Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, it's Behind the Bastards, the only podcast
Speaker 2: that just made you reconsider listening to this podcast, because
Speaker 2: that's not an appropriate sound to make for a bunch
Speaker 2: of people driving to work gardening with their kids in
Speaker 2: the yard. You know, I apologize for that. We're not
Speaker 2: going to go back. You can't edit audio, you know,
Speaker 2: it's impossible. You know, if if that dream were real,
Speaker 2: if you could, by god, we would change this podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, if only there's there's so many things
Speaker 3: would be different if we could edit audio and video.
Speaker 1: What's exciting, Robert is that we may or may not
Speaker 1: release video at some point at an undisclosed time, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe not allegedly, who knows.
Speaker 2: So we can edit that.
Speaker 1: Finally, the listeners will get to see Cody and I
Speaker 1: make faces. Maybe that were.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe include those were really just just some honest reactions.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed Cody's Sayce, that's what I was saying, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: or maybe we'll all get to hm. I don't want
Speaker 2: to make any of those jokes. Let's move on, Cody,
Speaker 2: how are we feeling about Bobby Kennedy? You know, as
Speaker 2: we as we roll in depart two right now, he's
Speaker 2: not a bad guy, you know.
Speaker 3: My feeling is that he never had a chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, that is the Bastardrey here is primarily not
Speaker 2: because again he is admitted to sexually basically admitted to
Speaker 2: sexually assaulting people. So I'm not trying to whitewash rfkguni'or either,
Speaker 2: but like, the primary bastard of the story is the
Speaker 2: concept of the Kennesty dynasty and what it does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not good, no good, never had a chance, really bad.
Speaker 2: Really bad. Just the it's like if you if it's
Speaker 2: like scientists in the lab, we're trying to cook up
Speaker 2: the worst way to raise people. I just watched the
Speaker 2: movie They Cloned Tyrone, which is I don't want to
Speaker 2: like spoil it for you, but excellent excellent, really really
Speaker 2: really really good movie, and the Kennedys kind of feel
Speaker 2: like the reverse of that premise. If instead of, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to say, this is going to bed,
Speaker 2: but it's like somebody, it's like a bunch of creepy
Speaker 2: scientists we're trying to like design a ruling dynasty in
Speaker 2: a lab and just completely fucked up at it, you know,
Speaker 2: like the experiment did not work.
Speaker 3: Or like a more ambitious like dog tooth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Let's just like raise our kids in the most like
Speaker 3: fucked up way possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think about like those those like those
Speaker 2: fucking nerds who keep winding up in the media. Every
Speaker 2: like three months, the news will decide, let's have a
Speaker 2: little circus around these, like we have to have as
Speaker 2: many kids as possible because we're exceptionally smart people, and yeah,
Speaker 2: we've got to. We have a responsibility. And I hit
Speaker 2: my kids, but for science reasons, you know.
Speaker 3: And then you ask them for the science reasons and
Speaker 3: they're like, I saw a tiger do it once.
Speaker 2: There kids, Man, what else do you when they get sick?
Speaker 2: Do you eat your young because I have seen a
Speaker 2: cat do that. I have seen it eat its own
Speaker 2: kittens because the kitten was ill. Are you doing that?
Speaker 2: Are you going to eat your sick kids so that
Speaker 2: predators don't smell them? You know, No, you're not doing
Speaker 2: that because we don't take parenting advice from tigers.
Speaker 3: Data points from tigers. H We're never gonna this is
Speaker 3: I mean, I last episode, I kept wanting to like
Speaker 3: bring them up because this is just that, or we
Speaker 3: got to as many as possible. Our army is being
Speaker 3: created by us, and there our children.
Speaker 2: All I hope, and I again, this is the not
Speaker 2: to whitewash RFK Junior. But I actually walked away, very
Speaker 2: rare for me. But I walked away more sympathetic towards
Speaker 2: him than I was, because it's just not again not
Speaker 2: that he he doesn't have agency and the bad things
Speaker 2: he's done. But my god, how could this story have ended?
