UPDATE 8/30/24: Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Trump is the act of someone braving the predictable brickbats facing any cult renegade. The cult in this case is his own family, historically not easily ignored or abandoned by any of its captive members. The fabled Kennedy magic now exists only in the delusional minds of a far Left Democrat Party and most of the Kennedy brats themselves. RFK, Jr., doing his part to rescue America from the clutches of the nightmarish Clinton/Obama/Biden cult, may be the most admirable moment in his own very checkered history and the murky saga of his mythologized, entitled family.
To the present woeful generation of Kennedys, Bobby’s endorsement of Trump seems to be a much, much blacker mark on the distinguished Kennedy brand than the very recognizable little “mishap” starkly represented below.
UPDATE 8/13/24: A new book further delves deep and wide into the corruption of an unjustly lionized family of total cads. With very few exceptions, growing up male and Kennedy for the last century has proven to be “the Kennedy curse,” something bred into them, not the heart-tugging bad-things-happen-to-good-people myth.
UPDATE 7/12/18: Who better to join a really cool, fun celebrity “hunger strike” (that’s actually pretty high in junk food calories) than Monster Matriarch breeding machine, Mrs. Ethel Kennedy, mother of 11 (often abused and neglected) offspring. This shrewish source of overpopulation has an unfortunate history of bullying Black servants and knocking around South American immigrant employees who displeased Madam. For the most flamboyant flourishes of High Hypocrisy of the Left, nobody does it like the Kennedys.
UPDATE 4/10/18: A slowly suffocating girl in Chappaquiddick isn’t Teddy’s only travesty. Remember the communique from said U.S. Senator to Soviet leadership unearthed from newly opened Russian archives in 1991? Imploring the Russians to ratchet up the rattling nuclear sabres in order to scare the Americans off Ronald Reagan? Russian collusion anyone? Or is he still “The Lion of the Senate?”
UPDATE 4/7/18: Liberal NYT film reviewer (and “impartial” Teddy Kennedy hagiographer) Neal Gabler despairs over a movie that finally tells the truth about The Family.
UPDATE 4/2/18: JFK’s sordid “love” life termed “legendary” by CNN. No doubt their take on the just-released “Chappaquiddick” will be on Teddy Kennedy’s “heroic, near-death” aquatic experience back in 1969. To draw in customers, free waitress sandwiches will be on sale at the concession stand of your local Rialto.
UPDATE 2/4/18: Muss the hair just so, add a little bit of ChapStick, and you’re in Camlelot again! Another Kennedy hairball coughed up as a desperate retort to the 2018 SOTU!
UPDATE 10/29/17: Weinstein, Schmeinstein. Papa Joe Kennedy-bootleg gangster and voracious movie mogul-set the standard early on for predatory bad boys in Hollywood and Washington. Often mimicked, even surpassed by his entitled sons & grandsons and their many imitators. Can’t wait to read Bay State treasure Howie Carr’s “Kennedy Babylon.”
UPDATE 9/13/17: Chappaquiddick rises from the murky depths in a new documentary unlikely to add burnish to the badly tarnished legacy of “The Lion Of The Senate.”
UPDATE 8/22/17: Reports of drunken, disorderly behavior and disturbing the peace in the middle of the night from two of Hyannisport’s most distinguished “public servants.”
UPDATE 8/8/17: More offers of “public service” from this most selfless of clans, politely declined.
Fascinating and telling thing whom we Americans choose for our leaders; and, for better or worse, we seem to get what we want. After the mythical “glory” days of Kindly King FDR seeing us through Depression and war, we settled on ordinary Midwesterners of humble origins: first outspoken haberdasher Harry followed by benign, reliable war hero Ike. We were comfortable and on equal footing with these familiar Main Street guys. Right in character, they would do their duty then retreat graciously to private life. Is it mere coincidence that they were our chosen leaders during America’s most prosperous, peaceful days within living memory, our just reward for the real sacrifices of the “Greatest Generation.” Realistically, those times, rosily nostalgic in collective memory, were just the first step toward today’s all-out dive into the Socialist vortex.
