The ‘Kennedy legacy’ deserves to be tarnished

There’s a lot of hand-wringing in the media these days over what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential run is doing to the Kennedy family name.

The Boston Globe recently ran a story under the headline, “RFK Jr. is running on the Kennedy name. What does that mean for the family’s legacy?” which says that “Kennedy’s run could tarnish the lasting image of the closest thing America has had to a royal family.”

Politico has called RFK Jr. the “black sheep” of the family. Others have called him a “KINO,” a Kennedy in name only. And the South Dakota Standard said his candidacy, “Will do harm, perhaps enduring damage, to a once-revered name.”

No, RFK Jr. is not doing anything to preserve the mythology that the Kennedys were the first family of Camelot. He was recently caught on tape saying that “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi [Eastern European] Jews and Chinese.” (He later walked it back.)

He has said that mass shootings are linked to prescription drugs. He believes that the 2004 presidential election was stolen by the GOP using hacked voting machines in Ohio. He’s no fan of vaccines (to put it mildly) and believes they can cause autism.

Are his views controversial? Of course. Are they just plain nuts? You could make that case.

As for harm to the Kennedy legacy, well, let’s just say it’s more complicated than a lot of Kennedy fans would have you believe.

Despite averting a nuclear war with Russia over the Cuban Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy was a profoundly reckless man. He had all sorts of sexual affairs that the media in those days didn’t have much curiosity about.

He wasn’t only involved with Marilyn Monroe, who officially died of a drug overdose, but he was also sexually involved with a woman named Judith Campbell, who was sexually involved with a mafia don.

“I mean, imagine: this is the president of the United States having an affair with this woman who is also involved with the head of the Chicago Mafia. It is a devastatingly dangerous thing for him to be doing,” Kennedy biographer Laurence Leamer says in a documentary about the family.

You could make a case that those were the “Mad Men” days, when bosses could chase their secretaries around the desk trying to cop a feel and no one would even think about filing a complaint with HR. But as Joe Biden might say, “come on, man” … is this the legacy that RFK Jr. supposedly is doing “irreparable harm” to?

Bobby Kennedy was also involved with Marilyn Monroe, and some think he was at her house the day she died. And despite coming off as that rare politician with genuine morals, according to Larry Tye’s book, “Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon,” he also had affairs with Hollywood stars Kim Novak and Lee Remick and the singer Claudine Longet.

Ted Kennedy, the liberal “lion of the Senate,” drunkenly drove his car off a bridge in 1969 and left his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die. He received a slap on the wrist — and stayed in the Senate for another four decades.

So before we get all teary-eyed over how RFK Jr. is smearing graffiti on the walls of Camelot, let’s acknowledge that Camelot was a carefully crafted concoction to make JFK look like the knight in shining armor that he wasn’t. And the media helped burnish that image by what they wrote about the family — and what they failed to write.

In researching this column, I stumbled onto a piece written in 2018 about the real Kennedy legacy. Here’s part of it: “It was Kennedy’s death on Nov. 22, 1963, that elevated him in martyrdom. His death suppressed all allegations that diminished his character, as that would go against the sainthood that was now seen in him posthumously. With the shot that killed him, all speculation and scandals that accompanied the playboy died as well. The truth will always be buried behind the icon that was John F. Kennedy.”

Fasten your seatbelt: That piece was written by a high school student named Maddie Anderson for her school newspaper in Texarkana, Texas. It’s interesting that a teenager comes off as far less star-struck with the Kennedys than a lot of grownup journalists today.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — with his wacky takes on all sorts of issues — may in fact be doing damage to the Kennedy name. But the Kennedys did a pretty good job damaging the family name long before RFK Jr. came along.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.