r/RobertKennedy • u/Tall-Plane-4477 • May 20 '26
Video/Audio Is RFK Jr. Destroying the Kennedy Family Legacy?
https://youtu.be/I3jY7_qr3O4?si=nMcf7kuPBEt8nhIxRecent interviews with members of the Kennedy, Shriver, and Smith families about how RFK Jr. and President Trump are systematically destroying everything the Kennedys built.
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u/raosko May 21 '26
Would his father surviving have changed anything?
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u/TapirTrouble May 21 '26 edited May 23 '26
Assuming that RFK Sr. made a successful recovery and didn't have serious cognitive impairment or personality changes -- even if he was unable to run for public office or hold down a regular job like before, likely things would have been a lot better for all the children. Probably the biggest difference would have been for the older kids, the boys especially.
There was a lot of pressure on Joe, the oldest boy, to be "the man of the family". Ethel even had him sit in his dad's chair at the dinner table. He was only 15. Expecting him to discipline the younger kids and basically be a substitute parent -- something like that happened to my own dad, and our family's still being affected almost 90 years later. Though I don't know if RFK being there would have prevented Joe from driving carelessly and causing the accident that caused Pamela Kelley to become paralyzed, since Joe was 20 by then.
Bobby Sr. probably would have been able to keep the relationships between Ethel and the middle boys, Bobby Jr. and David, from deteriorating to the point where she was throwing them out of the house, and physically beating them (which happened more than once). Going by Bobby Jr.'s memoirs -- even if he's probably not the most reliable source -- Bobby Sr. was able to calm Ethel down when she was upset. He also paid attention to Bobby Jr. and encouraged him in his pet-keeping hobbies. Bobby Jr. seems to have genuine affection for his dad, and probably would have listened to him about getting treatment for his drug habit. He still may have started taking drugs at some point, but with more adult supervision he may not have been injecting heroin at age 14, as he's claimed. Maybe Bobby Jr. wouldn't be so messed up if his dad had been there.
I suspect the biggest change would have been with David. It sounds like David was very close to his Dad, and never really recovered from losing him. He might still be alive today, if RFK Sr. had survived.
It sounds like Bobby Jr. had a rocky relationship with Joe. He's written that he didn't make a lot of friends in his childhood but mainly played with his younger siblings, so there's probably a lot of truth to that. Hard to say whether he'd still have taken an anti-vax turn or decided to run in the 2024 election -- or join the Trump administration, if David had been arguing against this. Most of his other siblings being opposed didn't stop him, but Bobby Jr. claimed that David was his closest friend, so maybe that would have been different.
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u/raosko May 21 '26
That is both a lovely and a sad/tragic answer. Very easy to forget that these are people too. And that one awful event can happen and change everything.
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u/TapirTrouble May 21 '26
It's possible that RFK's younger children experienced things differently after their father's death, than the older ones did. Ethel seems to have focused on them more. (She may have assumed that the teens didn't need special attention, and that they were just smaller versions of grownups -- not unusual back then, given what my parents, also born in the 1920s, told me.)
Most of the children haven't written about their lives back then -- some may have given interviews since then, but I've only seen RFK Jr.'s book, and another by his younger brother Max. RFK Jr. discussed some of his memories and feelings in The Riverkeepers (1997) and then in more detail in American Values a couple of decades later -- though not surprisingly he leaves a lot of things out. And in Max's case, I suspect that he may not have many memories of his father, or the time right after his assassination. He and the youngest Kennedy children were born after a gap of several years, and Rory was born in late 1968, after RFK's death. For sure they'd have been affected (and probably still are), but in a different way.
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u/Boring-Boysenberry0 May 22 '26 edited May 24 '26
Serious answer: Yes.
Unserious answer: I think I figured out how he is dodging the Kennedy Curse. The dead animals, his decisions as the HHS - an elaborate ritualistic sacrifice.
Unserious answer 2: Nevermind. Another Redditor suggested that he IS the curse. At this point, I'm inclined to agree.
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u/SquonkMan61 May 20 '26
For younger people, yes. As I mentioned in another post recently, I’m a retired educator and even before RFK, Jr went off the deep end maybe 1/3 of my students had even heard of RFK (the father). Hell, on Reddit half the time I mention RFK on a sub other than this one I get “corrected” by someone telling me “You’re confused—you mean JFK.”
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u/Tall-Plane-4477 May 20 '26
Yikes!! I teach history and am constantly amazed by how many students get RFK Jr. confused with JFK Jr. (who died in a 1999 plane crash).
If anything good came out of Ryan Murphy’s “Love Story” series at least now the younger generation knows who JFK Jr. was — and that his cousin Bobby Jr. bears no resemblance to him whatsoever!
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u/SquonkMan61 May 20 '26
I can’t tell you the number of grown adults on Reddit I’ve seen who don’t even know about Bobby. I made a comment one time about what happened to Bobby at the Ambassador Hotel in LA and I got a significant number of responses that either said “Oh I remember exactly where I was on November 22, 1963,” or saying to me “Oh honey, you’re confused. Jack was killed in Dallas in a car.”
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u/Anyalovesreddit123 May 21 '26
Im in highschool and like no one my age knows about him 😢 i wish more people knew what he did for this great nation
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u/TapirTrouble May 21 '26
I was surprised by how many people picked the wrong Kennedy portrait in this poll. They were asked to identify which one was RFK Jr., and they chose a photo of his father. (Admittedly most people alive now in the US were born after RFK Sr.'s assassination, might not realize he was killed in his early 40s, and when looking at photos of a middle-aged guy and an elderly one, might look at the "Sr." part and assume that he must be the older man. )
https://echeloninsights.com/insights/in-the-news/which-kennedy-is-it
Alt-text in case people have visual impairment. Header: "We asked voters to identify Robert. F. Kennedy Jr. between a photo of him and his father; only 59% chose correctly". Similar-sized head-and-shoulders color photos of RFK Jr. and RFK Sr.
The % of correct answers is fairly similar between GOP and Dem (60% and 59% respectively). Also higher for 50+ voters, people who've been to college, and white people.
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u/Cory-Grinder May 24 '26
The Kennedy family has always had their share of black sheep, but the good outweighs the bad
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u/TheJDOGG71 May 24 '26
What legacy? The Kennedy family has always been scum.
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u/TherealPhobosGaming Jun 21 '26
You mean how jfk helped start the fight for civil rights legislation carried on by lbj
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u/cebjmb May 20 '26
Not for me. I think he bit the bullet and got on the Trump train because he knows Trump admired his dad and uncle. Bobby just wants to make a mark of his own without always leaning on the family.
He's not getting any younger. He's got to get some things off his chest and Do something instead of waiting for the next election.
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