Hijacking the Kennedys

I can't believe they still have to go to Hyannisport and compete at sports.

Christ. RFK, Jr. still had a perfect face, even through his awkward teen stage.

[quote] Christ. RFK, Jr. still had a perfect face, even through his awkward teen stage.

And now he looks like a rotting gourd.

I have a hard time believing the poormouthing in this article-these assholes still have plenty of money.

They aren't the Rockefellers though. There are a ton of Kennedy grandkids and great-grandkids, which dilutes the investment income stream quite a bit. I can believe that many of them will have to work full time to support themselves, using the inherited income as supplemental. This is true of a lot of formerly wealthy families from the early 20th century.

RFK Jr. has been a corrupt creep for years, but because he wasn't shitting (too often) in their backyard, none of them cared. But now, he's got real power & there's nothing they can do about it.

[quote]RFK, Jr. still had a perfect face

On what planet did he ever have "a perfect face?" He looks like a mouth breather in need of a bath in that photo.

The Kennedys were never good looking. They all have ratty birds nest hair, giant teeth with overbites, bulging eyeballs and "alkie" red blotchy skin. Not one of them is remotely attractive. JFK himself always looked either bloated or malnourished, and always sickly.

R7 In the Irish gene pool, that still constitutes "good looks."

R8, in a world with Pierce Brosnan and Paul Mescal and Colin Farrell, you can retire your hoary and disproven stereotypes, dear.

The Kennedys are ugly, full stop.

The oldest brother Joe who was killed in World War II was very good-looking, as was John F. Kennedy, jr.

The article is good. As the author notes, the Kennedys, like other American political or economic dynasties, are (for most members) fading into obscurity, as the generations grow in distancer from the original members who made them noteworthy.

The author rehashes the same old stuff, like Jackie O distancing herself and her kids from their wild cousins.

Can someone grab the photo?

Why couldn’t Bobby Jr heal her?

Ethel’s brothers were handsome, and when she was young she was cute. Bobby was not the most attractive Kennedy brother, but he was handsome in his way.

But the combination of Bobby and Ethel’a genetics created some buck toothed, ugly malformed assholes.

I blame Rose Kennedy. Her parents were cousins.

He's a Skakel through and through.

R10 yet her branch has the most $$$$

C or no c —they got the ca$h

Are you legally blind, R2? The only good looking guys I see are Bobby Shriver and JFK Jr. They had decent outside genes. The Kennedy/Skakel branch were double cursed.

Maria was the prettiest girl…for a brief moment in time.

I love the now tragique 70s look on the Kennedy girls. That hair! They all could have been background actresses at Marcia Brady’s party, or at a Partridge Family concert.

For one brief, shining moment.

Camelot!

Who was Caroline wearing? 😵‍💫

JFK Jr. was handsome because he favored the Bouvier side of his family. He didn't look like a Kennedy.

Are sure r21. Really sure?

I love how you think we should care about some mob family with bad genes who deserves to die out in obscurity.

Mark Shriver's hair went from dirty blond to dark brown in a few years.

Irony alert.

Stephen Smith is the best of the in-laws… his wise money management extended the trust funds to a greater extent than a lot of large families.

He also begat the very worst of the *living* cousins, other than our HHS secretary.

I liked the public letter Caroline Kennedy wrote, basically calling him a piece of shit.

His wife was not offensive…

She looked like a guest star on I Love Lucy ;). My mom had that look in the 50s—a bit more Audrey Hepburn, though.

The part of the letter that really stuck with me was the part where she talked about RFK Jr. having his own kids vaccinated while preaching that anti-vax crap. She basically called him a fraud and a liar.

The older Smith sons were close to John and Caroline. They were the same age, and Jackie’s New York apartment was a block or two away from the Smith apartment

Steve Smith was the bane of Ethel’s existence, because he was the one tasked with trying to keep her on budget.

The youngest of Jean and Steve’s kids, Kym, married a bartender in Dublin when her mother was the ambassador. She probably doesn’t have a lot in common in Caroline, considering she got tattooed with the name of her drag queen friend, Mister Pussy.

The other Smith daughter, Amanda, has written books on the Kennedy family. She doesn’t like Caroline.

Jean and Steve adopted the two girls after Jean’s affair with Alan Jay Lerner ended.

I’m related to the Irish - Jewish mafia of great Boston, so this sorta fits.

Cambridge and Brookline were right next to each other… ;)

Caroline's kind of grown on me; she's undoubtedly a world class snob, but she's raised down to earth (if very extra) kids, she's always been an honorable representative of the US during her ambassadorships, she seems put together despite her many tragedies and she'd done the old man proud. Probably calling RFK Jr. a liar & a creep was probably far more diplomatic than all the things she could've said.

RFK Jr has lots of power obtained by fraud, chicanary and sucking up to a fascist. I bet the rest of the family is so jealous. What a rag New York magazine is.

[quote] Stephen Smith is the best of the in-laws

My money's on Sargent Shriver, a real class act. Faithful husband, loving father, exceptional public life. My first campaign donation was to his short-lived presidential campaign.

Eunice and Sarge had an unusual marriage, in that it was characterized by loyalty and fidelity. Shriver as a result never 'fit in' completely with his toxic macho Kennedy in-laws, as Smith and Peter Lawford did. But their family was happy and escaped a lot of the issues that plagued their cousins (Maria's ruined marriage to Arnold aside).

[quote] Ethel never spoke publicly about her son’s campaign, but everyone saw the effect it had. “The one who was brokenhearted — and the family won’t talk about it, but I saw it up close — was Ethel[.]" ... She had devoted her life to supporting the Democratic Party, which RFK Jr. was now undermining with his insurgent ... candidacy.

In her dotage, did Ethel forget that she supported her husband's challenge to the renomination of LBJ (before Johnson dropped out) & brother-in-law Teddy's challenge to the renomination of Jimmy Carter?

Great article, but it exemplifies this mistaken belief:

[quote] Ethel was the last surviving member of her generation of Kennedys from the 1960s. . .

Joan Kennedy is still alive, though God knows she's had her struggles. She'll be 89 next week. I knew someone who was close to her for a while and he said she was lovely but troubled and had trouble keeping up with her sisters-in-laws JBO and Ethel, let alone the Kennedy women. She's the last one left of that iconic photograph taken the night of JFK's election.

R33 too funny

That’s power?!

R34 the post wasn’t about what’s good for you. It was about family.

R36 doesn’t quite get the history of the party, does she?

The Kennedy Women is a great book for anyone interested in the family, although Laurence Leamer’s writing style is awful. He interviewed Eunice, Pat, Jean and most of the cousins.

Maria said she noticed as a teenager that her parents didn’t really have a social life because they put all their energy into their children. That is sharp contrast from the RFK and Ted Kennedy households.

Eunice and Jackie were the best Kennedy mothers by far.

I kid

Oops!

She was the hot chick—

R23 "mob family with bad genes".

Ahem!

America’s #1 rated college—if you were a Kennedy sister - wife

Forget all these Kennedy kids and their looks. This is Datalounge. Can we have a word about those CURTAINS???!!!!

R36 doesn’t quite get the history of the party, does she?

As an 11-year political junkie who was gutted by Bobby's death in '68 (& saw him up close at a rally mere weeks earlier) & who also supported Teddy's 1980 bid (also seeing him up close at a campaign event), I most surely do.

Were they lace curtain?

Stephen Smith kinda looks like Sinatra in r26's pic.

Who ever would've thought that alkie Joan would outlive all of them?

My dad was half-Irish. He got the feckless part. My mom was half-Irish. She got the ignorant part.

[quote] Who ever would've thought that alkie Joan would outlive all of them?

Well, being the youngest in the group helps.

[quote] when he was 13, a coatimundi he kept as a pet attacked Ethel and sent her into premature labor with his brother Douglas.

Am I a bad person for laughing at this?

The coatimundi attack was Ethel's own fault. She loved keeping exotic pets, and encouraged her children to do the same. Reportedly Hickory Hill stank like a zoo because few if any of the exotric pets were housetrained.

r52 she's lived to an older age than many of them did.

Jean Kennedy Smith was also a drunk and lived to 92.

Ethel lived to 96.

Was Ethel a drunk?

R54 once read a Wiki entry for fun.

r59 Hickory Hill was a pigsty, that's been well documented.

[quote]Only one cousin is in a position of power — and his family can only watch helplessly as he destroys much that they stood for.

Well. he's resurrected the Kennedy name in politics. They had lost their political relevance prior to that.

You dint say!

R61 is at the tomb, ready to push that stone!

On the 60th anniversary of his father's doomed presidential campaign, you can be sure that Bobby, Jr., will be running for president in 2028.

Hickory Hill was the Spahn Ranch of the eastern seaboard.

He’ll be dead by then.

lol r65. It's kinda true.

[quote]On the 60th anniversary of his father's doomed presidential campaign, you can be sure that Bobby, Jr., will be running for president in 2028.

I think national health issues have been his main concern, so he may be satisfied with a term at HHS. I don't know that he passionately wants to do anything in other areas.

He's obviously running.

He used to be passionate about the environment, but that is now an inconvenient truth when you play for Team Drill Baby Drill.

The Shah of Iran gave Bobby and Ethel beautiful, expensive Persian rugs as a gift. They ended up rumpled up in a pile in the basement of Hickory Hill, covered in piss and shit.

r62 Hickory Hill being a pigsty has been written about for many years in various books and articles.

You reed as loot . Doncha

Hickory Hill didn't smell like a toilet when *I* owned it.

You could, R46, but Rose, like her taste in window treatments, is long gone and can’t respond.

R5, they each have had TRUST FUNDS since the day they were born. It’s not one big pot that’s “diluted.” Don’t you know anything about the rich?

One of my favorite Ethel factoids: She was told by "the office" to reign in her spending because she barely had any money left in her checking account. Ethel, genuinely perplexed, argued that it simply couldn't be true. She has so many personal checks left! She thought that the remaining checks automatically indicated she had the money to back them!

So rich that you don't know how banking works?!!

OP- The boys in the back row remind me so much of the Loud family from the PBS documentary An American Family.

No one expects the Irish (Kennedy) Inquistion!

R78 never went to SB 😎

R77 yes we know— S Smith 🤨

[quote]Well. he's resurrected the Kennedy name in politics. They had lost their political relevance prior to that.

No, RFK Jr. has allowed the evil, covetous trump to use him to destroy the Kennedy family name and their standing as America's beloved First Family.

[quote] The Shah of Iran gave Bobby and Ethel beautiful, expensive Persian rugs as a gift. They ended up rumpled up in a pile in the basement of Hickory Hill, covered in piss and shit.

How awful a monstrous dictator's gifts were not treated better!

Or even declined.

The rugs were not to blame for either the Shah or the execrable Kennedy clan, r83. The rugs deserved better.

When will this bucktoothed family of ugly motherfuckers die off? RFK, Jr is a piece of shit, but frankly, it's a family of trash and mostly (lately) good for nothings.

