After the news, the stories.
Some good angles for newspapers:
“FIGHTER” MENTALITY AND OPTIMISM
News of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s brain tumor has led to an outpouring of support from friends and colleagues, with many connecting his “fighter” mentality and “powerful spirit” in the Senate with the ability to fight a personal battle…. Some studies find that optimism is associated with lower risk of heart attacks.
Jeanna Bryner from LiveScience.com
THE END OF “CAMELOT”
The bigger narrative of when Kennedy shuffles off this mortal coil is the end of “Camelot,” that idyllic image of John, Bobby, Teddy and the rest of the Kennedy clan playing touch football at the family’s Hyannisport compound, of Jackie Kennedy’s perfect pillbox hats and little JFK Jr. saluting his father’s casket as it rolls by. This is the end of an era in American politics and history, despite how many of the next generation of the family are in public service. Ted Kennedy is the last tie to Camelot and has been the family’s patriarch for 40 years. The nostalgia for that “simpler time” will come back full force.
Heather Muse from The Village Voice
A REAL CHARACTER
A Little Like Everyone, a Lot Like No One Else: Congress is rife with types: the Serious Legislator, the Bomb Thrower, the Show Horse, the Workhorse, the Blowhard, the Orator, the Partisan, the Statesman, the Prima Donna, the Mentor, the Old-fashioned Pol and the Visionary. Senator Edward M. Kennedy is the rare man who shows flashes of them all, making him a singular senator. Presidents come and go, Senate leaders pass through, majority power ebbs and flows, but Mr. Kennedy has for more than four decades commanded the nation’s attention from the Senate floor.
Carl Hulse from The New York Times
THE LAST LIBERAL ICON
It was 28 years ago, that a Kennedy – vanquished, for once – delivered the unforgettable peroration of his keynote speech at the Democratic convention that nominated his rival, Jimmy Carter. “The cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die,” Kennedy told an audience that had tears in its eyes. His words were at once an epitaph for his own dream of the White House, an encomium to his fallen brothers, and the articulation of a myth.
Rupert Cornwell from The Independent
And also, the wrong way to tell the news on the front page of The New York Post…
(AP Photo/Steven Senne)
