Senator Kennedy has been beleaguering Judge Samuel Alito over his membership in a Princeton alumni association several decades ago, some members of which expressed racist and sexist opinions in writing. It's not clear that Alito was deeply involved with the group or that he held similar opinions, but the fair-minded Senator is trying his best to establish guilt by association.
Now it turns out according to Matt Drudge that the Senator himself was a member of an all-male club which refused membership to women:
Conservative activists are eager to point out that Sen Ted Kennedy was on shaky ground accusing the Judge Alito of associating with people opposed to the inclusion of women in private institutions, the WASHINGTON TIMES is fronting on Thursday.
The eight-term senator belonged to an all-male social club -- the Owl -- at Harvard University. The Owl refused to admit women until it was forced to do so during the 1980s, according to records kept by the HARVARD CRIMSON, the student newspaper.
A Kennedy spokeswoman said it was an entirely different matter.
"No one can question Senator Kennedy's commitment to equality, justice and civil rights," said Laura Capps. "What he was part of was a social club, not a radical group pushing a radical agenda."
Anyway, she said, even though women were admitted to the university during Mr. Kennedy's tenure, they weren't fully integrated to the campus until much later.
As if this rather tenuous distinction would matter were it Alito who belonged to the Owl rather than Kennedy.
We think that the attempt to discredit someone and disgrace them because of some tangential membership in a moderately questionable organization several decades ago is reprehensible, but that's all the Democrats can do to stop Alito. Besides, political assassination is a favored and important part of their skill set.
Even so, it seems that the only thing that matches Kennedy's hypocrisy is his chutzpah. Here's a man who was expelled from Harvard for cheating, a man who should be humiliated and disgraced by his responsibility for the death of a young woman in 1969, a man who at a D.C. restaurant rolled on the floor with Senator Chris Dodd, a waitress wedged betwixt them in the infamous waitress sandwich, while the Senators' dates were in the restroom. And this man nevertheless sits on a senate panel lecturing Samuel Alito on moral matters. Teddy, despite his own past associations, pillories Alito for having years ago belonged to an association, some of whose members expressed politically unfortunate sentiments not much different than those held by the organization to which Kennedy himself belonged. Why does anyone pay any attention to anything this man says?
For younger readers who may not be aware of the Senator's responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne you can read about it here. Other episodes in Kennedy's life are recorded here.