On Tuesday, New York magazine published an essay by a 24-year-old law student who recently paddleboarded around Manhattan for the first time.
“I signed up for the race because I thought it sounded cool,” writes our participant. “Of course, when I asked around, everyone said it was really hard and I’d better start training.”
The smugness, the entitlement, the painfully obvious observation — one might wonder: Who cares?
Until you look at the byline and realize: Oh, of course. Another Kennedy foisted upon us.
Our diarist is none other than Jack Schlossberg, grandson of JFK, son of Caroline, accomplishment-free save for that 25-mile race around Manhattan — which he curiously notes he lives “on” rather than “in.”
This semi-self-deprecating essay is juxtaposed with 14 portraits of Jack in black-and-white on his big day, muscular and shirtless and smiling, just one of the guys. He resembles no one so much as his late Uncle John F. Kennedy Jr., who, until his untimely death in 1999, was the Kennedy family’s last last great hope.
Is anyone asking for this?
Even with the great goodwill he generated, JFK Jr. was regarded as not terribly bright. He’d never held elected office. At the time of his completely avoidable death — he was piloting a plane carrying his wife and sister-in-law at night, in poor visibility, without being instrument-rated, killing everyone on board — he was editing the poorly conceived and floundering George magazine.
The Kennedy clan hasn’t produced a political star since Ted Kennedy — and Ted literally killed someone and got away with it. In July 1969, he drove right off a bridge and into a pond at Chappaquiddick, leaving his 28-year-old campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne to drown. Ted swam to shore, walked back to his inn and, just before 2:30 a.m., complained to the front desk about noise from a neighboring party.
Yet somehow, the Kennedy family spun this atrocity into Ted’s tragedy. He, the narrative went, was the sole surviving Kennedy brother, outshone by his smarter, handsomer, more charismatic siblings John and Robert, both martyred for our sake. When Ted finally issued a statement, he made sure to remind the American public of his victimhood. “This past week has been an agonizing one for me,” he said.
Conventional wisdom holds that Chappaquiddick killed Ted’s chances at the White House, and some believe the Kennedy myth went with it. But has it really? In the decades since, we’ve learned that JFK threw sex parties in the White House, abused drugs, hid serious health issues from the public, wasn’t as far ahead on civil rights as his admirers would believe, and almost started World War III. His father, Joe Kennedy, bought him the 1960 presidential election.
His sainted brother was hardly better. Early in his career, RFK worked for Joe McCarthy, the senator who ruined countless lives and careers with accusations of communism and treason. The two men were so close that McCarthy was godfather to RFK’s first child, Kathleen. Robert, too, was a philanderer who, as JFK had, conducted a sexual relationship with Marilyn Monroe before cruelly discarding her. He also reportedly had an affair with his sister-in-law, Jackie, after JFK’s assassination.
And this is what the Kennedys’ greatest generation had to offer!
Among those known to us as second-generation Kennedys, the children, nieces and nephews of JFK, RFK and Ted are a rogues’ gallery: Michael Kennedy, publicly revealed to be cheating on his wife with the babysitter right before his death, caused by recklessly skiing while playing football, endangering others before he slammed into a tree; William Kennedy Smith, accused of rape after a night drinking with Uncle Ted; Michael Skakel, convicted of the 1975 murder of teenager Martha Moxley; Patrick Kennedy, DUI; Kerry Kennedy, DUI and, as The Post reported in 2016, the unhinged head of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, which ostensibly helps the poor and oppressed but which she uses as a personal piggy bank to party with celebs; Doug Kennedy, who kicked a maternity nurse while holding his newborn; RFK Jr., known for womanizing and his expulsion this year from environmental nonprofit Riverkeeper.
“He’s a very deceitful, dishonest man,” Riverkeeper founder Bob Boyle told the Daily Mail. “He’[s] done a great deal of damage to the environment with his various postures.”
And who can forget Jack’s mother’s foray into politics in 2008, when she asked then-Gov. David Paterson for Hillary Clinton’s vacated Senate seat? Caroline, long spoken of as far smarter than her pin-up brother, quickly disabused the electorate of that notion.
In a round of devastating interviews, Caroline couldn’t explain why she hadn’t voted since 1988, couldn’t answer the most rudimentary policy questions, and said the words “you know” 235 times in 41 minutes when talking to this paper. To two journalists from the New York Times who dared to press America’s princess on her candidacy: “Have you guys ever thought about, like, writing for a women’s magazine or something? I thought you were the crack political team.”
Within a month, Caroline withdrew from the race, citing that old Kennedy fallback: Family first. Her Uncle Ted’s health was in decline, and her children didn’t want her to run — even though Hillary’s seat had once been her Uncle Robert’s and so really belonged to her. Never forget.
Now she’s rolling out her son to an unsuspecting public, accompanying him to the most recent Met Gala, appearing with him on the “Today” show, deputizing him to present Barack Obama with the JFK Profiles in Courage award (named for a book JFK won the Pulitzer for but probably didn’t write).
Jack also contributes to outlets such as Time, Politico and the Washington Post and maintains a Twitter feed that’s almost all about his political lineage. He’s flirting with a run for office.
“I’m inspired by my family’s legacy of public service,” Jack said on “Today” last May. “So stay tuned.”
Please, let’s not. Much as the electorate has finally had its fill of the Clintons — you know it’s bad when even Vanity Fair begs Chelsea not to run — so too should we be done, once and for all, with the Kennedys and their myths.
And if the Kennedys truly believe in public service, they should consider their withdrawal from our politics their last great contribution.