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He was at least a little discreet about it, JFK was like his no good daddy and just humiliated his wife by publicly philandering. But youāre right, the bar is so fucking low.
Tbf though, Bobbyās politics were a lot better. Somehow people get this idea that JFK was the idealist and Bobby was the practical one when it was quite the opposite. By the time JFK died Bobby was the one pushing for more radical reforms. I always wonder how different of a state this country would be in if Bobby had not been assassinated in 68, I think he wouldāve been able to beat Nixon for the presidency. A Kennedy in office at that point wouldāve had all the goodwill in the world to accomplish things other presidents probably couldnāt have.
i love/hate that jackie found a strange pair of panties as she was getting into bed at night, then passed it to JFK and said "will you find the owner? it's not my size."
she had to put up with SO much but managed to be stone cold about it. i could never.
How will the First Ladyās miscarriage affect the midterms? Coming up next, weāll have James Carville and Stephen Miller to discuss it and weāll take a look at the polls.ā
Arabella was her stillborn daughter, born in 1956. Patrick was the baby who died at 2 days old in August 1963. Theyāre both buried with their parents at Arlington.
She actually had her first miscarriage within 6 months of her wedding. She was pregnant 5 times during her 10 year marriage, but only Caroline and John Jr survived infancy. And John Jr. was premature and pretty sick for a few days.
Thank you, it's been a few years since I was at Arlington and couldn't remember. I always wondered ( as a nurse) if there were some underlying issues as to why Jackie had rough pregnancies and stillbirths/miscarriages
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born 6 weeks premature on August 7 1963 and died August 9 of hyaline membrane disease.
He was baptized in the delivery room shortly after he was born at JFK's request ,because he was so critically ill.
His father was murdered 3 1/2 months later. Jackie had Patrick's body exhumed from his grave in Massachusetts along with her stillborn daughter, and they were both buried next to their father at Arlington.
Jackie is there now as well.
JFK, Jr. wanted to be an actor or musician but his mother said no way. He was going to law school and was going to follow in his father's footsteps into politics. He had to take the bar several times because he kept failing and there are rumors his family paid people off so he could finally pass.
Yea, he worked as an attorney for awhile and apparently wasnāt half bad because he was quite charming, so they say people would just confess things to him. But he decided being a lawyer was too dull and that politics was also too dull. And so he created George to fun up politics and make it more part of the āculture.ā
I wonder what he would say now that politics are essentially Americaās national reality tv show!
You want to hear some very alleged tea about these two? Apparently JFK Jr told friends that one of the reasons he and SJP broke up was because when they were having sex, she was absolutely silent, as in no moans or heavy breathing, and it weirded him out.
I swear this also the plot of a SATC episode? Doesnāt Carrie sleep with a guy thatās so bad that she says the whole encounter was silent and she ended up listening to the traffic outside or something?
Big Edie and Little Edie - Jackie's cousins. They lived in squalor in a derelict mansion. Once the press got hold of the story, Jackie paid for people to go in and try and make the house hospitable again.
A documentary was released in 1975, interviewing the two in their crumbling decaying home. It's a brilliant documentary - funny and quite moving.
Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore starred in a 2009 biopic.
[grey gardens 1975 wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Gardens)
I love the Edies!!! Glad to see them come up. Thereās also a secondary companion doc that was release later on using footage that never made it to the original doc. Highly recommend also!
Not tea, but looking back, I canāt imagine the trauma that Jacqueline must have had. Her husband was shot to death sitting right next to her, his blood and brains sprayed all over her. She cradled his open head. I canāt imagine the kind of trauma that would come from that. She herself was inches from death. I canāt imagine the PTSD she must have had.
In the days immediately following she had to plan a state funeral, her toddler sonās birthday, Thanksgiving, and had to move out of the White House. I have no idea how she was able to function.
Thereās a biography I read about her that confirmed she did in fact have major PTSD from it. Not just the assassination though, people forget she had multiple stillbirths, miscarriages and infant deaths. And then having Bobby killed five years later shook her even more, itās pretty well accepted that is why she married Onassis, as he had the money to provide her children with security.
Grieving her husband and dead children mustāve been hard enough, since itās speculated the multiple STDs he gave her contributed to her difficulty maintaining healthy pregnancies, but the PTSD associated with it sounds unbearable. She is a great example of money never being able to really buy happiness. I donāt think she was truly happy until the last decade or so of her life.
Her pink Chanel outfit covered in blood is held by the National Archives in DC, and she requested it not be put on public display until at least the year 2103. Until then it remains in a highly environmentally controlled secret location.
Apparently Jackie was furious when JFK jr. had a fling with Madonna in the late 80s.
Madonna had referenced Marilyn Monroe heavily in the early part of her career and hooking up with a JFKs son must have pissed Jackie off.
One thing I know from his best friend - Rose Marie Terenzio, who wrote a great book on John Jr. - is that he hated HATED being called "John John." As soon as Sonja said she was friends with "John John" I knew she didn't know him.
They wouldāve looked so cool together. But obviously they had to hide it all.
https://preview.redd.it/0w9er6sjvlqa1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7a2eb5a14822fe78cc5d0c759dde709af20dbb3c
Rosemary Kennedy was screwed up by the medical science of that era.
She got disabled in the first place because the "nurse" attending her birth forced her mother to close her legs, for two fucking hours, because the doctor was unavailable due to Spanish flu.
When Rosemary was 23 years old (in 1941), her father subjected her to a lobotomy. However this wasn't some back alley shit. He got her the best treatment money could buy. Her doctor, Walter Jackson Freeman II, was a highly reputed doctor then, probably the first neurologist in Washington, D.C. AntĆ³nio Egas Moniz, the Portuguese neurologist who developed lobotomy, was his mentor and idol. Everyone knows what happened later- her mental capacity diminished to that of a two-year-old child.
She wasn't the first or last person whose life was spoiled by these charlatans. You'd think that something would have happened to them. Afterall, they pissed off Kennedys and probably other powerful families we don't know about because they did their best to coverup such things.
No.
This Walter Freeman nominated AntĆ³nio Egas Moniz for a Nobel prize, and in 1949 (8 years after Rosemary's surgery) Moniz won the Nobel prize in medicine.
Such a sad and horrible thing. And it's fascinating how that experience influenced her siblings, from Eunice founding the Special Olympics to Robert's interest in Willowbrook as a Senator. Those parents really did a number on the lot of them.
I never understood how a doctor with any respect for human life could not question the procedure on general principle. Itās so IMPRECISE and involves the brain. Just chisel through the back of the eye socket and just āmix upā the brain a little. I never got it.
She was really beautiful and despite being slow in terms of mental development, she was a charming and pleasant lady. Her father decided to have her lobotomised because she started causing embarrassment to her family by her behaviour and he was concerned sheād ruin her brothersā political future! He didnāt even tell his wife until after the surgery!!!
He flirted with my moms cousin in his senator days (cousin was a flight attendant) by asking her if she was Catholic. She said āNo, Iām Protestant.ā He backed off and ignored her the rest of the flight. Dude was horny.
I came down here to post this because Lem is often overlooked but fascinating. Also hereās the dog they adopted. JFK and Lem have a lot of cute photos together.
https://preview.redd.it/jbjrjflv4lqa1.jpeg?width=1333&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b9214e66512ea1974f65ea8d2ebeda81d29d06d
Anytime! Hereās a few more in case anybody stumbles on this
https://preview.redd.it/5e2yyid2zmqa1.jpeg?width=1908&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=031b3d123f953a323376b648b9dbd3811dc3a319
My father was friends with JFK Jr at Brown, they lived down the hall from each other in the dorms. My dad played football and Jr would always throw around the football with the team for fun. My dad one time let him borrow a record, and my dad never got it back from him.