The Kennedys are exhausting.

Who's that old hag in pink in the middle feigning pleasure that she has all this crotch fruit around her?

I’m sick of these fucking Kennedy people. Have never cared about them and never will.

There is a mistake in this story. When Ethel Kennedy frequently threw RFK Jr. and his brothers out of the house, they weren’t young men, they were children under 16. Most of the time only reason was she didn’t want to see them at home. Considering their father had been recently brutally murdered in public, being rejected and unloved by their mother must be just awful . RFK Jr. also became the obsession of a 52 year old gay man when he was 14. He constantly tried to convince him he was the new Kennedy chosen to be president. It is absurd to not think his future and mental state was already destroyed when he was a child. RFK’s children grew up under a mother who had mental illness (bipolar, borderline personality disorder, whatever it is) and suffered permanent damage.

Caroline Kennedy’s real aim is to separate JFK’s legacy from the Kennedy family legacy. In fact, the whole family’s aim is to separate the Kennedy legacy from RFK’s children. Not just RFK Jr,everyone of them. The only reason they haven’t spoken out loudly until now is the Kennedy family’s sense of loyalty .They also still feel sorry for them because of their mother’s mental instability and their father’s murder. But probably very soon Caroline Kennedy will take a step in this direction.

Then why aren't the Kennedy girls train wrecks like their brothers, R90?

Ethel was not bipolar

.........

R7, JFK, Jr. was an exceptionally good looking man.

You may disagree, & the perception of beauty is subjective, but on no planet was this man unattractive or ugly to the majority of straight women & gay men.

He was tall, had a perfect body, a FANTASTIC face, a gorgeous smile, along with a full head of thick, wavy, dark hair with zero signs of thinning or balding, & he looked healthy.

You’re delusional if you cannot see why decades after his death, American culture is still obsessed with the man.

Ahh! Now I see the confusion.

Guys - I meant that JFK, Jr. had a perfect face, NOT RFK, Jr.

Apologies for my faux pas! The horror! No hyperbole! 😂

I already posted this on the recent JFK Jr. thread, but I saw JFK Jr. on the street in NY on three occasions in the mid/late 90s and he looked exactly the same in person. He was gorgeous, one of the most stunning-looking men I have ever seen. Even if he hadn't been famous and was just some anonymous guy, people still would've stopped and stared and been like "who the fuck is that?"

I also saw his mother buying Marlboro Reds at a corner bodega on Lexington Ave. on the UES in the early 90s.

That’s because he took after his mother, R95. Boy children tend to look like 5heir mother.

[R93] If not bipolar, ADHD +hypomania. From the interview of a doctor in Ted Kennedy’s main staff: ‘…Ethel [Kennedy] was a pretty religious woman in her own way but clearly had no substantive political views that I could ever assess, and I dealt a fair amount with Ethel because of her kids and her own mental health…’

Ethel Skankel

Jackie and Ethel were never close, they just kind of tolerated each other. They had practically nothing in common.

Jackie did not like the Kennedy sisters. Her main alliance in the family was Joe in the early days. Bobbie and Teddie later.

She didn't get on well with Eunie, R102?

Jackie and Ethel were like Diana and Fergie.

One was introverted, ethereal, and artistic. The other was casual, boisterous, and essentially "one of the boys."

One never quite fit in to the family, and the other fit the family like an old pair of jeans.

Of the Kennedy sisters, Jackie got along best with Jean. Unlike her gym teacher/Peppermint Patty like sisters in law, Jean was a bit quieter and more refined.

She didn’t have much in common with Eunice, although it would seem there was mutual respect between the two of them. Jackie and Eunice both took steps to keep their children away from the RFK branch of the family.

Pat was a drunk whose parenting skills weren’t much better than Ethel’s, when it came to her son. When Chris Lawford was 14, Pat moved to Paris for an extended period with her daughters and didn’t take him because she “needed a break from the Kennedys.” Chris Lawford was as rudderless as Ethel’s sons, and like them turned to drugs.

I wonder where the idea came from that Eunice was a good mother and a caring person. According to Rose Kennedy’s secretary and the author of the Eunice biography, she had never been involved in taking care of her children when they were young. In the evenings, she would shut herself in her room and lock the door. It was Sargent Shriver who placed a second bed next to his so that the children could spend time with him before going to sleep and in the mornings when they woke up. It was only later in life, after the children were in their twenties and the Kennedys’ influence had weakened under Republican presidencies, Eunice began to spend much time with them.

Eunice was Ethel’s best friend. She cared more for Ethel than for Bobby. But the person Eunice loved most in her life was JFK. JFK was like a god for her. She loved him more than her own husband. I believe she was jealous of Jackie because of this.

Sargent Shriver was an intellectual and a religious man. I don’t believe he ever cheated on his wife. However he was already 38 years old when he was married. Unlike the others(Ted and Bobby) , he already had enough affairs before marriage and entered marriage at a much more mature age.

I've never forgotten the story that Ethel got the Kennedy sisters to listen at the door and giggle whenever Jackie went to use the bathroom in the Hyannisport compound because she would always run the water to hide her bodily noises. There was no privacy there.

Jackie was no heroine, but Ethel was the worst of them.

R108 The Skakels and the Kennedys had no fucking class.

I wish there was a book or documentary on Skakel family. They were all hyperfertile. Each sibling had at least 7 children. There was a persistent pattern of alcoholism and violent outbursts of anger. They were completely eccentric people, living almost entirely for the sake of making jokes. Those jokes were destructive and bizarre. They all had countless children but none of them took any real responsibility for raising those children after birth.

The Kennedy legacy is inseparable from the post-war legacy of American superpower prestige and authority.

As American power dissolves under Trump, all other associated legacies will circle down the drain as well.

R111 This lays bare just how fucking hollow "American superpower, prestige, and authority" actually are. The idea that this family of horse-toothed drunks, drug addicts, and woman-beaters is somehow "elite" tells you just how cheap that word is in this country.

It's like McDonald's calling the Big Mac their signature meal. It's like Chrysler calling the K-Car their flagship model.

R108, the sound of trickling water will induce a need to urinate. With JFK's petri diCK, she probably needed all the help she could get. She may have been shooting flames into that toilet bowl! Poor thing...

"She's always talking about the Kennedy money, the Kennedy compound, the Kennedy vigor when all she ever gave ME was the Kennedy clap!" -Ari Onassis

[quote]The idea that this family of horse-toothed drunks, drug addicts, and woman-beaters is somehow "elite" tells you just how cheap that word is in this country.

Because aristocratic European families have never engaged in seedy, immoral or abusive behavior. No, never.

Not Harry and William again? Even here?!

R115 Don't let them take over the thread. Nip that shit right in the bud.

They hijacked my frontal lobe!

[quote][R5], they each have had TRUST FUNDS since the day they were born. It’s not one big pot that’s “diluted.” Don’t you know anything about the rich?

With over a hundred Kennedy great-grandchildren now all coming of age, those potential trust funds aren't worth what they used to be, for the prior generations. The wealth has been DILUTED either way. Many of the new generation have said that they have to hold jobs, with trust income largely functioning as supplemental.

r91 tell that to Kerry Kennedy, who in recent months (since her mother's death) has been acknowledged as the de facto new family 'matriarch' who speaks at least for the RFK branch, and somewhat for the overall family as well.

Caroline doesn't have the personality or patience to be leading the family.

When the Kennedys sold the Chicago Merchandise Mart in 1998, they received almost $700 million plus an equity stake in the buyer, Vornado Realty Trust, which owns commercial real estate all over the US. Vornado co-owns a large office tower in San Francisco with the Trump Organization, 555 California Street.

I get the RFK branch of the family is huge, which is probably why their share of the fortune is diluted, but the family as a whole are rich.

Doesn't the RFK branch also have access to the (richer) Skakel family fortune?

Ethel’s inheritance from the Skakels was tied up for decades as equity in her father’s company. She wasn’t able to access any of the money until the company did a employee stock purchase plan in the 80s. But even after that, Ethel spent money wildly.

There are scores of stories about her stiffing vendors near Hickory Hill.

R118, my trust fund is in fine shape. Created in the 1920s, the income from it has been reinvested and reinvested and feeds many people in my family today. I may not be Kennedy rich, but I can easily live on the amount $9 million in investments produces. The Kennedy off-spring have more than enough $ from ma and pa’s families, which has multiplied over the years, not diminished.

[quote] There are scores of stories about [Ethel] stiffing vendors

Just like me!

[quote]Caroline Kennedy’s real aim is to separate JFK’s legacy from the Kennedy family legacy.

R91 Caroline needs to do something about that embarrassing, immature son of hers, Jack Schlossberg.

He's in his thirties and posting cringeworthy videos online.

His grandfather and uncle are rolling in their graves.

They may have another descendant with whom they’re now preoccupied, R125.

R125 His grandmother and uncle are proud of the boy.

They were aimless whores, too. And if Instagram had been around in their day, they would've been all over it like a Kennedy at an open bar.

Sorry. GRANDFATHER.

Jackie-O was never aimless or a whore.

In the ‘The Other Mrs. Kennedy’ book , their nanny who had been with them since the 1950s said that Bobby did so much for Ethel and spoiled her tremendously. I once read that before Bobby Kennedy died, Ethel was spending around $40,000 in a month for their home Hickory Hill, which would equal about $350,000–400,000 a month in today’s money. Ethel didn’t like being alone. She wanted to party every night. Because her 10 children, dozens of animals, and even her husband during vacations weren’t enough for her, Bobby would take along 30 more people on every trip just to keep her entertained. Of course, he would paid for all of it. When RFK went on a Latin American tour, Ethel went with him. He traveled with just 1 suitcase, while Ethel brought 100 !! RFK’s staff grew tired of carrying Ethel’s luggage and of having to take her wigs to the hairdresser every single day. So the impact of losing this husband must have been enormous.

I remember Tom Brokaw interviewing Ethel on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Bobby’s assassination & asking her why she never remarried. “I had the best,” she responded.

You people have no idea what he trust are worth. There are over one hundred adults alone from old Joe’s children.

Do people here really think wealth is a fixed number and it gets tucked under a mattress for heirs to grab from willy nilly, depleting the pile over time? [italic]Diluting[/italic] it?

I'm poor as dirt and I understand how investing works.

Caroline Kennedy loved her uncle but hates his wife and children . TownandCountry wrote a piece on them on May .In there you can feel Caroline’s hate; ‘Other observers point out that a family feud wasn’t that shocking. It wasn’t that hard for Caroline to denounce her cousin publicly because there has long been a split in the wider family. Caroline’s family referred to Bobby’s family as “the RFKs,” the family friend continued, and “it was said with great disdain, lumped all together as if none of them was worth a nickel. They were always outliers in the family. They were never close, because they were always this crazy bunch of wilding-like children,” a reference to the fact that Bobby Kennedy had 10 siblings—six brothers (two of whom died tragically) and four sisters—and they grew up without a father after the 1968 assassination and with a mother who was often absent.’

