Back in Wuxi!

I have returned!

In the manner of  General MacArthur making a promise, all those years ago, I have returned to Wuxi after having made an over night trip to my wife's hometown.  Tony and Jenny have returned also.  Jenny starting cleaning the apartment as soon as she arrived.  She said it was a pig pen.  Although to be fair, it was maybe dusty but not disorganized.  She did not come to an apartment lived in by a slob.

 

A Book about Teddy Kennedy

I managed to read a complete book during my trip.  The book, The Senator: My ten years with Edward Kennedy, is a revelation-a-page recounting of the author's (Richard E Burke's) time spent working for Ted Kennedy.  I found the book at the HyLite School Library, and took it out after hearing of the Senator's recent death.  The book is hard to take seriously because it seems written  solely to provide prurient and shocking revelations about Ted Kennedy. 

 

Some of its more sensational revelations:  Ted and Jack Kennedy competed for the affections of Judith Exner, who was also a girlfriend of Sam Giancano, a Chicago Mobster;  Ted Kennedy's wife Joan was a serious alcoholic, Ted Kennedy was taking cocaine during his failed 1980 presidential campaign; Ted Kennedy had threesomes; Ted Kennedy slept with Margaret Trudeau and Joan Baez;  The Nixon Watergate Taping controversy forced Kennedy staffers to delete audio tapes of President Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe have intimate conversations;  Ted Kennedy slept with staff members after promising he wouldn't do so; Ted Kennedy had to campaign for Jimmy Carter in 1980 in order to pay off the debt of his presidential campaign; Ted Kennedy has a stash of drugs in his desk; and Ted Kennedy had a hot tub party with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson during the 1980 election campaign.  Since Ted Kennedy is a Liberal Democrat, and there is nothing these types aren't capable of (except honesty and decency), I imagine some of it could well be true.  Irregardless, Ted Kennedy was wrong about everything he believed in and "worked" for.  The revelation that really annoyed me was that Kennedy thought it was an accomplishment to get some legislation passed.  Never does Teddy and his staff care about the results of their legislation.  I also make one more observation:  if what is written in the book is true, then the only difference between Ted Kennedy and Ron Jeremy was that Teddy had better connections.

 

Wuxi Expats will be also be disappointed to learn that the book sheds no light on the relationship between the Senator and the King of Wuxi.  The author left Ted Kennedy's clutches before the Senator had ever meet the great Expat King.  AKIC speculates that the relationship was sensual, never sexual.  That is, the two famous and flawed personalities had belching contests, and together went shopping for Chocolate, Lard, and Bread.