Who Is -- and Who Isn't -- Defined by their Worst Moments?

Mama has a slight correction to Tuesday’s Substack.

My mother notes that her headmaster at Ecole Internationale de Genève did not call an assembly to announce the demise of Joseph Stalin. Rather, he shared the news during school lunch. He was so horrified by the exultation that greeted his announcement that he called an assembly later that afternoon, and it was there and then he condemned the vice of cheering on death.

I should note too that the Ecole Internationale de Genève is the world’s oldest international secondary school, founded exactly one hundred years ago. The primary language of instruction was initially French, but switched to English as the composition of the student body shifted after the Second World War. The headmaster who declared, with great emotion, that “death is never on our side" deserves to have his name remembered: Fred Roquette.

That correction and clarification aside, a few readers wrote emails to complain that I was wrong to regard Toby Keith and Teddy Kennedy as equally controversial. Keith’s views may have made him anathema to the left, but he did not kill a woman, as many believe Kennedy did. In my original piece, I lamented that we are a people reluctant to acknowledge complexity or draw distinctions. Some felt that by lumping the two late TKs together, I was failing to draw a very meaningful distinction indeed.

Let us stipulate that Teddy Kennedy, at the very least, was complicit in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne in the 1969 incident at Chappaquiddick. He was convicted only of leaving the scene of an accident, but many regard his failure to try to rescue his passenger from the water (and his failure to notify emergency services) to be manslaughter, if not worse.

It is easy for me to say that we ought not to judge people by their worst moments. Joseph Stalin had a pattern of having people murdered. Teddy Kennedy did not, though I am sure there are some conspiracy theorists eager to suggest otherwise. Mary Jo Kopechne’s (probably) preventable death was a “worst moment” for Teddy, and not part of a pattern. He lived to be 78 years old, dying forty years after Chappaquiddick. That’s a lot of moments! Even his ideological enemies generally stipulate that Kennedy did some good things, and was kind to some people. (He had many conservative friends — he and Utah Republican Orrin Hatch were famously devoted to each other.) On the other hand, leaving a woman to drown is, I think, an especially bad moment. It is not akin to making a drunken pass at a colleague, or shoplifting a candy bar, or uttering a racial slur in a moment of rage. Is it not possible that some “worst moments” — even if they are singular and brief — are so awful that they DO define an entire life?

The jury, as they say, is out on that.

When I was thirteen, I supported Teddy Kennedy’s campaign for president. Older readers will remember that in 1980, Teddy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. I was a young socialist, and Teddy was not nearly radical enough in my estimation, but he seemed a good deal better than the cautious and uninspiring incumbent. I had heard the story of Chappaquiddick, largely because the Carter campaign engaged in a masterful display of paralipsis — the rhetorical trick of emphasizing something by insisting you aren’t going to mention it. (Over and over again, Carter and surrogates would say: “I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about Chappaquiddick and what Senator Kennedy might or might not have done to that poor, pretty young woman.”). In my family, we saw the accident as a grievous and tragic mistake, but not a character-defining one. Mama voted for Teddy in the primary.

In 2017, an independent movie called Chappaquiddick made a brief splash (sorry) at the box office. A dramatization of the days before and after the accident, it was popular with conservative audiences. Teddy Kennedy did not come off well. Mama did not see the movie, but she saw the ads for it on television, and called me. At this point, I was living in my car and feeling very despondent. I felt as if I would never get over what I had done that led to the end of my teaching career. Mama said:

“Darling, I was thinking. Ted Kennedy did many bad things and was hated by many people. He knew he could never be president because of what he had done, but he did the best he could with the time he had. He had friends on all sides, just like you. Perhaps in your own way, you can think of yourself as a Ted. It’s comforting to me to think of you that way.”

Some of you do not find it comforting to think of me as a Ted, but mama did and does, and I find it comforting too.

Wikipedia defines me by my worst moments. So do the articles you will find if you Google me. It may always be so. And it’s not just the media, it’s people I know.

One of my former mentees wrote to me recently. She said she was finally ready to tell me how much I had hurt her and how angry she was. I had never slept with this young woman, but I had lied to her face when she had asked me if the rumors I had slept with students were true. While drugged up and hiding out in my mother’s house in 2013, I had given this young woman’s name to a reporter who was doing a story about my fall. I had offered this girl — barely out of her teens at the time —as a character witness. Desperately worried about me and trusting, this girl told the reporter that I was a safe and loving mentor who would never, ever cross a line. A few weeks later, when I confessed that I had indeed crossed that line many times, this young woman felt understandably betrayed and abused. Eleven years later, she still feels that way, and wrote last month to tell me so:

”I absolutely hold more resentment towards you than forgiveness. You abandoned, disappointed, and let me down infinitely. I do not want your amends. It seems like a lot of people fawn on you and reassure you that it’s all okay now. I will never be one of them.”

I know that I am loved by many. I know that many whom I hurt have forgiven me. I know that I am doing the best I can with the time I have. I understand that I will not get back what was lost — I will never be a tenured professor again, nor will I get every last person I wounded to say, “We’re good, Hugo. I forgive you. Be well.” For the sake of my own sanity, I must let it be okay that some people will always define me by my worst moments, by my lies, and by my betrayals. The damage I did doesn’t define me to everyone, but I must be at peace that it does define me — likely in perpetuity — for more than a few.

You get to hate Teddy Kennedy for Chappaquiddick, or for his politics. You get to hate Toby Keith for his role in pushing the Dixie Chicks off country radio. You get to hate the Dixie Chicks for denouncing American foreign policy during a concert in a foreign country. You get to refuse to mourn those whom you do not believe worthy of your mourning. You get to calibrate your own moral compass. You will not, however, ever convince me that any of us are no more than the sum of our sins.

I’m with Fred Roquette, my mama’s late headmaster. And I’m proud that my mama considers me a Teddy, a complicated man doing the best he can with the time he has left.