In many families, such separations between cousins would be handled quietly, because it's easy to avoid relations that distant if one wants to. However, the Irish are clannish in general, and the Kennedys even more so, so it would be very challenging to avoid seeing them or being lumped in with them by the press.

[quote]Do people here really think wealth is a fixed number and it gets tucked under a mattress for heirs to grab from willy nilly, depleting the pile over time? Diluting it? I'm poor as dirt and I understand how investing works.

How many families can you think of where ALL the descendants are kept in wealth after more than two or three generations? That is the reason why primogeniture was historically so important. Rose and Joe Kennedy have over a hundred living descendants.

It's like when I play Crusader Kings 3 and guide my dynasty through 600 years of medieval European history and by the time the game ends I can look back at the fates of all the previous generations of royal spares and their descendants and note how most of them are unlanded without the titles that were handed down to them and with their cadet branches going extinct in obscurity.

It really depends on how trusts were funded, how they have been managed (what investments) and whether or not the inheritors were allowed to touch principal.

I can imagine that the elder Kennedys (Joe and Rose) established trusts for each of their children and grandchildren. Based upon their wealth at the time, possibly as much as $1 million apiece (a lot of money in the 1930s and even to the 1960s). I think that means there were probably 40 trusts or so. However, they could not have set up trusts for great grandchildren, because those were unknown. If the trusts were well-funded, well-managed, and well-invested, they should be providing a generous annual income for those 40 - not billionaire levels of wealth, but allowing someone to live quite comfortably, especially if also working. However, if principal was allowed to be touched, then many of those trusts have probably dwindled away to nothing.

Investment now is a different kettle of fish than it was in feudal Europe. Passive returns are much much higher, and the safety of certain kinds of investments is much greater. However, a fool and his money are soon parted, and whenever someone is allowed to dick around with a trust fund, all bets are off.

[quote]Do people here really think wealth is a fixed number and it gets tucked under a mattress for heirs to grab from willy nilly, depleting the pile over time? Diluting it? I'm poor as dirt and I understand how investing works.

Re-read the article - the family spent more time running for public office, and burnishing up their political lives and reputations, then they did tending to the investment trusts and growing them at a high rate. Yes the money pool has grown, no question; but the point is not as fast as it could have, while the third generation at the same time got busy having many more kids.

End result: wealth is still there, there is trust money; but not at the individual levels for the great-grandkids that will allow most them be socialites and not work. Caroline's descendants aside (she has immense personal wealth apart from the others).

Is that how Jackie wound up on assistance? She spent all of Jack's share on one shopping trip in late November 1963 and then it was food stamps and cigarette butts fished out of ashtrays from then on?

r133 not quite so. Caroline has long had poor relations with RFK Jr and older brother Joe, and to a lesser extent with Michael when he was alive. This was due to many reasons, least of which was the druggy toxicity they all dwelled in, and the role that the elder two sons had in David Kennedy's early, drug-soaked death. Michael's nanny affair, divorce and sketchy accidental skiing death didn't help to change her opinion.

When Teddy was in a Boston hospital during his last illness, there was supposedly so much tension between Joe III and Caroline that they had to visit him separately, they couldn't stand to be in the same room together - Joe III (aka "Joe for Oil" in Boston, UMass Boston educated) has supposedly long viewed Caroline as haughty and a snob.

Not true for all of RFK's brood. Caroline is the same age as RFK's elder children. She was close for a longtime to Courtney Kennedy, who was a bridesmaid at her wedding. She gets on well with Kathleen and I don't believe has poor relations with Kerry, Rory or the younger sons (Max, etc). It's the elder two male cousins whom she openly disdains.

And I revise my post at r140 to note that Joe II is RFK's eldest son, not Joe III, and is known as "Joe for Oil".

R140, I don’t think she has any relation with younger Kennedy’s or pay any attention to them. She didn’t attend last 3 RFK siblings wedding.

Rory Kennedy is an interesting case. I don’t mean it that way, but Rory Kennedy unintentionally played a very important role in the history of the Kennedys. On the night of the 1968 California primary, when Bobby Kennedy was killed, his three bodyguards and close friends , Bill Barry, Rosie Grier, and Rafer Johnson, should have been protecting him. But Ethel was pregnant and at Bobby’s own direction they surrounded her instead so she wouldn’t be pushed around. If she hadn’t been pregnant that day, all three of them likely wouldn’t left Bobby’s side.

After their father’s death, the fact that their mother was pregnant made everyone focus so intensely on Ethel and this baby that the other children were left alone. In Horowitz and Collier’s book they were telling how they felt so alone. Years later, JFK Jr. died in a plane crash while going to wedding of this ‘miracle baby.’ Of course, all of these tragedies would have happened anyway, but that pregnancy played a strange role .

How many people are close with all of their cousins? Most people have some cousins they rarely or even never see at all.

Fuck Ethel and her crotch fruit!

[quote] How many people are close with all of their cousins? Most people have some cousins they rarely or even never see at all.

How many cousins share the bonding experience of having their fathers assassinated?

Even tragic events don't necessarily mean extended family members would be close r145.

I think if you're related to your cousins through 3 US Senators (including one who was POTUS) as part of a family often dubbed "America's Royal Family," and one that had so many high profile tragedies that a curse was named after you, you probably saw all of your cousins multiple times while growing up and would naturally bond with a few of them over the weirdness of it all.

I don't think any of us can relate to that.

I don't regard first cousins, especially those whose slain fathers worked hand in hand in life, as "extended family members."

Maureen Callahan's Kennedy book was good.

First cousins are extended family members, not immediate family.

Jackie deliberately kept her own kids away from Jackie's kids when she saw what bad influences the older boys were. They were druggies and out of control in terms of their behavior, and she was worried John-John would end up like them.

As a result, I think John-John and Caroline simply did not know Ethel's younger children very well. Once RFK was dead, and especially after she married Onassis, I don't think Jackie brought them to Hyannisport very much.

[quote] I don't regard first cousins, especially those whose slain fathers worked hand in hand in life, as "extended family members."

Mary!

In the family photo Caroline looks very similar to Patricia Krenwinkel circa 1969.

Kennedy money always stays in trust. I recall with perfect clarity reading in more than one publication that during the 1950s into the 1960s, both Joe and Rose were collecting an annual income in the neighborhood of $500k. No word on the amount of principal. By the 1960s, their children were collecting about $250k per year, each with about $10 million in principal by that point. They've probaby got a few billion by now in family money.

R148 you can consider them whatever you want, but outside of parents, siblings and offspring, everyone else is "extended family."

I don't think most families in the US owned a compound on a wide stretch of beach on the Cape with plenty of housing for all family members to be there at the same time. That's the difference. And I suppose at least in the Jackie, JFK, RFK, Ethel years, the grandparents would have demanded a certain amount of time with the grandkids to dance attendance on them. (Having left them all well set-up with trust funds).

My 7 cousins all lived 3000 miles away from my family, so we saw them every 3-4 years at the most. They were on the east coast, and my family lived in the West. However, I lived in the east for 20 years or so starting around age 18, so I got to know them very well in time.

Growing up, even in different cities, my first cousins - our mothers were sisters - never lived more than a block away.

I think it depends where you live.

I have friends on the East Coast, and their first cousins who grew up next to them in the same region are as close (or nearly as close) to them as their brothers and sisters are.

I have nineteen first cousins, but we grew up all over the country, with each nuclear family in a different state. I have several first cousins in California I've only seen a few times in my lifetime. I do not consider any of my first cousins as close to me as my siblings are, although I am closer to some of them than others.

It was different way back when, families didn’t spread out all over the country, they lived relatively close by. My family lived and went to school in the Northeast, didn’t go further south than northern New Jersey, and not further north than Boston. 90% of them were in NYC, NYS and CT. That’s just what was done, even if they only saw each other on the holidays. Families of lesser means lived on the same street.

[quote]As a result, I think John-John and Caroline simply did not know Ethel's younger children very well. Once RFK was dead, and especially after she married Onassis, I don't think Jackie brought them to Hyannisport very much.

JFK Jr and Caroline didn't know the younger RFK kids very well because they were (esp in Caroline's case) 5 to 10 years decade older than most of them. The '2nd set' of Bobby and Ethel's kids begins with Chris Kennedy, born in 1963, with youngest Rory in '68.

Jackie rarely set foot in Hyannis after JFK's death but her kids did go to visit Grandma Rose and the rest of the family, at least in the summer. They also spent time with everyone down in Palm Beach. Caroline was especially close to cousins Courtney, Kerry, Sydney Lawford and Maria Shriver.

Recall that it was Caroline and Maria who supposedly went in and cleaned up David Kennedy's Palm Beach hotel room of drug paraphernalia right after he died, before the police could come in. The family was there for Easter in 1984.

R160 So the Ambassadress Kennedy and the former California First Lady concealed evidence from the cops? What a lovely Irish family.

Actually it was Sydney Lawford who covered it up with Caroline, not Maria.

David wasn’t allowed to stay at the Palm Beach estate because of his drug use. Caroline and Sydney supposedly came to the hotel, found the body, cleaned up the scene and left. They went home and the hotel got a call from a “Mrs.Kennedy from Boston” who was worried about her son. The staff found the body. This came out during the investigation into David’s death.

The family was mad at David because he had spoken at length to David Horowitz for his book on the Kennedy family, about Ethel and Ted’s behavior after RFK’s death. I believe that’s when the public first heard about Ethel treating her sons like shit and allowing Lem Billings to “mentor” RFK Jr.

Horowitz wrote a forward for the 2nd edition of his book that came out after David’s death. He wrote that the family told him he was a traitor for speaking to a journalist and isolated him.

Bobby and Ethel’s three older sons and Chris Lawford were traumatized by Bobby’s death. Unfortunately, Ethel and Pat didn’t want to deal with it, so they got in trouble. Pat Lawford left the US for Paris for an extended stay after Bobby’s death. She took her daughters, but not Chris, saying she needed a “break from the Kennedys.” Chris was 14 at the time.

I still cannot understand how Bobby Kennedy was happily married to Ethel. He was very handsome compared to his wife. Zero femininity . Her lack of emotional maturity and intellectual depth was also very odd given her position. It was said that she was opposed to sex during pregnancy, and if we include the postpartum period, that means she avoided sexual affair for at least 7-8 months each time. Considering that she was almost constantly pregnant, and that Bobby Kennedy was young (30-40 years old) and he was a ‘Kennedy’, it is interesting that he was satisfied with this situation.

It was said that she was opposed to sex during pregnancy Prove it^^^

They fucked like rabbits.

If she had problems with Bobby, tough shit. She PICKED him.

Blame Jean Kennedy. She played matchmaker for Bobby and Ted.

