12. All of the Female Workers Were Unmarried, but All the Men Were Married
The media was very quick to seize upon the narrative of the women at the party being all young and unmarried, despite their status as campaign workers. While the conventions of the era were for working women to be single, the media wasn’t exactly fair in its coverage of women at the time. The first headline of Kopechne’s death referred to her only as “a blonde,” a truly awful title for a college-educated woman who was herself an educator and a speech-writer to a talented presidential candidate. While it was slightly unusual that so many of the campaign staffers were women, their being unmarried didn’t seem noteworthy. Even today, campaign workers are often unmarried due to the itinerant and demanding nature of campaign work.
What was unusual was the amount of booze transported to the island for a supposedly quiet campaign party, reportedly a large stash of beer, rum, and other hard liquors. Kopechne’s blood alcohol result, after her body was found, was 0.09, indicating that she had a great deal of alcohol in her system at the time of her death. Given that one of Kennedy’s first calls was to his long-term girlfriend, instead of his wife Joan, Kennedy was no stranger to affairs. His propensity for cheating combined with the unmarried women at the party, the amount of liquor, and the reported rowdiness of the night created an extremely damaging picture for the Senator.