) who have never worked an honest job in their entire lives and have contributed to bankrupting this country. The real heroes are not politicians who run up a massive credit card bill in our collective names. The true heroes are entrepreneurs who innovate, produce and create value. Politicians produce nothing. They simply take from the productive sectors of society and create huge distortions in the marketplace. Obviously, there have been some necessary and admirable laws passed in the brief history of this country, but they are the exception and not the rule.
- nettdata 17y agoDennis Leary said it best: Great Senator, but a bad date.
- larryfreeman 17y agoHe did the seeming impossible: he lived up to the reputation of his brothers as their equal. An amazing senator. A very great loss.
- oldgregg 17y agoIndeed, nobody can question the reputation of this mans virility.
- blasdel 17y agoWhile Ted was a pretty cool guy, eh garnered appropriations and doesn't afraid of anything, I don't think anyone could really live up to his brothers. John was an order of magnitude greater, and Bobby was at least an order of magnitude greater than that! Bobby was everything Obama aspires to be and more. His assassination was probably the worst event of '68 -- and a fuckton of awful shit happened that year: the crushing of Prague Spring, the events of May in Paris, MLK's assassination, the DNC in Chicago, the burning of DC, Nixon's election -- it was the last gasp of modernity. I can't think about it without crying.
- jhancock 17y agoI was just thinking of those events this past week as I see how the media is assisting corporate/industry status quo to fight health care reform. Regardless of what you think of the details of this current legislation (I'm not a fan of some details myself), a key thing, and HN appropriate, to understand is this is the battle ground for change of any sort, not just health care. Industry will fight these sweeping changes since if they win this battle, they feel the momentum for other change may be curtailed. Media doesn't work for the viewer/reader, they work for the advertiser. This fundamental is mostly the same since 1968. A key difference between 1968 and 2009 is the level of refinement and completeness of this control. Is this comment HN appropriate? Most startups talk about being disruptive. That's not so hard to do if your building a web-widget. But that's hardly being disruptive. You want to do something BIG? Be prepared for lots of opposition from industry status quo. You want to be disruptive like John or Bobby Kennedy or MLK Jr.? You have to be prepared to die to be that kind of Hacker.
- 17y ago
- oldgregg 17y agoSad to see him go-- on the upside, he can finally be reunited with his brothers and old family friends like Mary Jo Kopechne and Martha Moxley.
- spking 17y agoNice!
- pwmanagerdied 17y agoExcept that he won't.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ivankirigin 17y agoI heard some young girl was drunk and got in a car accident, and left him for dead. (too soon?)
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- msie 17y agoI heard that some guy joined Facebook and left TipJoy for dead. (too soon?) ;)
- ivankirigin 17y agolol. On a serious note, I wrote the comment mainly because people ignore manslaughter, which is inexcusable. But also because a person that spends years in public office isn't there "for the public good". That's just rhetoric that gets people elected. I'm amazed people still buy into the idea that politicians are good people. Enterprising startup founders, or even miscellaneous hackers working on interesting projects, do far more for the public good.
- gaius 17y agoMan, 77, dies.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoSo you're posting this here just in case hackers don't read newspapers?
- stevoski 17y agoRight on. Those of us outside the states just don't care that one of your politicians died - unless he was a competent computer expert. I come here for "Hacker News", not political death notices. Shall I post here when a long-serving New Zealand politician dies?
- akd 17y agoYes, you should. The voting buttons will determine the fate of the story.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoVoting behaviour may depend on what people have to say about the article.
- plinkplonk 17y ago"Shall I post here when a long-serving New Zealand politician dies?" Ahh but you aren't going to get the upvotes to get it onto the HN front page. HN membership is dominated by Americans. No harm in that really except for stuff like this. As an Indian, I don't particularly care to have US politics / news of the demise of sundry USA politicians on the HN front page either, but the "intellectually interesting" filter is wide enough to allow this kind of thing to happen occasionally. I think of it as static on an otherwise clear channel, and wait for it to pass. As long as there are enough people to upvote these stories, I don't think there is anything anyone can do about it. Just wait for it to drop off the front page. But otoh, perhaps the non USA contingent on HN should vote up the news of the death of some non US politician and keep it on the front page? Maybe one of the communist bosses of China when he goes to the big Party Office in The Sky.
- davidw 17y ago
- ecq 17y agohe is a great man. rest in peace.
- dangrover 17y agoI was in Mass General Hospital about a year ago on the exact day that Kennedy was. Strangely enough, I found out I had brain cancer too that night. Luckily, mine was not as serious as his. I feel fortunate.
- muriithi 17y agoWhat I can gather from his Wikipedia page is that Kennedy, like Clinton was a good politician but a consummate womaniser. I have always wondered why citizens expect politicians to be 'moral' and whether 'immoral' politicians are necessarily bad leaders?
- unalone 17y agoAmerica's got a fucked-up sense of morality. Everybody's messed up in one way or another romantically. We have a distorted sense of expectation, mixed with a bunch of weird ideas about what's appropriate and what isn't. There've been many perfect gentlemen politicians that were terrible. I hope one day we start judging politicians the way we would businessmen, wherein personal life matters less than performance.