R164 She was a very fanatic Catholic.For catholic women in the 1960s, sex only for procreation not for pleasure. Sexuality during pregnancy was generally restricted due to the fear of harming the baby.

There is a LOT of ADHD in that photo. Many of us with ADHD friends or family can recognise it.

[quote] Considering that she was almost constantly pregnant, and that Bobby Kennedy was young (30-40 years old) and he was a ‘Kennedy’, it is interesting that he was satisfied with this situation.

They got married in 1950, when, so soon after WWII, the Kennedy name was rather in ill repute.

R163, if there was a laugh button, I’d laugh at you adolescent post.

Peter Lawford told his trashy fourth wife that Pat Kennedy would do the sign of the cross right before sex.

That stretched out 11 baby clown car vagina wasn’t providing him pleasure.

Also, Ethel had a mustache. One of her secretaries from the 70s told Jerry Oppenheimer in The Other Mrs. Kennedy that Ethel would wax her lip before she would go out with Andy Williams, and the secretary would hear Ethel in the bathroom yelping “OW” as the hair came off.

[quote] I’d laugh at you adolescent post

Let it go, Mom, yes?. And no hit me with bag.

R167 Nunsense. That’s not Catholic doctrine, then or now.

Eldergay here. When I was in second grade in Catholic school, the whole class watched JFK’s inauguration and two years later I was sent home from school in the middle of the day on November 22, 1963. When I was in middle school, Bobby was assassinated. I don’t think anyone younger today can even approximate the hold the Kennedy family had on the American psyche as the decades following, as the events of the 60s followed us into the 70s, 80s and 90s when so many of the family members active in politics and public life and the name still had a major relevance. The deaths of Jackie, John Jr. and eventually Ted and the flameout of those in politics was the beginning of the end and news about the family receded in the flotsam and jetsam of the internet. Now Bobby Jr. rises like a ghoul to lend the final perverse twist to a once-storied name. It’s quite a saga and NY Mag did a great job of reporting and delivering a story I never thought I would see in my lifetime.

Release Sirhan!

I went to college with Amanda Kennedy Smith (Jean's daughter) and Max Kennedy (RFK and Ethel's son)--I met them both a few times, but was not really friends with either of them. Max was incredibly friendly; Amanda always seemed on her guard, but was not snobby.

Did you go to school “in Boston?”

Jeezus —you Harvard people are annoying. Is the fact that virtually everyone graduates with honors not enough?

r178, I just mentioned that when I was in college I met two well-known people currently being discussed on Datalounge in a thread about them.

Your little tantrum says much more about you than it does about me.

Yes we all how it works in Cambridge …

You used tantrum incorrectly, by the way.

"Considering that she was almost constantly pregnant, and that Bobby Kennedy was young (30-40 years old) and he was a ‘Kennedy’, it is interesting that he was satisfied with this situation."

It seems that the earlier generation of Kennedy men married women they thought would be good Catholic wives and who would shut up and put up. Bobby appreciated that Ethel let him have a huge brood, letting him feel/look like a good Irish Catholic and devoted family man. But he cheated on her constantly, so no need to care that she wasn't sexy - he got all those needs met elsewhere.

I suspect these Kennedy men really didn't like women at all (even those who were extremely straight) . Instead of having "Madonna/ whore complex"(which at least put the Madonnas up on some weird, chaste pedestal), they believed that women were either brood mares (their wives) or whores.

What a gross family. I'm glad their time is coming to an end.

R176 What a tragic situation America finds itself with a demented conspiracy minded anti-science brain-worm eaten secretary of HHS. When the next pandemic comes, there will no longer be any true experienced scientists or functional CDC agency to protect us, probably resulting in tens of millions of deaths.

The other attraction of Ethel was that her family - the Skakels - were wealthy so it's assumed that it would be expected that she'd have some settled on her when she married into the Kennedys. Mind you I doubt that anybody anticipated that she would pump out 11 children.

[quote] What a gross family. I'm glad their time is coming to an end.

I wouldn't be so sure.

In order of deadness:

David Kennedy (1984)

John F. Kennedy Jr. (1999)

Kara Kennedy (2011)

Christopher Lawford (2018)

RFK Jr. got more of the Skakel criminal genes.

Not one of these four Kennedy cousins had any idea that their last day was their last day alive when they got up that morning.

Kind of odd.

You missed Michael Kennedy, R185, the son who looked most like RFK, Sr., & who died in a skiing accident Dec. 31, 1997.

In the fourth generation, Saoirse Roisin Hill died in 2019 and Maeve Fahey Kennedy Townsend died in 2020.

Jackie, Jean, and Pat were all feeling pressure to get married when they landed their husbands. None of them had a particularly long courtship or engagement. Pat and Jean were 30 and 28, respectively, when they married, unusual for a Catholic woman in the fifties who wasn’t a nun.

Jackie had already gone through a broken engagement and watching her younger sister Lee get marries before her. She was also repeatedly reminded by her mother that she didn’t have a trust fund and needed to land a rich husband.

These three didn’t know their husbands that well prior to marrying. JFK and Peter Lawford were both getting pressure to marry at the time, as well.

Joan and Ted’s courtship was very limited-I believe Joan said they only had 5 or 6 dates before they were engaged. Joe and Rose pushed Ted to marry her, because he was “dating” a lot of women beneath their social standing, like ballet dancers. Joan was a model and beautiful, but also Catholic and well educated from a conservative family-on paper, the perfect match for him.

All four marriages had problems with chronic adultery, which Joan and Pat managed by drinking to excess.

Sarge and Eunice’s courtship lasted almost 9 years. He was trying for years to get her to accept his proposal and she finally did.

Bobby had first dated Ethel’s older sister Pat, who was quiet and serious. She wasn’t in love with him and ended up marrying an architect and moving to Ireland. Bobby and Ethel dated for a few years before they married.

Big family. Law of averages says there’s at least one gay in OP's photo. Any out Kennedy?

One of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's daughters is married to a woman.

Do Caroline & Ed lead separate lives? I never see them together.

Didn’t it come out during her brief, ill fated Senate bid that she had an affair with Arthur Sulzberger?

[QUOTE]Not one of these four Kennedy cousins had any idea that their last day was their last day alive when they got up that morning. Kind of odd.

Actually, isn't not knowing when you're going to die (let alone a particular day) the norm unless you're awaiting execution or are in hospice care?

I never liked the Kennedys because they're always getting away with shit that would put a regular person in jail.

About Kennedy women and sexuality, by the 1950s and 1960s the notion that sex was only for procreation had disappeared from Catholicism, but it doesn't mean women weren't harmed by all of the crazy prohibitions on sex and judgements made about women. Still then, showing interest was enough to be labeled a whore. Joe Kennedy subjected Rosemary to a lobotomy when she began leaving her school/institution to see boys.

I can't remember which Kennedy bio I read this in, but during Rose's Catholic education, the nuns expressly taught sex was only for procreation. After successfully spawning the first and when ready to breed again, the wife is to leave her nightgown over the back of a chair indicating receptivity. Once pregnant, sex ceased and would start up again once the nightgown appeared on the chair. Apparently, nuns taught this.

I have doubts about that r197. Perhaps SOME nuns taught that. But I grew up in a Catholic family, with all members going several generations back attending Catholic schools, and none of them ever reported such a doctrine.

That being said, the overriding message that Catholics, particularly Irish Catholics got in their schooling, was that the body was bad, that sex was bad, that sexual desire was bad - only made "ok" by the notion of procreation. And that message has had very negative impacts on the sex lives of countless people through the past centuries. I don't think most people paid that much attention, frankly, in the middle ages. And certain cultures were better at resisting the message that the body was bad and sex was bad. However, the 19th and 20th centuries were very pious centuries for Catholics, so most of us who lived in that milieu and endured those messages have had to do a lot of recovery work.

PS Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and lots of Protestants also got these messages too, so maybe the real blame lies on Abrahamic religions.

That’s a really, REALLY, frightening photo that I’m so glad I had no way of being involved with or standing somewhere inside of. 😱

[quote]by the 1950s and 1960s the notion that sex was only for procreation had disappeared from Catholicism

This is laughably inaccurate. "Disappeared?" By the [italic]50s?!?[/italic]

Hon, there!s a whole movement of trad Catholics right now that's trying to take us back to the 1400s. There are also Latino and Italian-American families where it's like Vatican II and the social progress of the 60s never took place. Even seemingly mainstream, assimilated Catholic families today often still project regressive social values on their children, especially if they attend mass weekly, hearing a priest lecturing them from the pulpit each time, and definitely if they send their kids to Catholic schools where they're immersed in the doctrine 5 additional days a week. .

There is a huge diversity in thought and compliance with Catholic doctrine among Catholics. There are plenty of pro-birth control and pro-choice Catholics today, plenty of Catholic "sluts" and Catholics who are "DTF." Plenty of young Catholic men and women having casual sex and casual relationships with no intention of marriage. But the predominant culture among practicing, believing Catholics today is still one of rigid sexual rules, absolutely no sanctioned sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman, and no contraception, abortion, or any "artificial" methods of birth control. There are Catholics still following "the rhythm method" today, and having "surprise" pregnancies, as always.

Are these rules always followed, even by the moralistic uber-Catholics who push them the most stridently? Of course not, the hypocrisy is everywhere like in every religion. But to say "the notion that sex was only for procreation" had ever "disappeared" from Catholicism is just not true, even today. It's still a sexually repressive religion that views women and their sexuality with great judgment and disdain, and treats sex like it's a filthy, disgusting sin.

I always chuckled at the alleged comments in one of those 1980s Jackie biographies where a former Ethel Hyannisport house maid claimed the family washer and dryer ran 24/7with that huge brood; and when Ethel once accused the maid of something, they quarreled, the maid said she was quitting, and Ethel told her she’d better finish the laundry load first, the maid told her to the effect that Ethel could try wishing that true in one hand and shitting in the other, and seeing which hand filled up first. LOL

[quote] Not one of these four Kennedy cousins had any idea that their last day was their last day alive when they got up that morning. Kind of odd.

Just like their father/uncle.

[QUOTE]and none of them ever reported such a doctrine.

It would be embarrassing to do so, wouldn't it? Also think about when Rose Kennedy attended her education after high school. By Sacred Heart nuns circa 1910, FFS. It drips over an entire family, damaging the girls especially.

Ethel was a dogmatic Catholic. She supported practicing Catholicism not on an intellectual level but with strictly religious rules. However at her non-stop parties, she forced her secretaries to wear bikinis . She locked them in cages and paraded them in front of everyone. On another occasion, she made young secretaries play hide-and-seek by locking them in closets with older men. She had no regard for these women’s discomfort or privacy, as long as she herself was entertained. She had also made great efforts to prevent the Peace Corps from distributing birth control pills.

I also heard that RFK was similarly dogmatic and puritanical before becoming AG .But he changed after post JFK assasination. If he had extramarital affairs, it began after 1963 .So I don’t believe Marilyn Monroe rumors. Robert Kennedy was too Catholic in that period.

