"Leaning back on a bone-white sofa, her glasses perched on her head, Kerry Kennedy spoke of her 20-month-long prosecution..."

"... for driving while drugged that ended last week, when she was acquitted after an hour by a 6-person jury."

"For me it caused some emotional upheaval,” said Ms. Kennedy, a 54-year-old mother of 3 girls, college-age twins and a 16-year-old. “There were times I should have been completely emotionally available to my kids and I wasn’t there, even for reading a book with them or watching TV or tucking my daughter into bed. I was unable to be fully present. That’s a loss."

I don't know if you care about Kerry Kennedy's emotional upheaval and her inability to be completely emotionally available to her kids while she was getting prosecuted for drunk driving. (Is she completely emotionally available now that she's found not guilty?)

But I'm blogging this because I just love the accompanying photograph by NYT photographer Suzanne DeChillo, in which we get to see not only that "bone-white sofa" — on which Kerry Kennedy is leaning forward, not back — but the out-of-focus wall behind her with 2 large paintings of young girls in white dresses, which I took to be pictures of herself as an innocent child, but now think are probably 2 of her 3 daughters to whom she was incompletely emotionally available.

In front of one painted girl, there's a lamp that has a base that's a globe, and on the mantel there's an indistinct dark blob that I construe as a bronze bust of Kerry's father Bobby Kennedy. Kerry looks stressed and earnest, with her man-hands slightly clasped, glasses atop her head, and a chunky cross hanging from her neck. The cross corresponds to text in the article:

Readers [of the media coverage of the trial] learned she is a devoted Roman Catholic, going to church on the mornings she does not go to the gym.

That's a funny sentence. What evidence of devotion is that? If she goes to the gym every morning, then she never goes to church... at least not in the morning. I construe that sentence as deliberate satire gesturing at the jury's charitable construction of the evidence it heard.

As I predicted, Kerry Kennedy was acquitted.

"After nearly 20 months of buildup, the misdemeanor trial of Kerry Kennedy ended on Friday in a breakneck blur, as jurors took one hour to find her not guilty of driving under the influence of a drug."

Here's my post from 4 days ago where I said: "I bet she wins."

"People familiar with the case said Ms. Kennedy’s lawyers would not agree to have her plead to a violation because it would result in her losing her driver’s license for three months."

"Ms. Kennedy is president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, an international organization named after her father, the assassinated New York senator, and her lawyers said she must drive for work not just in the United States but also in the many foreign countries she visits on behalf of abused women and children and for other causes. She was, for example, in Paris recently for a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry."

From a NYT article about Kerry Kennedy's going to trial on a drugged driving charge.

I don't believe that "people familiar with the case" theory, because if you've got enough extra money lying around that you can go to trial, you've got more than enough to pay someone to drive you around for the 3 months of driver's license suspension. The more direct reason to go to trial is that you want to clear your name.

The defense will try to convince the six jurors that she must have accidentally taken the [sleeping] pill since she was planning to work out in a gym and was so disoriented by the pill’s impact that she was not aware she was driving.

I bet she wins.

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest squeeze, actress Cheryl Hines, had been flaunting their relationship online in the weeks before his wife hanged herself."

The NY Post reports:

Hines also had struck up friendships with two of Mary’s best friends, Kerry Kennedy and Glenn Close, according to her tweets.

The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” blonde even tweeted about talking football with Mary and Bobby Jr.’s 11-year-old son, Aiden....

Throughout Hines’ Twitter tear, Mary was isolated in her Bedford mansion, drowning in sorrow, alcohol and debt....

“She faced losing her kids, and his relationship with Cheryl Hines was humiliating. At an event last month, he walked the red carpet with Cheryl as a couple and took the kids,” a source told The Post last week, referring to the Riverkeeper Annual Fisherman’s Ball in late April.

She didn't curb her enthusiasm.

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.

The dynastic struggle.

Ooh, this is just so frustrating for Andrew Cuomo.

From 1990 to 2003, Cuomo the Younger was married, Montague-and-Capulet style, to Robert F. Kennedy's daughter Kerry-and was close friends with Caroline's brother John Jr., from 1988 to his 1999 death. The marriage ended in a bitter divorce after Cuomo reportedly discovered his wife had an affair with a polo player....

"Incestuous, intermarrying with one another to take over the crown and consolidate power," is how one Nassau pol described the Kennedy-Cuomo relationship....

I didn't follow the divorce hijinx, but if it's true that Kerry cheated on Andy, then it's only fair that Andy should be Senator.

Who's the superior dynastic offspring?
	Andy
	Caroline
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