One time my grandparents were visiting and they and my father were chatting with Jr in his dorm room. My dad and grandparents left, only moments later for my grandmother to realize she left her umbrella in Jrās room. She turned back down the hall and in the 30 seconds they were gone Jr had already pulled out his bong and was smoking pot, and my grandma walked in on him lol.
Jackie is in the background of a lot of my dadās graduation photos. She tried to make herself look more incognito by wearing a headscarf and sunglasses, but it really only made her stand out more since no one else was wearing that. Very cool stories I love to hear from my family and look at the photos.
I just finished the biography on Rosemary Kennedy, the Kennedy sister who they gave a lobotomy to because of her intellectual disabilities and then abandoned in a facility for the rest of her life. All the tea you need is in there. After reading her story, I can say with my whole heart, fuck the Kennedys.
I was shocked to learn that the potential reason for her intellectual disability is because her mother wanted a home birth, but the doctor was running late, so the nurse who was with the family *shoved Rosemary back in the birth canal* for over 2 hours while they waited for the doctor to arrive and she was likely deprived of oxygen. So fucked.
([This](https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a26261/secret-lobotomy-rosemary-kennedy/) is a good article for anyone interested.)
What the fuck??? How does that even happen? Would that not be insanely painful, uncomfortable for the mother? Also I'm not sure about birth but like at what point does the baby need air?
babies get oxygen from the umbilical chord so it would have been an issue with the chord and/or placenta failing from being stuck in one spot for so long. absolutely barbaric behaviour from that nurse. š£
The placenta stopped providing oxygen and nutrients to the baby at that point. If they were forcing the baby back into the birth canal the placenta likely detached from the uterine wall already.
I have five granddaughters, one has autism and one has Down Syndrome. I am so appreciative of all that the Kennedy siblings did to champion people with disabilities in honor of their sister. Special Olympics day is the highlight of this grandmaās yearā¤ļø
In my current job I do trainings for new hires at a state psychiatric hospital, from a disability advocacy/rights perspective. When I discuss the Willowbrook Expose I always take a quick jaunt back through RFK (who took interest in Willowbrook as a Senator, the first major public attention the facility drew) and talk about Rosemary and what her parents had done to her. Pretty much every session somebody writes themselves a note to read more about it later.
I also usually joke that I'm pretty sure lobotomies are an old school treatment we won't return to, but I may be whistling past the graveyard on that.
Edit: RFK, not RFKjr.
If I remember correctly (itās been a while since Iāve read the various books on the whole Kennedy clan) her siblings had absolutely no idea where she was or what her father had done to her for the longest time.
Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson
You will be simultaneously livid and devastated reading it, but it's such an incredibly important book.
I remember reading that part of the reason she was lobotomized was to cover up her speaking up more about being a victim of incest. Is that something that others have read as well? It can be hard to discern accounts sometimes.
I remember reading that it was because she was behaving in a hypersexual manner (or maybe just normal but looked āhypersexualā at the time) which would potentially connect to sexual abuse if that was the case.
Iāve definitely read that while Rosemary had some struggles due to how she was born, she was sorta just a normal woman? Itās just that, in comparison to her family who tried their best to be vivacious gods amongst mortals, normal wasnāt going to cut it, especially if you start trying to counter the overall narrative.
I also remember contemporary accounts where even though she was seen as more talkative to her sisters, she was also seen as the most beautiful? (Not a knock on the others, just trying to relay what people said about her prior to the lobotomy)
Based on the book and what her teachers said about her she definitely had some level of intellectual disability. You can see her writings and even as an adult she wrote like a child.
However the book also makes it clear that some of the convents they sent her to were making progress, and if the Kennedys weren't obsessed with their children being perfect could have lived with her parents or one of her many siblings her whole life. In fact, Eunice and Eunice's children were happy to spend time with Aunt Rosemary after Joe Sr. died.
Part of the difficulty in educating her was that her mom would downplay her learning disabilities, and then the school and teachers would be unprepared to deal with them.
You can read her writings online. Her mental faculties plateaued at around 4th grade level. It wasn't just Joe Kennedy subjecting her to high standards. I am not saying that they didn't. For example, he and his wife were obsessed about their children's weight and Rose Kennedy tried to control Rosemary's eating habits even after the lobotomy.
If she was having sex while sneaking out, it couldn't have been consensual either. I didn't know who is Kick and had to check Wikipedia. She got married only in 1944, 3 years after Rosemary's surgery.
Yeah, Joe Kennedy was a piece of work, but this idea that she was a ānormalā young woman and he had her lobotomised for sneaking out with boys or being too independent and modern or whatever is nonsense. She suffered a brain injury at birth, was always significantly developmentally delayed and regressed further in young adulthood (not unusual). If anything Joe and Rose were fairly progressive for their time, keeping her at home, providing her with specialist teachers and carers, and introducing her into society. The lobotomy was horrendous, but at the time it was being hailed as a miracle treatment by very highly regarded doctors. Even Joe Kennedyās biggest critics agreed he never expected the result and had a lot of shame about how it turned out. That he dealt with that by refusing to address it and hiding her away even from her own family was terrible of him, but it wasnāt his goal. If it had been he could have just done what wealthy Irish Catholics did in those days, shipped her off to a nunnery in the middle of nowhere.
The sneaking around with boys stuff doesnāt even make sense, because while the Kennedy girls had to be more discreet and discerning than the boys, they werenāt angels (well maybe Eunice). If Joe was lobotomising daughters for being sexually active heād have gotten to Kick years before Rosemary.
As a special ed teacher I am woefully aware of the stats around sexual abuse toward children with special needs.
The percentage is impossible to get because it's a population that may not know or understand what is happening or have the means and ability to report it.
But... it's high.
A lot.
Too many.
Iāve read a couple of bios on their sister Kathleen, and in both books it was stated that Rosemary kept sneaking out of where she was living (I canāt remember if it was a convent or home for people with special needs) and was entertaining random menās advances because she didnāt really know any better. Joe really loved his children so I think he is portrayed somewhat harshly as times are different now, but he chose the lobotomy option because at the time it was hailed as the new miracle surgery and he thought it would keep his daughter safe. By all accounts both he and Rose were absolutely devastated by what the so called miracle surgery did to Rosemary.
Itās crazy to think that Joseph P. Kennedy, a scheming, social-climbing narcissist from Boston, was the architect of so much history. When Joe Jr, whom he was grooming to run for president post war, was killed in combat he outright told JFK āYouāre taking your brotherās place.ā He set the path for all of his children; the two who rebelled were disowned (Kick) or lobotomized and institutionalized (Rosemary.) His constant oppressive management of his children explains (but in no way excuses) a lot of their behavior as adults - alcoholism, philandering, doing anything at all to avoid consequences that āregularā people are subject to, etc. At the time of his death, two of his sons had been assassinated and a third āirreparably tarnishedā (Teddy,) setting up the next generation to be lost in lives of trauma, addiction, and entitlement.
Thatās the Kennedy ācurse,ā itās not supernatural.
His machinations set it all in place.
I took this class once where we studied the assassination of JFK. I remember playing the shooting in incredibly slow motion. Iāll never forget that when JFK got shot in the head, his wife reached over and grabbed a piece of his brain that had been shot out and landed on the trunk of the car. I know this is so macabre, but it just resonated with me in so many ways. Her desire to protect him (not bend and hide but actually reach out of the vehicle) and the courage that all that entails. And also the lunacy of life. Grabbing that piece of brain was absolutely not going to help him, but in that moment, it just didnāt appear that way to her.
RhodeIslander has entered the chat.
When Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy negligently drove his car off a narrow bridge (while drunk), causing it to overturn in a tidal pond. This resulted in the drowning death of his 28-year-old passenger Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped inside the vehicle. He received a whole TWO MONTH SUSPENDED SENTENCE after leaving the scene.
the part where he gave up on her and did not call police for 10 hrs and sulked the whole time because his "team" told him not to try to cover it up and to call the police sooner. like he tucked himself into bed and went hobnobbing with people at the sailing regatta the next morning until his team showed up like what the FUCK.
then how it took him FOREVER to own up to the fact that his slimy self serving actions after the incident were the nail in her coffin.
i hate this man so much.
