The Kennedys

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Reeves Wiedeman, Hijacking the Kennedys; Only one cousin has amassed enough power to reshape the country -- and his family can only watch helplessly as he destroys much that they stood for. New York magazine), Aug 25, 2025.

Quote:

(a) the first three paragraphs:

"ETHEL KENNEDY'S DEATH in October at 96 was the end of a trying few years. Her health had been in decline, and she had confined herself to living full time in Hyannis, the longtime family compound on Cape Cod. In the summer of 2024, her immune system was so compro- mised that she couldn't attend the wedding of her grand- daughter Mariah Kennedy Cuomo, even though it was being held at her home. * * *

"Ethel's son Bobby [Robert Jr] was there, too, although many of the other wedding guests weren't in a mood to talk to him. Ethel's relationship with her third child, named for her beloved husband, had always been tempestuous. When Bobby was a young man, she regularly threw him out of the house for drug use and other chaotic behavior; when he was 13, a coatimundi he kept as a pet attacked Ethel and sent her into premature labor with his brother Douglas. In high school, after Ethel excoriated him for getting arrested for marijuana possession in Hyannis, he packed up and drove west without telling anyone in his family where he was going, eventually selling his car and hopping freight trains. Bobby seemed to relish the chance to break away from his family and ride the rails with the other vagabonds. 'I could be one of them,' he said later. 'And not be a Kennedy.'

"Bobby and Ethel eventually made amends. * * *

(b) "ONE REASON THE Kennedy family was able to command such influence over American politics for so long was that everyone stuck together. Joseph P Kennedy, who was one of the richest men in the early 20th century, told his nine children not to worry about growing the family fortune and to use it instead to win elected office -- the higher the better. After JFK won the presidential election in 1960, he brought along his brother Bobby as attorney general, installed his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver as head of the Peace Corps, and helped his brother Ted get elected to the Senate seat he'd just vacated. Shriver married into the family through Eunice [one of JFK's younger sister], who went on to found the Special Olympics [Eunice championed the disabled due to her sister Rose Marie 'Rosemary' Kennedy's mental disability], and continually pressured Ted to make disability rights a core part of his decadeslong effort to revamp America's health-care system. Kennedy siblings and cousins made calls and knocked on doors whenever one of them ran for state senate or lieutenant governor or the House. There were so many Kennedys running for office in 1994 alone that a campaign button read simply: VOTE FOR THE KENNEDY NEAREST YOU! When tragedy struck or scandal engulfed one Kennedy or another, as it often did, the family circled the wagons; they didn't always get through unscathed, but they did get through as a team. In 2008, Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter, published a New York Times op-ed with the headline 'A President Like My Father' and joined her uncle Ted onstage to endorse Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, which helped seal the nomination for Obama while connecting a new generation of Kennedys to the most hopeful moment in Democratic politics since the one Caroline's parents had personified.

(c) " * * * Joseph and Rose had nine children, six of whom lived to have kids of their own: John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy and Eunice Shriver, Patricia Lawford, and Jean Smith. Each of those clans has spawned its own family tree, and there are now more than a hundred living Kennedys plus spouses. 'There is no "family" -- it's not The Godfather," Jack Schlossberg, JFK's grandson [mother Caroline Kennedy], told me. 'We don't all meet every year and have a discussion about what to do. It's just a bunch of individual people.' A person who has worked with numerous Kennedys over the years described them as more of a 'holding company' than a biological family. 'There are all kinds of subsidiaries that are oftentimes at odds with each other and competing with each other -- and then there are some links,' they said. 'If I heard from the Smiths on something, it didn't necessarily mean that's what Ted's family would think. They don't really communicate in the way you think they would. They're not emailing everyone together over everything. It's not because they're dysfunctional -- it's just because they're big.' No one can invite every Kennedy to their wedding anymore; if they did, they wouldn't have room for anyone else.

"The cohesion started to dissolve in earnest just a year after the Kennedys helped tip the 2008 election for Obama -- in hindsight, their last moment of collective political power. In 2009, Caroline was the front-runner to succeed Hillary Clinton as New York's junior senator, but she proved to be such a clumsy politician that her candidacy flamed out. A few months later, Ted died. In addition to his nearly five decades in the Senate, Ted had served as a father figure to more than a dozen nieces and nephews who lost their fathers to assassinations. * * *

Note:
(a) This article is about Robert F Kennedy Jr. There is no need to read the rest of this article.
(b) For coatimundi, see coati.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati
(c)
(i) Joseph P Kennedy Sr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy_Sr.
("He made a large fortune as a stock and commodity market investor, and later rolled over his proceeds by dedicating a substantial amount of his wealth into investment-grade real estate and a wide range of privately controlled businesses across the United States. * * * In the 1920s Kennedy made huge profits by reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood studios; several acquisitions were ultimately merged into Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) studios. Kennedy increased his fortune with distribution rights for Scotch whisky. He owned the largest privately owned building in the country, Chicago's Merchandise Mart"/ section 2 Business career)
(ii) Benjamin Fearnow, Kennedy Family Net Worth: How Wealthy Are Ted Kennedy's Living Relatives Today?  Newsweek, Apr 6, 2018
https://www.newsweek.com/kennedy ... ily-how-rich-874676
("Fortune magazine first published its richest people in the United States list in 1957. The inaugural list placed Joseph P Kennedy Sr in the $200 to $400 million range, about $1.74 billion to $3.48 billion today")
(d)
(i) In 2020, Joe P Kennedy III (son of Joe P Kennedy II, who is the same Joe born in 1952 mentioned in Note (d)(iii) below) challenged the incumbent US senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and lost 55.4% to 44.6%. It is the first time in Massachusetts a Kennedy lost in an election. But he was not the first one who lost in an election held in another state. See next.
(ii)
(A) Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Kennedy_Townsend
("served as the sixth lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003. She was the first woman to serve in that role. A member of the Democratic Party, she ran unsuccessfully for governor of Maryland in 2002. * * * was born [in] 1951 * * * the eldest of Robert F Kennedy and Ethel Skakel's 11 children")
(B) Townsend is her husband's surname.
(iii) Robert F Kennedy Jr (1954- ; the sitting Secretary of Health and Human Services) is the third child (but not the eldest boy). His elder brother -- and Robert and Ethel's second child -- Joseph was born in 1952.