I
grew up steeped in Kennedy-family lore. My mother—like
many women of her generation—was captivated. She
devoured the biographies, the Life magazine spreads,
all the glossy Camelot mythology. But cracks appeared
early in the glittering surface, like when she breezily
mentioned how Joe Kennedy had arranged a lobotomy for
his daughter Rosemary, which left her incontinent and
institutionalized for life. The cruelty of it haunted
me. How so celebrated, so impossibly golden, and yet so
monstrous?
That
whole Camelot thing, we now know, was cooked up by Jackie
after her husband was killed, which she fed to Pulitzer-winning
presidential historian Theodore H. White. She wanted him
to make people remember JFK not as a politician with enemies
and flaws, but as a shining young king with a radiant
queen and a heartbreaking, too soon ending. Life ran with
it, DC’s cultural class amplified it and the narrative
stuck—these were not ruthless social climbers, handsy
bosses or election-fixers, but American royalty.
Simpsons
creator Matt Groening surely saw the fakeness of the mystique
when he modeled Mayor Quimbly on a second-generation Kennedy
pastiche–the tuxedoed, endlessly re-elected Springfield
leader treating public office like a loyalty rewards program
for mistresses; who through an electorate’s chronically
low expectations, sruvives scandal and also rude outbursts,
like–hilariously–demanding a waiter pronounce
‘chowder’ like a proper Bostonian…
Regardless, and despite one sordid tabloid headline after
another, it always felt like mainstream media had a behind-the-scenes
agreement that the Kennedy brand was too valuable to tarnish,
therefore smoothing over every sin and scandal that would
sink any mortal.
The
cultural brainwashing still runs deep. As we speak, I’m
hearing that needling little ‘writer’ voice
in my head telling me not to be too harsh—like some
lingering etiquette rule about speaking ill of nobility.
It’s almost cinematic: a Clockwork Orange moment
with my eyes forced open, or some leftover MK-Ultra programmer
whispering, be nice to the Kennedys, dear . . . they’re
very important people. ????
The
conditioning is strong enough that I also find myself
a little shocked when another slice of Kennedy weirdness
surfaces. And last week delivered not one but two—both
of which made me throw my hands up and ask… why
are they like this?
One
was Tatiana Schlossberg’s harrowing account of her
cancer diagnosis, and the other was the fresh scandal
involving RFK Jr. and his messy entanglement with the
spectacularly unstable journalist Olivia Nuzzi.
The
details of Tatiana’s battle against acute myeloid
leukemia are horribly sad in all the ways you might expect.
From the grueling treatments to knowing your children
will grow up without you, it’s a level of suffering
you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. She describes
this ordeal beautifully and courageously—until she
doesn’t.
Somewhere,
around the 20th paragraph, her narrative veers into a
character assassination of her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., whom she basically accuses of killing people, herself
included. At the most basic level, her complaint is as
follows: he is hurting mRNA vaccine research by pulling
$500 million in public funding from it. She doesn’t
mention that Moderna—which had its grant to the
University of Texas Medical Branch to study an mRNA bird-flu
vaccine revoked—has a $10.5 billion market cap and
could easily fund its own research.
Setting
aside the whole vaccine debate, I’m baffled. Who,
with precious few months to live, picks a partisan political
fight with a relative (in order to defend America’s
ginormously rich neolib Big Pharma medical nexus)? A Kennedy,
that’s who. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘Let
me tell you about the Kennedys. They are different from
you and me.’
We
already knew Tatiana’s whole extended family hated
RFK when he tossed his hat in the presidential ring. Forget
all his other sins–and there are plenty–RFK’s
most unforgivable transgression was to join the other
team. In early 2024, before Biden stepped aside, non-RFK
Kennedys appeared on the White House lawn to circle wagons
around their reanimated corpse of a president and politically
disown RFK. “Nearly every single grandchild of Joe
and Rose Kennedy supports Joe Biden,” Kerry Kennedy
told the White House gathering.
When
RFK suspended his campaign and threw his support behind
Trump, his sister Kerry, unable to bear having her name
associated with a meretricious upstart from Queens, fell
on her divan, clutching her smelling salts.
The
Kennedys are usually thick as thieves—always closing
ranks, always projecting this mythic sense of shared destiny.
But that loyalty evaporates the minute someone wanders
off the political reservation. Once you see the mechanism,
it all clicks: Democratic loyalty is practically coded
into their DNA. They’re not just Democrats; they’re
the party’s living symbol, a mutually reenforcing
bond that helped them build an entire ecosystem of influence
across universities, think tanks, media, foundations and
old-money networks. Throw in vast influence over the managerial
elite, and you get a family that sees itself as custodian
of America’s power levers. And custodians think
they get to choose the leaders.
When
RFK Jr. walked away from that whole behemoth power apparatus—maybe
muttering a ‘change or die’ mantra to himself,
aware that the old institutions are losing their grip—I
honestly thought he’d turned a corner. But . . .
sigh. No. Not even close. Instead, through breathtaking
recklessness, he proved himself to be, through and through,
a Kennedy. In case you have no idea what I’m talking
about.
The details of this intense romance emerged more than
a year ago. But it was hard to know whether RFK’s
claim—basically, she was stalking him—was
true. Now comes Olivia Nuzzi's memoir, American Canto.
I’ve only read the Vanity Fair excerpt
and I feel like it’s all I really need to hear from
a writer people are describing as Temu Joan Didion. If
you think that’s an exaggeration, consider this
passage where Lizza describes RFK as a
drug user, sex
addict and compulsive cheater. Also, a
writer of love poetry with a cringe level so intense,
you can see it from space:
“Yr
open mouth awaiting my harvest,” Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., who is now the Secretary of Health and Human
Services, had written to my then-fiancé. “Drink
from me Love.”
Wait!
You’re telling me a Kennedy from the fabled Kennedy
clan has an issue with fidelity? No way!
Call
me naive, but I really did think he’d left all that
Kennedy-thanatos behind him—especially after what
happened with his marriage to Mary Richardson and the
personal horrors it entailed: custody battles, accusations
of serial infidelity, a journal full of affairs splashed
across the tabloids, and then the worst possible ending—her
suicide. You’d think a man would come out of all
that changed. And for a while, he seemed like someone
who’d taken stock of his own messes and settled
into something resembling peace—a quiet, grown-up
life with a glamorous Hollywood wife—one who basically
risked her career among the hyper-liberal entertainment
class and stood by him. She even went on The View—9th
circle of daytime TV hell—just to defend him.
Between
the attention from his presidential run and the key role
he played in nudging Trump over the line, I genuinely
thought he’d grown up. Instead, he’s set fire
to all that goodwill because . . . of course he did. He’s
a Kennedy. They’re different from you and me.
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