There were rumors that RFK was fucking Jackie in the months immediately after JFK's assassination. For reference (some are sure to ask) Gore Vidal quoted them in his memoir Palimpsest (yes, I know that it's Vidal) and I read them in one of the more salacious bios - "A Woman Named Jackie", maybe?

Vidal thought it had symmetry as Lee Radziwill was supposed to have fucked JFK. As well as fucking Onassis before Jackie landed him.

It's all beyond incestuous if true.

The second edition of A Woman Named Jackie added the story about RFK and Jackie fucking, supposedly in Antigua at Bunny Mellon’s house. His source wouldn’t go on the record.i could see them getting uncomfortably close to each other but not crossing that line.

Lee was sleeping with Onassis when Ari invited Jackie and Lee to cruise the Christina after Patrick’s death. Onassis became infatuated with Jackie and ignored Lee on the cruise, then gave Jackie a very expensive necklace on the cruise while giving Lee a couple of inexpensive bracelets.

Onassis was in DC for JFK’s funeral at Jackie’s invitation, and was at the family wake.

In 1961, Charles DeGaulle said of Jackie (after her trip to Paris with JFK), “ I can see her sunning herself on the yacht of a Greek petrol billionaire in 10 years.”

Fucking your brother's wife or your sister's husband is incestuous in a metaphorical sense, in the way that revolving sexual interests inside of a tight knit group is labeled "incestuous," but it's not actual incest and it's certainly not "beyond incestuous."

David Kennedy was the most beautiful of RFK kids. What a sad story.

RFK supposedly had a longtime fling with actress Lee Grant, not sure if that was before or after JFK's assassination.

[quote]One of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's daughters is married to a woman.

Rose Schlossberg married her wife in Ojai, where they live and run a cafe on the main drag in town.

r177 my older sister went to school in Boston (the other school, in Chestnut Hill) in the 80's with Chris and Doug Kennedy, and said much the same about them as was said of Max. Friendly, easy to approach. Chris married his college gf right after graduation.

Who exactly lives in the Hyannisport and Palm Beach residences now? Or are they only there part of the year?

Caroline's other daughter, Tatiana, is a climate and science reporter for the NYT. She broke the story about the mystery of the dead bear cub deposited in Central Park by cousin Bobby.

She's no longer with the paper.

R211- Ted moved into the house owned by Rose and Joe after she died. When Ted passed away the main house was donated to the Kennedy Institute, a foundation set up in Ted Kennedy’s name.

Caroline sold her family’s house in the compound to Ted Kennedy Jr and his wife. Ethel still lived part time in her house until her death (she spent half the year in Florida).

Joan lives in the home on Halls Island that Ted purchased in the early 60s, she got it in the divorce.

The Palm Estate was sold around the time Rose died. It was in disrepair and apparently hadn’t been redecorated in decades.

Passed away?

Thanks, r214. I didn't realize the Compound was several residences. And I didn't know they sold the Palm Beach residence.

RFK Jr might WANT to run for POTUS in 28 but he isn't going to get very far there.

I mean, what is he running as? Dem or Rethug?

The Dems LOATHE him. Some of the MAGA idiots might love him but there's also plenty of Repubs who LIKE their annual flu/Covid shot.

Daphne Zuniga of Melrose Place fame dated a Kennedy for quite a while. Was it RFK Jr?

Is this a test, R218? If we get the answer right, do we win something? You're the one bringing it up, why don't you just tell us?

I believe there was a Kennedy Family Trust but also individual trusts for each branch. And, one would assume that some of them created their own family trusts.

Obviously, Jackie had her own Onassis money. And, all the money she scammed from being On Assistance. Caroline seems like she could be one of the wealthier descendants, but who knows?

R164 is correct. You don’t have all of those kids via abstinence, & they all resemble their father, so those two were fucking, a LOT.

Too many of the kids resemble Ethel. Joe's speech patterns mimic his mother's.

Bobby and Ethel were having kids every 12-18 months or so—except for the period between Kerry’s birth in 1959 and Christopher’s birth in 1963. It’s interesting that Ethel got pregnant fairly soon after Marilyn Monroe died in August, 1962.

R220 we all know. She was her brother’s heir.. Her assets are derived from three separate estates. She is by far the wealthiest Kennedy cousin.

RE Kennedy family trusts - Joe could have, would have, and ultimately DID dictate via LWAT exactly what he wanted done with his money when he passed on. He regarded the females in his family to be spendthrifts (excepting Rose, of course haha), and the males as being clueless about finances (excepting Steve S, of course). He wanted it this way. "The office" was instructed by him to give his family a bit of a run around regarding the extent of their vast holdings. According to Rose's personal secretary, Barbara, Rose would routinely inquire about her own personal net worth at "the office" and was always told "we'll have to get back to you on that." Says secretary "They never, ever did." Joe knew better. God only knows how much money that family has today.

There were Kennedy Family Trusts long befoe Joe died.

His children were taken care of in their lifetimes. The primary beneficiaries of old Joe were the grandchildren, via separate trusts. Caroline has the assets of her own trust, her father’s trust (via her mother), her mother’s assets and her brother’s assets (including his share of their father’s and mother’s assets). It is A LOT, by Kennedy standards.

Used throughout the Kennedy family tree…

Did any of you read the article linked above? It explains how the wealth trickled down unevenly because the original 9 siblings who procreated each received an equal amount, but their family sizes varied widely from JFK's 2 kids to RFK's 9. They're not all rich and some are much richer than others.

[quote]When Joseph Kennedy died in 1969, the family fortune was split equally among his children, who were building families of different sizes. JFK and Jackie had only two children, one of whom died before having kids. (Jackie also received a significant inheritance from her second husband, Aristotle Onassis.) In 2013, when their daughter, Caroline, became Obama’s ambassador to Japan, the Post analyzed her filings and estimated her net worth at more than $250 million. RFK and Ethel, meanwhile, had 11 children. He died with $3 million in campaign debt, which had to be paid off, and Ethel, who never remarried, had a reputation for spending more money than she should. In Bobby’s divorce proceedings from 2012, he claimed that his mother was broke and that he and her other children had been covering her expenses. Bobby himself had to depend on wealthy benefactors from his environmental work who got him a house in Hyannis that he was only able to buy outright in 2020, after his anti-vaccine crusading had taken off. (Between 2016 and 2022, Bobby’s annual salary from Children’s Health Defense, his anti-vaccine organization, increased from $0 to $510,515.) Bobby’s current net worth has been estimated at $15 million — plenty rich, but a sliver of Caroline’s net worth. All of that leaves the 34 members of the G4 generation in the RFK branch in a much different situation from Caroline’s three children. “By the time you get to the fourth generation, the money’s run out,” Maeve McKean, one of RFK and Ethel’s grandkids, said back in 2008. Maeve had worked her way through Boston College with a job at Dunkin’ Donuts and was leaving law school with $150,000 in student debt.

@219. "If we get the answer right, do we win something? You're the one bringing it up, why don't you just tell us?"

Ha, sorry; I see your point.

I wasn't trying to be coy. I just remember with 100% certainty that Daphne Zuniga was dating a Kennedy for a year or two. Late 90s? Early 2000s? But I have no idea which Kennedy. I believe it was RFK Jr. but honestly all those toothy Kennedy men just sort of blurred together in my brain and so I cannot be sure. Maybe it was one of his many brothers or cousins. Definitely not JFK Jr. though. In any case, they were allegedly trying to keep the relationship fairly quiet at the time.

[quote] I wasn't trying to be coy. I just remember with 100% certainty that Daphne Zuniga was dating a Kennedy for a year or two. Late 90s? Early 2000s? But I have no idea which Kennedy.

He fell into one of her cavernous nostrils and was never seen from again.

Don't buy it. With the way Joe structured his assets, that family is still plenty rich. He had multiple streams of income at all times. For example, he owned an ice cream factory for years - no one links Joe Kennedy with ice cream. We've discussed before the fact that Jackie and Lee got no money from the Auchincloss estate, and had been raised knowing that there would never be any money for them from that family. No one was being mean to them. It was just a done deal put forth by Hughdie's own Mother, Emma, who left a large some for her BLOOD grandchildren to divide amongst themselves. It was revealed that Jackie's brother, James, was collecting $12k per month from that bequest. Trusts, trusts, TRUUUSTS!!

R232 won't rest until we all agree that everyone of the Kennedy Clan is filthy rich and will always be filthy rich because....TRUSTS!

[QUOTE], one of RFK and Ethel’s grandkids, said back in 2008. Maeve had worked her way through Boston College with a job at Dunkin’ Donuts and was leaving law school with $150,000 in student debt.

I can imagine her father lying and withholding information from his daughter in order to control her, or provide better funding to her numerous sibs as a form of manipulation. How shocking that RFK, Jr would withhold love and cash to manipulate a daughter as he's splashing cash to get fuvked by a younger woman.

I don’t understand this part. Kennedy family spent a fortune to get Jack Kennedy elected in 1960, and they would be ready to do the same in 1964. So why did the debts fall on the RFK family after his very short campaign ?they were going to use this money in 1964 general election anyway. Politics was almost like a family business for Joe Kennedy’s sons. So why did he divide his money equally among his daughters and sons and didn’t create extra funds for his sons to use in political campaigns? Didn’t the Kennedys have money in a pool they could use? RFK was treated very unfairly by his siblings. RFK himself gave additional money to JFK’s widow after his death, and also donated millions of dollars on behalf of the Kennedy family to Harvard University in JFK’s name. Most importantly, wasn’t there anyone to control Ethel Kennedy’s spending?They should have paid her annual allowance in cash, and made her cover her own debts.

R235, presidential campaigns burn money 24/7.

Even a short campaign goes into the millions VERY quickly.

Also, keep in mind that these particular candidates had to pay top notch security costs out of those campaign funds, especially during to JFK’s assassination.

Ask any top tier celebrity or tech leader where their money goes, on the day to day? I mean people like Stephen Spielberg or an Elon Musk type - and they will all tell you they’re paying up the nose for private security. And the more they travel, or are on the road? The more they pay.

Also, you sort of answered your own question. Bobby was married to a woman who spent more than they were bringing in.

The RFK branch of the family had waaay too many kids, on top of it all. Divvy up those equally numbered inheritances, along with other mitigating factors? It’s easy to understand why Caroline ended up with the largest bag, while the others did not.

