Is RFK Jr an embarrassment for the Kennedys or a gamechanger in the US election? America’s royal family has a new challenger

Published

6 months ago

November 27, 2023

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President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, 60 years ago. I do not remember that fateful day on 22 November 1963, as I was just four years old.

But I do remember the summer day, five years later in 1968, when his brother – former US attorney general and would be president, Robert F “Bobby” Kennedy – was shot dead in that tumultuous election year.

Over the decades since their deaths the two brothers, often referred to just by their initials – JFK and RFK, have never been forgotten.

In the United States, and much of the Western democratic world, they have assumed iconic status in death. Their family members left behind, have tried to pick up their political legacies.

The Kennedy name has been the biggest brand in American politics, public interest in its members sharpened by numerous tragedies and scandals.

Some likened them to America’s royal family complete with symbolic castles at the “family compounds” in Massachusetts and Florida. Clan members seemed to occupy political office, almost as if by divine right.

But the dynastic vision has been fading at last. The myths, personalities and untimely deaths associated with the Kennedys are inevitably resonating less and less with contemporary electorates. There are currently none of the dynasty in elected state or national office.

In this election year, a maverick Kennedy is hoping to reverse all that. RFK’s 69-year-old son, who shares his father’s name, is running for president.

Whether Bobby Junior revives or further tarnishes the Kennedy brand is an open question. At least four of his 10 siblings say he is “an embarrassment”.

He has abandoned his family’s traditional allegiance to the Democratic party. He pulled out of the Democratic nomination contest to run as an independent candidate against both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, declaring “my intention is to spoil it for both of them”.

RFK junior is a self-styled environmentalist, an anti-vaxxer, and a supporter of the right to bear arms. He has embraced numerous conspiracy theories – even suggesting the CIA was involved in the assassinations of his father and uncle.

He marked the 60th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy by launching a petition to release the last of the government’s records relating to the shooting.

The National Archives says 99% of the material is already in the public domain, following orders from Presidents Trump and Biden. RFK junior retorted, “what is so embarrassing that they’re afraid to show the American public 60 years later?”.

Political dynasty

The Kennedys came to America as immigrants from Ireland. JFK was the first Roman Catholic US president. A grandfather of Joseph Kennedy was mayor of Boston in the 1890s.

Joe Kennedy was the patriarch of the clan and founder of the family fortune. His businesses flourished through the great depression and the prohibition of alcohol.

President Franklin Roosevelt gave Joseph P Kennedy I his highest rank in politics by appointing him a controversial ambassador to the UK.

He resigned during the Battle of Britain in 1940, suspected of Nazi sympathies, after commenting “democracy is finished in England”.

He was subsequently a major supporter of the anti-communist senator Joe McCarthy.

Today Joseph’s fortune is shared by several generations of direct descendants, who have mostly chosen to go into public service rather than business. Their net worth is put at several billion dollars.

Joe and his ambitious wife, Rose, had nine children, all now dead. The eldest son, Joe junior, a US Navy bomber pilot was killed above the English Channel in 1944. Their youngest daughter, Jean Kennedy Smith, was US ambassador to Ireland and died in 2020.

Rose and Joseph put their ambitions and their money behind their surviving sons – Jack, Bobby and Ted. All three became US senators and presidential candidates. Their siblings and descendants have often followed in their political footsteps – to a lesser and dwindling degree.

JFK was elected the US’s youngest-ever president. Young, rich, and beautiful, the Kennedys carefully curated their glamourous image in the White House.

Most famously Marilyn Monroe sang a seductive “Happy Birthday, Mr President” at the Madison Square Garden for his 45th birthday.

He and his stylish wife Jackie had three children. Patrick died in infancy. John junior and Caroline were still small when their father was killed.

Neil Diamond has said Caroline was the inspiration for his song “Sweet Caroline”. More recently Biden appointed Caroline Kennedy US ambassador to Japan, she was previously Obama’s ambassador to Australia.

John junior and his wife Carolyn Bessette were killed when a plane he was piloting crashed off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999.

