Edward - Ted - Kennedy - Legend is listed 10th of 28 of the GQ Men of the Year
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US liberal icon Edward Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, was back at work in the Senate on Monday for the first time since July, vowing to fight for healthcare reform.
Kennedy, 76, showed up for work as the chamber opened for a "lame duck" session to discuss a raft of economic rescue measures.
"I am grateful for the prayers and good wishes I've received over the past several months," Kennedy said in a statement.
"They have certainly lifted my spirits, as has the election of Barack Obama as our 44th president."
Kennedy said he would lay the groundwork for one of his signature issues, healthcare reform, for when Obama takes office in January.
The Massachusetts senator, first elected in 1962, made a high profile endorsement of Obama during the primary campaign and gave an emotional address at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Kennedy underwent surgery for a malignant brain tumor in June after suffering a seizure. He made a brief appearance in the chamber in July.
He is the last surviving brother of the famed political dynasty which includes former president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate. Both were assassinated.
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Watch the President-elect's Weekly Address
www.change.gov
Read why Ted Kennedy thinks Barack Obama is the man for the job:
Game Changer
I had not planned to endorse anyone in the primaries. The Democratic candidates were my friends and colleagues—some for many years. I knew them well and could support any one of them enthusiastically as our party’s candidate for the White House. But I had to admit that one stood out. I had already come to know Barack as a Senate colleague who was gifted with a rare combination of talent and principle, vision, and a capacity to transcend divisions of party, ideology, and race. Once he announced his improbable campaign for the presidency, I listened as he spoke to the heart of America, and moved the young in spirit as well as age, by challenging us to think of something bigger than ourselves, something more powerful than the incremental politics of caution. I sensed a deep yearning in our people for the kind of person he is and the kind of president he will be: a fighter who cares passionately without demonizing those who differ, a leader who sees the world clearly without being cynical and shows the world the best of America, a president who will not shred the Constitution but uphold it.
As he moved from victory in those first snowy days in Iowa, to a setback in New Hampshire that revealed both his grit and his grace, to the intensity of South Carolina, I found myself stirred by the power, the poetry, and the authenticity of his call for change. I had not felt this way about a candidate since the 1960s. I talked with my wife, Vicki, my family, and a few close friends. I heard from my niece Caroline that wherever she traveled, people told her that the last leader who had inspired them in this way was President Kennedy. It was time again, I had decided, for “a new generation of leadership” and I could not stand aside.
I rejected the argument that he was too young, too inexperienced. I learned long ago that what counts most in our leadership is not years in Washington but reach of mind, strength of purpose, and that most essential quality of all—the judgment Barack Obama showed in opposing the Iraq war from the start as others pushed ahead or simply went along and then refused to admit they were wrong. I knew as I endorsed him that as president he would never commit young Americans in uniform to a mistake, but only to a mission worthy of their bravery and priceless service.
I also rejected the argument that Senator Obama was too cool, too steady. Those are qualities that can serve us well, even save us—in a Cuban Missile Crisis or an economic crisis. Nor could I accept the notion that the capacity to inspire a nation and a world—whether in John or Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., or Ronald Reagan—is just words. Their words, and Barack Obama’s, can be the great engine of change that transforms history itself.
Win or lose, with the Obama candidacy the torch has been passed, and I hope I made a difference.
edward m. kennedy (d-mass) is currently serving his eighth term in the U.S. Senate.
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Rafael Nadal made the GQ Men of the Year list also.
Rafael Nadal
Photo credits: L'oreal Paris
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Being Rafa
Uploaded by mirsasha
Local Hero of the Year: Leave No Child Behind
In the early '90s, children with AIDS were shunned by fearful communities. Neil Willenson created a safe haven where they could enjoy a basic rite of childhood: summer camp. Fifteen years later, he's taking his mission global
by sarah goldstein
Photograph by Michael Edwards
In 1991, Neil Willenson was studying film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and making plans to move to Hollywood. Then he crossed paths with a 5-year-old.
Sounds like a setup for a movie, yes. But this is really a setup for something larger.
That fall, Willenson had gone home for a weekend visit and heard about people in his old neighborhood outside Milwaukee trying to force an HIV-positive boy out of kindergarten. These were the days of Ryan White. Of Magic Johnson. Of communities being scared and ignorant about AIDS. The boy, Nile Sandeen, had contracted the disease at birth from his mother, who had been infected by her ex-husband.
"I didn’t have a plan,” Willenson says. “I called Nile’s mother. I figured I could help with child care. You know, be a friend.”
He soon became something more. When parents at the school tried to make Nile use a separate bathroom or eat with a plastic fork or sit alone on the bus, Willenson fought them. And when Nile wanted to play soccer, it was Willenson who made the call to a scared coach. “I could hear him shaking on the other end of the line.”
By the time graduation came around, Willenson was questioning his life. He ditched his Hollywood ambitions, took a job as a forklift operator at his father’s company in Mequon, and rechecked his priorities. “I couldn’t stop comparing my own youth to Nile’s,” he says. He decided to make a difference and set to work creating Camp Heartland, a summer camp for kids living with HIV/AIDS, a place where kids like Nile could be kids—and not endure the stares of fearful people. Willenson organized a grassroots fund-raising campaign and got Miller Brewing and Harley-Davidson to give grants. Within four months, he’d raised $60,000, enough to cover his costs for the first summer, 1993, and to support seventy-two kids, including Nile—who is now 22 and studying to be a minister in St. Paul.
“Camp Heartland was a feeling of normalcy in what was a very un-normal world,” says Nile, who nominated Willenson for this year’s Local Hero award.
Fifteen years later, the organization—recently renamed One Heartland—has an annual operating budget of $3.5 million and outposts in Minnesota and California. And this year, it began training people in AIDS-ravaged countries such as Uganda and supporting kindred organizations like Walking With Children, in Honduras, and the Living India orphanage, in Hyderabad.
The camp continues to be the center of Willenson’s life, and he says he cannot imagine doing anything else. Seven thousand kids are forever grateful. Most of all, perhaps, Nile: “Neil was a father figure to me. He changed my life.”
sarah goldstein is a gq editorial assistant.
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BOY GENIUS OF THE YEAR....Mark Zuckerberg
By Alex French
Mark Zuckerberg knows where you live, who your friends are, what your favorite album is—he even knows about last weekend’s one-night stand. And sometime soon, the 24-year-old Facebook creator is going to use all that knowledge to make billions. Don’t believe it? Silicon Valley sure does.
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