As 2010 came to an end, an American political era expired. For nearly two-thirds of a century, a member of the Kennedy clan had “served” in elective office at the federal level. No more.
I was delighted — as the column below makes blindingly clear, deliriously delighted.
The no-Kennedys epoch didn’t last long. Joe Kennedy III dutifully stepped up, and did a stint in the House of Representatives. But in 2020, Ed Markey snuffed the trustafarian’s attempt to upgrade to the Senate. (EMK’s eldest was even less impressive — he pulled off just two terms in the far-from-important Connecticut General Assembly.)
With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. making this year’s presidential contest more interesting than it otherwise would have been, it’s time to revisit one of my favorite objects of hate. (ICYMI: Raised in New England, I really, really despise the Kennedys.)
Enjoy!
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Patrick Kennedy is leaving the U.S. House of Representatives. The Boston Globe is sad.
“When the new House is seated in January,” the paper lamented, “it will mark the first time since 1947 — the year a 29-year-old John F. Kennedy was sworn in as a Massachusetts congressman — that no member of the Kennedy family will be serving in the House, Senate, or White House.”
It’s fitting that the clan’s 64-year political rule comes to an end at a time when the nation is bankrupt, four out of every ten babies are born to unwed mothers, and tens of millions of households consider welfare a way of life.
An attitude of entitlement is the true “Kennedy curse.” And in the 20th century, Americans allowed themselves to become infected with the brood’s fatal flaw. We’re all trust-fund kids now.
While a return to traditional virtues remains possible, the nation petulantly sticks with its longstanding abandonment of individual initiative, self-sacrifice, and moral integrity. Hey, solipsism, recklessness, hypocrisy, and buck-passing worked for the Kennedys.
Impulse control wasn’t a family hallmark. The litany of depravity is well-established. Women were considered little more than sexual playthings. (As for female relatives, they were useful on the campaign trail.) Booze and narcotics were always on hand to soothe the many stresses associated with being Important Men.
When their appetites led to trouble, the spin machine went to work. After JFK’s assassination, flunkies — Dave Powers, Ted Sorensen, Arthur Schlesinger — helped his widow concoct the “Camelot” myth. (It was years before the full scope of the slain president’s drug-addled horndoggery emerged.) The press could be counted on to spike embarrassing episodes. In 1979, The Washington Monthly averred that Ted had “a severe case of arrested development” and exhibited “a babyish ego that must constantly be fed.” But such unflattering coverage was rare. Most “journalists” desire access to power and glamour — and maybe a job — even more than they seek to push leftism. With eye-popping wealth, immense influence, good looks, Hollywood connections, mob ties, and the adoration of millions, the Kennedys delivered.
No one who posed a threat to the family’s political ambitions was safe. Not even one of their own. RFK’s son David, who died of a drug overdose in 1984, once read a story about lobotomies in High Times. It included a picture of his aunt Rose Marie, lobotomized and institutionalized decades earlier and by then, all but abandoned by the family. “The thought crossed my mind that if my grandfather was alive the same thing could have happened to me that happened to her,” he told writers Peter Collier and David Horowitz. “She was an embarrassment; I am an embarrassment. She was a hindrance; I am a hindrance. As I looked at this picture, I began to hate my grandfather and all of them for having done the thing they had done to her.”
Wouldn’t it have been refreshing if a Kennedy had become an outspoken activist for the sanctity of unborn life? Or perhaps an advocate for the right to bear arms? No, conformity to prevailing Democratic Party orthodoxy was consistently enforced.
“Public service” (i.e., holding political office, being surrounded by sycophants, and using other people’s money to Do Noble Things) came first. Ted offered some of the best evidence of clan’s creepy fixation in a 2006 interview. Vanity Fair asked, “If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?” The senator could have cited the violent deaths of his three brothers. Or his first wife’s alcoholism, or her multiple miscarriages. His son Patrick’s substance abuse was another option. None made the cut. “Jack would have had a second term,” he replied. Asked about his greatest fear, Ted answered, “Another two years of Republican control of Congress.”
Those of us lucky enough to be born after PT 109, the 1960 election, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dealey Plaza, the Ambassador Hotel, and Chappaquiddick missed the worst of the Kennedy PR blitz. We weren’t subjected to images of touch football at the Hyannis Port compound, John-John’s staged salute to his father’s passing casket, or RFK’s well-publicized poverty tours.
Post-Boomer generations are thus more inclined to see the Kennedys for what they were, and in many ways, still are — privileged brats who lacked their own identities, squandered their advantages, ruined the lives of many, and reflexively supported destructive expansions of the federal government.
Patrick’s leaving Washington, and thus endeth America’s ersatz royal family. Good riddance.
Good riddance. My family despised the Kennedys also. But we still have too many dinosaurs in our government.
At the suggestion of Mr Muska, I read the Howie Carr volumes I & II of "Kennedy Babylon" detailing the Kennedys' corruption and slime. I needed to take a shower afterwards to clean off the stench.