Lion in Winter

THE press notices that followed the announcement that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor were, quite properly, sympathetic. You don’t kick a man on whom the shadow of death has just fallen.

But the instinct of candor rebels against the constraints of hagiography. Such was the delicacy of some of the encomiasts (among them Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post and Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times) that, with the exception of oblique references to “personal tragedy” and a dynasty’s “tragic epic,” they failed to mention the central event of the senator’s public career. Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff went so far as to express doubt about what the central event was. “Pinpointing the mo-ment that defines Edward M. Kennedy’s 45-year Senate career,” she wrote, “is, to say the least, a bit of a challenge.”

About the Author

Michael Knox Beran

Michael Knox Beran, a lawyer and writer, is the author of WASPs: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy.

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THE press notices that followed the announcement that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor were, quite properly, sympathetic. You don’t kick a man on whom the shadow of death has just fallen.

But the instinct of candor rebels against the constraints of hagiography. Such was the delicacy of some of the encomiasts (among them Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post and Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times) that, with the exception of oblique references to “personal tragedy” and a dynasty’s “tragic epic,” they failed to mention the central event of the senator’s public career. Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff went so far as to express doubt about what the central event was. “Pinpointing the mo-ment that defines Edward M. Kennedy’s 45-year Senate career,” she wrote, “is, to say the least, a bit of a challenge.”