Laid
up with Covid last week, I was bed-rotting and doom-scrolling
when the algo served up another deranged himbo dispatch
from Jack Schlossberg, only grandson of JFK. If you missed
it—or wisely avoid Instagram—here’s
the gist: he is bravely boycotting this year’s Met
Gala.
“I
love to party and I’ve been to the Met Gala before.
I had a great time,” Jack informs us. “But
this year, with so much happening around the world, and
at home, I cannot in good conscience go to the Met Gala…”
Good
to know, right? We were all wondering.
In
case he’s flown under your radar, here’s a
quick rundown on Jack Schlossberg: son of multi-millionaires
Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, double grad from
Harvard and Yale, and once hyped by mainstream media for
his enviable hair reminiscent of his hunky late uncle,
John F. Kennedy Jr. For a while, he was even floated as
a future star of the floundering Democrat Party—but
that buzz has cooled, likely thanks to his increasingly
oddball TikTok rants. Here he is, for example, swearing
off restaurants. Trenchant stuff.
After
watching him swear off Anna Wintour’s annual freak
show—which now feels more like a zombie parade passing
through a wake for Western civilization—I had two
thoughts:
1)
Wintour must regret naming young Schlossberg a Vogue
special political correspondent in the run-up to last
year’s election. Then again, that kind of appointment
is par for the course at Condé Nast, where overworked
editors are routinely tasked with turning the ramblings
of pedigreed mediocrities into something vaguely readable.
2)
Young Jack is an example of a familiar archetype, one
of endless morbid fascination: the Nitwit Nepo Baby.
Throughout
history, in fiction and real life, Nitwit Nepo Baby barges
into the frame. A mix of inherited power and personal
ineptitude, he personifies the underbelly of dynasty and
the pitfalls of unearned privilege. Where would we ever
be without him?
I
mean that sincerely.
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Spoiled, ineffectual heirs—real or fictional—scratch
a deep psychological itch. Part of it is schadenfreude:
we take pleasure in seeing the unworthy fumble their power
and privilege. But it’s a guilty pleasure watching
the inevitable spiral—where will they land? How
messy will it get?
Modern-era
TV showrunners love spoilt nepo-disasters. Jesse Armstrong
wrote four of them into his hit series Succession, all
flailing magnificently under the weight of legacy, especially
Connor, a man so painfully out of touch, he thinks he
has a shot at the White House.
Now
airing on Paramount is the excellent MobLand. It features
an evil little oik named Eddie Harrigan. Cut from the
same cloth as Joffrey Baratheon of “Game of Thrones,”
young Eddie sulks around his gangster granddad’s
Cotswold estate, complaining to his grandmother how “everyone
thinks I’m a c***.” (He’s not wrong).
If there was a BAFTA category for “Character with
the Most Punchable Face,” actor Anson Boon would
be shoo-in.
Like
GoT’s Joffrey, we already know young Eddy will meet
a violent end—à la Fredo Corleone in “The
Godfather.” There’s an unwritten rule in drama:
petulant, entitled punks must be punished.
Shakespeare
had an eye for dynastic decay. He wrote many such characters
into his plays, either as tragic or comic, but always
weakened rather than strengthened by legacy. No shortage
in the history of Europe’s royals either: Carlos
II of Spain, grotesquely inbred and barely functional;
Ludwig II of Bavaria, a man-child who bankrupted his kingdom
building fairy-tale castles before being quietly removed
(and possibly drowned); and George IV of the UK, remembered
less for governing than for his gluttony and vanity.
Today,
we can add Pitiful Prince Harry and his uncle, Prince
Andrew, to the list of nepo-dimwits. Both are members
of a uniquely British category of the genre: “the
upper-class twit.” Andrew lost all remaining shreds
of dignity and respect when he told the world a war injury
prevented him from sweating. Poor Harry just lost a battle
to have British taxpayers furnish his security detail
while visiting the UK, overlooking the fact that nobody
in the UK wants him to visit. Harry and Andrew descend
from the OG Nepo Nitwit and ultimate upper-class twit—Edward
VIII. While Churchill battled to save the free world,
Edward sulked over china patterns and Wallis’s wardrobe.
In
America, there’s ex-crackhead and affluenza victim
Hunter Biden—a man handed every conceivable opportunity
who spent eye-watering sums on hookers and once snorted
parmesan cheese; who took up with his late brother’s
widow, addicted her to crack and convinced his family
to pretend all this was normal.
Poor
Hunter almost gets a pass—tragic childhood, losing
his mother and sister in a car crash, dad remarrying the
nanny, then spending years on the road chasing the presidency.
Add a golden-boy older brother who dies of brain cancer
and you have a textbook Ordinary People setup—IE:
the burden of survivor’s guilt and fear that the
wrong one died.
Then
again, there’s always someone willing to carry water
for Nitwit Nepo Baby, for whom a well-placed connection
to a plum job is always at hand. No expense—or institution—was
spared to shield Hunter from consequences. The G-men,
high-paid lawyers and, finally, a presidential pardon
cleaned up all his messes. To help pay his bills, money
moved discreetly through the art world, with the help
of a gallerist happy to crown Hunter “one of the
most consequential artists of this century.” OK.
Sure. **wink**
As
the old Chinese saying goes, many rush to prop up a falling
wall.
That
said, I don’t envy Nitwit Nepo Baby. Inborn advantage
and what you do with it versus overcoming childhood hell
is the chiaroscuro of American life. Curiously, nothing
turns Jack Schlossberg into a tempestuous toddler like
JD Vance. His spittle-flecked TikTok rants against the
Vice President, which the media calls ‘expert trolling,”
hint at the psychic shame of inborn privilege.
If
only young Jack had some rough seas to hone his sailing
skills, like his hero grandfather and namesake. After
his boat was sunk by an enemy ship, John F. Kennedy swam
for hours through enemy waters, towing a wounded crewmate
by a life jacket strap clenched between his teeth. If
only grandson Jack—who spends his days firing off
snarky Instagram posts—could have been so lucky.
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