"Bobby’s doing the eulogy and in the middle of it, his older brother—of which he only has one, Joe Kennedy, former congressman from Massachusetts—starts cursing him and throwing a scene."

"In his mother’s funeral. This happened?! You were there? You witnessed it.... Talk about the physiological response in your body when this was happening."

Billy Bush was pressing Cheryl Hines about something she wrote about in her forthcoming book "Unscripted" (commission earned).

I only know one thing about Billy Bush — his "grab them by the pussy" conversation with Trump — and I have to suspect him of seeking similar attention when he tries to elicit details of the "physiological response in [Hine's] body."

But that's a side track. We need to pay attention to the scene Hines is describing — RFK Jr. heckled viciously as he's in the middle of delivering a eulogy for his mother:

 

Cheryl Hines answers:

"Of all the repellent Kennedy spectacles of the past 60 years, today's spectacle of Kennedys disavowing other Kennedys for not being good Kennedys..."

"... is really the kind of false aristocratic creepiness that makes me want to, you know, drive off a bridge."

Tweets John Podhoretz.

"What does Callahan hope to add to this vale of tears? Only her residual and, yes, partisan and ideological suspicion..."

"... that despite ample testimony (in many cases from the victims themselves), the Kennedy men have somehow gotten away with it all. So unfurls her multigenerational perp walk, which begins, as it must, with Big Joe.... Joe’s habit of treating women as, in Callahan’s words, 'accessories, broodmares, chattel' was inevitably passed down to his sons. John Kennedy’s White House notably featured what one aide called 'a conveyor belt of young women' running up and down the back stairs, 'leaving blond hairs and bobby pins,' Callahan writes, 'dripping water and passing their half-finished drinks to Secret Service agents as they scurried out the door, no doubt hearing that the first lady was on her way home.' In one particularly repellent act, she writes, the president commanded the 19-year-old intern he was having sex with to fellate one of his aides...."

Writes Louis Bayard, author of the novel "Jackie & Me," in "A Horror Story Starring the Monstrous Men of Camelot/Maureen Callahan’s lurid 'Ask Not' paints the Kennedys as mad, bad and dangerous for women to know" (NYT).

"The grandson of President John F. Kennedy this week savaged his presidential-candidate cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a series of mocking, meant-to-be-funny videos..."

"...that were, inarguably, uncharacteristically un-Kennedyesque, escalating a civil war within America’s most storied political dynasty. In a series of Instagram posts, the grandson, Jack Schlossberg, 31, variously called Mr. Kennedy, 70, a 'prick,' suggested he was using steroids, said he was 'lying to us' and portrayed him as a Russian stooge and a stalking horse for Donald J. Trump. But what viewers may be more struck by, or even insulted by, are the heavily accented caricatures the young scion used to dramatize his points. He impersonates a Massachusetts fan of the Kennedys named Jimmy.... 'You know, I’m a fan of his father,' Mr. Schlossberg says, as Jimmy. 'And you know his uncle? Rest in peace, I remember where I was the day he was killed, I mean it was a tragic day, the entire country wept. But listen, that guy, he’s a prick. The new guy, the young guy, he’s a friggin prick.' He channels a southerner named Wade.... And he conjures an Italian-American Long Islander named Anthony....What may be the edgiest impression, though, is Mr. Schlossberg’s depiction of Joshua, an older New York Jewish man...."

From "Using Cartoonish Accents, J.F.K.’s Grandson Insults and Mocks Robert F. Kennedy Jr./In an escalation of the family feud, the son of Caroline Kennedy portrayed heavily accented characters who suggested that his cousin, the presidential candidate, was on steroids, not too smart and a liar" (NYT).

Wow! Here's this famously handsome, hyper-privileged young man and he imagines it would be a good idea to put these cheap ethnic stereotypes on Instagram! How did this happen? It can't be merely that he's insanely out of touch with present-day standards of diversity and inclusiveness. And leave to one side the delusion that insults like "he’s a friggin prick" count as publicly shareable comedy. It must also be that the family and friends who surround him have been laughing at this stuff and encouraging him to post it, telling him it will be great for his future career in politics. Oh, Jack, you're so funny! And please, help us bring down RFK Jr. You can do it like no one else, because everyone is devastated by your good looks and your genetics. 