Someone posted in one of the Kennedy groups about the state of Hickory Hill: ‘ ‘…I did a house inspection when Hickory Hill first went on the market in 2008 for $24M; it finally sold in 2010 for ~$8.5M. The place was falling down and riddled with friable asbestos with a kitchen with appliances circa 1950s.What was eerie was in her bedroom was Robert’s closet that she had closed on the day Robert was assassinated and not touched since. His suits were left hanging and shoes on the floor all covered in dust. On the lower level was RFK’s office with a long meeting desk with his Cabinet chair at the head and his US and Attorney General flags behind the chair. The flags were rotting away with pieces falling off and littering the floor.The top third floor had been divided up into small cubicles and each kid lived in a 10’ x 10’ area resembling a 1950s college dorm room. The house had no central air conditioning and the priceless artifacts hanging on the walls including a Lincoln-signed Emancipation Proclamation were deteriorating with ink bleeding and bleaching. Whoever bought Hickory Hill had an expensive project on their hands to make it livable…’ The money didn’t went to children because they were always looking cheap and dirty. Kennedy family paid their school expenses . The money didn’t went to house. The money didn’t went to gambling or disastrous business links. The money didn’t went to real estate. So how did she managed to spend nearly 100 million dollar in her life time?

Robin and Victoria Lawford are swapped in the photo of Rose and all the grandkids. Robin is the redhead in front. Sloppy journalism!

I remember reading in The Other Mrs Kennedy (a fantastically bitchy and trashy book) that Ethel couldn’t afford to replace the roof at Hickory Hill in the 70s, when it was completely rotted and in of a replacement.

A letter was sent to Rose and the other branches of the Kennedy family, asking them to help pay for the roof, from the Kennedy’s financial office in New York. None of them offered to help, except Jackie (who was Onassis’ widow by then). Jackie ended up paying to replace the roof at Hickory Hill.

The stories about Ethel’s behavior as a widow all sound like she had a drinking/prescription pill problem, as well as some sort of untreated mental disorder. So I could see how the RFK share of the Kennedy trust is depleted.

Does anyone really think uber-Catholic, soft-brained Ethel ever sought out medical help for her and her kids after the assassination? Mental health care? Any child who loses a parent needs therapy. Any spouse who is widowed needs it too. She probably sent them all to confession and prayed a few rosaries and called it a day.

No wonder the RFK kids turned out how they did. They were neglected, and had massive unaddressed trauma that they constantly relived publicly. That public tragedy followed them everywhere for the rest of their lives and none of them ever addressed it properly.

It's pretty clear she was mentally ill.

I'm not sure therapy was standard in the 1960s in such cases, and I doubt all young children whose parent dies receive it today.

Ethel spent as little time as possible with her kids immediately after Bobby’s death. The younger children and girls were sent to church to pray for Bobby. The older boys were sent off on various camping trips and Safaris around the world. The eldest, Kathleen, spent the summer of 1968 backpacking in Europe.

Ethel spent the summer playing tennis and pretending everything was great.

You can see why Ted couldn’t cope with the responsibility.

He was expected to be the surrogate father for both of his dead brother’s kids, the surrogate father for Pat’s kids, father to his three children, married to an alcoholic wife, having one sister in law not coping with her husband’s death (Ethel) and another sister in law who needed help negotiating a dowry with the world’s toughest businessman (Jackie), a father in failing health, the expectations of Kennedy supporters, the job of Senator….

R242 , also with Bobby Kennedy’s death, family lost its only head. Bobby was not only his last surviving brother, but also his closest friend and confidant. But I believe one of the real reason of Ted Kennedy’s breakdown was he knew he wasn’t as loyal to his brother as he should have been. His aides for some reason saw Bobby Kennedy as their number 1 enemy and they believed he would lose to John Lindsay in the 1970 Senate elections. So once Bobby was out of the way, the path to the presidency would be clear for Ted. They never supported Bobby’s candidacy in 1968 because they thought if he lost, it would damage the Kennedy myth. Ted himself did not support Bobby’s presidential run. He was certainly not like Bobby to Jack. I believe Ted lived with that regret for the rest of his life. It is one death he couldn’t get over.

Ted didn't support Bobby's '68 candidacy because the realistic pol he knew he couldn't win. Not against Johnson himself or the Johnson machine that controlled the party on behalf of Humphrey. Ted wanted him to wait until '72. He had no reason to feel guilty. Ethel, on the other hand, who was strongly pushing Bobby to run, might have had some guilt.

Daphne Zuniga only went to fundraisers for Waterkeeper Alliance, RFK Jr's environmental initiative.

Ben Affleck is the one who reportedly was hooking up with RFK Jr's daughter Kick Kennedy.

Robert Kennedy’s family was a victim of rigid Catholicism. This is not specific to Catholicism it applies to every religion if you practice too rigidly. They practiced no birth control, had no sense of family planning, and ended up with far more children than they could truly care for. Instead of seeking psychiatric help from doctors they turned to priests. Children were forced to attend mass every day, as the results shows they didn’t want to learn anything .

The Kennedys are living proof that "trashy" is just as easily applied to the rich as to the poor. Maybe more so.

R247, we resemble that remark!

It’s more about their lack of parenting skills rather than religion. There is a book called Growing Up Kennedy. Robert Kennedy may have loved his children very much. But he was never at home and by constantly pushing his kids to show physical courage, what exactly was he trying to achieve? Every single of his children broke at least one extremity 3-4 times. As for Ethel’s motherhood, it was a crime. I mean absolutely absolutely zero maternal instict or ability. The lack of discipline in the RFK household is unbelievable. How could a parent allow this? Two mild examples from the book: - McSorley has some additions for that category. Once he took Bobby to a McLean pet shop where the boy bought a thousand locusts and some mice to feed to his predators. During the ride back home, McSorley wondered why Bobby, an animal lover, would submit the locusts and mice to such a fate. That night McSorley got a frantic call from Hickory Hill. Bobby had released the intended victims, and there were hundreds of locusts and dozens of mice running through the house. - Food fights were a favorite pastime at Hickory Hill, and when RFK’s youngsters were in full career, mashed potatoes and string beans hurtled at high velocity around the dining room, distempering the walls and driving domestics to cover. “It was pandemonium at mealtime in that place,” a friend recalls, not in admiration. It is said that some of the older RFKs still patronize only restaurants where nobody minds if half the spaghetti winds up on the furniture.

Some people should not be parents.

There was a family in my small midwestern hometown that had a mother sort of like Ethel. No real maternal instinct yet she had 14 kids. And, didn't even have the excuse of being Catholic or Mormon or any other religion that encourages huge families.

But, she was a child of adoption. So maybe that's why.

Jackie Onashish

If you weren't around then, just know that nobody's star outshone Jackie.

Ethel was interested in politics as a young woman, which is why she hooked up[ with the Kennedys in the first place--she wanted to marry JFK, but had to settle for his brother. She loved the ideal of what Joe Kennedy wanted his daughters to be: athletic, wealthy, and well-connected. unfortunately he also wanted women to be baby machines, and she complied, although she was completely uninterested in raising the children once she gave birth to them.

Joan Kennedy is still alive

I've read that Ethel’s ambition was to become a nun, not marry.

R253 No. Her family were Republicans. She herself admitted that at the time she didn’t even know the difference between Republican and Democrat. During a ski holiday, she fell in love with RFK and with the Kennedy family. She kept hanging around them. Until she got married, she obsessively followed RFK. I don’t think she ever had any interest in JFK.

If you watch the HBO documentary "Ethel," then you'd likely come away with the feeling that her adult children loved her, especially the girls. That's all.

Ironically, before his death, Jack Kennedy began to distance himself from the broader Kennedy family. Jackie wanted this way. In 1963, it was more first family than extended family. I don’t know if he would have parted away from Robert Kennedy. After Jack Kennedy’s death, Robert Kennedy was very successful in holding the family together and keeping JFK’s myth alive. But the problem was within his own family. He was blind to it.He couldn’t understand the danger. After his death, his own family became a source of shame and trouble for the Kennedys. And it still continues today. Yesterday Caroline Kennedy’s son said there is only one Kennedy family and it is mine-JFKs. So the seperation of JFK legacy from Kennedys begins 62 years later.

Two years before Bobby’s death, Ethel’s brother George Jr. died in a plane crash.

Three months later, his daughter was showing off her new Mustang convertible to the neighbors and took the neighbor’s two small kids for a ride. The kids sat on the convertible top; she hit a bump and they fell out and died.

Four months after that, his son was severely injured in a fireworks accident. He was still hospitalized a month later, when his mother (George Jr’s widow) choked to death on a piece of meat at dinner in front of her children.

As close as they were professionally, Jack & Bobby were not social intimates.

Jackie was a fixture on the cover of Photoplay.

Jospeh P Kennedy 11 looks demented

R259 Both of George Skakel Jr.'s parents also died in a plane crash,11 years before Jr.'s fatal plane crash.

You would think with all the family deaths by airplane*, JFK Jr. would have taken flight safety more seriously. Especially, if reports are true, after his mom had premonitions of his death piloting a plane and urged him not to take piloting lessons.

* Joe Jr., Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy, the Skakels

JFK Jr was very handsome.

He was also an idiot.

[quote]Yesterday Caroline Kennedy’s son said there is only one Kennedy family and it is mine-JFKs. So the seperation of JFK legacy from Kennedys begins 62 years later.

I understand his anger at RFK Jr, who's a disaster and total embarrassment to the family, but young Schlossberg is his father's son here - Ed always held an arrogance about Caroline being the most important Kennedy, and had an antagonistic relationship with RFK Jr at best - RFK in his published diaries talked about how Ed cruelly bullied the Bessettes in the days following John-John's plane crash and controlled all of the funeral arrangements. Methinks Jack S. has more than just the usual bone to pick with RFK.

Also, Aristotle Onassis’ son Alexander died in a plane crash two years before his own death.

Alexander had convinced his father right before the crash to commence divorce proceedings against Jackie. Jackie somehow became aware of this.

While Alex was languishing in the hospital before his death, Jackie suddenly showed up and cornered Alex’s longtime girlfriend, Fiona Thyssen, trying to find out what Ari planned to give her in a divorce settlement.

[quote]You can see why Ted couldn’t cope with the responsibility.

Ted was never supposed to amount to anything in the family, he was the last-born 'oopsie' baby, soft, chubby and not academically bright as a child. There were three handsome, ambitious brothers ahead of him - no one could have predicted they would all die tragic early deaths, and all of the family goals thrust onto Teddy.

And he had all of the issues and responsibilities listed in r242. It's amazing he didn't end up crazy or dead.

[quote] And he had all of the issues and responsibilities listed in [R242]. It's amazing he didn't end up crazy or dead.

And I thought [italic]I[italic] had problems because I couldn't find a few grubs for my only meal this weekend!

[quote]t's amazing he didn't end up crazy or dead.

He's been dead for 16 years.

Ted only wanted to protect and preserve the family name and dynasty, period.

[quote]There were three handsome, ambitious brothers ahead of him.

The Kennedys were politician handsome. Most of them had their father's canine mouth. JFK had the loaf hair and a puffy face from his illness.

God, the Skakels were a mess. All the things described above plus the one who was a murderer

"Daphne Zuniga only went to fundraisers for Waterkeeper Alliance, RFK Jr's environmental initiative.

