Monday, January 09, 2006

Children's Literature

First it was Jamie Lee Curtis. Then it was Madonna. Now it's Ted Kennedy.
Yes, moral paragon Ted Kennedy is writing a children's book, about a "dog's eye" view of a day in the senator's life in D.C. I'm all about the cutesy explanation of the election process for kids, mainly because most adults could do well to read a colorfully illustrated rundown of the basics of American government. But I'm fairly sure the dog angle has been done for children's books (I do know I've read one with a duck who runs for president) and I don't really know what Ted can add to this topic.
The book I want Ted to write will be called One Night On Chappaquiddick, and will be a "riverbank's eye" view of the night he drove drunk (or homicidal, depending on who you ask) and drove himself and Mary Jo Kopechne off a bridge. Somehow, the big fat Kennedy escaped the car while teeny tiny Mary Jo met her death in the 1967 Oldsmobile. It would go a little something like this:

And old Ted, he dove and dove,
to save Mary Jo he strove and strove.
But Ted, he was drunk; and Ted, he was fat,
and it's not easy to rescue someone like that.
So Ted sat on the banks of the mighty river,
his head in his hand, his lips a-quiver.
"What shall I do, oh, what shall I say
that will make this horrible scandal go away?"
But the best rum-soaked Ted could do
was sit and think about how the press would construe
this terrible accident as monstrous crime
and he'd ruin the Kennedy name by doing hard time.
In his haze, Ted decided to go back to the cottage
which was not an idea of the highest wattage...

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