GEORGIA: Publisher of pro-Islamic text book claims to be getting many online threats

Posted: September 29, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam

Police are looking into a series of online threats made against a Georgia textbook publisher after a parent complained that one of the books promoted Islam and polygamy.

ORIGINAL STORY POSTED AT BNI:
georgia-middle-school-furious-parent-gets-sharia-friendly-curriculum-scrapped

TPM  The controversy began last week when Hal Medlin, the parent of a student at Campbell Middle School in Cobb County, Georgia, complained to the school about an assignment that he said “slanted positively” toward Islam. “Trying to relate this to school uniforms, which was the context they put it into, didn’t make much sense to me,” he told WSB-TV News.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the part of the assignment in question was called the “letter from Ahlima”:

The assignment by a teacher at Campbell Middle School, which asked students to write on the issue of dress codes, included a fictional two-page letter ostensibly written by a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian woman. In it, the character writes approvingly of wearing the Islamic veil — and of her fiancé’s multiple wives and the superiority of Sharia Law.

The story was picked up by anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller, which she called “grotesque.” “Misogyny, homicide bombing, Jew hatred, packaged in multi-culti tolerance of Islam, is being spoon fed to our young,” Geller wrote. (This doesn’t look like a death threat, but it is the truth)

And the publisher, InspirEd Educators, complained that a number of other bloggers made “terroristic threats” and that it has “received what the police have classified as hate email and phone calls, and the company and its staff have been threatened and discussed with threatening language on various websites and blogs.” (No threats were posted at BNI)

Local police say they are investigating the threats, which include one blogger’s comment that “there will be a blood bath,” according to WSB-TV.

An official for the publisher defended the lesson: “It’s important for kids to have some empathy for other people in the world. Some people think we’re trying to teach their children to be Muslims, and that could not be more ridiculous.” (A lot of schools are teaching about Islam in the classroom. Your kind of subtle pro-shari’a propaganda is exactly how they do it) 

Posted on 29 Sep 11 by BNI

Geller: Islamophobia a fictitious term invented by the Muslim Brotherhood

posted in:  Atlas Shrugs

Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C. Win Important Victory for the First Amendment & Conservative Blogger

NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2011

CAIR-linked lawyer dismisses $10 million defamation suit against AtlasShrugs.com blogger Pamela Geller

NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Omar Tarazi, the Ohio lawyer who represented the parents of Rifqa Bary and who had filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against AtlasShrugs.com blogger Pamela Geller, has dismissed his lawsuit with prejudice. The dismissal came on the heels of a court document filed by David Yerushalmi of the Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C., and Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, asking the court to enter a judgment in favor of Pamela Geller. The voluntary dismissal with prejudice prevents Tarazi from refilling the lawsuit at some later date and was part of a settlement in which Ms. Geller paid no money and only agreed to remove five specific blog entries out of dozens criticizing Tarazi’s involvement and handling of the Rifqa Bary juvenile proceedings.

Ms. Geller, who blogs from New York City, also refused to agree to keep the terms of the settlement confidential. As she put it, “This lawsuit was filed as part of the Islamist lawfare against critics of sharia, jihad, and honor killings, and I refused to capitulate. At the end of the day, Tarazi blinked and folded.”

Ms. Geller was unflinching in her assessment of the outcome of this suit: “This is a huge victory for the First Amendment, truth, and the anti-sharia movement in this country which is exposing an insidious cancer that brings progressives and Islamists together in common cause to attack anyone who criticizes Islamists with the threat of lawsuits, actual lawsuits, or worse, violence.”

Mr. Tarazi came under intense criticism by Ms. Geller during the Rifqa Bary litigation, which arose after the 17-year-old Rifqa converted from Islam to Christianity and ran away from her Ohio home in the summer of 2009 to take refuge with Christian friends in Florida, alleging that her father threatened to murder her in an honor killing. The case garnered enormous media coverage both nationally and internationally and involved vituperative juvenile proceedings in both Florida and Ohio.

Ms. Geller blogged about the case extensively given her work at the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an organization Ms. Geller founded and directs, the mission of which in part is to protect young Muslim women from the violence of honor killings.