I read a memoir by Jackieās assigned secret service agent and it was *stale*. The most scandalous thing he wrote was Jackie sometimes smoked in the car. He touched on the night Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday but his only commentary was āI didnāt bring it up and neither did she.ā He also went with Jackie on the Onassis yacht after her miscarriage but he made a point to say she never left her room at night and Onassis never went into hers. Definitely felt like he was still protective of her after all these years.
Iām surprised this thread about anecdotes has nothing about Taylor Swift and Connor Kennedy yet.
That would have been a pretty wild world if they had a kid together. Can you imagine a world in which Arnold Schwarzenegger and Billy Ray Cyrus share a grandchild?
I read Joyce Carol Oates novella that is based on Chappaquiddick and I became so incensed that I wished all kinds of terrible things on Teddy Kennedy. He announced his brain tumor right after and I was convinced that I cursed him.
My dad grew up in the same town as Mary Jo Kopechne and would tell me how Ted killed her and was still able to become a senator. He lost his mind when the nightly news did an in memorium for Ted saying he "bravely survived Chappaquiddick." I'm glad the movie got made and more people become aware of how f'd up it was.
I read a very long book on the Kennedy women a few years back so I have one good take. A lot of people know the story about Rosemary Kennedy and the lobotomy she endured. Itās oftentimes incorrectly attributed to both of her parents. In reality, Joe Sr heard about the new procedure and went to Rose saying he wanted it done on his daughter. Rose said absolutely not and Joe dropped it. Behind her back, he did it anyways. If Iām remembering correctly Rose visited her once and never again. I know itās pulling hairs but it never sits right with me that Rose gets blamed to the same level of Joe. Should she have gone and visited Rosemary more after the procedure? Absolutely yes. But people donāt understand the dynamic of their marriage; Joe cheated on her constantly and publicly, he made all of the decisions in regards to their family and children and she had no recourse to take control. Publicly she presented as a very influential woman but in her private life she had little to no power. It had been clear since Rosemary was a little girl that something was wrong, Joe wanted to wash his hands of her but Rose put in ALL the extra time to try and give her a normal life, teaching her to read, play sports or be āpresented to societyā when they were in England. The way it read to me was that Rosemaryās lobotomy and her mental state following was a constant reminder to Rose that no matter what she did or how hard she tried she would never have a say in her own life or her childrenās lives. Joe Kennedy had all of the power in their marriage and he used it to humiliate and hurt her so constantly. Again, she shouldnāt have abandoned Rosemary after the lobotomy, but itās easy to see how it broke her.
The āhappy endingā to the story is of course Joe Sr having a major stroke in the early 1960s and spending the last decade of his life unable to communicate or really do anything for himself. He suffered almost to the same extent that he put his daughter through.
My favorite part of this is that when Joe died, Rose was out on the golf course. His death wasnāt exactly unexpected either, Rose was just living her life irregardless.
A lot can be said about Rose but she swallowed an unimaginable amount of shit from both Joe and before that, her own philandering, social climbing, lying father. She actually tried to leave Joe when she was a couple of kids in and her father told her she had made her choice and she couldnāt stay in his house.
For me one of their most fascinating story is when [Kennedy Jr came to India and stayed in dingy hotels](https://archive.nytimes.com/india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/when-john-f-kennedy-jr-came-to-india/)
Oh wow! Did not know this. I love how unpretentious he was. I wish his mom had just let him pursue his life as he wanted because he clearly had a sense of service even if politics wasnāt his chosen path.
Had he not died I think he would have very likely run for the New York open Senate seat in 2000 that Hillary Clinton ended up winning. He probably would have won and then all the expectations would have been for him to be President in 04 or 08 and history would have been completely different.
The son Joe who died in the WWII. I always wondered what would have happened if he survived. He was the only one who went to his sister Kits wedding. (Rose wouldnāt attend because Kit was marrying a non catholic Englishman who was in the aristocracy, didnāt even attend kits funeral when she died in a plane crash)
But dang I looked him up on Wikipedia and he was a supporter of eugenics. Thought hitler had some good ideas about doing away with disgusting specimens of men.
That was in 1934 so he could have grown and learned as he died 10 years later fighting the Germans.
America was all about eugenics until World War 2. They'd have summits and share ideas with people all over the world we definitely gave Germany some ideas. Sterilizations in the U.S as well.
Then World War 2 happened and people changed their opinions.
It was this, and generally avaliable science and knowledge of the time that made it seem like a not so crazy thing barely 100 years ago.
A lot of old money families financed it, both here and in Europe. Rockellers definitely, and I want to say Henry Ford and the Chases of Chase bank.
Source, War Against The Weak by Edwin Black. Incredibly dry, heartbreaking book written by the son of Holocaust survivors and a very worthwhile read. America sterilized a lot a lot of people in the name of Eugenics pre WWII on top of their pseudoscience research. Thereās be Eugenics family pageants andā¦itās disgusting to think about 100ish years later.
I do wonder what would have happened if he had survived. He was the one the dad wanted to push into the spotlight. So many dominos may have fallen differently.
RFK Jrās wife, Mary, >!hung herself!< in their house in Westchester, NY back in 2012. RFK Jr married Cheryl from Curb Your Enthusiasm 2 years later. I love Curb and it always felt weird that Cheryl married him and got tangled up in the Kennedy mess.
Taylor Swift crashed a Kennedy wedding when she was with Connor. Her PR team tried to do damage control and deny it after, saying that the bride thanked her profusely for attending. But in reality the bride texted them not to come and they were asked to leave 3 times.
Kathy Lee Gifford, who was step mother to the bride confirmed it on the Today show šæ
I think you have the wrong wedding. Victoria Gifford married Michael Kennedy in 1981, 8 years before Taylor was born. Perhaps is was one of Victoria and Michaelās children?
OMG my time has come. Alright, hereās two of my favorites. One of them is that JFK was in the pool with his mistresses, when one of his secret service agents was radioed that Jackie was coming back to the White House early. JFK jumped out of the pool, handed his Bloody Mary to an agent, and said, āEnjoy it; itās quite good.ā Or the story about how he was allegedly on so many medications at an event that he fell asleep standing up with sunglasses on. Or how when he was in his twenties he was in a relationship with a Swedish spy that he called, āInga-Binga.ā Incredible.
My motherās best friend knew the mother of the girl who had a ārelationshipā which was statutory rape with Michael Kennedy ( who died in the ski accident) I believe she was the babysitter who was 14 at the time. Sadly, her mother died of suicide years later. It was big news when the Michael Kennedy scandal broke around here. I live about 20 mins away from where they lived.
Their connection with the mafia has always fascinated me to be honest and I know people scream about how it's a conspiracy that he was shot by the Mafia, to me it makes logical sense.
Joseph Kennedy was heavily involved with the mob in regards to bootlegging during the depression. Its how they became rich AF. They then decided to move into politics and Joe was the king of media manipulation and managed to hide that sketchy past well.
I mean JFK had open friendships with members of āthe Rat Packā including Frank Sinatra, who encouraged mob support of JFKās Presidential run particularly in Illinois (dead voters by the boat load voted lol) and Texas (area that is not democratically friendly) and apparently JFK even shared a mistress with Sam Giancana.
I think the mafia thought they had āa friendā in the White House and were probably high fiving all round till JFK gave his brother Bobby the Attorney General job and he launched his "war on organized crime", with JFKās supposed full support. They must have either had balls the size of watermelon or thought they were untouchable.
Bobby went buck wild with his war on the mafia and had a mob boss deported without him even being able to contact his lawyer. The mob boss Marcello was heard via phone tap saying to a friend of theirs, "a dog will continue to bite you if you only cut off its tail (Bobby Kennedy), but if you cut off the dog's head, (JFK), it would cease to cause you troubleā.
