Royal Flush
21st November 2023
As Steve notes, the New York Times has finally gone after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., member of a family that has been “ersatz American royalty” for 60 years. The great Paul Johnson, who died at 94 back in January, had some thoughts on the Kennedys in A History of the American People, published in 1998.
Patriarch Joe Kennedy, appointed by Franklin Roosevelt to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, was “a crook and known to be such,” and FDR called him “a very dangerous man.” Joe was a big booster of son John Fitzgerald Kennedy, better known as “Jack” but with key realities carefully concealed.
“Strictly speaking Jack was never fit to hold any important public office,” Johnson explains, “and the list of lies told about his body by the Kennedy camp over the years is formidable.” That was also true of his alleged body of work.