The last powerful, world-famous Kennedy died in 2009. Edward Kennedy was the younger brother of JFK and RFK.

“Ted” died while still a US senator. Many viewed the liberal Democrat’s 47 years of continuous service as an attempt to expiate for what happened at Chappaquiddick in 1969.

A 29-year-old aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned in his car when Kennedy drove it off a bridge in Martha’s Vineyard. He survived but was later linked to a further scandal.

After a night partying with his son and nephew, his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was charged and subsequently acquitted, of rape. Dr Smith went on to found the charity Physicians Against Land Mines (PALM).

Ted had three children, including Patrick who served eight terms as a congressman from Rhode Island before retiring with mental and addiction issues.

Of RFK’s 11 children, Joseph P Kennedy II was a six-term congressman for Massachusetts, Kathleen was a two-term lieutenant governor in Maryland and then there is RFK jnr.

Jack, Ted and Bobby’s sister Eunice married Sargent Shriver, who ran unsuccessfully in 1974 on the Democratic ticket as George McGovern’s vice-presidential candidate.

Their daughter Maria Shriver was married to the bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was twice elected Republican governor of California.

‘Challenger’

Joe Biden has always enjoyed a close relationship with his fellow Irish Americans. As well as sending Caroline Kennedy to Tokyo, he made Ted’s second wife, Victoria, ambassador to Austria.

President Biden also appointed Ted’s 23-year-old grandson, Joseph P Kennedy III, US special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Now Bobby is challenging Biden. In a favourability opinion poll this month by Harris, he topped the candidates list with a net rating of +27, ahead of Trump on +7 and Biden on -2.

That does not make him a likely winner in the US’s fundamentally two-party system, but third-party candidates matter because they often affect who becomes president.

In 2000, when Democrats won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, the activist Ralph Nader scored 97,488 votes in Florida. If Al Gore had picked up just 537 of those votes he would have become president instead of George W Bush.

In 2016 Democrats again won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College.

In the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan the Libertarian, Gary Johnson, and Green Party’s Jill Stein, each took multiples of the margin of votes by which Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

Kennedy’s current ratings around 20% are on a par with the businessman Ross Perot, the strongest third force of modern times.

Perot won 19% and 8% of the popular vote respectively in 1992 and 1996, arguably assisting Bill Clinton’s election.

With typical entitlement, Kennedy says he is confident he will win the battle against Trump and Biden’s lawyer to “get on the ballot of every state”.

If he succeeds, polls suggest he takes slightly more votes from Trump than from Biden. That could be enough to change who wins in closely fought key states.

Trump has called Bobby a Biden “plant”. The Biden campaign is worried that the Kennedy name could cost Democratic votes.

They note Bobby’s visit to Trump’s White House and the encouragement he has received from Steve Bannon and alternative media outlets such as Fox News, Joe Rogan and Jordan Petersen.

Plugging into the mood of populist discontent, Bobby is appealing for votes from “people who are willing to question orthodoxy”.

As embodied by JFK and RFK, the Kennedy name is one of the most revered in American politics. Now yet another descendant is attempting simultaneously both to exploit and to escape from being a Kennedy.

US

First victim in Jaws has died aged 77

Published

3 hours ago

May 13, 2024

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The swimmer who was the first victim in the 1975 blockbuster Jaws has died.

Susan Backlinie died in her home in California at the age of 77, according to her agent. Her death was first reported by The Daily Jaws website.

The opening scene of Steven Spielberg‘s classic features Ms Backlinie running along the beach and before diving into the water and skinny dipping.

Her character Chrissie Watkins is then suddenly pulled under the water and she screams as she is violently attacked by an unseen great white shark.

Ms Backlinie had been a champion swimmer when cast in the film. She told The Palm Beach Post in 2015 that Spielberg told her: “When your scene is done, I want everyone under the seats with the popcorn and bubblegum.

“I think we did that,” she said.