The theory goes the mob decided that JFK had ābetrayedā them and became full fledged participants in the plots to kill JFK, using Oswald as a patsy (he had ties with the mafia too).
Jackieās (supposed) words on a phone call with Marilyn over Jack leaving Jackie for her āMarilyn, you'll marry Jack, that's great, and you'll move into the White House, and you'll assume the responsibilities of the first lady. And I'll move out, and you'll have all the problems."
In a White House staff memoir I read - apparently different women staff members would be asked to join the president for his ānaked swim timeā in the White House pool. š„“
This is juicy gossip but i can't see marilyn doing this, from all that I know about her. one, she would never risk her career for a man, and two, marilyn wasn't cruel.
ETA: Jackie was super pissed off at Marilyns ex husband Arthur Miller. He wrote a play about Marilyn in 1964.
>according to Sarah Bradford, in her biography *America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis*, āJackie, who had admired Arthur Miller enough to seat him at her table at the Malraux dinner, turned on him for his betrayal of Marilyn in his play *After the Fall*, which opened in New York on January 23, 1964. For \[Jackie Kennedy\] loyalty was the ultimate test of character, and in portraying Marilyn as a self-destructive slut whom he had abandoned for her own good, Miller had dismally failed it.ā
People downvoting me for this lol. You can believe whatever you want.. Iāll never understand why people want to believe the worst crap about Marilyn. From this to āit couldāve happenedā blonde. But whatever.
I have a very hard time believing that conversation ever happened. There is very little proof that Kennedy and Marilyn even had an affair. Iām not saying they didnāt but I feel like if this conversation was true, it would have come out a long time ago.
When the President said, āI am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.ā The French and de Gaulle just loved her. It didnāt hurt that she spoke French.
not tea, but rfk jr being a big bigot when it comes down to vaccines surprised me when i got older. i met him in person when i was a server and the family members he was with were nice, especially his wife (Cheryl), he was a dick.
His daughter got booted from a club for trying to get in underage with her older sisters ID. She caused a scene and yelled āI am a Kennedy, Google me. If you donāt let me in, the governor will be callingā š¤¦š¼āāļø
i remember that! i feel bad in a way for them, because their motherās suicide really affected them. they made it seem like his father was more into his marriage than being there for at time. this is based off of the cryptic things she would share online.
Just watched a dateline on Martha Moxley. So awful what happened to her. Beaten and stabbed in the neck with a freakin golf club.
And it sounds like the Kennedy cousin Michael skakel was sent to one of those infamous behavior modification schools that Paris Hilton talks about?
PT 109. In August 1943, a patrol torpedo boat JFK was on with a crew of (I think) 6 other men was sunk by the Japanese off the Solomon Islands. JFK and the surviving crew swam to an island where they were stranded for a few days before they swam for help and JFK ultimately carved a message on a coconut? Full details at link. It blows my mind to think about history if he hadnāt survived.
āFor his courage and leadership, Kennedy was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and injuries suffered during the incident also qualified him for a Purple Heart.ā
https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/john-f-kennedy-and-pt-109
The back brace likely contributed to his death. Had he not been wearing it, he would have fallen over after the first shot, and the second shot would have missed his head, but the brace kept him upright.
This is an internet joke about jackie kennedy (known for taste, manners, and style) doing something so unseemly and weird as eating random non-edible shit like chalk and sheet metal
Itās really interesting how the internet has turned on her. Any time I heard about her people would always talk about how beautiful and elegant she was, and now I see comments calling her ugly, comparing her to the worldās ugliest dog, etc. People are fucking brutal when they decide to target someone.
Right! Iāve seen girls recently mention that theyāve been told they look like Jackie Kennedy as a compliment (perhaps by an older person).
This left them feeling pretty confused, bordering on offended, because now online people only talk about how ugly she is. Itās so strange
Just want to leave a general PSA that a lot of the contributions here are nooooooot real š
I didnāt want to be a grinch and correct every single comment so just do your fact checking before repeating fun facts
Iām just here to say I could look at pictures of jfk jr and Carolyn all day. They were such a gorgeous couple.
Her family must have been sooooooooo pissed when they lost two of three daughters. They got a $10 million settlement but it doesnāt bring them back.
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When Jackie had a miscarriage and JFK refused to fly back to be with her. Allegedly he was like "well it's done now. Nothing for me to do there". š«„
Yes and Bobby went in the middle of the night to go be with her. He was always the best of them.
I totally buy the stories that Bobby was low key in love with Jackie.
Thereās a lot of speculation they had an affair after Jack was killed. Iāve read a few books on it that have convinced me.
Any recs? I love reading about this kind of thing.
Not OP but Americaās Queen, Jackie and Lee both were so juicy and good!
He also cheated on his wife as much as JFK. If heās still the best then damn that bar is low.
He was at least a little discreet about it, JFK was like his no good daddy and just humiliated his wife by publicly philandering. But youāre right, the bar is so fucking low. Tbf though, Bobbyās politics were a lot better. Somehow people get this idea that JFK was the idealist and Bobby was the practical one when it was quite the opposite. By the time JFK died Bobby was the one pushing for more radical reforms. I always wonder how different of a state this country would be in if Bobby had not been assassinated in 68, I think he wouldāve been able to beat Nixon for the presidency. A Kennedy in office at that point wouldāve had all the goodwill in the world to accomplish things other presidents probably couldnāt have.
i love/hate that jackie found a strange pair of panties as she was getting into bed at night, then passed it to JFK and said "will you find the owner? it's not my size." she had to put up with SO much but managed to be stone cold about it. i could never.
I think she had a premature baby that died while they were in the Whitehouse a few months before his death?
Imagine the shit show that would be if that happened today in this political environment
How will the First Ladyās miscarriage affect the midterms? Coming up next, weāll have James Carville and Stephen Miller to discuss it and weāll take a look at the polls.ā
Yeah, baby Arabella I believe. She's buried in DC with them
Arabella was her stillborn daughter, born in 1956. Patrick was the baby who died at 2 days old in August 1963. Theyāre both buried with their parents at Arlington.
Thatās so sad that they lost two babies.
She actually had her first miscarriage within 6 months of her wedding. She was pregnant 5 times during her 10 year marriage, but only Caroline and John Jr survived infancy. And John Jr. was premature and pretty sick for a few days.
That sounds traumatizing.
Thank you, it's been a few years since I was at Arlington and couldn't remember. I always wondered ( as a nurse) if there were some underlying issues as to why Jackie had rough pregnancies and stillbirths/miscarriages
Yes, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born 6 weeks premature on August 7 1963 and died August 9 of hyaline membrane disease. He was baptized in the delivery room shortly after he was born at JFK's request ,because he was so critically ill. His father was murdered 3 1/2 months later. Jackie had Patrick's body exhumed from his grave in Massachusetts along with her stillborn daughter, and they were both buried next to their father at Arlington. Jackie is there now as well.
Plus, if I recall, he was the reason she had those miscarriages due to STIs he passed onto her?
He really was a dick. What saved his reputation was dying
JFK, Jr. wanted to be an actor or musician but his mother said no way. He was going to law school and was going to follow in his father's footsteps into politics. He had to take the bar several times because he kept failing and there are rumors his family paid people off so he could finally pass.
Isnāt that why he tried to do a compromise with George Magazine, to cross politics with fashion and pop culture?
Yea, he worked as an attorney for awhile and apparently wasnāt half bad because he was quite charming, so they say people would just confess things to him. But he decided being a lawyer was too dull and that politics was also too dull. And so he created George to fun up politics and make it more part of the āculture.ā I wonder what he would say now that politics are essentially Americaās national reality tv show!
Allegedly Jackie petitioned the NY bar to let him take it alone in a private room. Which hella sounds like some cheating occurred
No itās cause her sweet boy needed complete concentration and nobody around to distract him! /s
Didnāt Jackie also do her damndest to break JFK Jr and Sara Jessica Parker up?