Here he is, defending himself in the voice of Wade, the southerner. Watch it, watch his long hair flapping in the breeze, and try to imagine the people who pumped up his ridiculous confidence over the years:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jack Schlossberg (@jackuno)

ADDED: Over at Daily Beast, you can see the encouragement in the raw: "Everyone Is Thirsting Over Kennedy Grandson Jack Schlossberg—for Good Reason/The Camelot heir’s goofy shirtless videos and ridiculing of cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has made Schlossberg the internet’s biggest crush of the moment" ("It’s so charming that I’m ready to vote for whoever Schlossberg tells me to").

"I'm so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain."

"The ad was created and aired by the American Values Super PAC without any involvement or approval from my campaign. FEC rules prohibit Super PACs from consulting with me or my staff. I love you all. God bless you."

Tweets RFK Jr., about this ad, which I'm seeing because he has it pinned in his Twitter feed:

Our momentum is growing. It’s time for an Independent President to heal the divide in our country. 🇺🇸#Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/6rwXW3AwAp

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 12, 2024

Do you have a problem with the ad? Should RFK Jr. refrain from trading on his name entirely or is there just some line that he should not cross? But where is that line? And how can he force his supporters to stay behind it? It's one of the many travails of being a Kennedy.

"Research has shown that when people get older, they commonly recalibrate their goals; though they might be doing less..."

"... they tend to prioritize what they find meaningful and really appreciate it. A decline in openness to experience, then, could reflect someone relishing their routine rather than seeking new thrills; a decline in extroversion could indicate that they’re satisfied spending time with the people they already love. That may involve adjusting to what they can’t control, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re reacting to a bad life—just a different one.... There’s a stereotype that older people are grumpy shut-ins.... That judgment is obviously sweeping and unfair, but perhaps it’s also emerged, in part, from some real tendencies—tendencies that might be better understood as justified reactions to a harsh and inaccessible world...."

From "The Curious Personality Changes of Older Age/When people lose the ability to control their circumstances, their selves sometimes evolve instead" (The Atlantic).

Speaking of "a decline in extroversion," I'm finally reading a book I've had in my Kindle for years: "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" (paid link). I switched over to that book — in self-defense! — halfway through reading RFK Jr.'s "American Values/Lessons I Learned From My Family" (paid link). 

So I was amused, to read, on page 6 of "Quiet":

If you’re an introvert, you... know that the bias against quiet can cause deep psychic pain. As a child you might have overheard your parents apologize for your shyness. (“Why can’t you be more like the Kennedy boys?” the Camelot-besotted parents of one man I interviewed repeatedly asked him.) Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.... Now that you’re an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you’re told that you’re “in your head too much,” a phrase that’s often deployed against the quiet and cerebral....

"[O]ur mother shattered the protocols of stuffy Washington decorum. 'People were uptight and too concerned about how they appeared'..."

"... my mother remembers. To cure this contagion, she coaxed notables of different backgrounds into unfamiliar situations. A wizard at peer pressure, she compelled her guests to play charades, freeze tag, and capture the flag, and join in rope climbing and push-up competitions. She had Cabinet members fence with bamboo sticks on gangplanks spanning the pool....When Robert Frost visited Hickory Hill after Uncle Jack’s inauguration, she made him judge a poetry-writing contest among government officials and celebrity guests. At a party for Averell Harriman’s birthday the guests came dressed as the Harrimans during some episode of their eventful lives. My mother borrowed life-size wax figures from Madame Tussauds of Harriman, FDR, Churchill, and Stalin at Yalta, and placed them unobtrusively around the living room to mingle with the crowd...."

Writes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in "American Values/Lessons I Learned From My Family."

Before blogging, there were proto-bloggers, and I have encountered another example: Rose Kennedy.

I have commemorated proto-bloggers before. For example, something John Keats did in 1816. And, in the first year of my own blogging, I told you about my grandfather, Pop. And though I can’t find where I've blogged about it, there's something I myself used to do in the 1990s. I'd read the paper NYT at the dining table in the morning and if I found something distinctly interesting, I'd tear it out and put it on the other side of the table, where my sons would see it when they eventually came into the room.

Anyway, the proto-blogger I discovered today was Rose Kennedy. As a consequence of reading that Rebecca Traister article about RFK Jr. — blogged here — I started reading his book "American Values/Lessons I Learned from My Family." 

