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!