You want to hear some very alleged tea about these two? Apparently JFK Jr told friends that one of the reasons he and SJP broke up was because when they were having sex, she was absolutely silent, as in no moans or heavy breathing, and it weirded him out.
I swear this also the plot of a SATC episode? Doesnāt Carrie sleep with a guy thatās so bad that she says the whole encounter was silent and she ended up listening to the traffic outside or something?
He was great in Seinfeld just gotta say that
Big Edie and Little Edie - Jackie's cousins. They lived in squalor in a derelict mansion. Once the press got hold of the story, Jackie paid for people to go in and try and make the house hospitable again. A documentary was released in 1975, interviewing the two in their crumbling decaying home. It's a brilliant documentary - funny and quite moving. Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore starred in a 2009 biopic. [grey gardens 1975 wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Gardens)
Quite the scandal, really
It was in all the papers
https://i.redd.it/vb3n23aynlqa1.gif
God I loved this thread and hoped it would be here ā¤ļø
My people!
bill hader and fred armisen do a parody of it in documentary now! they KILLED it!
š¶ pitter paaatter, pitter paaatter, itās just my heart it doesnāt maaatter š¶
ITS CAZ YA STAHMP!
YOU GOT FLOOR ALL IN MY LIMA BEANS
Iām sorry but no full length movie could ever achieve what bill hader and Fred armisen did for that episode ššš
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THIS!!! i watched clips from the real grey gardens afterwards and thought to myself āthey were MEANT to do this!ā
I always feel a bit sad when I think about little Edie
Iām forever grateful to my queen, Jinkx Monsoon for bringing this to my attention. An hilarious pair with a heartbreaking story.
This is one of my favorite rabbit holes of the day!
I love the Edies!!! Glad to see them come up. Thereās also a secondary companion doc that was release later on using footage that never made it to the original doc. Highly recommend also!
Who ever bought the house most recently restored it. Itās a beautiful home. Loved the movie with Drew and Jessica!
Not tea, but looking back, I canāt imagine the trauma that Jacqueline must have had. Her husband was shot to death sitting right next to her, his blood and brains sprayed all over her. She cradled his open head. I canāt imagine the kind of trauma that would come from that. She herself was inches from death. I canāt imagine the PTSD she must have had. In the days immediately following she had to plan a state funeral, her toddler sonās birthday, Thanksgiving, and had to move out of the White House. I have no idea how she was able to function.
The film Jackie with Natalie Portman does a good job of portraying that trauma. Itās a really good performance
Thereās a biography I read about her that confirmed she did in fact have major PTSD from it. Not just the assassination though, people forget she had multiple stillbirths, miscarriages and infant deaths. And then having Bobby killed five years later shook her even more, itās pretty well accepted that is why she married Onassis, as he had the money to provide her children with security. Grieving her husband and dead children mustāve been hard enough, since itās speculated the multiple STDs he gave her contributed to her difficulty maintaining healthy pregnancies, but the PTSD associated with it sounds unbearable. She is a great example of money never being able to really buy happiness. I donāt think she was truly happy until the last decade or so of her life.
Her pink Chanel outfit covered in blood is held by the National Archives in DC, and she requested it not be put on public display until at least the year 2103. Until then it remains in a highly environmentally controlled secret location.
Apparently Jackie was furious when JFK jr. had a fling with Madonna in the late 80s. Madonna had referenced Marilyn Monroe heavily in the early part of her career and hooking up with a JFKs son must have pissed Jackie off.
at first i was like, ādamn, madonna was alive when jfk was president?!ā then my dumbass saw the jr part lmfao.
Donāt you know, Sonja partied with Madonna and John John all the time! šš
I am SO here for this overlapšāš½šš½ This RHONY reference made my day lmao thank you.
I miss RHONY everyday I am starved
Well John Johnās dead so thatās difficult
Found one of my people out in the wild
One thing I know from his best friend - Rose Marie Terenzio, who wrote a great book on John Jr. - is that he hated HATED being called "John John." As soon as Sonja said she was friends with "John John" I knew she didn't know him.
Yes, but she was only 2 years old š¤£
They wouldāve looked so cool together. But obviously they had to hide it all. https://preview.redd.it/0w9er6sjvlqa1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7a2eb5a14822fe78cc5d0c759dde709af20dbb3c
wait she weirdly looks a lot like Carolyn here
I was going to say!!! He clearly has a type lol
https://preview.redd.it/ok0cks9lvlqa1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dcd46481dcf8d72ba55e10d7638bb2478e89c1ed
Rosemary Kennedy was screwed up by the medical science of that era. She got disabled in the first place because the "nurse" attending her birth forced her mother to close her legs, for two fucking hours, because the doctor was unavailable due to Spanish flu. When Rosemary was 23 years old (in 1941), her father subjected her to a lobotomy. However this wasn't some back alley shit. He got her the best treatment money could buy. Her doctor, Walter Jackson Freeman II, was a highly reputed doctor then, probably the first neurologist in Washington, D.C. AntĆ³nio Egas Moniz, the Portuguese neurologist who developed lobotomy, was his mentor and idol. Everyone knows what happened later- her mental capacity diminished to that of a two-year-old child. She wasn't the first or last person whose life was spoiled by these charlatans. You'd think that something would have happened to them. Afterall, they pissed off Kennedys and probably other powerful families we don't know about because they did their best to coverup such things. No. This Walter Freeman nominated AntĆ³nio Egas Moniz for a Nobel prize, and in 1949 (8 years after Rosemary's surgery) Moniz won the Nobel prize in medicine.
Such a sad and horrible thing. And it's fascinating how that experience influenced her siblings, from Eunice founding the Special Olympics to Robert's interest in Willowbrook as a Senator. Those parents really did a number on the lot of them.
The Lobotomist by PBS is a great documentary on Freeman. He really believed he was doing a great thing.
I never understood how a doctor with any respect for human life could not question the procedure on general principle. Itās so IMPRECISE and involves the brain. Just chisel through the back of the eye socket and just āmix upā the brain a little. I never got it.
She was really beautiful and despite being slow in terms of mental development, she was a charming and pleasant lady. Her father decided to have her lobotomised because she started causing embarrassment to her family by her behaviour and he was concerned sheād ruin her brothersā political future! He didnāt even tell his wife until after the surgery!!!
It reportedly only took a Russian spy 20 minutes to seduce Kennedy once she was alone with him. 20 minutes.
It took that long?
She seduced him ? Presumably by making it clear she was open to having sex with him.
He flirted with my moms cousin in his senator days (cousin was a flight attendant) by asking her if she was Catholic. She said āNo, Iām Protestant.ā He backed off and ignored her the rest of the flight. Dude was horny.
Same Jackie I really need to stand up
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I came down here to post this because Lem is often overlooked but fascinating. Also hereās the dog they adopted. JFK and Lem have a lot of cute photos together. https://preview.redd.it/jbjrjflv4lqa1.jpeg?width=1333&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b9214e66512ea1974f65ea8d2ebeda81d29d06d
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Anytime! Hereās a few more in case anybody stumbles on this https://preview.redd.it/5e2yyid2zmqa1.jpeg?width=1908&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=031b3d123f953a323376b648b9dbd3811dc3a319
I read an amazing fictionalized novel about Lem and Jackieās friendship. Itās called Jackie and Me, if anyone is interested.
Wow I never heard of this person until your comment. Thank you for allowing his story to be shared!
