And now, 'Chappaquiddick,' the movie

The Dike Bridge, off of which Edward Kennedy drove a car, drowning his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne The bridge didn't have a guardrail at the time of the 1969 accident.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

I wonder how much interest there might still be in this infamous case:

Chappaquiddick, a new film about what happened after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy drove his car off the Dike Bridge on the eastern side of Martha Vineyard on July 1969. His passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned but Kennedy swam to safety. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of a crash, for which he got a suspended sentence. Many people at the time thought that was outrageously light. The word “Chappaquiddick” quickly became shorthand for the scandal, which may well have deprived Kennedy of the Democratic presidential nomination.

The movie will be shown March 15 and March 17 in the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival before it opens nationally. I expect that it addresses the roles of power and privilege.

The moon landing, the rock festival called “Woodstock’’ and Chappaquiddick were the big U.S. stories of the summer of ’69, as the Vietnam War ground on. At the now long-dead Boston tabloid paper where I worked then in a summer job, Chappaquiddick was the big one, combining celebrity, power and salaciousness.

But the script, direction and acting would have to be mighty good to entice people under, say, 50 to see this movie about such a long-ago scandal.

A third person in the car in the Chappaquiddick scandal?

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

I'm looking forward to reading Donald Frederick Nelson's book CHAPPAQUIDDICK TRAGEDY: Kennedy’s Second Passenger Revealed (Pelican, 191 pages, sold in bookstores and online), in which he argues that there was a third person in the car that then Sen. Edward Kennedy drove off the Dike Bridge on July 18, 1969, killing  young Kennedy aide Mary Jo Kopechne and, as it turns out, probably dooming Kennedy’s presidential ambitions.

Mr. Nelson, a retired physicist who lives in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard, and Worcester, argues that Ms. Kopechne had climbed into the back seat of Kennedy’s car after some heavy drinking at a Kennedy party in a house on Chappaquiddick Island, the easternmost part of the Vineyard, and passed out, unbeknownst to Kennedy and another Kennedy “boiler room girl,’’ Rosemary (Cricket) Keough,  who was sitting in the front passenger seat.  When Kennedy drunkenly drove the car off the bridge and then, with Ms. Keough, escaped from the submerged car,  they had no idea  that there was somebody in the back seat, Mr. Nelson argues. In any case, Kennedy and his many enablers then went on to do a fairly effective coverup.

I still remember vividly the guys in the un-air-conditioned (but with salt tablets!), smoky newsroom of the old tabloid Boston Record American, where I spent the summer of 1969 as a news clerk, showing far more interest in the Chappaquiddick scandal than in the moon landing, the Vietnam War and Woodstock that summer.  It was like something out of the movie The Front Page. Vividly sordid.

Editor's note: Earlier versions of this comment said that Ms. Kopechne "drowned''. We changed that to "killed''. 

This was after Mr. Neal Costello, a reader, wrote to correct us with:  "She died a long and horrible death by asphyxiation, clinging to life for hours in an air pocket in the car. Perhaps she could have been saved if Kennedy had returned with help instead of only thinking of himself. ''

Where it's Arbor Day everyday; Kennedy on Chappy

“Path, Arnold Arboretum” (photo), by RUSSELL duPONT, in the show "Artists in the Arboretum,'' at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, 125 Arborway, Boston, Sept. 17-Oct. 18.

Arboretums can be magical. We just toured the exquisite and unexpected Mytoi Japanese Garden on Chappaquiddick Island, part of Martha's Vineyard. Very, very soothing. Everything was perfect except that otters had eaten all the gold fish in the lily-padded pond.

Then  we took on the ugly, as we traced the routes that the late Sen. Edward Kennedy took in his drinking, driving and other activities  on the night of July 18, 1969 that resulted in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne when Mr. Kennedy drove a car off a bridge into the water.

None of excuses/explanations he gave were plausible but local authorities were in the pocket of the Kennedys so he avoided a vehicular-manslaughter charge and proceeded with his political career. But the accident may well have prevented him from becoming president.

-- Robert Whitcomb