In the documentary, Jaws: The Inside Story, Spielberg called Ms Backlinie’s sequence “one of the most dangerous” stunts he’s ever directed.

“She was actually being tugged left and right by 10 men on one rope and 10 men on the other back to the shore, and that’s what caused her to move like that.”

Ms Backlinie worked with Mr Spielberg again in the 1979 parody war film 1941, in which she spoofed her Jaws character.

US

Patient who had first ever pig kidney transplant dies two months after procedure

Published

21 hours ago

May 12, 2024

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Patient who had first ever pig kidney transplant dies two months after procedure

The first person to have a pig kidney transplant has died nearly two months after the procedure.

Richard “Rick” Slayman, 62, underwent the four-hour transplant at a hospital in Boston in March.

It marked the first time a genetically modified pig kidney was transplanted into a living patient. Surgeons said they believed the organ would last for at least two years.

Slayman’s family announced his death yesterday, thanking the doctors who carried out the world-first surgery for their “enormous efforts”.

They said the animal-to-human transplant – known as a xenotransplant – gave them “seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts”.

The transplant team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) said they did not have any indication he died as a result of the transplant.

Slayman, from Weymouth, Massachusetts, previously had a kidney transplant at MGH in 2018, but had to go back on dialysis last year after it showed signs of failure.

As he needed frequent procedures as a result of dialysis complications, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant.

His family said Slayman wanted to undergo the procedure to give hope to those on waiting lists for transplants, adding: “Rick accomplished that goal and his hope and optimism will endure forever.”

Pig kidneys had previously been transplanted into brain-dead donors, but only temporarily. Two men have also received hearts from pigs, with both dying within months of their prodecures.

A month after Slayman’s transplant, New Jersey’s Lisa Pisano became the second person in the world to undergo a pig kidney transplant, and the first to have surgery while also having a mechanical heart pump surgically implanted.

The 54-year-old said she “took a chance” after suffering heart and kidney failure, which left her too ill to qualify for a traditional transplant.

More than 100,000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the US – most need a kidney, but thousands die waiting.

In the UK, the NHS said that in the year to March last year, there were 6,959 patients waiting for an organ transplant.

It said 439 patients died while on the active list waiting for it and a further 732 were removed from the transplant list, “mostly as a result of deteriorating health and ineligibility for transplant”.

US

Oprah Winfrey speaks of ‘biggest regret’ as she opens up about weight loss struggles

Published

21 hours ago

May 12, 2024

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Oprah Winfrey speaks of 'biggest regret' as she opens up about weight loss struggles

Oprah Winfrey has admitted playing a role in perpetuating diet culture during her career and said a dieting item from a 1980s show was one of her “biggest regrets”.

The 70-year-old star – who has been ranked among the most influential women in the world – has been open about her struggles to maintain a healthy weight and attempts to lose weight.

In March she said “making fun of my weight was a national sport” for more than two decades.

In comments reported by NBC, Sky’s US partner, the talk show host told a livestream and live audience: “I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years.

“I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight loss shows and makeovers I have done and they have been a staple since I’ve been working in television.”

But she admitted an item on a 1988 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show was one of her “biggest regrets” when she rolled a wagon of fat on to the stage to represent the weight she had recently lost thanks to a liquid diet and exercise.

She had starved herself for months, she said, admitting that it “sent a message that starving yourself with a liquid diet and set a standard for people watching that I, nor anybody else, could uphold. The very next day, I began to gain the weight back.

“I own what I’ve done, and now I want to do better.”

Winfrey was speaking on Thursday at an event organised by WeightWatchers, whose board of directors she joined in 2015, before saying in February she was leaving.

In 2016, she used an interview in the magazine O to reveal she had lost 12kg, sharing the cover with nine other woman to celebrate their “best body”.

In the issue, Winfrey said, “It was my idea to share the cover with other women who are on the same journey that I am. My own struggles with the scale are well known. I’ve never believed in hiding them.”

In December, she told People she had started taking a weight loss drug, saying she used it “as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing.

“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.”