In the course of her blogging about the case, which also included a rally she organized in Ohio to advocate for Rifqa’s right not to return to her parent’s home, Ms. Geller reported on various stories published at My Pet Jawa and televised on Fox News critical of Mr. Tarazi’s legal representations in court. The central allegation against Tarazi was that he had allegedly perjured himself in court filings in the Ohio juvenile proceedings.

Mr. Tarazi filed his lawsuit in September 2010 against Ms. Geller and Rifqa’s Florida lawyer, John Stemberger, seeking $10 million in damages. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio based upon diversity of citizenship. Ultimately, Mr. Tarazi and Mr. Stemberger entered into a confidential settlement and Mr. Tarazi dismissed his complaint against Mr. Stemberger.

Soon after the lawsuit was filed, Ms. Geller’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss in November 2010, asserting that Ms. Geller’s comments were protected speech under Ohio Free Speech law and under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court never got around to ruling on that motion.

In the meantime, the parties conducted discovery and in August 2011, Mr. Tarazi filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that he believed he had made out his case for liability, and asked the court to grant judgment on liability and to set a trial just on the amount of damages.

On September 19, 2011, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise filed an opposition to Tarazi’s motion and argued that not only had Tarazi failed to make out a case of defamation, but also that all of Ms. Geller’s published statements were true and not defamatory. The 400+ page opposition detailed to the court just how Tarazi had been less than candid with the juvenile court, resulting in “truth” as a defense. In the opposition papers, Ms. Geller also raised Free Speech defenses and asked the court to award her judgment and to dismiss the lawsuit against her in its entirety.

The very next day, Tarazi called Mr. Yerushalmi and asked to settle. Although Tarazi sought to keep the terms of the settlement confidential, Ms. Geller refused.

Mr. Yerushalmi explained the calculus during the settlement negotiations which culminated in a voluntary dismissal the very same day: “I explained to Mr. Tarazi: you can walk away now with no money and no secrecy agreement, or you can wait until the court dismisses your suit and renders a formal judgment that you were not truthful to the Franklin County Juvenile Court. Take your pick.” The settlement agreement and voluntary dismissal with prejudice were negotiated, drafted, and filed with the court before the close of business.

Although Ms. Geller agreed to take down and not re-post five specific blog entries that directly mentioned and criticized Tarazi, dozens of critical blogs remain and there are no restrictions on Ms. Geller’s future blogging on the Rifqa Bary affair and Tarazi’s role.

One of the claims of defamation lodged by Tarazi was that Ms. Geller had linked him to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group, which the U.S. Department of Justice had previously named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial in Texas. The trial culminated in guilty verdicts for all defendants.

During discovery, Ms. Geller’s lawyers uncovered that Tarazi in fact has personal and professional links to CAIR and argued to the court that Ms. Geller’s statements linking Tarazi to CAIR could not be defamatory because they were true. (A copy of the memorandum is available at www.davidyerushalmilaw.com under Recent Events).

Tarazi, an Ohio licensed lawyer, represented himself during the proceedings. Ms. Geller was represented by David Yerushalmi of the Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C. (New York and Washington, D.C.) and by Robert J. Muise, senior trial counsel to the Thomas More Law Center (Ann Arbor, Michigan). Patrick Dunphy of Falke & Dunphy, LLC, in Dayton served as local counsel.

About David Yerushalmi, Esq.
David Yerushalmi has been practicing law for more than 27 years. He is a litigator specializing in securities law, public policy relating to national security, and public interest law. Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed and practices in Washington, D.C., New York, California, and Arizona and serves as General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s leading national security think tanks founded by former Reagan administration official Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. www.davidyerushalmilaw.com

SOURCE Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/428220#ixzz1YcfypoLr

Stop The Islamization of America!

posted in:  Atlas Shrugs

STOP THE ISLAMIZATION OF AMERICA – Pamela Geller’s exciting new book about the stealth jihad that is infecting this country

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Posted: August 4, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam | Filed under: Islam in America | 2 Comments »

Islamic supremacism is seeping into every aspect of American life. Islamic jihad groups aren’t solely concentrating on terror attacks, but on the creeping encroachment to introduce Islamic law into this country, step-by-step and bit-by-bit, until finally America wakes up to a country transformed into an Islamic state.