Speaker 3: Well? Well, yeah, I mean it's the you know, it's
Speaker 3: how you create empathy for like villains in stories like well,
Speaker 3: if you know their backstory, then you stand how they
Speaker 3: got that way. It doesn't excuse their actions at that point,
Speaker 3: but yeah, you're like, oh man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it honestly makes them scarier. And you know, I
Speaker 2: talk about like the sympathetic young Hitler a lot, but
Speaker 2: like another young Hitler story is when he was a
Speaker 2: young man living independently as like a poor artist in Vienna.
Speaker 2: He was kept afloat by his dad's old government pension,
Speaker 2: which he gave up which rendered him completely destinut because
Speaker 2: his sister had a kid and she needed the money.
Speaker 2: More you can you can find in the Hitler story
Speaker 2: a truly selfless act because he wasn't always destined to
Speaker 2: be fucking Hitler, and you kind of have to accept
Speaker 2: that with most of them.
Speaker 3: No one's destined to be.
Speaker 2: There's some five year olds out there torturing cats and stuff.
Speaker 2: Maybe those people, right, Maybe, maybe it happens occasionally, but
Speaker 2: that's not the story we're talking about today for sure. No,
Speaker 2: he loves animals, Yeah, he loves them. He did maybe
Speaker 2: kill that endangered turtle, but you know, someone just stopped him.
Speaker 2: That was the adults. And at this point Sergeant Schreiver
Speaker 2: shouldn't have let him steal it. Endangered turtle.
Speaker 3: Probably shouldn't let him do that. Maybe that was maybe
Speaker 3: that was the start, maybe the start of it all.
Speaker 2: It's just like, well, you know, your uncle Jess died.
Speaker 2: Sure abduct come.
Speaker 3: On, here you go.
Speaker 2: He's got plenty of them. Yeah, speaking of things Africa,
Speaker 2: it's got a lot of probably podcasts cold opens, and
Speaker 2: this podcast cold Open is done.
Speaker 1: It's time to warm it up.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a great cody.
Speaker 3: Band. If you send me that audio file, I will
Speaker 3: turn that into a hit. Yeah, he's already a hit.
Speaker 2: You can turn that into a hit. Along with that
Speaker 2: clip we found of Rush Limbaugh saying, bust female vaginal walls. Cody,
Speaker 2: that's a great one. It's in the Doctor Laura episodes.
Speaker 2: You gonna love it, really good stuff, really good.
Speaker 3: Actually you love it.
Speaker 2: It's really horrible thing to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On the day his dad died, Bobby Junior was at
Speaker 2: his boarding school, Georgetown Prep, which was run by Jesuits
Speaker 2: and had a reputation for being one of those places
Speaker 2: you sent rich boys to turn them into responsible members
Speaker 2: of the power elite. Bobby was sleeping in his dorm
Speaker 2: room when his dad was assassinated and was woken by
Speaker 2: one of the one of the fathers or whatever. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's a father, if it's like more
Speaker 2: of a monk type deal. But one of the Jesuits
Speaker 2: guys comes down and is like, hey, a chartered car
Speaker 2: has come for you in the night. I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: explain why, but you probably you're a Kennedy at this
Speaker 2: point you probably can have say a bad thing happened.
Speaker 3: The pattern is establishing itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he is taken to the Kennedy compound at
Speaker 2: Hickory Hill. The whole experience is obviously his dad got
Speaker 2: shot to death. Right, that's traumatic. You know, there's no
Speaker 2: way for that not to be traumatic. Bobby and his
Speaker 2: siblings are ushered in to see their father before, like
Speaker 2: while he's still technically alive. But like, and that's like
Speaker 2: a hitty. I don't know, I don't know. I can't
Speaker 2: say that's the wrong thing to do, yeah, or a right.
Speaker 3: Thing, but like what condition, Like how how responsive is he?
Speaker 3: Is That going to be more traumatic?
