Kennedy Tire Tracks on RFK’s Back: A New Loss of Family Dignity
Like much of America, I tuned in – but only in passing – during recent weeks to the Senate confirmation hearings of various new Trump Administration cabinet member nominees.
Some nominees received more pundit commentary than others. But one that got my attention – more from what was said online than in the hearing room – was that of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (known as Bobby within the famous, dynastic Kennedy political family).
Last year, a number of RFK’s siblings (there once were 11 of them, born to Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., and wife Ethel in the 1950s and ‘60s) publicly rebuked their brother Bobby for his having endorsed now-President Trump.
His sister Kerry Kennedy appeared to take the lead, issuing this statement that she implied spoke on behalf of the entire family (she and only four siblings were listed) and also sitting for a large number of media interviews…
The degree of such public family acrimony was tough to see.
American Gen Xers (like me) were taught since birth in our media culture that if America could be deemed to have a “royal family,” the Kennedys were it.
I grew up in the 1980s with the phrase “Kennedy Family Royalty” constantly invoked to describe JFK / Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy offspring John and Caroline Kennedy, in particular.
And of course, all different branches of the family have been awash in sensationalistic news stories and a stunning degree of scandals since the get-go (bearing in mind they’re a large family, and imagine if every single thing you or a family member ever did wrong was front-page news). I always wondered, though, how the JFK and RFK direct-offspring generation could have been expected to fare, having lived through seeing assassins gun down their fathers with bullets to their heads in such grotesque violence, in full public view.
What does such an unspeakable early-life experience do to a person?
We almost saw precisely this situation occur with President Trump last summer, so I remain a bit surprised that members of the Kennedy Family appeared to offer little empathy to the Trump Family, with regard to shared experience.
With that backdrop, it seemed particularly tragic to see the RFK sibling infighting ratchet up in public, prior to family matriarch Ethel Kennedy’s passing on October 10, 2024 at the age of 96.
It made me sad for Ethel Kennedy, that her life had to end last autumn while bearing witness to her own children in such an all-out public war of words, accusations, and seeming hatred toward one another.
As if Mrs. Kennedy had not already been through enough in this life, with a husband assassinated more than half a century ago (after which she never remarried), a brother-in-law assassinated more than 60 years ago, her own two parents lost in a plane crash, and two of her sons dying at young adult ages – one to a drug overdose and another in a skiing accident. And of course, there have been so many other excessive tragedies involving family members.
But nearly 10 years ago, Ethel Kennedy’s youngest daughter, Rory, produced a documentary on HBO featuring her mother’s life – which I loved watching.
It was a heartwarming and insightful presentation of Mrs. Kennedy’s journey of surviving life’s highest highs and absolute lowest lows.
I believe all of her living children appeared in the documentary – including RFK, Jr. (Bobby).
The siblings’ remembrances of their iconic father and of their mother’s strength were fun, funny, sweet, poignant, tragic… the full gamut. But all of them seemed so loving toward their mother and toward one another. It felt uplifting, given all they’d survived throughout life, together.
It therefore felt all the more soul-crushing to see in this past year and more recent months, these same siblings pitted against their brother Bobby in such a complete about-face from what was on display in that modern-era documentary, about family love, survival, and unity.
It’s devastating for politics to divide families in such ugly ways. But such is the sign of our times.
For a public family like the Kennedys, it’s even worse to see how the vitriol is carried out at a commensurately public level, in relation to their own fame.
I can’t help but feel that so much of the Kennedy reaction to RFK’s support of President Trump is political theatre and posturing — with possibly people from the outside placing pressure on them to “Be a Kennedy!” and “Stand up to Trump!” Speaking one’s own mind is one thing; being placed under undue pressure by outside partisans and political operatives is another.
When the Senate confirmation hearings got underway for RFK, Jr., arguably his most famous cousin got in on the action to discredit him and destroy any positive image whatsoever of him — not just as a Health Secretary, but also as a human being.
In a specifically timed video statement released on social media, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy read her own letter to the Senate, in which she blamed RFK for other Kennedy cousins’ drug abuse problems over the years, and called RFK “a predator.”
The full video is available here:
Her accusation against her cousin as a “predator” made me reflect with some pot-kettle irony: power-imbalance predation appears to run in that family.
Caroline Kennedy’s own father’s abuses of power / position relative to his treatment of the opposite sex in the 1950s and early 1960s — from female campaign staffers and White House interns (and practically anyone else in a skirt and heels) — are abundantly well-documented.
Remember the book “Once Upon a Secret,” by Mimi Alford?…
It’s widely known, in fact, that many elder Kennedy men exhibited these same tendencies. Who can forget Chappaquiddick?
As for Caroline Kennedy’s own son (JFK’s only grandson), Jack Schlossberg, he also has released anti-RFK, Jr., videos on social media, mocking his uncle, even openly making fun of RFK’s vocal disability.
Mr. Schlossberg is reportedly a 30-year-old lawyer. But he comes across in his videos that I’ve seen, like an entitled, know-it-all trust fund kid, with zero self-awareness. (I’m not going to re-post his videos. Some are outright bizarre and wholly undignified as to the legacy of his maternal grandparents, in their roles to our nation.)
In my view, none of these expressions of disapproval of RFK are helping the Kennedy family brand, as it were.
If I were advising the family in the PR realm, I would tell all of them: Dial this stuff back, please — even if only for your own family’s good.
It’s fine to disagree publicly on policy matters and on POTUS candidates of choice, but the way they’re going about these video soliloquies and cable-news take-downs are too disloyal through the lens of family ties and shared family trauma. It’s too mocking and hateful toward a family member.
Their feuding in this manner only makes me speculate about just how many mental wellness and psychological safety problems are likely rife within that family.
Believe me – I have empathy for what occurs due to early childhood trauma.
And on that account (trauma), the Kennedys have had more than most families have in 10 generations.
The dual JFK, Sr. / RFK, Sr. legacies of such violent and tragic death – even from so many decades ago – seem to be taking continued tolls on later generations of this very famous American family. All the generations since have borne witness to endless re-airings on television, in film, and via countless other kinds of venues, of seeing their family members murdered – and seeing / hearing strangers talk about it and judge it in completely impersonal ways, as if those killings were nothing to them.
Decades of that situation on a constant replay-loop simply must inflict an inexplicable harm on family survivors, for the rest of their lives. It makes me so sad to see it.
But not everyone in the Kennedy family has embraced this mode of tearing down family members.
Turning to a separate branch of the Kennedy family, their cousin Tim Shriver (TV journalist Maria Shriver’s brother) has been promoting a new initiative, called The Dignity Index: “Moving from contempt to dignity in public & political discourse: honoring each other’s dignity is a patriotic duty.”
I saw this segment with Tim Shriver on Bret Baier’s program, explaining The Dignity Index’s purpose, of not dehumanizing other people when we disagree:
When Bret Baier asked if RFK, Jr. would be invited to Tim Shriver’s house for a holiday dinner, Mr. Shriver said yes, his cousin is always invited to his house.
More of this, please!
I wish so much that the Kennedy Family could model the philosophies articulated by Tim Shriver. All of us need this mode. (You can find out more about The Dignity Index, here: https://www.dignity.us/).
I don’t mind lifting a prayer up for the Kennedy Family, just as I lift one up for myself, to always try to do better.
After all, I certainly criticize publicly organizations and people in my advocacy work, to raise the bar in my industry of public relations. While my own efforts often involve calling people out – particularly when really bad things are being allowed to occur with no end in sight – I’m always looking for better ways to improve how I go about that process.
I make mistakes, too.