First up we learned that Richard and Judy’s daughter Chloe Madeley apparently abandoned her car having crashed into another. Then Ted Kennedy dies and everyone is thinking back to the time when he drove into the water at Chappaquiddick and left his companion, Mary Joe Kopechne to die in his semi-submerged car.
The news of the rugby team’s cover up over using fake blood to simulate an injury so that they could substitute a player seems - at first glance - to be yet another example, except that this isn’t denial so much as outright lying. After all, they knew what they were doing; it was a deliberate, pre-meditated act so they can’t be said to be in ‘denial’. Just dishonest.
Will Carling talks about the 'Bloodgate' scandal
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But the first two examples are similar. Chloe Madeley presumably hoped that by running away, she might avoid getting into trouble. Perhaps she was worried about being breathalysed and thought her famous parents would be able to organise a cover-up. Perhaps she’s still young enough to think first of her parents in times of trouble. Could be she just wasn’t thinking straight, but it certainly doesn’t sound as if she’s been brought up to deal honestly and openly with the consequences of her actions.
Similarly, the Kennedy family, sad to say, often felt they didn’t have to suffer any consequences of their actions. They came across as firm believers in the theory that they were above normal procedures, even above the law. They knew everyone who was rich and powerful and instinctively tried to make this work for them. Edward Kennedy’s penalty for leaving the scene of the accident was pretty minimal. The Kennedy’s seemed to think that if they stuck together in times of trouble, closed ranks and shut out the rest of the world, they could overcome most difficulties that came their way. That’s denial, if ever I’ve seen it.
Even much more recently Edward Kennedy was involved in an attempted cover-up of an alleged rape by one of his nephews, for which I believe he has since apologised. So it sounds as if in later years he had begun to learn that attempting to hide things, and trying to circumvent the law are not useful tools for life.
Interesting though, that with all this in his background, he should have gone on to win such huge respect from the American people, and the rest of the world. It seems he managed to redeem himself by working for most of his life for the underdog, for those without the same voice as the Kennedy’s, with those who were impoverished and suffering through no fault of their own.
So perhaps the lesson here is that Kennedy’s experience in manipulating the system, maybe eventually opened his eyes to the fact that there are others much less fortunate who can’t, and who are much more deserving of help than the richest and most powerful members of society. So maybe that’s why he focussed so much on legislation to improve the lives of others in his later years.
One imagines he came to see that none of us is an island, that each of our actions impinges on others, that we can face up to what we’ve done and learn from it, that it is possible to own up, admit a mistake and ask forgiveness. And that that is usually a far healthier way forward than pretending something didn’t happen.
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