Speaker 2: But still seeing him at some point where he's technically
Speaker 2: alived is that, I don't know, everyone's different. What definitely
Speaker 2: does not help is that this whole period, every moment
Speaker 2: of this where they're outside the compound and outside of
Speaker 2: that hospital room, they're surrounded by press right to an
Speaker 2: extent that like even today is probably pretty rare, right, Like,
Speaker 2: the sheer degree of attention on them is has to
Speaker 2: make this even harder to handle, right than just having
Speaker 2: your dad shot to death in public? They are subjected
Speaker 2: to a massive public show of mourning at the funeral
Speaker 2: of their dad. There's like a hobo march for RFK
Speaker 2: because he was such like a so beloved by so
Speaker 2: many like poor and struggling people, right like he really is.
Speaker 2: And again you can. We can argue, like how fair
Speaker 2: is it? There's some bad stuff he did, but like
Speaker 2: that that love is real, you know, and that contributes
Speaker 2: to how RFK Junior and his siblings are processing all
Speaker 2: of this. Ethel Kennedy, Bobby's moms kind of collapses after
Speaker 2: her husband gets murdered. And I have a lot of
Speaker 2: criticisms of Ethyl, but like, again, you got eleven kids
Speaker 2: and your husband gets shot to death. Sure, I mean,
Speaker 2: like what do you who?
Speaker 3: Like, what are you gonna do? Like it's so easy
Speaker 3: to judge how people react to these sort of things, but.
Speaker 2: What's the good reaction? It's not what she did, But
Speaker 2: I can't say that like I would have done better
Speaker 2: as Ethyl, you know. The big change, the biggest difference
Speaker 2: between how the Kennedy family as a unit reacts to
Speaker 2: JFK getting shot. I was gonna say JFK getting blown away?
Speaker 2: But how many How any more Billy Joel references are
Speaker 2: necessary in this episode? Probably one more, but maybe not
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 3: Only one more.
Speaker 2: But there's a big difference between how the family reacts
Speaker 2: to JFK getting killed and to RFK getting killed. Because
Speaker 2: when JFK gets killed, RFK is there and he is
Speaker 2: there to re mold the family around him and make
Speaker 2: them feel like we still have a pretty bright future.
Speaker 2: We're going to move forward. That's not there after he dies,
Speaker 2: right Teddy Kennedy is kind of the family patriarch at
Speaker 2: this point, and he tries this is not Teddy will
Speaker 2: become a more capable and responsible person. He is not
Speaker 2: at this point. So we will talk about and like,
Speaker 2: you know, to a little bit of like like how
Speaker 2: could he be? Like what what do you do here? Right?
Speaker 2: Like you have had to the two patriarchs of the
Speaker 2: family and like a two or three like not to
Speaker 2: like but like within very shorter it's like a four
Speaker 2: year period.
Speaker 3: It's a very short period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, assassinated right Like.
Speaker 3: And at that point you're like, is are we all
Speaker 3: going to get assassinated? Like what's like?
Speaker 2: What is if I'm Teddy? What I'm was like? Should
Speaker 2: we keep doing this?
Speaker 3: Should like rich family plan?
Speaker 2: What is this? Seems like this might have been a
Speaker 2: really bad plan?
Speaker 3: What are you doing? Yeah?
Speaker 2: One of the Kennedy cousins, who's you know in the
Speaker 2: compound of the family later recalled to Horowitson Callier for
Speaker 2: there it was so different from Jack's death, there had
Speaker 2: been a coming together. Uncle Bobby had seen to that
Speaker 2: in a strange way. We'd felt even more like Kennedy's
Speaker 2: than ever, proud of what Jack had been, determined that
Speaker 2: our time would come again. But once Uncle Bobby died,
Speaker 2: there was just this sense of splitting apart. RFK Junior
Speaker 2: was only an occasional presence at the Kennedy compound in
Speaker 2: Hickory Hill at that point. Ethel kind one of the
Speaker 2: ways she reacts to RFK getting killed is she is
Speaker 2: kind of permanently angry at her son's like forever and
Speaker 2: in a way that's really hard to forgive, and that
Speaker 2: must have been devastating to them. The youngest children and
Speaker 2: girls were, according to Colerin Horowitz, immune to her temper.