- nandemo 17y agoJust a minor quibble, not meant to detract your point: it's curious that even as you criticize America's sense of morality, you seem to use "gentlemen" as opposed to "womanizer".
- roundsquare 17y ago> I have always wondered why citizens expect politicians to be 'moral' and whether 'immoral' politicians are necessarily bad leader I think its the need to relate it to something easier to understand. Policy positions can be complex and subtle, but for a lot of people, "don't cheat on your wife/husband" is an absolute and a convenient/simple (albeit horribly inaccurate) metric.
- hughprime 17y agoPoliticians have a lot of power, and that power can easily be misused. All other things being equal, I'd much prefer to elect an honest politician with strong moral fibre to a dishonest one with few scruples. If a guy can't resist the temptation to break a promise he made to his wife for the sake of a few cheap kicks, it's less likely that he can resist the temptation to, say, hand out political favours to his favourite campaign donors.
- danielrhodes 17y agoFor those of you who are questioning why this deserves to be here: obviously HN is predominantly tech/entrepreneur related, but don't be so fundamentalist about it. Ted Kennedy was a prolific senator who was one of the most influential members of the most powerful government in the world -- his death deserves discussion not just among those interested in politics but in other circles as well. HN has a great community where people value good analysis and feedback, why not occasionally apply those positive aspects to other topics as well?
- unalone 17y agoThere's a value in asking whether something's Hacker News or not. In the end, we are the users, and we decide what we want to see. When we don't like what we see, however, there's no harm in discussing it, in the hope that like-minded people see it and are inspired.
- danielrhodes 17y agoThat's what the voting buttons next to the story are for. If you discuss the article itself, then you should add value to the discussion. Complaining about the presence of the story itself when the community obviously voted it up to the top is not adding value, it's only adding negativity.
- unalone 17y agoI would agree if there was a downvote option, so that people who don't like a story could have a say. As it is, a vocal-and-irritating minority can push stories to the top without anybody else being able to stop it. (I don't refer to this story when I say that, mind you. We all have our pet peeves.)
- andreyf 17y agoA clever solution would be a downvote button that behaves the same as the "flag" link ;)
- 17y ago
- flipper 17y agoAn oblique link to HN - Kennedy was a senator for Massachusetts, the original home of YC.
- asciilifeform 17y agoWhy is this here? I'm a US citizen and I still don't think it ought to be.
- TheElder 17y agoIt shouldn't be, but politics is a religion for many who lean left. One of the biggest liberal names just passed away, so it's here. My comment is way out of line, but so is this submission, but that's what happens when politics is introduced.
- biohacker42 17y agoIt shouldn't be, but politics is a religion for many who lean left Aw crap, you and I are now gong to start a political argument on HN. Well it's a Ted Kennedy story so here we go. A clear majority of hackers, including me, are libertarians, not liberals. And I guess (but actually mostly hope) most of the HN readership is libertarian. And I definitely don't think this belongs on HN. But I also very much doubt "liberals" are voting it up.
- TheElder 17y agoI'll end it. I hope you have a wonderful day my dear HN friend.
- biohacker42 17y agoThank you, and the same to you my friend.
- bct 17y agoSaying "politics is a religion for many who lean left" is deliberately inflammatory. You don't get to blame the topic of conversation for your own bad behaviour.
- _pius 17y agoIt shouldn't be, but politics is a religion for many who lean left. Complete and utter flamebait. Worse, it's tripe ... the comment doesn't even make sense.
- biohacker42 17y agoAlso, Michael Jackson - still dead!
- dgabriel 17y agoOk, now I see why we should stay away from politics on HN. Too many people are downvoting/upvoting based on their political perceptions of TK. Do you really need to downvote someone into the negative for simply saying they liked the guy?
- unalone 17y agoJeez, they downvoted you for it, too. Hacker News is very mature regarding certain things; regarding others, they act like kneejerk jackasses. Politics is one of the latter categories.
- johnohara 17y agoLike so many on both sides of the aisle, he was too long a 'public servant.' Rest and be at peace.
- kingkawn 17y agoIf still alive he'd be a major force for passing the kind of healthcare legislation that could have liberated Americans from employer-provided insurance as the only option. This would have freed a great deal of energy for risks like starting a business. That he became sick and died now is a a loss of leadership in the effort to make the dynamism of entrepreneurship, among other things, available to more people.
- protomyth 17y agoThe government is treaty-obligated to provide health care to a section of the population and are doing a offensive job. If they can't do it right for ~7 million Native Americans, what chance do they have to do it right for the rest of the USA?
- kingkawn 17y agoThey do it right for veterans, and they even do it fairly well for the elderly. Why not everyone else?
- protomyth 17y agoFrom personal experience of friends, they mess up a lot of veterans' lives, and that, in my mind, is a serious breach of trust. Look at the recent scandals in the VA for incidents.
- kingkawn 17y agoSeriously even with the scandals the veterans' lives are not peachy until they hit the VA. Iraq? I was in and out of a lot of Veterans hospitals when I worked in an ambulance, they have fantastic care if you give it some context with the rest of the healthcare system.
- zeynel1 17y agoWhere is the flag button?