Kennedy Legacy

Who would have figured that in only one or two generations, this family of American royalty would father such self-indulgent, mis-guided. and frankly embarrassing offspring?
~
Irish Catholic American working  class Democratic families like my own were so proud and hopeful for the Kennedy's.

~

Jack Kennedy, a legitimate WWII hero, would have been labeled a conservative today, and his brother Bobby had extraordinary courage and conviction.  They protected the nation from a real Russian threat, and steered the nation away from the cancer of racism.

~

We are forever in their debt.

~

But, Ted got caught in the downstream backwash and can never be forgiven for what he did in Martha's Vineyard.  At the time, the whole nation was in denial that this unbelievable death occurred at Chappaquidick Island.   I remember just wishing that it didn't happen and hopeing that he was not to blame.   He was though....and, he should have been convicted of manslaughter.... The national sense of denial gave him a stay of that sentence.  Maybe he turned out to be a Senator of consensus as he grew older, but there are a lot of those around.  He was saved only because he was a Kennedy.

~

It seems that John Jr. would have been the exception had he survived, but after that.... not so much.  Caroline's run for the Senate was a disaster as she demonstrated an inarticulate lack of passion and purpose. 

~

Seems like a legacy of entitlement and self-absorption characterized by drugs, infidelity, and  a liberal epithet thrown out once in awhile to keep things stirred up has defined the rest of the clan.   Literally no one who is a thinking person could rationally be inspired by what has emerged from that gene pool.

~

Caroline Kennedy recently has stated that the family is "at it's lowest point ever" as they scrap over the remains of Ted's estate.  Every family has it's phucked up issues.  Maybe it's unfair to have held the Kennedy's to a higher standard.

~

But they gave us so much hope in the beginning.