Speaker 2: She's not shitty to her girls, she's not shitty to
Speaker 2: the little kids, but she is really bad to Joe,
Speaker 2: Bobby Junior, and David. Right quote, she told Joe he
Speaker 2: must be the man of the house now and allowed
Speaker 2: him to sit in his dead father's chair at the
Speaker 2: dinner table. But when he hit his younger sister Carrie
Speaker 2: for making noise, she gave him the infantile punishment of
Speaker 2: having to walk up and down the stairs one hundred
Speaker 2: times times. Later, Joe went into the yard and in
Speaker 2: a moment of tenderness, took the hands of his younger
Speaker 2: brothers and sisters and began to sing the Battle Hymn
Speaker 2: of the Republic, their father's favorite song. Meanwhile, Ethel kept
Speaker 2: saying to Bobby Junior and David get out of here,
Speaker 2: as if the house itself, with all the pictures of
Speaker 2: family triumphs, where a sanctuary. They defiled with their presence,
Speaker 2: and you've got here is these kids are reacting to
Speaker 2: their uncle and dad getting shot. These boys by acting out. Joe,
Speaker 2: who's the oldest, is like being kind of a bully.
Speaker 2: He hits his younger siblings a lot. You know, he
Speaker 2: like tackles let me fire. But like that's not abnormal,
Speaker 2: it's not great. It's certain something you got. You want
Speaker 2: to deal with that behavior, you don't want to ignore it.
Speaker 2: But like you're not a bad person as a twelve
Speaker 2: year old boy something like that, because like that is
Speaker 2: how you react.
Speaker 3: That's an indicator that he's dealing with something and going
Speaker 3: through it. Not that like he needs to be like
Speaker 3: the target of your ire and your Yeah, like everything
Speaker 3: that your feeling shouldn't be targeted at the at these kids.
Speaker 2: And Ethel's only response is your disgrace the family, Like,
Speaker 2: how fucking dare you get the hell out of here?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: That is her go to parenting move for the boys.
Speaker 2: Bobby Junior also acts out constantly and his particular style
Speaker 2: he's less violent, but he seems to think the best
Speaker 2: way for him to get attention. And nobody's really got
Speaker 2: time to give attention to Bobby Junior, right, he has
Speaker 2: like servants and stuff. He gets like technically attention, but
Speaker 2: not from the people he needs it from, right, And
Speaker 2: he tries to get it by playing pranks.
Speaker 3: And he this is say yeah, it sounds like he
Speaker 3: would do yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: He's a pranker, and he does one of these. He
Speaker 2: plays a prank at his dad's memorial. So there's a
Speaker 2: neighbor and friend of the family, Philip Kirby, who's like
Speaker 2: this rich kid who lives nearby. He's part of the
Speaker 2: memorial service for RFK and he recalls like before it starts,
Speaker 2: the priest gives him a bell to ring during the liturgy,
Speaker 2: and the priest says like, I'll touch you in the
Speaker 2: shoulder when it's time for you to ring it right
Speaker 2: so you don't time it wrong. And Bobby starts tapping
Speaker 2: him randomly during the services a bit, so he rings
Speaker 2: the bell when there's not supposed to be any kind
Speaker 2: of music or noise. And like Kirby, this is like
Speaker 2: the biggest funeral and national history at least since JFK.
Speaker 2: He is like weeping in tears because he has fucked
Speaker 2: this up. And he looks back and he sees RFK
Speaker 2: Junior holding in laughter because it's a very little kid
Speaker 2: thing to do. It is also on the mean side.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, I mean if you're if you're a kid,
Speaker 3: you're not going to really be able to Christ.
Speaker 2: You're not a moral actor in the same way.
Speaker 3: Right right? But man, that yuy sorry Phillips, Oh man.
Speaker 2: The pranks continued. A week after his dad's funeral, David Kennedy,
Speaker 2: the younger of the Kennedy of this generation Kennedy brothers,
Speaker 2: has a birthday. This is obviously a fragile time for everybody,
Speaker 2: the first birthday for one of Rfk's sons. After his death,
Speaker 2: Bobby Junior decides the right thing to do is to
Speaker 2: poison everybody, and I'm gonna I'm gonna read a quote
Speaker 2: from Bihacker for Jerry opp and iimer here Bobby had
Speaker 2: spiked everyone's milk with a laxative. Infuriated, his mother demanded,
Speaker 2: just leave home, get out of my life.