In Stop Islamization of America, the renowned activist Pamela Geller and ATLAS SHRUGS blogger lays bare the chilling details of the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy of steady subversion and erosion of our freedoms, while offering a practical guide for how to fight back. Written by an original thinker and innovative, tested, successful activist, Stop Islamization of America is a much-needed wake-up call about a sinister, subversive agenda that could do nothing less than destroy the United States – with unique instructions about how we can, and must, fight back now to defend our nation and our civilization.

Stop the Islamization of America will be released by WND Books on September 6. It comes at a time when Islamic supremacists are demanding ever more accommodation of Islamic principles and practices, and growing ever more aggressive in eroding our freedoms – with politically correct public officials only too happy to oblige them. This book offers proven ways for Americans to fight back – lawfully, peacefully, and effectively.

Pre-Order at Amazon: Stop the Islamization of America

When Is an Ideology Responsible for Murder?

Last week, a psychotic anti-multiculturalism, anti-immigrant, anti-Marxist named Anders Behring Breivik shot up a children’s summer camp in Norway. The left wing media was only too eager to point to his ideology as the rationale for the shooting. David Neiwert of CrooksandLiars.com stated that Breivik subscribed to the “theories about ‘Cultural Marxism’ … promoted by the likes of Andrew Breitbart​, among others.” The Daily Kos tried to link Breivik to Accuracy in Academia and the World Congress of Families. Think Progress blamed Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, blogger Pamela Geller​, author Brigitte Gabriel​ and scholar of Islam Robert Spencer. In short, it was a repeat of the Sarah Palin-Gabby Giffords story, only writ large.

This begs the question: when should an ideology be held responsible for murder undertaken by its adherents?

The quickest answer — when an adherent of an ideology commits murder, the murderer is responsible — is obviously the wrong one. Adherents of every ideology commit murder on a regular basis. They may be doing so because they misinterpret the ideology or because they are insane.

A more rational answer would require an ideology to fulfill two basic criteria in order to be blamed for a particular act of violence. First, the ideology must itself promote the sort of violence at issue and the type of violence that takes place must bear some resemblance to the violence being promoted. This makes sense. If a group of pacifists shot-up a school, we could say with accuracy that they’d clearly misinterpreted pacifism. The same does not hold true of neo-Nazi ideology and Jews.

Second, a large number of adherents to the ideology must engage in or support the form of violence in question. It is possible for formerly violent ideologies to change over time — no one, for example, save Timothy McVeigh​, thinks that Constitutional ideology is violent anymore, despite Thomas Jefferson​’s proclamations about the tree of liberty and the blood of patriots.

Let’s take a test case, Islam. There is no question that Islamic texts promote violence against Jews and Christians. For example: the Koran famously proclaims, “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” With regard to Jews, one famous tidbit of Islamic oral tradition delightfully states, “The Day of Resurrection will not arrive until the Moslems make war against the Jews and kill them, and until a Jew is hiding behind a rock and tree, and the rock and tree say, ‘Oh Moslem, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’”

Now, if these verses and teachings were interpreted differently over time — as some seemingly violent verses in the Torah and the New Testament​ have been, almost universally, by Jewish and Christian scholars — we would have no problem.

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Posted in:  Front Page Magazine

Feature Video of the Week — 60 Minutes on the Ground Zero Mosque

Posted at:  Stop Izlamization of America

September 11th Freedom Rally at Ground Zero

NY Judge Gives Ground Zero Mosquestrosity the Nod: Last Legal Challenge Removed

AFDI/SIOA 9/11 Freedom Rally: Stand Against Ground Zero Mosque, and Durban III, Stand for America

NEW YORK: The human rights organization American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) will be hosting its second annual 9/11 Freedom Rally on September 11 at 3pm at Park Place and West Broadway.

Free citizens are coming from all over the U.S. to attend the rally. “It is crucial to stand for freedom on this tenth anniversary of the heinous 9/11 jihad attacks,” said AFDI Executive Director Pamela Geller. “We must show the jihadists we are unbowed in the defense of freedom. As a judge yesterday dismissed a suit by a New York firefighter challenging the construction of the mosque, the last legal hurdle blocking it has been removed. But we are not giving up. It is time for free citizens to make a stand.”

