Stupid Grandson Theory
Kennedy Scandals, Then & Now.
A few weeks ago, when
39-year-old Michael Skakel
finally appeared in court to
plead not guilty to the charge
of murdering a teenaged neighbor
named Martha Moxley in 1975, the
event was reported as the latest
scandalous episode in the
ongoing dramedy of the
self-styled "clan" that has long
stood in for royalty in these
lamentably egalitarian United
States.
Skakel is, of course, a Kennedy.
To be precise, he is a nephew of
Big Ethel Kennedy, the widow of
Robert F. Kennedy, the
much-mourned assassinated
presidential contender, Marilyn
Monroe sex toy, and one-time
right-hand man to Senator Joseph
McCarthy (who was, in turn,
godfather to Bobby's first kid).
Skakel's upcoming trial —
the next round is scheduled for
20 June and will decide if the
arteriosclerotic middle-aged
defendant is tried as a juvenile
or an adult — promises to
offer the nation a Jon Benet
Ramsey-like reprieve from both
summer reruns and brand-new
episodes of Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire? But its true value
is not that it will keep
disgraced cop Mark Fuhrman off
welfare for a few more weeks as
a TV analyst or that it provides
new material for another
installment of a family-based
soap opera that has already run
more seasons than Dr. Who. Apart
from the not-insignificant
possibility that a grisly,
senseless homicide may finally
be solved 25 years after it
occurred, the Skakel case
reminds us that, in a relatively
open and mobile society, class,
status, and wealth are not fixed
forever but must be renewed with
each generation or be
surrendered to arriviste
upstarts. Who would ever have
thought that at this late date
in human history (we may have
already run out of time by Hal
Lindsay's watch) the Kennedys
would have started contributing
to society?
Some 50 years ago, the great
economist Joseph Schumpeter
coined the now-hip term "creative
destruction" to describe what he
saw as the constant economic and
cultural adaptations
("mutations," he called them)
characteristic of market-based
societies. He noted further
that, under capitalism and
compared with feudal societies,
dynasties are particularly
difficult to maintain over any
length of time, that wealth and
position are built up and
dissipated with disquieting
regularity. There's a great deal
of truth, wrote Schumpeter, in
the saying that families
typically go "three generations
from overalls to overalls."
Economists in the age of Edgar
Bronfman and George W. have
streamlined this old adage into
the more euphonious "stupid
grandson theory."
While no one expects to see
members of the Kennedy clan
working the fry vat at
McDonald's any time soon —
though the high-visibility
failure of Eunice Kennedy's
daughter Maria Shriver to snag a
post-throwing- in-the-towel
interview with presidential
sweepstakes loser John "Nasty"
McCain may be a prelude to just
such a career move — the
Skakel case underscores
Schumpeter's thesis, at least
when it comes to scandal and
tragedy. Who will argue that the
latter-day Kennedys fail to
measure up to the preceding
generation regarding their two
most enduring familial traits,
utter human debasement and
gloriously overwrought
self-fashioning?
When the generation of John,
Robert, and Ted (and yes, even
brother-in-law Peter "I want to
send a Candygram" Lawford)
indulged in the sort of
hypocritical, loathsome behavior
they claimed as a birthright
(Joe Sr. famously boffed film
great Gloria Swanson while on a
family cruise to Europe), they
did it with such class and style
that even a perfect gentleman
such as Francis Albert Sinatra
had to snap his fingers, nod his
head, and mumble, "You're all
right, pally."
When John was banging tarts in
the White House, for instance,
he didn't merely boff (and then
reportedly stalk) his kid's baby
sitter, as his late nephew
Michael would do decades later
(nor would JFK stoop to the Good
Friday behavior of William
Kennedy Smith, who was acquitted
of rape in 1991). No, President
John got it on with a Mafia
moll, Judith Exner, and the
premier sexpot of his era,
Marilyn Monroe. When the time
came for Teddy to finally split
with his long-suffering and
hard-drinking missus, Joan —
amid rumors of long-term
affairs and extramarital sex in
Washington, DC, restaurants — he
did the stand-up thing and got a
divorce, not an annulment, as
Robert's son, Joe II, tried to
do (despite the presence of
several children testifying to
the multiple consummation of a
12-year-old marriage).
Even when it came to causing the
deaths of others (usually
women), the elder Kennedys
comported themselves with a
certain bigger-than-life panache
totally lacking in their younger
offspring. Marilyn Monroe became
Robert Kennedy's magnificent
obsession once brother John was
finally done with her and RFK
himself was finally done with
Tailgunner Joe. Bobby has been
entertainingly, if improbably,
charged with her death by
overdose, allegedly rigging the
coroner's report and engaging in
other sorts of cover-up
activity. In 1969, Ted Kennedy
was far more probably involved
in a fatal drunk-driving
accident in Chappaquiddick, gave
conflicting accounts of his
role, and somehow managed a
boozy marathon swim from a wreck
that took the life of a young
female aide, not his wife. His
coldly calculated apology
(televised only to his
Massachusetts constituents) at
the very least suggested public
relations skills that
Machiavelli himself (if not
Sinatra, who was reportedly
disgusted by such ploys) would
have had to admire.
There is, moreover, no
comparison between older and
younger generations when the
focus shifts from the tragic
deaths the Kennedy clan has
caused to the ones it has
suffered. It is perhaps a slight
overstatement to suggest that
American innocence died the day
that Lyndon Johnson's secret
operatives made it look as if
John F. Kennedy was shot to
death in Dallas (thanks to
Robert Redford's 1994 movie Quiz
Show, we know that America's
psychic cherry had, in fact,
been popped some years earlier
by time-traveling actor John
Turturro and game-show warlord
Jack Barry). But it is
nonetheless true that the
president's apparent
assassination at least inspired
two awful Bob Dylan songs ("He
Was a Friend of Mine" and "They
Killed Him").
Viewed from the all-important
perspective of pop music, RFK's
assassination (which occurred in
uncomfortable proximity to
former football player,
needlepoint expert, Bounty
pitchman, and O. J. Simpson
confessor Rosie Grier) is
similarly groundbreaking: Just
listen to the last verse of
Dion's "Abraham, Martin, and
John" to hear the national pain
caused by Bobby's death (though
yes, that's Hubert Humphrey III
playing the tambourine in the
background).
It seems unlikely that the two
most recent "tragic" deaths of
Kennedys will result in such
affecting pop tunes, though one
expects a Weird Al Yankovic
parody of "Abraham, Martin, and
John" any day now. Michael
Kennedy, whose baby sitter
problems not only destroyed his
marriage but his brother Joe's
gubernatorial aspirations, died
in a 1997 skiing accident. (In a
gruesomely comic twist on a
family activity made famous by
the older Kennedy generation,
Michael struck a tree while
playing touch football on the
slopes). Then, of course, there
was John Kennedy Jr.'s plane
crash last summer, which killed
not only John-John but his wife
and sister-in-law. Such deaths,
however sad, served not to
extend the Kennedy clan's claim
on the American psyche but to
force the nation into facing the
brute fact that a family once so
loved and revered was good for
little more than jokes
referencing John Denver.
All, of course, is not lost. If
Schumpeter is right about the
quickness with which family
wealth and status is pissed away,
he is even more right about the
way in which new broods rise to
the top: not simply in money, but
also in terms of scandal. Though
the Kennedys may no longer run
the country, this is still
America, a country where every
parent can dream, however
foolishly, that their children
will be even more successful
embarassments than they were.
Nick Gillespie is editor-in-chief of reason. This story originally appeared in Suck, and can be viewed in that format here.
