Despite a strong effort to take over first place from his uncle, Congressman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. remains in second place in the race to be named Most Embarrassing Kennedy Ever.
RFK Jr.'s recent post on Hurricane Katrina invokes biblical imagery in a kind of postmodern pagan deification of nature, arguing that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour brought the disaster on his state because he opposed ratification of the Kyoto Treaty's limits on so-called greenhouse gases.
Besides ignoring the meteorological reality that hurricane strength and frequency depends on patterns of ocean currents that change constantly over time and are not quickly influenced by atmospheric temperature changes, the Congressman's remarks also ignore the geological reality that dramatic events in the atmosphere, oceans and crust of the earth have shaped the earth's surface since the planet first formed, with or without the effects of human activity.
Endorsing the myth that Earth was an edenic paradise prior to industrialization--or at least prior to the Bush Administration, the remarks also show no understanding for the recurrence of disasters affecting major cities throughout human history. One observer remarked, "This is the dumbest blame-casting since Mrs. O'Leary's cow took the rap for the Chicago fire."
Despite this strong showing in the Kennedy embarrassment standings, Senator Ted Kennedy remains securely in first place, the position he's held since July 1969. The Senator established his lead by driving a car in to the water off Martha's Vineyard. The Senator was apparently intoxicated at the time, and was in the company of a young woman other than his wife. That passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned in the accident, while the Senator escaped and contacted someone other than the legal authorities. The Senator's actions managed to gain public attention despite the fact that they occurred on the evening that the Apollo 11 mission first landed men on the moon.
The "Most Embarrassing Kennedy Ever Contest" was first established by family patriarch Joseph Kennedy, Sr., who led the standings in its first years on the strength of his very public extramarital affair with neurotic film star Gloria Swanson and his statements supporting European fascism while serving as US ambassador to Great Britain in the Franklin Roosevelt administration.
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