From today's Boston Herald:
Another Kennedy crime broomed away
By Howie Carr
Boston Herald Columnist
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - Updated: 11:05 AM EST
The only thing missing at Patches Kennedy’s press conference yesterday was his father’s post-Chappaquiddick neck brace.
Patches’ problems:
“I’ve always said,” the dim lad began, “I wanted to take full responsibility for my actions - ”
Full responsibility - but no mug shot. Full responsibility amounted to a suspended license - wink, wink - and $350 in fines and court costs. Do you think Patches had to arrange a payment schedule with the probation office?
“Today in court, I accepted the consequences of my actions.”
Riiiight. That poor window-washer who iced the seagull high above Devonshire Street is looking at more time than Patches.
“I’m very grateful,” he said, “to be on the road to recovery.”
He’s been on this road a very long time, since his prep-school days snorting coke. If he were an over-the-road truck driver, Patches would be picking up a gold watch for his first million miles on the road to recovery.
Let’s just hope it’s not the same road, with a bridge over a tidal pond, that his father took in 1969.
And please don’t let it be the four-lane Route 3 his mother ran off into a ditch, or the sandy cut-out on Nantucket where his cousin Joe crippled Pam Kelley for life.
Like father, like son. Like mother, like son.
The reality is, this was another Kennedy crime that was broomed in the halls of justice where the only justice is in the halls. Everybody knew the fix was in, which was why Patches had to drag along his AA “sponsor,” Rep. Jim Ramstad, (R-Minn). He is to Patches what Orrin Hatch is to Teddy - a first GOP line of defense. And Ramstad also served as a shield for Patches as he fled the reporters’ volley of questions:
“Were you drinking that night, Congressman Kennedy?” one scribe shouted.
“Will you resign?”
To which Patches could have answered, 1) I’m a Kennedy - what do you think? and 2) Resign? My dad killed a woman and he didn’t resign.
As Patches was screwing out of the press conference, Ch. 7’s Dan Hausle sidled up to him and thrust the microphone into his face.
Hausle: “Were you treated like everyone else?”
Patches: “I was treated fairly.”
Like everyone else named Kennedy maybe.
According to a cop, here are some of the phrases that Patches would have heard that night, had he been treated fairly:”
“Sir, please blow into this plastic tube until I tell you to stop.”
“Sir, please focus your eyes on the tip of my pen and follow its movements left to right with your eyes without moving your head.”
“Sir, walk nine steps on this straight line, heel to toe, then turn around and repeat another nine steps along the same line.”
And of course, everyone’s favorite line:
“You have the right to remain silent . . . ”
Of course Patches is still stonewalling on whether he was drunk.
In one of his more bizarre interviews on his way out to the Mayo Clinic, he basically told the Providence Journal that he’d been framed by a Republican waitress at his favorite D.C. watering-hole. A Kennedy framed on an OUI - I told you he was the runt of the litter’s runt of the litter.
caller last night came up with a limerick about this latest Kennedy misadventure: “There once was a boy named Patches/ Who got into a lot of car crashes./ He claimed he had a condition,/ Said ’twas a family tradition./ Now bad driving comes to its fruition.”
So Patches says he wants to take full responsibility. Does this mean he’ll next be pleading guilty to his earlier car accident in Portsmouth, RI? Next time don’t forget the neck brace, Patches.
JT
