Maybe it is because I am African American, and his family has historically meant a lot to African Americans. Maybe it is because I'm from New England, with family from Boston. Maybe it's because I've lost family members to cancer. Maybe it's because I am an unashamed liberal. Probably because of all of those things, I mourn the death of Senator Ted Kennedy.
I wanted to list some of the bills that he authored and helped pass, but on his senate website, the PDF listing his accomplishments was 54 pages long. While I'd like to say that I'll read it, I know I probably won't get to it soon enough to post this in a timely manner. What I saw was that he authored over 2,500 bills, hundreds of which became law. When the honors and accolades die down over the next few weeks or months, and scandalous memories are dragged out of dusty corners, his legacy as the "liberal lion of the senate" will live on. Hopefully, his dream of universal health care will not die with him.
On the cover of a local newspaper a few weeks ago was a white woman whose health problems led to her losing her job, her health coverage, and her home. I mention that she was white because, unfortunately, the general public sometimes has less sympathy for a person of color in the same situation. The attitude when you don't want to relate to someone else's plight is often: "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; no one helped me." As untrue and callous as those statements are, the real point here is that so many of us are one serious illness, one major uncovered procedure, one disability away from the same predicament facing the woman in that article.
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