AFDI and its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) program are encouraging all Americans to stand against the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero and the anti-Semitic Durban III conference that will be held in New York City at the same time, and for American values on the tenth anniversary of the worst attack ever on American soil.

The confirmed list of speakers includes 9/11 family members Alexander and Maureen Santora, who lost their firefighter son Christopher; Sally Regenhard, whose son Christian was killed on 9/11; Nelly Braginsky, who lost her son Alexander; and others.

Other speakers include former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton (video message); the courageous ex-Muslim human rights activist Wafa Sultan; war hero and North Carolina Congressional candidate Ilario Pantano; former prosecutor and bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy; popular radio host Joyce Kaufman; Darla Dawald, National Director of the Patriot Action Network; James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Taskforce (VAST); Coptic Christian activist Joseph Nassralla; Iraqi ex-Muslim Paul Gaynos; and others.

Hosting the rally are Pamela Geller, publisher of the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog, executive director of AFDI and SIOA, and author of Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books); and AFDI/SIOA associate director Robert Spencer, the bestselling author and director of Jihad Watch.

Building the Ground Zero mosque is not an issue of religious freedom, but of resisting an effort to insult the victims of 9/11 and to establish a beachhead for political Islam and Islamic supremacism in New York. Cordoba Initiative board member imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is an open proponent of Sharia, Islamic law, a system that denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. Given the thousands of triumphal mosques that have been built on the cherished sites of conquered peoples throughout Islamic history, the mosque leaders’ claim that this mosque would be understood differently by Muslims worldwide lack foundation.

The Durban III conference follows upon two previous conferences that scapegoated and demonized the state of Israel in service of Islamic jihad and Islamic supremacist interests. The rally will defend Israel against the defamation to which it will be subjected at this conference. It will also call upon the city to remove roadblocks to the reconstruction of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed on 9/11 and since then mired in bureaucratic red tape that has prevented its rebuilding – in stark contrast to the help Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials have given to the Ground Zero Mosque project.

AFDI/SIOA is one of America’s foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

St Nicholas Church Rally at Ground Zero – Rebuild the 95-Year-Old Church, Stop the Ground Zero Mosquestrosity!

Apparently, Islamic Supremacism trumps Christianity at Ground Zero. 

While Mayor Bloomberg wets himself in anxious haste to build the cultural obscenity, the Ground Zero mosque, the iconic St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, built in 1916 and destroyed by the destruction of the World Trade towers by Muslim terrorists, remains vanquished, unable to rebuild. Bloomberg is lobbying for 911 taxpayer funds for the Islamic supremacist grifters behind the Ground Zero mosque, but the St. Nicholas church is in purgatory, ten years after the worst day in modern American history.

Perhaps St. Nicholas should claim they are a mosque. Mayor Gloomberg and NYC Council speaker Quinn would probably pour the cement for its foundation (Bloomberg worked behind the scenes to get Ground Zero Mosque approved).

St. Nicholas Church is suing the Port Authority, claiming that agency is blocking church’s reconstruction (NY Daily News)

A notice of claim was filed on behalf of St. Nicholas Church and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, declaring their intention to sue.”This claim arises out of the arrogance, bad faith and fraudulent conduct of the Port Authority in preventing St. Nicholas from re-building its church at Ground Zero,” the church says in its legal filings.

Why not tie up the Ground Zero mega mosque in this red tape morass?

Book September 11th — we will be holding our second annual freedom rally for our war dead and to protest the 15-story mega mosque going up on Ground Zero. Be there. Join us on the tenth anniversary of that bloody, brutal day when jihad came to America.

The stealth jihadists behind the Ground Zero mosquestrosity launched a public fund-raising drive yesterday in a bid to open its doors to the public with an art exhibit that would debut just 10 days after the Sept. 11 anniversary:

The group plans to open the three-month exhibit on Sept. 21, which the United Nations has declared the International Day of Peace. The exhibit would feature portraits of the city’s immigrant kids representing at least 171 different countries.

