Hold the presses. Teddy Kennedy has just signed a contract with John Karp, the publisher of 12, an imprint of Hachette, for—get hold of this—8 million dollars, for the senior senator from Massachussetts’ memoirs. Just think of it. 8 million big ones for Teddy’s side of the story. And here’s my exclusive. My Kennedy spies tell me that all of the moolah, all eight million of Teddy’s royalties will be donated to the Mary Jo Kopechne Fund for the Study of the Side-Effects of Water. And if any of you believe this, you know there was no cover up back in 1969.

The mind boggles. Just imagine if a conservative Republican had left a girl to drown after driving her off a bridge, had tried to cover it up for ten hours, and then pleaded diminished responsibility and spent the next forty years as a respected U.S. Senator. You couldn’t make it up, as they say.