Here's what I consider to be like blogging:

10 rules for writing about the 50th anniversary of the day John F. Kennedy was shot.

It's coming up next Friday, and I'd like to help with that op-ed or blog post you might have in the works.

1. Don't repeat the cliché that everyone who was around at the time remembers where he was and what he was doing when he heard the news.

2. Don't tell us — especially don't tell us as if it were not a big cliché — what you happened to have been doing and how you've always remembered that. After 50 years, can you not finally see that it doesn't matter?

3. Don't even attempt to say that the assassination had a profound effect on people. There is no new way to say that. We know!

4. Don't make up alternate histories of what would have happened if Kennedy had not been killed. Everything would have been different; we would all have been different. If you're American and under 50, you can assume that you would never have been born.

5.  Don't recount the conspiracy theories. Here's Wikipedia's article on the subject. If you're into that sort of thing, enjoy it some day in your spare time, but don't lard your 50th anniversary writings with that. It's tawdry and undignified, and we've heard it all a thousand times. And by "all," I don't really mean all. What's the one about the Federal Reserve? I just mean, if that's what you've found to talk about, just shut up.

6. Don't connect the story of JFK to Obama. I know it seems as though everything is about Obama, but resist. It's cheap and inappropriate.

7. Don't tell us about other Kennedys. Don't drag in the recent news that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's son Jack appears to have reached adulthood in nonugly form and has grown a large head of hair and is therefore presumptive presidential material. That's annoying and off-topic.

8. Don't commemorate murder. A man managed to kill the President. He's already gotten far too much press. He doesn't deserve our endless attention. I'm sick of "celebrating" a death day. We don't make anything of Lincoln's death day. We celebrate his birthday, like Washington's, because he was such a great President. We don't celebrate JFK's birthday — I don't even know what it is — because he was not great enough. We celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday, not the day he was assassinated. Why? Because of his greatness, and because we don't want to direct our attention toward his murder. So why do we focus on Kennedy's death day? It must be because he was not great enough, and because of points #1, #2, and #3, above. It's about ourselves. A man died and we morbidly relive it annually, for some reason that must make little sense to those under 50.

9. Do write to end the annual ritual of death commemoration. Nail down the coffin lid and give the dead President some peace. Inspire us to move on to modest acknowledgements of the date at 10 or 25 year intervals up until 2063, when we — those of us who survive — can go big for the centennial.

10. Do make it — if not original — short.

Speaking of distractions...

... Taylor Swift showed up at a Kennedy wedding — she's dating Conor Kennedy — and was told to leave.

“They texted me an hour before the wedding and asked if they could come,” Vicki Kennedy said. “I responded with a very clear, ‘Please do not come.’ They came anyway. ... I personally went up to Ms. Swift, whose entrance distracted the entire event, politely introduced myself to her, and asked her as nicely as I could to leave. It was like talking to a ghost. She seemed to look right past me.”

She seemed to look right past me.... Why do I find that so funny?

ADDED: Was Swift invited?

Conor was reportedly invited solo to the wedding of Kyle Kennedy and Liam Kerr last Saturday — but never sent a response, according to Victoria Kennedy....

The wedding-crashing couple, despite Victoria’s protestations, apparently danced the night away at the reception without any further complaints.

A Swift spokeswoman denied the reports of any mixup, insisting the singer was definitely on the guest list.

“There is no truth to that,” said Paula Erikson. “Taylor was invited to the wedding, and the bride thanked her profusely.”

There are 3 separate etiquette issues here. 1. Should Swift have attended, given her degree of invitedness? I don't know all the facts, but more probably should have been done by Conor. 2. Once Swift arrived, should she have been confronted? Maybe not. Finally: 3. Afterwards, should one blab about the whole thing to the press? That question is easy: no. The clearest violation of etiquette is Vicki's in airing her grievances to the press and deliberately humiliating and embarrassing Swift. I love the way she claimed to have been polite and nice in her own impolite and not nice statement to the press. Going public and presenting yourself in a flattering light? Horrid!

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral gets 4-and-a-half stars on Yelp.

