The Huffington Post explains that "Melissa Lafsky is the deputy web editor at Discover magazine, where she writes the Reality Base blog. She was previously the editor of the New York Times's Freakonomics blog, and is a former associate editor at HuffPo's Eat The Press." So she's a major-media-certified pundit when she wrote about Chappaquiddick drowning victim Mary Jo Kopechne on Arianna's pages today:
Mary Jo wasn't a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan. She was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future....We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.
Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.
Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it.
The first reaction here at the office? "This is why writing satirical fake-liberal-media quotes for April Fools is impossible." Lafsky's truly tasteless. Arianna Huffington should take this awful piece down.
How, in any way, did Chappaquiddick make Kopechne a "catalyst" for Kennedy's career? Is she the person who's supposed to be Douglas Brinkley's "martyr" for health care reform?
Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center.
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