Joyce Carol Oates' Cranial-Rectal Inversion

Writer Joyce Carol Oates poses what, in saner times, would be considered sarcastic inquiry:

Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?

But, of course, in the current day this vacuous, dishonest, crone wants us to take the question seriously.

Why do I call her 'dishonest'? The honest question would have been phrased to encompass reality. That question would be more along the lines of:

Yet if one weighs the criminally irresponsible taking of a young woman's life against the 'accomplishments' of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?

As the question is originally phrased (and in the finest modern liberal tradition) the question is only reality-based. One doesn't weigh the life of a young woman against the so-called deeds of a man. One weighs the misdeeds against the deeds of the man. And in the American (borne from Judeo-Christian traditions at a minimum) society, Ms. Oates, there is very little worse in the 'misdeed' category than what Ted Kennedy did to Ms. Kopechne.

BTW: In Oates' version of the question, there is also the implied creepiness, a sorites paradox of evil as it were, that if Kennedy had killed more than just one young woman...well then, THAT would have been different. As if we needed any more insight into the twisted mind of Joyce Carol Oates.

Update 08/30/09.

Mark Steyn wraps up the issue perfectly:

"The senator’s actions in the hours and days after emerging from that pond tell us something ugly about Kennedy the man. That he got away with it tells us something ugly about American public life."

...and that is only the conclusion. Read it all here.