“NYChildren Exhibit: Let’s open Park51’s doors to the World!” the fund-raising solicitation says. By early last night, Park51 had raised $867 from 14 donors, according to Kickstarter.

“While our critics know us as the Ground Zero Mosque, we are the Park51 Community Center,” Park51 says in the appeal. “This exhibition is about finding the courage to meet and get to know neighbors to build trust and friendship.”

96-Year-Old St. Nicholas Church at Ground Zero Sues for Right to Rebuild While Bloomberg lobbies for 911 Taxpayer Dollars for Ground Zero Mosque Supremacists 

St Nicholas Church Rally at Ground Zero (6-26-11) by Pamela Hall

TEN YEARS AFTER 9-11 they are still asking, “How long must St. Nicholas WAIT to Rebuild?”

The video is 45 minutes (yes) but well worth your time. Listen to the intelligent statements and pleas regarding the STONEWALLING of the City Of New York towards St. Nicholas Church, as they have been denied over and over for TEN YEARS to  rebuild their Church Home (while the city supports the creation of a mosque in a Coat Factory)

The are some very important and useful statements made by the politicians concerning how the church has been disabused vs the proposed mosque. Watch it.

It’s explosive – the  revelation that Bloomberg is kicking the Greek Orthodox Community to the curb.

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The leading membership-based association for the nation’s three million American citizens of Greek heritage, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA),]

was host to this rally at Ground Zero …..calling for St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church to be rebuilt at 130 Liberty Street.

The rally was on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 2 p.m., at Liberty Street and Trinity Place in Lower Manhattan… across from Ground Zero.  Where generations of a church…that has been there since 1913…came together…. BEGGING to rebuild their Church!

Federal, state, and local legislators were invited to attend, many were there, speaking to the OUTRAGE and stonewalling of the Port Authority and NYC and State politicians who have kept St. Nicholas from being rebuilt.

Ten Years later they must still beg to REBUILD  a church that has been at that location since 1913….

Yet, it seems Mayor Bloomberg can’t do enough to help build at Mosque in a Coat Factory at Ground Zero

While TEN YEARS LATER , negotiations to rebuild St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, the only house of worship destroyed in the attacks of September 11….negotiations between the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and church representatives and the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey came to a halt in August 2010.  The people of St. Nicholas ask : WHY?

In support of the effort to rebuild St. Nicholas at 130 Liberty Street, a site chosen by the Port Authority, AHEPA submitted more than 20,000 signatures .

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Posted by Pamela Geller on Monday, June 27, 2011 at 08:20 PM in Ground Zero Mega Mosque: Takbir! | Permalink | Comments (7) ShareThis

Pamela Geller says, “The Whole World Knows that the Kennedys are racist, misogynist, adultererous antisemites”

“The whole world knows that Geert Wilders is a racist,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says, “The whole world knows that Geert Wilders is a racist.” What world would that be, RK? This coming from a demagogue with the ethics of a snake. Who supports Hugo Chavez. This is the same genius who blamed 911 on Ronald Reagan.

RFK’s claptrap propaganda has been debunked and exposed by the the left and the right.

Piety and moral superiority coming from a member of the K-gang. There is nothing right or righteous about this pox on the American landscape. The Kennedy family made its fortune illegally, running liquor during prohibition. The Kennedy patriarch, Joe Kennedy, was a Nazi lover. Throughout 1938, while the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany and Austria intensified, Kennedy attempted to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler. That is racism.

The family history is littered with murder, rape, misogyny, adultery ……… apparently, so is RFK’s marriage. Am I surprised that Robert Kennedy would support supremacists over defenders of freedom? Uh, no.

Is the third generation of this goon dynasty righteous?

Here, in reverse order of importance, are the top seven Kennedy sex scandals:

7. Joe Kennedy, son of Robert Kennedy and former Congressman, secretly had his 12-year marriage to Sheila Rauch annulled by the Vatican. Rauch only found out about the annulment years later, after Kennedy remarried. She wrote a very angry book about the experience, Shattered Faith, since the Church’s decreeing that the marriage never existed left her twin sons in everlasting limbo. Rauch pointed out that only powerful people like the Kennedy’s could unilaterally cancel 12 years of marriage. (This raises the question of whether the Church can gain entry to Heaven for powerful people who have sinned.)