Speaker 1: Choice, and I mean, aren't going well.
Speaker 2: It's very bad behavior to poison your family. You know,
Speaker 2: there's certainly a punishment. That's now we can always tell
Speaker 2: what kind of parents do get away with poisoning the family.
Speaker 2: But get out of my life. What a devastating thing
Speaker 2: to say to your child, after your after his data set.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, at that point, it's like, I mean, just
Speaker 3: let me get into politics and wait a few years
Speaker 3: and I will, like.
Speaker 2: Fucking he is. These boys are all abandonment issues. The
Speaker 2: guy like that is that is the Kennedy boys of
Speaker 2: this generation. Uh. Soon after, possibly to make up for
Speaker 2: the ruined party, ethel flies the kids with Ted Kennedy
Speaker 2: because again he's he's around a lot, he's kind of
Speaker 2: in the sometimes trying to be a father. He's also
Speaker 2: very young. He's a party boy. He is not mature
Speaker 2: enough to be responsible, and like, really, it's kind of
Speaker 2: unreasonable to expect a man of that is to suddenly
Speaker 2: take on the duties of being the head of this
Speaker 2: family of kids who aren't yours, who belong to your
Speaker 2: murdered brother. That's a lot to ask of Ted. But
Speaker 2: he doesn't do a great job at it, right, He
Speaker 2: does seem to be trying very hard. Ethel takes them
Speaker 2: all on this chartered boat ride. Right, And during this
Speaker 2: chartered boat trip, Ethel's moods swung wildly and RFK Junior is,
Speaker 2: as usual, pushing boundaries and fucking around with his siblings.
Speaker 2: Ethel grew furious at him and David and dragged them
Speaker 2: both below decks and beats them with a hair brush.
Speaker 2: This is the first time something like this has happened.
Speaker 2: I don't think she had been physically violent with them before.
Speaker 2: It is a really like searing moment for OURFK Junior
Speaker 2: and for David. Yeah, they remember it course. Yeah. And again,
Speaker 2: you know, on Ethyl's side of things, it's not good
Speaker 2: to do this. I might say that, like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: can't expect any kind of perfectly rational behavior from a
Speaker 2: woman in the situation, but this has.
Speaker 3: A horrible and beyond the pills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the beating. I think we've crossed the line
Speaker 2: from just saying.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't it was the first time? Was it
Speaker 3: the last time? Like? Did they become a pattern after that?
Speaker 3: I don't think it's just like, yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't get the impression that she is a present
Speaker 2: enough parent for there who have been much many patterns
Speaker 2: at all, other than she repeatedly tells them to leave,
Speaker 2: get out of here. You're not welcome at home. That
Speaker 2: is the big pattern, is her saying, get out of here.
Speaker 2: You are no longer welcome at the family compound. You're
Speaker 2: no longer welome. Like Bobby's gonna spend time like hiding out,
Speaker 2: like camping and hiding and like outbuildings and stuff because
Speaker 2: he's not supposed to be there. He spends a lot
Speaker 2: of his childhood just like living with other families who
Speaker 2: are kind of adjacent to the Kennedys. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: messed up, right.