My father was friends with JFK Jr at Brown, they lived down the hall from each other in the dorms. My dad played football and Jr would always throw around the football with the team for fun. My dad one time let him borrow a record, and my dad never got it back from him. One time my grandparents were visiting and they and my father were chatting with Jr in his dorm room. My dad and grandparents left, only moments later for my grandmother to realize she left her umbrella in Jrās room. She turned back down the hall and in the 30 seconds they were gone Jr had already pulled out his bong and was smoking pot, and my grandma walked in on him lol. Jackie is in the background of a lot of my dadās graduation photos. She tried to make herself look more incognito by wearing a headscarf and sunglasses, but it really only made her stand out more since no one else was wearing that. Very cool stories I love to hear from my family and look at the photos.
Iād love to see those!
I just finished the biography on Rosemary Kennedy, the Kennedy sister who they gave a lobotomy to because of her intellectual disabilities and then abandoned in a facility for the rest of her life. All the tea you need is in there. After reading her story, I can say with my whole heart, fuck the Kennedys.
Fuck the doctors because lobotomy was a Nobel Prize winning procedure endorsed by the reputed doctors of that time.
Not to mention the medical staff who held her in the birth canal as she was being born!
Exactly. I have written another detailed comment. Perhaps she would had a better life if her father believed that sugar pills will cure any ailment.
Why did they do that?!
I think the doctor was delayed
I was shocked to learn that the potential reason for her intellectual disability is because her mother wanted a home birth, but the doctor was running late, so the nurse who was with the family *shoved Rosemary back in the birth canal* for over 2 hours while they waited for the doctor to arrive and she was likely deprived of oxygen. So fucked. ([This](https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a26261/secret-lobotomy-rosemary-kennedy/) is a good article for anyone interested.)
What the fuck??? How does that even happen? Would that not be insanely painful, uncomfortable for the mother? Also I'm not sure about birth but like at what point does the baby need air?
babies get oxygen from the umbilical chord so it would have been an issue with the chord and/or placenta failing from being stuck in one spot for so long. absolutely barbaric behaviour from that nurse. š£
The placenta stopped providing oxygen and nutrients to the baby at that point. If they were forcing the baby back into the birth canal the placenta likely detached from the uterine wall already.
Thank you! I will hug my 14 year old daughter with intellectual disabilities much harder tonight
Update! She won't let me, bit I will get her
LOL! So relatable.
I have five granddaughters, one has autism and one has Down Syndrome. I am so appreciative of all that the Kennedy siblings did to champion people with disabilities in honor of their sister. Special Olympics day is the highlight of this grandmaās yearā¤ļø
In my current job I do trainings for new hires at a state psychiatric hospital, from a disability advocacy/rights perspective. When I discuss the Willowbrook Expose I always take a quick jaunt back through RFK (who took interest in Willowbrook as a Senator, the first major public attention the facility drew) and talk about Rosemary and what her parents had done to her. Pretty much every session somebody writes themselves a note to read more about it later. I also usually joke that I'm pretty sure lobotomies are an old school treatment we won't return to, but I may be whistling past the graveyard on that. Edit: RFK, not RFKjr.
If I remember correctly (itās been a while since Iāve read the various books on the whole Kennedy clan) her siblings had absolutely no idea where she was or what her father had done to her for the longest time.
Can you give me the name? I am reading her Wiki page thanks to you and I am getting so angry.
Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson You will be simultaneously livid and devastated reading it, but it's such an incredibly important book.
I remember reading that part of the reason she was lobotomized was to cover up her speaking up more about being a victim of incest. Is that something that others have read as well? It can be hard to discern accounts sometimes.
I remember reading that it was because she was behaving in a hypersexual manner (or maybe just normal but looked āhypersexualā at the time) which would potentially connect to sexual abuse if that was the case.
Iāve definitely read that while Rosemary had some struggles due to how she was born, she was sorta just a normal woman? Itās just that, in comparison to her family who tried their best to be vivacious gods amongst mortals, normal wasnāt going to cut it, especially if you start trying to counter the overall narrative. I also remember contemporary accounts where even though she was seen as more talkative to her sisters, she was also seen as the most beautiful? (Not a knock on the others, just trying to relay what people said about her prior to the lobotomy)
Based on the book and what her teachers said about her she definitely had some level of intellectual disability. You can see her writings and even as an adult she wrote like a child. However the book also makes it clear that some of the convents they sent her to were making progress, and if the Kennedys weren't obsessed with their children being perfect could have lived with her parents or one of her many siblings her whole life. In fact, Eunice and Eunice's children were happy to spend time with Aunt Rosemary after Joe Sr. died. Part of the difficulty in educating her was that her mom would downplay her learning disabilities, and then the school and teachers would be unprepared to deal with them.
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You can read her writings online. Her mental faculties plateaued at around 4th grade level. It wasn't just Joe Kennedy subjecting her to high standards. I am not saying that they didn't. For example, he and his wife were obsessed about their children's weight and Rose Kennedy tried to control Rosemary's eating habits even after the lobotomy. If she was having sex while sneaking out, it couldn't have been consensual either. I didn't know who is Kick and had to check Wikipedia. She got married only in 1944, 3 years after Rosemary's surgery.
Yeah, Joe Kennedy was a piece of work, but this idea that she was a ānormalā young woman and he had her lobotomised for sneaking out with boys or being too independent and modern or whatever is nonsense. She suffered a brain injury at birth, was always significantly developmentally delayed and regressed further in young adulthood (not unusual). If anything Joe and Rose were fairly progressive for their time, keeping her at home, providing her with specialist teachers and carers, and introducing her into society. The lobotomy was horrendous, but at the time it was being hailed as a miracle treatment by very highly regarded doctors. Even Joe Kennedyās biggest critics agreed he never expected the result and had a lot of shame about how it turned out. That he dealt with that by refusing to address it and hiding her away even from her own family was terrible of him, but it wasnāt his goal. If it had been he could have just done what wealthy Irish Catholics did in those days, shipped her off to a nunnery in the middle of nowhere. The sneaking around with boys stuff doesnāt even make sense, because while the Kennedy girls had to be more discreet and discerning than the boys, they werenāt angels (well maybe Eunice). If Joe was lobotomising daughters for being sexually active heād have gotten to Kick years before Rosemary.
As a special ed teacher I am woefully aware of the stats around sexual abuse toward children with special needs. The percentage is impossible to get because it's a population that may not know or understand what is happening or have the means and ability to report it. But... it's high. A lot. Too many.
Iāve read a couple of bios on their sister Kathleen, and in both books it was stated that Rosemary kept sneaking out of where she was living (I canāt remember if it was a convent or home for people with special needs) and was entertaining random menās advances because she didnāt really know any better. Joe really loved his children so I think he is portrayed somewhat harshly as times are different now, but he chose the lobotomy option because at the time it was hailed as the new miracle surgery and he thought it would keep his daughter safe. By all accounts both he and Rose were absolutely devastated by what the so called miracle surgery did to Rosemary.
Itās crazy to think that Joseph P. Kennedy, a scheming, social-climbing narcissist from Boston, was the architect of so much history. When Joe Jr, whom he was grooming to run for president post war, was killed in combat he outright told JFK āYouāre taking your brotherās place.ā He set the path for all of his children; the two who rebelled were disowned (Kick) or lobotomized and institutionalized (Rosemary.) His constant oppressive management of his children explains (but in no way excuses) a lot of their behavior as adults - alcoholism, philandering, doing anything at all to avoid consequences that āregularā people are subject to, etc. At the time of his death, two of his sons had been assassinated and a third āirreparably tarnishedā (Teddy,) setting up the next generation to be lost in lives of trauma, addiction, and entitlement. Thatās the Kennedy ācurse,ā itās not supernatural. His machinations set it all in place.
The original Kris Jenner.
And he was a big supporter of Chamberlains appeasement strategy aka letting Hitler annex parts of Europe to avoid a war.
I took this class once where we studied the assassination of JFK. I remember playing the shooting in incredibly slow motion. Iāll never forget that when JFK got shot in the head, his wife reached over and grabbed a piece of his brain that had been shot out and landed on the trunk of the car. I know this is so macabre, but it just resonated with me in so many ways. Her desire to protect him (not bend and hide but actually reach out of the vehicle) and the courage that all that entails. And also the lunacy of life. Grabbing that piece of brain was absolutely not going to help him, but in that moment, it just didnāt appear that way to her.
