OK, Genie. I get it. I don't think Chappaquiddick is judged any more harshly than some of the other things you mention, but I guess we judge it harshly because it's less abstract to us -- it's one man and one woman in one car, and most of us can relate to being in that situation and being responsible, as a driver, for what happens to the passenger in the car we're driving.

The right thing to do after a traffic accident is very obvious, and it's spelled out for each and every driver by the law, so when a rich and powerful figure gets away with doing the wrong thing (walking away) and compounding it with silence and lies and conflicting stories, it raises our ire because we know we'd have the book thrown at us for doing the same thing. It's a bit more difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of the person who starts a war or authorizes torture; we're left wondering what sort of judgment call we'd make in the same situation, with so many conflicting pressures upon us.

Wesley says we should let Chappaquiddick go, now that Kennedy is dead. That's not so easy when we know that Kennedy took his deepest secrets about that incident to the grave with him. In all his versions of the incident, he never gave an explanation of it that made sense in light of the evidence that the public is privy to, and we don't know what the local authorities covered up and continue to cover up. Many of us believe there was a more serious crime committed that night, and we believe that Kennedy should have come clean about it but never did. So, yeah, we're still kickin' it around to see if someone still living knows what really happened... and will admit to it now that Kennedy is gone.