6. One of the storied political couplings of the twentieth century was between Andrew Cuomo, son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert Kennedy. The younger Cuomo was forced to withdraw his own bid for the governorship (although he is now New York’s Attorney General) in 2002 when it was revealed that his wife, to whom he had been married 13 years and with whom he had three daughters, had been having a long-term affair with a married man. Kerry Kenedy’s philandering shows that Kennedy disregard for marital niceties extends to the distaff side of the family as well.

5. An extremely unappetizing Kennedy scandal involved Joe’s brother and campaign manager, Michael. Like his brother and sister, Michael was stably married with children when it was revealed he had been having an affair with a family babysitter, beginning when the girl was 14! This, of course, is a crime that would get a non-Kennedy registered as a sexual predator. For some reason (perhaps bribery and threats to her and her family), the girl refused to press charges, and Kennedy entered treatment for sex and alcohol addiction. Michael Kennedy had been keeping an extremely low profile when he died in an accident on a family skiing trip.

4. All of these scandals concerned third-generation Kennedy’s. But the stories of sexual assaults, infidelity, and religious hypocrisy began with the family’s patriarch, Joe Kennedy. In Swanson on Swanson, silent screen star Gloria Swanson revealed having an affair with Kennedy when, she claimed, he forced himself on her during his business trips to Hollywood when he left his saintly wife, Rose, at home in Massachusetts.  (Swanson was most pissed off that, despite his legendary financial acumen, Joe lost a ton of her dough.) Other Kennedy family historians report that the elder Kennedy made advances on his sons’ girlfriends!

3. Back to the younger Kennedy’s, in 1991 Kennedy nephew William Smith was charged with rape while staying with uncle Teddy in the family’s seaside estate in Palm Beach, FL. The woman claimed she met Smith at a night club at which he was accompanied by Ted Kennedy and his son, Patrick. Later, while ostensibly showing her around the estate, Smith began pursuing and pawing her as she tried to escape. Other women were found who described having similar experiences with the Kennedy nephew, but Smith was acquitted.

2. Both President Jack Kennedy – whose sexual escapades were legendary – and younger brother Bobby had closely contiguous sexual liaisons with Marilyn Monroe. Numerous conspiracy theories have been developed around the Kennedys’ involvement in Monroe’s death, which occurred in the aftermath of these affairs. At a minimum, the relationships were extremely damaging to Monroe’s fragile mental health.

1. What could most interfere with Ted Kennedy’s passage to Heaven (as it frustrated his aspirations to be president) was his involvement in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Following a party with six young female campaign workers on the island of Chappaquiddick, Kennedy was giving Kopechne a ride back to her hotel when he drove off a bridge. Kopechne drowned in the car, and Kennedy left the scene to consult with Kennedy family advisers. In fact, he never reported the incident, which was discovered independently the next morning! Kennedy was charged only with leaving the scene of an accident.

Of course, you and I can wonder how our lives would have been derailed if we were involved in a situation like this (Kennedy was married). But the Kennedy’s are not deterred by such experiences, as the subsequent actions of his nephews and niece indicate. Are there separate rules – both legal and psychological – for people like the Kennedy’s?

P.S. (Feb 19, 2009): Perhaps the greatest “scandal” – more of a tragedy – was the case of Ted’s wife at the time of Chappaquiddick, Joan Bennett Kennedy, who became a ravaged alcoholic (in 2005, when she was 68, her children took legal guardianship of her affairs after several late-life drunken episodes).  The “Kennedy wife thing” of tolerating non-stop cheating while establishing her own life didn’t work well for her (unlike Jackie).  According to the Boston Globe: “During the [wedding] festivities, Jack [who was 15 years his brother’s senior], Ted’s godfather and best man, wore a  microphone because the Bennetts had hired a film crew as a wedding gift.  Later, watching the footage, Joan would hear Jack whisper to his brother that marriage didn’t mean you had to be faithful.”

Posted by Pamela Geller on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) ShareThis