Ben Affleck is the one who reportedly was hooking up with RFK Jr's daughter Kick Kennedy."

Yeah, Ben briefly hooked up with the current (and rather dull, compared with her namesake) Kick. But Daphne absolutely was involved with a Kennedy for at least a year or two. Anyway, I'll let it drop now since I can't remember the details...

I'm sure she did hook up with RFK Jr since this is who she ended up marrying. This isn't her dad, it's her husband!

Her taste in men is atrocious.

Teddy was sure fucked up and not fit to be a surrogate father to any kid. And poor Joan was like the proverbial innocent lamb led to slaughter when she married the cheating/weak cunt. Yeah, he had to deal with her alcohol problem, R242, but he certainly contributed to her becoming an alcoholic/pill popper.

As an aside, on the day of Mary Jo's funeral, Ted had the nerve to wear a neck brace---as if he suffered any injury!---and poor Joan had to stand there and be all supportive, knowing full well that he not only that he fled like a coward to leave the girl to die (in 3 feet of water!) but that she was being used only to prop up his political ambitions.

I wonder if Ted provided much for her in his will.

An autobiography from her, a real tell all, and not some wishy washy Camelot shit, would be quite a read as she could really spill the beans on that family.

R267 Speaking of winding up dead, let’s talk about that innocent broad who drowned in waist-deep water while Teddy fled the scene, had a Dr. Pepper, and then called his lawyers to come clean up the corpse.

The person who could still write the most sensational book about JFK is alive: Priscilla Wear Ellsworth (Fiddle). Later, she married the publisher of The New York Review of Books. So, I don’t think she will write. If she decides, it will end up as the all -time best seller.

Faddle on the other hand never married. Very interestingly, Jill Cowen became a historian and specialized in Islamic art. She published books. She passed away. Only Priscilla Wear remains.

Edward Kennedy II’s daughter has a PhD in Physics.

R274 The age difference between Daphne and her husband David is only 11 years, despite appearances. They were together 12 years before they married.

‘… But my pain was well worth the memory of that afternoon at Hickory Hill: Bobby Kennedy hovering over me before I went off to the hospital and, in turn, being hovered over by dancer Rudolph Nureyev. Bobby introduced me to the famous Russian and even in my agony, I was vain enough to note that Mr. Nureyev was not as interested in my anatomy as he was in Bobby’s. Happily, the reverse was not true.’ Bobby Kennedy was very complicated. What kind of relationship did Bobby Kennedy and Rudolf Nureyev have? Was it purely friendship or platonic ?

[quote] [R8], in a world with Pierce Brosnan and Paul Mescal and Colin Farrell, you can retire your hoary and disproven stereotypes, dear.

Pierce Brosnan is leagues better-looking than Colin Farrell, and Mescal...well I don't have the right words.

[quote] The Kennedys were politician handsome. ... JFK had the loaf hair and a puffy face from his illness.

Look at any picture of JFK with the regular folk & his handsomeness immediately stands out. And as hairstyles change over time, deprecating someone from mid-century America on his hair is pretty odd. But then I notice that even his son's hair has now come under attack by some here. It's undisputable that father & son had great heads of hair. As JFK's steroid-induced "puffy face," that became a thing only as he entered his 40s, a rite of passage his son was fated never to enjoy.

i'd forgotten about this episode

7 people in a Jeep driven by a Kennedy. What could possibly go wrong?

There are so many villainsn Kennedy family so she was never targeted. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lost the 2002 Maryland election by a wide margin in a state that was 60% Democratic. It was the Republicans only victory since 1960. Her opponent did nothing. He just waited for her to embarrass herself and that’s exactly what happened.

Her hair and clothes were so bad that she was nicknamed “The Anti-Kennedy” and “The Unsexy Kennedy.” She lost because 60–70% of women voters voted for her opponent. They found her too unsexy.

In the vast majority of photos, JFK looks only slightly above average, especially by the time he became president.

Kathleen Townsend has always been interesting to me. She’s an outlier in the family, more of a quiet intellectual type, married to a professor for the past 50 years. She doesn’t seem to fit in with her rabid animal siblings.

Bald Kennedy is still pretty handsome.

Some of the RFK children turned out pretty well. The problems have mostly been with the older boys.

While he was in law school, Ted Kennedy had a near miss with a commercial jet while piloting a single-engine aircraft.

In 1964, as a passenger, he survived a twin-engine plane crash in which the pilot and another person were killed. Kennedy suffered three crushed and fractured vertebrae, a punctured lung and broken ribs, and was hospitalised for months.

Jesus, RFK Jr. is a bigger idiot that I thought, if he was made aware of all these aircraft tragedies in his family and still chose to take unnecessary risks.

If only it were RFK, Jr., R290.

I just never found JFK that good looking either--I always think people made a fuss over his looks mostly because the previous few presidents were so much older. I thought RFK was handsome when younger, though, and Joe Jr. was gorgeous.

R289 according to Michael Skakel’s unpublished book, both Chris and Maxwell Kennedy were alcoholic when they were young, later after David Kennedy’s death, changed their lifestyle. And Rory Kennedy went to holidays with Michael Kennedy and his teenage (child) babysitter girlfriend. Douglas Kennedy famously had dispute with two nurses and hit them. And later claimed it was because his father was murdered when he was 1. The second generation of the RFK children are insignificant figures. That’s why when they all came together and made statements against RFK Jr., nobody cared.

Wrong Jr. died.

R290 Pat Lawford’s face shockingly changed in later years. Unrecognizable

Her teeth remain the same. Can you imagine those Kennedys in the meth generation?

R291 If only!

Thanks for catching my mistake. I should have typed JFK Jr.

RFK Jr. is a much bigger idiot than his dead cousin, something I think we can all agree on.

[quote]I just never found JFK that good looking either--I always think people made a fuss over his looks mostly because the previous few presidents were so much older.

I generally agree but actually think FDR and Eisenhower were more distinguished-looking and easier to look at than JFK. And Eisenhower was much better looking than JFK as a young man. I won't give you much argument about Truman.

Why would anyone get into a moving vehicle with a Kennedy?

[quote] Why would anyone get into a moving vehicle with a Kennedy?

Larry King once told a story to Jimmy Kimmel about getting into a car accident in late '50s California in which, as best as I can recall, he hit a convertible JFK was either a passenger or driver. Kimmel made some comment about how JFK should have learned a lesson about driving in open air cars. When the audience groaned, he said, "Too soon?"

I want to see pictures of how ratty and rundown the Kennedy Compound, the Palm Estate and Hickory Hill looked by the 80s/90s.

After Jackie died and her apartment at 1040 5th Avenue was sold, the new owner did a total gut renovation because Jackie never did any upkeep in the decades she lived there. She was also a heavy smoker so the apartment must've reeked of old smoke.

I read somewhere that Jackie was unimaginative in interior design so when something needed replacing (drapes, sofa fabric, rugs, wallpaper etc) she'd get it replaced with the same thing so that it always looked the same.

Having been raised by a smoker parent who didn't believe in opening windows I can well imagine how it smelt - ugghh.

Here are some photos of Jackie's Fifth Avenue apartment from when she lived there.

[quote]Having been raised by a smoker parent who didn't believe in opening windows I can well imagine how it smelt - ugghh.

My grandparents smoked like chimneys and of course back in the day nobody went outside to smoke. My grandfather died first and then after my grandmother died a few years later my cousin bought their house. He had to strip it down to the bolts and do a total gut reno because the entire house REEKED of old cigarette smoke. You can't get that smell out of the walls without tearing them out.

R305 Over the years the smoke permeates into the sheet rock and plaster. Removal is the only good option.

I think the reason people have a hard time believing that the Kennedy fortune dissipated is because we have all heard stories for decades about their cheapness, and how all their homes looked like shit.

Wasn't Sister Lee an interior designer?

No way was Jackie ever allowing Lee to touch her apartment.

Jackie of course won acclaim for redecorating the White House and making it more of a historical home.

She definitely had better taste than the rest of the Kennedys but she also had a lot of help.

If you look at the photos it WAS an improvement...the WH really was mostly decorated like a high end hotel. Jackie frenchied it up so it looked like a high end French hotel.

R304 that Pepto-Bismol makes my eyes bleed. It's interesting that she had a such a pared back personal style of dress with that cluttered interior style. I understand that the latter is what the upper classes have always had but it must have been hell to maintain. At least I assume that she had help to do the dusting and vacuuming.

Clutter sets me off. My mother never liked a bare surface when it could have had a lovely Lladro figurine placed upon it.

Lee wasn't afraid of pink but didn't seem to be a fan of upper-class clutter. Unless she sold off all her tchotchkes in her earlier divorces.

[QUOTE]At least I assume that she had help to do the dusting and vacuuming.

The idea of Jackie pushing a vacuum cleaner is pretty hilarious.

[quote]”I don’t know if you’d say cluttered,” Radziwill said of her Manhattan home at the time, “but it’s extremely full. So it’s wonderful to have the contrast [in Paris] of having it totally Zen, totally peaceful. In what other city do you find doves outside your window?”

Lee left her tchotchkes in New York.

I can see it if she'd just pissed off another maid and Bunny Mellon was coming over for pizza. Scarf on her head and a Marlboro Red clamped in her mouth.

In general, we tend to be more influenced by beautiful people, give them more chances, and tolerate their mistakes more. For some reason public bought the handsome and charismatic Kennedy image. Joe and Rose Kennedy’s family visually satisfied people. That was their greatest asset. They also delivered impressive speeches politically. As in the case of Ted Kennedy, they set a legendary career in the senate. They had followers. This generation is generally too ugly, lacks charisma, and can’t even read a prepared text. There is absolutely nothing to sell. I think if even one of them showed the slightest bit of hope, their surname would still attract attention.

[quote]In general, we tend to be more influenced by beautiful people, give them more chances, and tolerate their mistakes more. For some reason public bought the handsome and charismatic Kennedy image. Joe and Rose Kennedy’s family visually satisfied people.

That argument might be convincing if they didn't all have horse faces.

Always loved this ridiculous photo of Bobby and Pele.

Peter Lawford's DNA was stronger than Kennedy DNA, as his kids all look like him.

This family, especially Bobby and Ethel’s branch of the family tree, sounds like an introvert’s nightmare.

Unruly children and animals pissing and shitting everywhere.

A constant stream of guests staying over or coming over, like a hotel built into a convention center.

Loud, gym teacher-esque Eunice and Ethel, yelling at everyone to get up and sail or play touch football or something.

The current events quizzes at the dinner table.

Teddy walking around shitfaced without his pants on.

No wonder Joan drank.

I think the Skakel genes and wildness hit this family like a bomb and over time they couldn’t escape its effect. In the end it destroyed them. Apart from William Smith’s rape case which he won, all of the scandals of this generation came from the RFK branch. While creating scandal after scandal, they also brought back the sins of the past.

Bobby Kennedy is a cold-blooded killer.

