MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“The Kennedy’s Had Issues: And Your Family Doesn’t?” Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, August 30, 2009
You won’t find this in the Declaration of Independence. The concept is nowhere laid out in the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Ayn Rand be damned. The individual is not the basic unit of American society. The family is.
How else to explain the extraordinary outpouring of emotion this weekend from Kennedy-land?
Ted Kennedy was not just a politician who died. In fact, the reaction over his death has little to do with politics. It’s a family thing at its core.
Ted was the final member of a ruling family’s key generation. We watched, cheered and mourned them, for nearly 50 years.
The Kennedy family had its limitations. Like our families do.
They had feuds, disappointments and embarrassments. Yours don’t?
Their charms were unevenly distributed, just like their faults – and ours.
And through it all, the family whole really was greater than the sum of the individual parts.
It’s strange, isn’t it? We broke away from England, disgusted with its royal heredity – so a couple of centuries later we could turn over our government to a succession of Clintons, Bushes and Kennedys.
R.I.P., E.M.K., family man.
POWER NICKNAMES
1. Danny
2. Teddy
3 The Fed
4.. Swine flu
5. Yanks
PAST/BLAST: “I wasn’t a cool kid or popular; I sort of laid low and hung with my friends. I didn’t really go into the city. Some kids growing up on Long Island would go into New York City every chance they got. I was one of those kids that feared the city and stuck to my suburb,” writer, director, Onion alum and Merrick native Robert Siegel tells Paste Magazine. In his gritty new film “Big Fan,” a violent incident at a nightclub sparks a scandal involving a New York Giants star. Can’t wait for Plaxico’s review?
CLEVER ISLAND: Readers had some slick name suggestions for LIPA’s new fridge-rebate offer: “Cold Cash” (Hugh Parkhurst), “Cash for Coolers” (Joan Gessner), “Icebox Ice” (Amir Charles) and on and on. Personally, I’m kinda partial to Kevin Mitman’s retro near-rhyme: “Cooler Moolah.” Thanks for the creativity, even the real groaning stinkers.
ASKED AND UNANSWERED: Will someone please explain: What’s the argument AGAINST a guardrail between the motor vehicles and the bikes on the Wantagh? . . . Oh, great, this is the big robocall crackdown? All calls are banned except the ones I keep getting at home? . . . That creepy abducted-girl story – be honest, does it make you glance more warily into your next-door neighbor’s backyard? . . . Free Jones Beach rent for Donald Trump? And to show his appreciation, Donald won’t be charging fees at his eventual catering hall, right? Right? . . . Now that disgraced Smithtown building boss Robert Bonerba has pleaded guilty to bribe-taking and sentenced to 2 years in jail, will his loyal pals finally quit complaining that I referred to the disgraced Smithtown building boss as the “disgraced Smithtown building boss”? . . . A couple of dead crows in Huntington tested positive for West Nile? This is the kind of PR crows need? . . . Trop-storm Danny: “deadly surf” (meteorologists) or “killer breaks” (surfer dudes)? . . . Is “ticket clerk” now an endangered occupation at the LIRR? Seems so as 20 more stations go all-machine . . . Counterfeit cigarettes busts on the Poospatuck reservation, LI beverage dealers charged in a bottle-redemption scam – oh, my goodness, is this what smoking and drinking has come to? . . . A health care town hall in this environment? What exactly did Tim Bishop expect? An erudite exchange of nuanced views? . . . If TV is really moving onto the home computer, how soon ’til we trade the coffee-table remote for a coffee-table mouse pad? . . . Are you jealous of Katie Lee Joel‘s horseshoe-shaped Sagaponack kitchen with the Wolf range and built-in cappuccino machine? For $22.5 mil, it could be yours. . .”Death Before Dishonor?” Well, OK.
E-mail ellis@henican.comFollow at Twitter.com/henican
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