Alas, things are never perfect, and, Harry & Ike notwithstanding, America needed a little shaking and waking up after the post WWII respite. Glaring racial inequities, Jim Crow laws, remained as a matter of both policy and practice in a number of states. Communism remained a constantly expansive threat, particularly among the ripe pickings of the Far East.
Alas, alas, electoral choices were made that continue to haunt us today. Young Americans were awakened commendably to a Crusade, but the choice made was a return to Altruistic Monarchy, an updated, more “vigorous” version of the sedate King & Queen Franklin & Eleanor. No unassuming hometown guys now. We sought a dashing Arthurian knight to do good deeds for the Ages. Enter a boundlessly ambitious Boston bootlegger/erstwhile Hollywood mogul who’d finagled his way into a huge fortune and the respectability of a British Ambassadorship. The Presidency was the one prize that would elude him, but his deep bench of saleable sons would do the trick for him, albeit a generation later than he would’ve liked.
Nine toothy-grinned offspring in tow, the stage was set. The Hollywood Dream Factory assembly line went to work on DC politics. Out with quaint Victorian relics like Truman & Eisenhower, in with carefully crafted, telegenic “vigah!” The result was a box office smash at the time, ominously titled “The Kennedys.”
One made it to the Presidency(Jack); the other two presumptive heirs were, respectively, destroyed (Bobby) and self-destructed (Teddy). Supposedly, the Dream Lives On, but hard facts and ensuing generations of progressively more corrupt, more unpalatable young Kennedys only prove that the whole thing was a dream, often a nightmare.
“Camelot” has never existed except as a Broadway musical. “One brief shining moment that was known as…” Just one of those catchy, romantic bits of idealistic whimsy that hit home at the time of JFK’s murder, reputedly concocted by none other than Jackie herself with the slavish collusion of Kennedy sycophant Teddy White. The Kennedys were a Hollywood version of patrician Progressivism still lapped up by modern Democrats. It’s an inexplicable longing for serfdom, a craving for the care & approval of those golden-hearted rich people who live in the big house on the hill, summoned by God to the higher purpose of Taking Care Of Us Little Folk, our kindly, more powerful Big Brothers and Sisters. When powerful, rich and influential enough themselves such as in present-day Hollywood and in the multinational corporate world, today’s Liberal Democrats happily, greedily join the ranks of the annointed Ruling Class.
The “patrician” part was scrapped immediately upon JFK’s demise as the ensuing gallery of Democratic standard bearers prove: Johnson, Carter, Clinton and now Obama, three cunning Good Ol’ Boys from Dixie and a cold-blooded Chicago Organizer. As the real story of “Camelot” is told and the current generation of Kennedys underscore, Joe’s clan was never even patrician, just a trained pack of opportunistic political animals with a lot of money, a skillful PR staff and eager willingness to bend Leftward with the prevailing winds of the times.
Starting with JFK’s Democratic Party more than a half century ago, we now find ourselves in the throes of Socialized nausea. America’s Royal Family of “Public Servants” has proven itself to be just a large clan of mediocrities living off scads of inherited money, raised to believe they were entitled to whatever influence and position this manufactured myth of entitlement decrees. Drunk with power of celebrity and the ridiculous Arthurian comparisons, dysfunctional corruption now runs in their veins as it does in the veins of their successors, the considerably less glamorized Clintons and Obamas. The so-called “Kennedy Curse” is not some allusion to Shakespearean/Greek High Tragedy decreed by Divine Fate. It’s just rotten luck being born into a pushy, largely amoral family. It’s also a family that eats its own in service to preserving its image. Without a qualm, Old Joe had his mentally-challenged (and socially embarrassing) daughter Rosemary lobotomized and locked away out of sight for most of her life. When balking at publicly supporting his rapist cousin, JFK Jr. was blackmailed by the family to get in step. With a few rare exceptions, they do not operate as autonomous individuals. They are themselves “socialized,” imprisoned by iron loyalty to family image as they feed off the trough of their grandfather’s largely ill-gotten gains.
