The Last Brother

I read this editorial in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine and wanted to share it with anyone who might be interested. Ted Kennedy was really a remarkable man despite his very human inadequacies. I hope you enjoy.

The Last Brother
by Erin Bates, Executive Editor
Rolling Stone

Ted Kennedy wasn't all that different from the rest of us. Maybe he partied a bit too much sometimes. Maybe he spent his entire life working at the same shit job, only to blow it when he got a chance at the top spot. Maybe he felt burdened at times by the demands of his family. Maybe losing so many of his loved ones broke his heart.

But we aren't allowed to think of Ted Kennedy as one of us, and neither was he. Because of his last name, and all the weight and expectation it carried with it, he was required from a young age to assume a mantle of charisma and nobility. It did not fit him well, and he did not always wear it comfortably, but he was the last brother standing, so he took over the family business and got on with it. It sucks to be the youngest of nine children, the one allowed to slack off and get away with anything, only to find yourself suddenly forced to shoulder all of the responsibility that was never meant for you.

Along the way, though, something truly remarkable happened. The kid who was filling in for his older brothers, all three of them flashier than him, all three claimed by violence, grew into the man who turned their dreams into something real and meaningful. Think of him as Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life - kind of awkward and shy, but always there for his neighbors, always ready to stand up to old Mr. Potter, always demanding that institutions do their best to help the community to serve the greater good. If he despaired at times, and wound up drunk and on a bridge late one night, he was saved in the end by his own hard work, and by all that he had given of himself.

There is much we would not have if Ted Kennedy had never lived. In his 46 years in the Senate, he helped give 18-year-olds the right to vote and black citizens the right to fair housing. He helped give working Americans a decent minimum wage and a federal agency devoted to making their jobs safer. He helped give Meals on Wheels ot the hungry, and doctors to the poor, and equal rights to the disabled. He fought to end the Vietnam War, and he was one of only 23 senators to vote against the invasion of Iraq. He was one of the last giants of the Senate, not because he mastered its arcane procedures and good-old-boy niceties, but because he insisted that it work on behalf of the very people that it was designed by the founding fathers to restrain: the majority of Americans.

Ted Kennedy was an aristocrat, well-born and well-to-do. He served in an institution intentionally constructed to protect the aristocarcy and thwart the popular will. Yet he did what he could to use its immense power on behalf of democracy - on behalf of us. It was a wonderful life.