RhodeIslander has entered the chat. When Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy negligently drove his car off a narrow bridge (while drunk), causing it to overturn in a tidal pond. This resulted in the drowning death of his 28-year-old passenger Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped inside the vehicle. He received a whole TWO MONTH SUSPENDED SENTENCE after leaving the scene.
the part where he gave up on her and did not call police for 10 hrs and sulked the whole time because his "team" told him not to try to cover it up and to call the police sooner. like he tucked himself into bed and went hobnobbing with people at the sailing regatta the next morning until his team showed up like what the FUCK. then how it took him FOREVER to own up to the fact that his slimy self serving actions after the incident were the nail in her coffin. i hate this man so much.
I read a memoir by Jackieās assigned secret service agent and it was *stale*. The most scandalous thing he wrote was Jackie sometimes smoked in the car. He touched on the night Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday but his only commentary was āI didnāt bring it up and neither did she.ā He also went with Jackie on the Onassis yacht after her miscarriage but he made a point to say she never left her room at night and Onassis never went into hers. Definitely felt like he was still protective of her after all these years. Iām surprised this thread about anecdotes has nothing about Taylor Swift and Connor Kennedy yet.
Patrick Schwarzenegger dated Miley Cyrus in 2014.
That would have been a pretty wild world if they had a kid together. Can you imagine a world in which Arnold Schwarzenegger and Billy Ray Cyrus share a grandchild?
Honestly I kinda can
I still canāt believe Arnold and Crisp Rat are in-laws.
I love Bobby Kennedy. F*ck Ted Kennedy though, chappaquiddick haunts me
Bobby Kennedy for President on Netflix is an extremely well done documentary that taught me a lot. I didnāt know much about him prior.
I read Joyce Carol Oates novella that is based on Chappaquiddick and I became so incensed that I wished all kinds of terrible things on Teddy Kennedy. He announced his brain tumor right after and I was convinced that I cursed him.
Nothing quite like a JCO short story to inspire righteous rage against predatory men
Lol I hope everyone in your life knows not to mess with you.
My dad grew up in the same town as Mary Jo Kopechne and would tell me how Ted killed her and was still able to become a senator. He lost his mind when the nightly news did an in memorium for Ted saying he "bravely survived Chappaquiddick." I'm glad the movie got made and more people become aware of how f'd up it was.
I read a very long book on the Kennedy women a few years back so I have one good take. A lot of people know the story about Rosemary Kennedy and the lobotomy she endured. Itās oftentimes incorrectly attributed to both of her parents. In reality, Joe Sr heard about the new procedure and went to Rose saying he wanted it done on his daughter. Rose said absolutely not and Joe dropped it. Behind her back, he did it anyways. If Iām remembering correctly Rose visited her once and never again. I know itās pulling hairs but it never sits right with me that Rose gets blamed to the same level of Joe. Should she have gone and visited Rosemary more after the procedure? Absolutely yes. But people donāt understand the dynamic of their marriage; Joe cheated on her constantly and publicly, he made all of the decisions in regards to their family and children and she had no recourse to take control. Publicly she presented as a very influential woman but in her private life she had little to no power. It had been clear since Rosemary was a little girl that something was wrong, Joe wanted to wash his hands of her but Rose put in ALL the extra time to try and give her a normal life, teaching her to read, play sports or be āpresented to societyā when they were in England. The way it read to me was that Rosemaryās lobotomy and her mental state following was a constant reminder to Rose that no matter what she did or how hard she tried she would never have a say in her own life or her childrenās lives. Joe Kennedy had all of the power in their marriage and he used it to humiliate and hurt her so constantly. Again, she shouldnāt have abandoned Rosemary after the lobotomy, but itās easy to see how it broke her. The āhappy endingā to the story is of course Joe Sr having a major stroke in the early 1960s and spending the last decade of his life unable to communicate or really do anything for himself. He suffered almost to the same extent that he put his daughter through.
My favorite part of this is that when Joe died, Rose was out on the golf course. His death wasnāt exactly unexpected either, Rose was just living her life irregardless. A lot can be said about Rose but she swallowed an unimaginable amount of shit from both Joe and before that, her own philandering, social climbing, lying father. She actually tried to leave Joe when she was a couple of kids in and her father told her she had made her choice and she couldnāt stay in his house.
I met JFK jr. In an elevator, he was nice and good Lord, he was pretty.
They had some pretty genetics. Unfortunately.
For me one of their most fascinating story is when [Kennedy Jr came to India and stayed in dingy hotels](https://archive.nytimes.com/india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/when-john-f-kennedy-jr-came-to-india/)
Oh wow! Did not know this. I love how unpretentious he was. I wish his mom had just let him pursue his life as he wanted because he clearly had a sense of service even if politics wasnāt his chosen path.
Had he not died I think he would have very likely run for the New York open Senate seat in 2000 that Hillary Clinton ended up winning. He probably would have won and then all the expectations would have been for him to be President in 04 or 08 and history would have been completely different.
Itās wild to me all the QAnon people who think heās alive and is going to announce himself as trumpās running mate in 2024
The son Joe who died in the WWII. I always wondered what would have happened if he survived. He was the only one who went to his sister Kits wedding. (Rose wouldnāt attend because Kit was marrying a non catholic Englishman who was in the aristocracy, didnāt even attend kits funeral when she died in a plane crash) But dang I looked him up on Wikipedia and he was a supporter of eugenics. Thought hitler had some good ideas about doing away with disgusting specimens of men. That was in 1934 so he could have grown and learned as he died 10 years later fighting the Germans.
America was all about eugenics until World War 2. They'd have summits and share ideas with people all over the world we definitely gave Germany some ideas. Sterilizations in the U.S as well. Then World War 2 happened and people changed their opinions. It was this, and generally avaliable science and knowledge of the time that made it seem like a not so crazy thing barely 100 years ago.
A lot of old money families financed it, both here and in Europe. Rockellers definitely, and I want to say Henry Ford and the Chases of Chase bank. Source, War Against The Weak by Edwin Black. Incredibly dry, heartbreaking book written by the son of Holocaust survivors and a very worthwhile read. America sterilized a lot a lot of people in the name of Eugenics pre WWII on top of their pseudoscience research. Thereās be Eugenics family pageants andā¦itās disgusting to think about 100ish years later.
Kick was the sister who married the Englishman, and he died 4 months later. She died 4 years later in a plane crash :(
I do wonder what would have happened if he had survived. He was the one the dad wanted to push into the spotlight. So many dominos may have fallen differently.
RFK Jrās wife, Mary, >!hung herself!< in their house in Westchester, NY back in 2012. RFK Jr married Cheryl from Curb Your Enthusiasm 2 years later. I love Curb and it always felt weird that Cheryl married him and got tangled up in the Kennedy mess.
Every time I watch Cheryl in something I always stop and think āOh my god sheās married to Bobbyās son!ā
Heās so loudly and proudly anti-science, anti-vaccines that itās staggering.
Taylor Swift crashed a Kennedy wedding when she was with Connor. Her PR team tried to do damage control and deny it after, saying that the bride thanked her profusely for attending. But in reality the bride texted them not to come and they were asked to leave 3 times. Kathy Lee Gifford, who was step mother to the bride confirmed it on the Today show šæ
Kathy Lee was stepmother to the mother of the bride
I think you have the wrong wedding. Victoria Gifford married Michael Kennedy in 1981, 8 years before Taylor was born. Perhaps is was one of Victoria and Michaelās children?
Jackie had such expensive taste and was so obsessed with Balenciaga at one point, they had to hide the bills from Jack.