Speaker 3: Not gonna be good.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Ethel only expresses more and more frustration with
Speaker 2: her kids. After this, She exiles Bobby Junior back to
Speaker 2: a private school, this time a new one, a place
Speaker 2: called Millbrook. And Millbrook is you're routched to rest of development,
Speaker 2: right obviously you did? You know how? Like fucking Buster
Speaker 2: is he went to that school Milford. Milford is a
Speaker 2: parody of Millbrook, right, it could because this is the
Speaker 2: place where like, not just the sons of the rich
Speaker 2: and famous are sent, but it's the sons that are
Speaker 2: having problems, right, You send them there to get disciplined
Speaker 2: and to get like straightened out.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: One teacher described it as quote a place where they're
Speaker 2: rich and famous would tuck their children away.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: If you're wondering what that was a reference to, it's
Speaker 2: a reference to Millbrook. RFK Junior is just one of
Speaker 2: what would become a long line of rich boys with
Speaker 2: behavioral problems whose parents didn't want to deal with them
Speaker 2: full time. And Millbrook is also located very near the
Speaker 2: mansion where Timothy Leary kept all of his acid and
Speaker 2: his friends on acid, and drugs are not hard to
Speaker 2: come by for Millbrook kids. And it's this unique situation
Speaker 2: of people don't really know about drugs. There's like a
Speaker 2: vague understanding like maybe of marijuana, but even then that's
Speaker 2: not very visible, and like LSD is so fucking new,
Speaker 2: and so adults don't really know. They just noticed like, wow,
Speaker 2: these kids are behaving really weird, and they don't really
Speaker 2: notice that, Like, yeah, Bobby Kennedy is just always fucking
Speaker 2: on drugs. Now, Like from this point forward, he is
Speaker 2: always on drugs, you know. And it's funny because it
Speaker 2: seems like at this point mostly it's pot Oppenheimer, because
Speaker 2: he's going to wind up addicted to heroin. Oppenheimer treats
Speaker 2: pot like heroin. And his biography of Bobby where he's
Speaker 2: like and he was getting every day, And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's fifteen, you know, Like I know a lot like
Speaker 2: half of the people I know. I'm not saying you
Speaker 2: should You shouldn't do drugs until you're older. Kids, Wait
Speaker 2: a little, my opinion.
Speaker 3: You've brain developed and stuff and all that.
Speaker 2: How to say, ninety plus percent of people who smoke
Speaker 2: pot when they're sixteen, fifteen, seventeen, Like it's fine, you know, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: you'll be okay, people generally are. Bobby is not, though
Speaker 2: I will say that, But I don't know that I'm
Speaker 2: gonna blame the drugs. I think the drugs are more
Speaker 2: a symptom of this kid's disastrous early life. Yeah, being
Speaker 2: a Kennedy and having just lost his dad. None of
Speaker 2: the adults at Millbrook seem to have known how to
Speaker 2: handle him, Like, how do we discipline this kid. We're
Speaker 2: kind of now marketing a lot on the fact that
Speaker 2: a Kennedy goes here. It's kind of a selling point
Speaker 2: to other rich families. So like there's no He kind
Speaker 2: of comes and goes as he pleases, and he spends
Speaker 2: most of his free time getting fucked up or hunting
Speaker 2: small animals with his hawk. Morgan le Fay, his primary
Speaker 2: hobby is taking acid and going hawking, like hunting with
Speaker 2: his hawk.
Speaker 3: So he got to bring his hawk.
Speaker 2: He does get to bring his hawk. His hawk is
Speaker 2: with him all the time. It is always in the room.
Speaker 2: People who live with him is like roommates at these
Speaker 2: boarding schools say that there are just birds shitting everywhere
Speaker 2: all the time. Like if you are living with Bobby Kennedy,
Speaker 2: there's bird shit everywhere constantly because he is never far
Speaker 2: from his fucking bird. It's a weird guy. He loves
Speaker 2: his a weird guy. During this period of time, there
Speaker 2: is one adult who is a consistent presence in RFK
Speaker 2: Junior's life, and it's a guy named Limb Billings. And uh,
Speaker 2: we will talk about old Limb, but first Cody, speaking
Speaker 2: of Billings. Yeah, get your billings from the companies that
Speaker 2: support our podcast by sending them your money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm getting my money out right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Limb those billings on over to them, you know,
Speaker 2: lim them out. Limit to win it. Anyway, We're done.
Speaker 2: Who's at.
Speaker 3: Back?
Speaker 2: So? Limb Billings was a former New York ad executive
Speaker 2: who had been very deep friends. He's like JFK's oldest
Speaker 2: friend and like so close that Joe Kennedy, who is
Speaker 2: not like the most emotional man in the world, considers
Speaker 2: Limb basically part of the family. Right, he has a
Speaker 2: house or he has a room at the Kennedy compound. Right,
Speaker 2: He's that close with the family. And he is also gay.
