Recently in Ave atque vale Category

David Frum recalls the moment he stopped despising Ted Kennedy. Why had he started?

I know exactly the hour when my opinion of Sen. Ted Kennedy permanently changed. I had remained very angry at the Massachusetts liberal for many years since his 1986 speech so unjustly vilifying the great conservative justice Robert Bork:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could not be taught about evolution.

For 15 years thereafter I could hardly bear to hear his name spoken. Nor was my temper much improved by his rough handling of another great conservative legalist, Theodore Olson, at Olson's confirmation hearings as solicitor general. I was always ready to laugh at the harsh jokes conservatives told about the senator's legendarily self-indulgent personal laugh. It seemed a fair judgment on an unfair man.

Then came 9/11.

You've got to read about the amazing grace Kennedy later showed that revolutionized Frum's opinion of the man.

You never really know about people, do you? I'm thinking right now about a conversation I had last year with my friend B. about a well-known political controversialist, whose public pronouncements and activism often drive me crazy. "What's wrong with that guy?" I said to B. Ah, said B., let me tell you something about him that you don't know. B. went on to relate a story in which the unsympathetic public figure behaved in private with such staggering generosity to a stranger in need that I had trouble reconciling what I knew about the man in public with this private behavior. But it was true. They were the same man. I'm glad it's up to God to judge the eternal fate of human souls, because only He can know the whole story.

And so, the last brother of that mythical generation of Kennedys is gone, and of the children of Joe and Rose, only Jean Kennedy Smith remains. After the death of his brothers, and until the election of Obama, Teddy Kennedy was the iconic American liberal. We always like to say that it's the "end of an era" when a historically significant figure passes, but in Sen. Kennedy's case, it really is true. Whatever else one might say about him, Ted Kennedy was a survivor. He endured the rise and fall of American conservatism, though he did not live to see his signature issue -- health care for all -- become a reality. I thought this bit from the NYT obit was spot-on:

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

Kennedy was a figure of novelistic tragedy. All the potential for greatness he possessed he squandered because of his inability to transcend his own all too human weaknesses. Chappaquiddick was only the worst of it. He did, of course, achieve a kind of greatness, and one shouldn't try to take that away from him. But it's hard to think of him this morning without thinking about what might have been had he been able to bear the burden of history and his slain brothers' legacies. He could have done so much more with what he had been given. He was a Kennedy. RIP.

UPDATE: And what he did to Judge Bork is one of his most noxious legacies.

One of the last of the old-school journos dies of cancer. What many people who only saw him as a conservative pundit failed to understand about Novak is that he was first and foremost a dogged reporter. Excerpt from his newspaper's editorial obit:

In speeches to college graduation classes, Bob distilled the essence of his years-long ruminations on America for young people just starting out in life:

"Always love your country -- but never trust your government!

"That should not be misunderstood. I certainly am not advocating civil disobedience, must less insurrection or rebellion. What I am advocating is to not expect too much from government and be wary of its power, even the power of a democratic government in a free country."

Can I tell you that I am not looking forward to returning to my regular job next week, even though I'm ready to see my friends and get back into a regular routine again, because it requires me to pay close attention to daily news? Having been freed from that responsibility for the last two months, I've been able to notice more easily things like the passing of Harry Patch, Britain's last surviving World War I combat veteran. Excerpt from today's NYT report from the funeral:

A Belgian diplomat read an excerpt from Mr. Patch's 2007 autobiography, "The Last Fighting Tommy," in which he described an offensive during the battle at Passchendaele, the bloodiest chapter in the Ypres fighting, when he came across a fellow soldier "ripped from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel" during a British assault on German lines.

The episode reinforced in Mr. Patch, a devout Christian, the belief that there is a life after death. "When we got to him, he looked at us and said, 'Shoot me,' " he recalled. "He was beyond all human help, and before we could draw a revolver he was dead. And the final word he uttered was 'Mother!' It wasn't a cry of despair, it was a cry of surprise and joy."

He added, "I'm positive that when he left this world, wherever he went, his mother was there, and from that day, I've always remembered that cry, and that death is not the end."

For many in Britain, Mr. Patch's death signaled another kind of end, the departure of the last man living who could tell what it was to be a soldier in "the Great War," as many here still call it, leaving only military archives and books and documentaries to tell the story. "We mark the end of an era," said the Very Rev. John Clarke, the dean of the cathedral. "The last voice with direct experience of combat in the trenches of the First World War has fallen silent."

According to the Times, the last French and German combat vets died in the last decade. Mr. Patch was the last of his kind.

Somehow, given the civilization-changing consequences of that accursed war, this strikes me as more important news than anything else we might have read in the past day or two. RIP, Harry Patch.

The '80s-era film director John Hughes has died. RIP, well and truly. He was responsible for some of the happiest memories of my life inside a movie house. Rachel Carner and I saw "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" together in some theater in Lafayette, La. Good times, good times.