[quote] Apart from William Smith’s rape case which he won, all of the scandals of this generation came from the RFK branch.

Several members of the other branches had alcoholism problems: Christopher Lawford, Patrick Kennedy (Ted's son), Joan Kennedy.

JFK Jr. killed his wife and sister-in-law due to his poor judgment.

Maria Shriver married a man who fucked their maid and who did not acknowledge his child by her until forced to do so,.

How Maria Shriver could've looked at that kid and not known he was Arnold's bastard son with the cumdump maid is a mystery.

If you can’t find The Other Mrs.Kennedy, this You Tuber (who is NOT a fan of Ethel) reviews it here in multiple parts.

You can read The Other Mrs. Kennedy for free on the Internet Archive.

R323, she probably never met the kid before.

Ethel at r325 looks as the best possible hope an MTF transitioning back then could have had. All those kids and estrogen, but still looked like a dried out husk?

It is because Bobby Kennedy was mercilessly bullied by his father and siblings when he was young.He had inferiority compex. There is a famous exchange in books when someone was praising the younger siblings and Bobby’s name came up, Eunice said ‘Bobby? Forget it. Let’s talk about the other boys.’

According to Evans Thomas book, Bobby got in love with an attractive girl and they started dating. But Jack Kennedy saw them on the street, took the girl away, and the girl left Bobby at that moment. Later Jack brought her to the Kennedy home regularly. The whole family knew about this and mocked Bobby for it. Perhaps his later alleged affair with Jackie was a kind of divine revenge.

So, it was normal for him to marry Ethel who loved him madly. Bobby was probably very much aware that Ethel wasn’t particularly beautiful, but since she was the first person who truly loved him, he was always grateful and cared for her deeply, spoiled her. I always thought he was just too good for Ethel and should have married with a blonde one.

[quote]Several members of the other branches had alcoholism problems: Christopher Lawford, Patrick Kennedy (Ted's son), Joan Kennedy.

Ted Kennedy Jr. had a longtime drinking problem as well. His wife is actually some kind of addiction therapist, iirc. Bobby Jr, David and Michael Kennedy all had booze problems as well. Pat Lawford was a well-know alcoholic for many years.

Pat needed to be in rehab in the 80s, but the family didn’t want to do it, because Joan’s rehab stints were uncovered by the tabloids in the 70s. She had a drinking problem as far back as the 50s-her father wrote her and made a comment about her cutting back on drinking at the time. She was pulled over in LA in the early 60s with the kids in the car for driving erratically, and the cop smelled liquor on her breath.

Rose’s secretary in the 70s noted in her book that the family was concerned that Ethel would combine painkillers with a bottle of wine every night.

Jackie drank heavily right after the assassination. In the Arthur Schlesinger tapes that came out a while ago you can hear the ice in her drink. She was also drinking a lot when she did her interviews with William Manchester, which is why she spoke so freely with him, and why she pushed relentlessly to stop publication.

I'd drink heavily in the months following my husband's bloody assassination that occurred in full view of the world while seated .3 feet from me. I'd drink a lot for a few months if photographs of me wearing clothing soaked with my murdered husband's blood and brain matter made the front page of every newspaper in the world.

Jackie was a drinker but she wasn't an alkie like the Kennedys, or Joan or Ethel. She went through a hell no one else can imagine and she found a way to cope through the first few months. But she wasn't an alcoholic.

Correct r331. The drinking stopped when she moved to New York.

When she began chain smoking instead.

Wasn't Jean Kennedy Smith also a boozebag?

Their fame and national presence are really disproportionate to their achievements, and most of the ones you could name were achieved by Ted Kennedy in the senate.

Joan Kennedy came from a family of hardcore alcoholics, her mother was well-known in those social circles to be a severe alcoholic and had to be hospitalized herself a number of times, even before Joan married Ted.

Yes, R334, she was a Kennedy. All of them were boozebags. Most of their spouses were too, but not Jackie.

When Janet finally set Jackie straight about six months post assassination. Janet "Mama Don't Take No Mess" Auchincloss brought her back from the brink with the sort of matter of fact read that only a Mother can get away with.

Give both RFK and JFK their due. Despite suffering from chronic pain throughout his life, JFK never sought relief in alcohol. After JFK’s assassination, RFK lived through hell. He didn’t just lose his brother and his power overnight, he also became the number 1 enemy of the new administration. But he never turned to alcohol.

[quote] Their fame and national presence are really disproportionate to their achievements

I'd say a passable claim to saving humanity is a decent-sized achievement.

"Saving humanity?" Can you dial down the hyperbole to only slightly absurd?

How on earth did "the Kennedys" save humanity?

RFK may have been heading in that direction. I remember being very surprised and disappointed when I read this.

[QUOTE]Yet it was a Democrat who caused one of the most unpleasant scenes in the history of a restaurant with very few unpleasant scenes. Robert Kennedy and a group were there in the mid-60s for dinner. As Charles Masson the son tells it, “He was very drunk. He said, ‘This vichyssoise is canned.’ My father was deeply insulted by the charge. He took my mother over to the senator and said, ‘Will you please tell Senator Kennedy how I make the vichyssoise?’ And she did, step by step—none of those quick ways he’d learned in Hawaii—at the end of which Robert Kennedy said, ‘It’s canned.’

[QUOTE]“Later in the dinner, he finds a raspberry in his dessert with a blemish, and he gets up and clinks his glass and makes a speech about the raspberry. He says, ‘It’s unacceptable that in a restaurant like this that we should be served a rotten raspberry.’

[QUOTE]“At this point, my father’s had it. He said to the senator, ‘Just because you have one bad Democrat does not mean the whole party’s rotten!’ ”

[quote] How on earth did "the Kennedys" save humanity?

Have you read anything about the placement of Russian offensive missiles in Cuban? If JFK had taken the advice of most of his militaristic advisors, including, we learned belatedly, RFK, that crisis could have ended very much differently.

The Kennedy curse hijacked my right leg!

R342 Robert Kennedy had many enemies. Very serious allegations were made against him. However no one ever claimed to have seen him drunk. In the book by one of the FBI directors, it was written that he could spend the whole night with just a single drink, and for that reason they could never catch him red-handed. I don’t believe it

The real people at the center of these events never spoke. Apart from the superficial book that came at the end of Ted Kennedy’s life, none of them wrote their memoirs. The close circle around these people showed incredible loyalty. They kept their mouths shut and never spoke out.

Most of the anecdotes written in books were shaped to fit the author’s narrative. Many are simply fabricated. In Taraborelli’s books there are dialogues between two people who are already dead. How could he possibly know these? That’s why I think we’ll never really know the truth about this family.

Some claim that Bobby and Jackie were together for a time, while others say Jackie was an alcoholic after the assassination and involved with many people including her secret service agent. Architect Jack Warnecke claimed they were lovers, passionately making love and they were going to get married. All of these claims contradict each other.

If Bobby Kennedy truly had a relationship with her, would he have allowed all these other people involved with Jackie ? If all the other stories are true, why are there still allegations about Bobby and Jackie ? Isn’t this a great injustice to the children of both families?

Kennedys sell book . Kennedy gossip sell better.

[quote]I'd say a passable claim to saving humanity is a decent-sized achievement.

Saving humanity from a crisis you arguably caused, doesn't rank high among the list of human achievements.

In the infancy of his new administration, JFK made the mistake of being led by the generals, of not questioning them enough, but he grew enough in his short time in office not to make that same mistake again. And due to his refusal to engage in similar groupthink eighteen months later, he does have, as I noted, a passable claim to saving humanity.

R348 If JFK had listened to the generals, the confrontation with the USSR would very likely have led to nuclear war. JFK's decision for a diplomatic and back channel communication resolved the impasse over the Cuba missiles and an amicable settlement was reached.

R348. That is a much less ringing endorsement than your original statement.

That was indeed my point, R349.

Not at all, R350. He showed remarkable growth in office. And when presented with the gravest threat of the Cold War era, he ignored the recommendations of most of his advisors, including that of his brother, & was able to steer the world away from the abyss of a nuclear conflagration. As I noted in my original post, a passable claim to saving humanity.

R146 "Even tragic events don't necessarily mean extended family members would be close [R145].

Specially if a couple of your cousins were rapists too

R352. The Bay of PIgs Invasion, which he both approved and failed to execute properly that led to the crisis to begin with. Kennedy then was responsible for leading the American people to think the missiles were an existential threat by misrepresenting them as offensive and overstating their range, making a negotiated settlement all the more difficult. In the end, he made concessions to remove the missiles that he could have made earlier, but he wanted to make it sure that the resolution appeared to be a humiliation to Krushchev, undermining a leader that was a better for America than his predecessors.

It's really not anything to admire.

R354 Wow. Talk about revisionist history. JFK did not like anything about the Bay of Pigs plan that remained in limbo status under Eisenhower because he would not authorize it. He refused to authorize to air cover for the invasion as it was a covert and illegal act. He did grudgingly approve it to go forward but as a clandestine act, not sanctioned or in junction with any part of the US military.

'Makes me irritate at the mere mention of Pig Bay!'

R355. Dear Lord! You've entered the realm of total insanity. He was President of the United States and authorized it, only without the proper air coverage.

The Kennedys are high academic achievers

It's amazing that Djokovic didn't have a medic timeout. He knows Fritz is too mature for these games, the trickery won't work on Taylor. I bet he is saving the dramatics for Alcaraz who is already traumatized by Novak's past trickery

I always knew that the Kennedys played tennis, but not at this level.

R259 after all this tragedy, less than a month after her sister-in -law’s death, Ethel threw a party for 300 people to celebrate her wedding anniversary and partied until morning. Disgusting!

If this family had never had the old man's bootlegger money, they'd be just another clan of Irish white trash.

Picture them with Kentucky accents instead of the Boston style.

Boston defines "Irish trash" way more than Kentucky. They'd be typical Southies.

Exactly. Picture the Walhbergs, but with more hair and better teeth.

[quote] If this family had never had the old man’s bootlegger money

One of those so-called facts, like the “Russia, Russia hoax,” that gets repeated ad nauseam despite having been thoroughly debunked.

R364 I think you have it backwards.

With the Kennedys, it's always BETTER HAIR and MORE TEETH.

[quote]like the “Russia, Russia hoax,”

What? What are you talking about?

If you’re serious, R367, & not merely being your usual puckish self, what I mean is that Trump regularly proclaiming “Russia, Russia hoax” has convinced wide swaths of voters that the fact of Russian meddling in the 2016 election was not so, a mere hoax concocted by Trump’s enemies.

R365, maybe learn to write in complete sentences and offer some context. There are close to 400 replies in this thread so keeping track of who is saying what about whatever is a bit impossible when choose to write in nonsensical shorthand. Trump wasn't even being discussed.

You fucking cunt.

Leave that fucking orange pig out of this. We are discussing the Hyannis Port Hillbillies here!