"How can you not give a Church 5-stars - maybe it's just the Catholic guilt in me but if you go to Church, even if only once a year, you should give it 5-stars :-)"

I never noticed Yelp had ratings on churches. Fascinating. I was Googling St. Patrick's Old Cathedral — which is in Little Italy in New York, prompting one Yelpist to say "it's funny when the patron saint of another country is in the wrong ethnic neighborhood." She gives 4-and-a-half stars, and perhaps that half-star deduction is for ethnicity mismatching.

"The Rupert Murdoch tabloid loves to package other people’s reporting in World War III headlines."

Writes Howard Kurtz, mocking the New York Post article that has the headline "Mary Kennedy pummeled RFK Jr., ran over family dog and threatened to kill herself for years: court papers," which begins: "Robert Kennedy Jr.’s wife, Mary, beat him up, tried to blackmail him, killed the family dog and, finally, told a servant she needed rope for a new couch — then hanged herself with it, according to a bombshell report.”

The "other people’s reporting" used by the NY Post is in Newsweek/Daily Beast, which is Kurtz's employer. That article is headlined "Exclusive: The Last Days of Mary Kennedy," with a subtitle: "She was the love of Bobby Jr.’s life. Then everything unraveled. In Newsweek, bestselling Kennedy historian Laurence Leamer reveals the heartbreaking story of Mary’s long decline." Heartbreaking. Love of his life. That goes to a different extreme, trying to appeal to a different audience — presumably women who adore bestselling Kennedy historians.

It's not surprising that the Post — like a blogger — would pull out the most lurid details and state them plainly, for readers who don't want the romance and don't need their suicide porn swathed in the pretense of respectability.

From the hardcore Post:

A close friend of the suicide wife of RFK Jr. says: "She had cause. She was used up and tossed away by Bobby. That was awful."

"She was deeply troubled, abusing alcohol and prescription meds."

"She had grown up with the Kennedy family, having been Kerry’s best friend since they were teenagers,” the friend said.

The marriage broke down amid reports of her addiction and rumors of his involvement with other women.

“She knew Bobby her whole life, and now he rejected her. Tragic.”

They found her body hanging in the barn. She left a note.

IN THE COMMENTS: Jay takes up the theme Another Death in the Kennedy War on Women.

During the last episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," TLC put up this teaser for its special "Kennedys' Home Movies."

Yes, they are both TLC shows, but why did TLC think the people watching a show about Sarah Palin and her family would be susceptible to a show about the Kennedys? (Meade raised this question in the comments to the post earlier today about "Sarah Palin's Alaska.")

Your first thought might be that it doesn't make much sense because liberals love the Kennedys and conservatives love the Palins. But let's assume TLC isn't run by idiots, that they know how to appeal to viewers. If you had to argue that a good chunk of the "Sarah Palin's Alaska" audience would like to watch "Kennedys' Home Movies," what would you argue?

I'd say: Not all American TV-watchers are strongly grounded in one political party or the other. These people are not cemented to abstract ideology. They may feel their way into politics through personalities. Or they may not care that much about politics at all and simply enjoy peering into the family lives of celebrities, and politicians are a special, elite breed of celebrity, like royalty. The Kennedys have been, for many people, America's royalty, and the Palins may be the new royal family that people who like that sort of thing like.

Obviously, there are differences. The Kennedys posed as European-style aristocracy, and the Palins present themselves as working-class Americans. But both are very much big, colorful families with a strong sense of geographical place — Massachusetts/Alaska — and a mesmerizingly beautiful and feminine woman to fascinate us. Both families have a lot of children who we get to see looking robust and active in outdoor settings — especially boats.

There's a romanticism of the family about it all. I'm not saying that's good. It's a point of entry by which political opinion seeps into a certain very common type of American brain. And it happens through television. Pay attention.

***

By the way, what do you think of the crazy culture clash that is Johnny Cash singing the Beatles ("In My Life") over home movies of the Kennedys?

"Nightfall on the Kennedy era in Washington looks like this..."

"...Representative Patrick J. Kennedy’s office space surrendered to a Republican, his family memorabilia in boxes, and Mr. Kennedy yearning for a role away from the public eye."

"WaPo Style Writer Declares Kennedy Old-Money Style Only Cool on Liberals."

The Weekly Standard rags on Robin Givhan.

A family's reputation and a lobotomy for mild mental retardation.

A short, chilling obituary for Rosemary Kennedy.