For all its professed niceties, Socialism is all about a lot of have-nots being controlled by a very few haves. The Kennedys are a lesson in the deep-downside of being one of Socialism’s self-appointed haves. Corruption, self-destructive greed and power lust comprise the life’s blood of those who would rule us. These days, it’s the Clintons and the Obamas. But it was the Kennedys who showed how it’s done.
One can look in vain at the scads of Old Joe’s spawn for a hint of real virtue or integrity. It should’ve been easy with all that money and acquired wisdom of the previous generation’s missteps, but the hunger for power combined with its easy availability can ruin the best of us. And none of the Kennedys even remotely approach the best of or in us.
JACK-The most mythologized of all, attainer of The Prize, actual possessor of genuine charm, intelligence and talent as demonstrated in his off-the-cuff press conferences. Ironically, a rather Conservative presence in his time: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country” does not exactly resonate with today’s Democrat voters. JFK’s martyrdom and canonization at the time offset full disclosure of his highly Kennedy-esque character as story after story emerges of a crude and heartless misogynist and irresponsible risk-taker.
BOBBY-By almost any account a nasty piece of work whose long list of misdeeds includes reproducing 11 times with the help of one ETHEL SKAKEL KENNEDY, herself the member of another rich, unpleasant and plagued clan.
TEDDY-The so-called “Lion Of The Senate,” really a drunken, trust-funded skirt chaser whose great legacy is the wildly successful ObamaCare! Think of the smooth efficiency and good intentions of Healthcare.gov as something the hero of Chappaquiddick might design on a bender or swimming away from a submerged car. Initially a sympathetic victim of his father’s long, sinister reach, ultimately a portrait in self-destroying corruption and lasting societal damage.
JFK JR.-The attractive, basically nice young prince saddled with too much time and money and, ultimately, little sense. The excessive handwringing over his self-inflicted death is just one more juvenile remnant of the Camelot silliness.
CAROLINE-America’s little princess who grew up to discover that even a Kennedy has to speak properly in public if they’re going to hand you a high political office just for being a Kennedy. Failing to be handed said Senate seat, she has had to settle for being our Ambassador to Japan, an office for which she has proven to be both eminently unqualified and incompetent. For good measure, she has now been called out for her Hillary-like use of her own private email server for official business. Illegal, you know. But when you’re a Kennedy, it’s not about being qualified or competent or even legal. It’s about that…uh…Camelot thing, y’know.
JOE II-Bobby’s oldest son who made it to Congress and tripped up just being a typical Kennedy male.
KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND-Bobby and Ethel’s oldest child, made it as high as Lt. Governor of Maryland, amazingly scandal-free, married to one man for more than 30 years, the mother of 3 daughters, her mischief apparently confined to being a visible and prominent Democratic Party fundraiser and supporter of typically Liberal causes.
BOBBY JR.-An aspiring tyrant separated at birth from Sean Penn, also an advocate of jailing anyone who doesn’t love Venezuelan monster Hugo Chavez. An unfortunate amalgam of his cold father and colder mother. Former heroin addict, environmental fanatic and hypocritical profiteer (ergo his bromance with Godfather Chavez). Most memorably and damnable, the husband from hell.
PATRICK-Teddy’s substance-abusing, one-time RI legislator son, strangely missing his family’s mysterious affinity for the camera.
MARIA SHRIVER-Eunice’s high-achieving, driven, body-obsessed daughter who married a high-achieving, driven, body-obsessed body builder named Arnold. Not a fairy tale match as things would pan out; however, by Kennedy standards, not a bad or wasted life.
JOE III-Son of Joe II. Based purely on merit and personal achievement and not on his family name, he is the latest Kennedy to become a Congressman from Massachusetts. Ominously, both he and his wife are devoted Harvard protégées of the conniving Affirmative Action Opportunist Elizabeth Warren. Thus far, no specific scandal attached, but it’s still early.
Loved it, especially “The Kennedys were a Hollywood version of patrician Progressivism still lapped up by modern Democrats.”
Great exposé. It speaks to the shortcoming of anyone taken in by progressivism: the inability to differentiate between glitter and pomp, on the one hand, and intellectual and moral seriousness on the other.