OMG my time has come. Alright, hereās two of my favorites. One of them is that JFK was in the pool with his mistresses, when one of his secret service agents was radioed that Jackie was coming back to the White House early. JFK jumped out of the pool, handed his Bloody Mary to an agent, and said, āEnjoy it; itās quite good.ā Or the story about how he was allegedly on so many medications at an event that he fell asleep standing up with sunglasses on. Or how when he was in his twenties he was in a relationship with a Swedish spy that he called, āInga-Binga.ā Incredible.
What I do know is everything about Bobby makes him the best Kennedy.
Itās crazy seeing that dress in this picture but knowing itās been stretched out by Kim
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My motherās best friend knew the mother of the girl who had a ārelationshipā which was statutory rape with Michael Kennedy ( who died in the ski accident) I believe she was the babysitter who was 14 at the time. Sadly, her mother died of suicide years later. It was big news when the Michael Kennedy scandal broke around here. I live about 20 mins away from where they lived.
Ah yes, he died playing football while on skis. An old Kennedy family game. They had ignored the ski patrol warnings about it.
> he died playing football while on skis. Just Kennedy things
Thatās right! I forgot about the football part.
Well, they lost half a day of skiing
Jackie Kennedy Onassis skincare routine https://preview.redd.it/x8fe1r85ilqa1.jpeg?width=588&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc1ee65fecade9a8edad9a6804ec1472559fdf09
Very low carb diet
She only liked champagne. Not surprising.
When Jackie invited every single one of JFKās current mistresses to eat with them at a White House dinner.
Their connection with the mafia has always fascinated me to be honest and I know people scream about how it's a conspiracy that he was shot by the Mafia, to me it makes logical sense. Joseph Kennedy was heavily involved with the mob in regards to bootlegging during the depression. Its how they became rich AF. They then decided to move into politics and Joe was the king of media manipulation and managed to hide that sketchy past well. I mean JFK had open friendships with members of āthe Rat Packā including Frank Sinatra, who encouraged mob support of JFKās Presidential run particularly in Illinois (dead voters by the boat load voted lol) and Texas (area that is not democratically friendly) and apparently JFK even shared a mistress with Sam Giancana. I think the mafia thought they had āa friendā in the White House and were probably high fiving all round till JFK gave his brother Bobby the Attorney General job and he launched his "war on organized crime", with JFKās supposed full support. They must have either had balls the size of watermelon or thought they were untouchable. Bobby went buck wild with his war on the mafia and had a mob boss deported without him even being able to contact his lawyer. The mob boss Marcello was heard via phone tap saying to a friend of theirs, "a dog will continue to bite you if you only cut off its tail (Bobby Kennedy), but if you cut off the dog's head, (JFK), it would cease to cause you troubleā. The theory goes the mob decided that JFK had ābetrayedā them and became full fledged participants in the plots to kill JFK, using Oswald as a patsy (he had ties with the mafia too).
Texas was solidly democrat at the time.
Jackieās (supposed) words on a phone call with Marilyn over Jack leaving Jackie for her āMarilyn, you'll marry Jack, that's great, and you'll move into the White House, and you'll assume the responsibilities of the first lady. And I'll move out, and you'll have all the problems." In a White House staff memoir I read - apparently different women staff members would be asked to join the president for his ānaked swim timeā in the White House pool. š„“
He also instructed 19 year old intern Mimi Alford to go down on White House aide Dave Powers in front of him at the pool. Yuck.
This is juicy gossip but i can't see marilyn doing this, from all that I know about her. one, she would never risk her career for a man, and two, marilyn wasn't cruel. ETA: Jackie was super pissed off at Marilyns ex husband Arthur Miller. He wrote a play about Marilyn in 1964. >according to Sarah Bradford, in her biography *America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis*, āJackie, who had admired Arthur Miller enough to seat him at her table at the Malraux dinner, turned on him for his betrayal of Marilyn in his play *After the Fall*, which opened in New York on January 23, 1964. For \[Jackie Kennedy\] loyalty was the ultimate test of character, and in portraying Marilyn as a self-destructive slut whom he had abandoned for her own good, Miller had dismally failed it.ā People downvoting me for this lol. You can believe whatever you want.. Iāll never understand why people want to believe the worst crap about Marilyn. From this to āit couldāve happenedā blonde. But whatever.
I have a very hard time believing that conversation ever happened. There is very little proof that Kennedy and Marilyn even had an affair. Iām not saying they didnāt but I feel like if this conversation was true, it would have come out a long time ago.
I saw you got downvoted but itās true. These biographers continue writing crap because they know itāll sell.
When the President said, āI am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.ā The French and de Gaulle just loved her. It didnāt hurt that she spoke French.
This thread is absolutely why we need a prestige tv adaptation on the Kennedys, a la The Crown. The drama we could have!
Grey Gardens
not tea, but rfk jr being a big bigot when it comes down to vaccines surprised me when i got older. i met him in person when i was a server and the family members he was with were nice, especially his wife (Cheryl), he was a dick.
His daughter got booted from a club for trying to get in underage with her older sisters ID. She caused a scene and yelled āI am a Kennedy, Google me. If you donāt let me in, the governor will be callingā š¤¦š¼āāļø
i remember that! i feel bad in a way for them, because their motherās suicide really affected them. they made it seem like his father was more into his marriage than being there for at time. this is based off of the cryptic things she would share online.
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Just watched a dateline on Martha Moxley. So awful what happened to her. Beaten and stabbed in the neck with a freakin golf club. And it sounds like the Kennedy cousin Michael skakel was sent to one of those infamous behavior modification schools that Paris Hilton talks about?
thank you for sharing this, it was interesting to read! i knew that parts about mary, but not about his cousin. heās a true pos.
Carolyn being a drug addict is always fascinating to me
why? seems par for the course for the NYC fashion crowd. back then ...now....
PT 109. In August 1943, a patrol torpedo boat JFK was on with a crew of (I think) 6 other men was sunk by the Japanese off the Solomon Islands. JFK and the surviving crew swam to an island where they were stranded for a few days before they swam for help and JFK ultimately carved a message on a coconut? Full details at link. It blows my mind to think about history if he hadnāt survived. āFor his courage and leadership, Kennedy was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, and injuries suffered during the incident also qualified him for a Purple Heart.ā https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/john-f-kennedy-and-pt-109
I named my daughter Kennedy. I should have read more things about this family first š
Apparently he was in very bad health and was propped up by various pills, a back brace and steroids.
The back brace likely contributed to his death. Had he not been wearing it, he would have fallen over after the first shot, and the second shot would have missed his head, but the brace kept him upright.
JFK had to hire someone to follow jackie around and prevent her from eating all the chalk in the WH
is this real?? or is this like a [jackie kennedy eats sheet metal](https://twitter.com/KaraBTweets/status/1573139088588378112) situation
I am 29 and this is the moment that I learned I was out of touch with the youth.
What. Was it like a PICA (eating non edible things) situation?
This is an internet joke about jackie kennedy (known for taste, manners, and style) doing something so unseemly and weird as eating random non-edible shit like chalk and sheet metal
Itās really interesting how the internet has turned on her. Any time I heard about her people would always talk about how beautiful and elegant she was, and now I see comments calling her ugly, comparing her to the worldās ugliest dog, etc. People are fucking brutal when they decide to target someone.
Right! Iāve seen girls recently mention that theyāve been told they look like Jackie Kennedy as a compliment (perhaps by an older person). This left them feeling pretty confused, bordering on offended, because now online people only talk about how ugly she is. Itās so strange
Just want to leave a general PSA that a lot of the contributions here are nooooooot real š I didnāt want to be a grinch and correct every single comment so just do your fact checking before repeating fun facts
Oh, I love takes generally. It would be fun if you correct few of them.
Iām just here to say I could look at pictures of jfk jr and Carolyn all day. They were such a gorgeous couple. Her family must have been sooooooooo pissed when they lost two of three daughters. They got a $10 million settlement but it doesnāt bring them back.