Speaker 2: He is in love with JFK. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of rumors that swirl around whether or not they had
Speaker 2: any kind of physical relationship. I don't actually think there's
Speaker 2: any evidence of it. It seems like the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that was not uncommon with a lot of particularly
Speaker 2: very prominent gay in back then. We're like, I am
Speaker 2: in love with this person, and my love take the
Speaker 2: form since there's no kind of relationship that's possible, maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, obviously they're probably not actually interested in reciprocating
Speaker 2: it that way, but I become basically like their closest confidant.
Speaker 2: I'm always watching out for them. I'm the guy who is.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, constant companion, constant buddy, who Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's a movie I like to talk about a lot,
Speaker 2: if Dot Dot Dot, which is the first Malcolm McDowell movie,
Speaker 2: and the it's.
Speaker 3: A movie that's not the Imaginary Friends movie from the
Speaker 3: twisted mind of John Krasinski. New that's called If as well.
Speaker 2: That's also called IF much worse movie. This If is
Speaker 2: an absolutely like incredible piece of cinema that everyone should watch.
Speaker 2: It is about a British boarding school. It's one of
Speaker 2: my favorite films. And McDowell has said later that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we didn't of the director. I didn't know at the
Speaker 2: time that he was gay, but now I can see
Speaker 2: that he was. And his way of like kind of
Speaker 2: making love to me was the way that he shot
Speaker 2: me right when he was filming me. You know, I
Speaker 2: think about that one. I think of Limb.
Speaker 3: Billings right, Yeah, yeah, well yeah, I just have that
Speaker 3: it's like an intense like attraction admiration, but yeah, like
Speaker 3: you can't express it in the way you want to,
Speaker 3: so you find, yeah, like socially acceptable ways to.
Speaker 2: Do exactly exactly, and that's kind of Lim. And Lim
Speaker 2: is obviously absolutely shattered by the jfk assassination. Right like
Speaker 2: this destroys him as a person. He starts drinking heavily.
Speaker 2: He's never a really functional adult right after this point. Now,
Speaker 2: depending on who you read, opinions on limb very Jerry Oppenheimer,
Speaker 2: who published the twenty fifteen biography of RFK Junior, is
Speaker 2: incredibly homophobic, and he I kept waiting for there to
Speaker 2: be like some evidence that Lim had abused RFK Junior
Speaker 2: had done something really bad, but like he really just
Speaker 2: seems to want us to be shocked by the fact
Speaker 2: that Lim was gay and see that as inherently sinister.
Speaker 2: He also alleges that Lim enabled Bobby's drug use. From
Speaker 2: what I have read in other sources, I kind of
Speaker 2: think it was the opposite. Lim is never fully functional
Speaker 2: after JFK dies. He becomes an alcoholic and when RFK
Speaker 2: Junior starts doing drugs, Lim, as the adult in this situation,
Speaker 2: doesn't stop him, and he should have, does not attempt
Speaker 2: to limit his access to drugs at all, but he
Speaker 2: starts doing them, and I don't think he's pushing RFK Junior.
Speaker 2: I think he is just like, yeah, sure, why the
Speaker 2: fuck not? Right right now? The fact that Lim is
Speaker 2: gay and in love with Jack with JFK shouldn't be
Speaker 2: totally dismissed though, not because he abused Bobby, but because
Speaker 2: I think he may have put added pressure on him
Speaker 2: to follow his uncle Jack. There's an allegation that I
Speaker 2: think probably does have legs that he is kind of
Speaker 2: trying to groom Bobby into being like JFK and kind
Speaker 2: of for a sweet reason of he like he wants
Speaker 2: his dead best friend back, you know, like it.
Speaker 3: It's a very right right, it's got to exist again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's a very sad story, but not one
Speaker 2: that I think. I don't see Lim as like a
Speaker 2: villain now. Obviously he's not the best influence to be
Speaker 2: the one adult in Bobby's life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this seems unhealthy.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but it's unhealthy because everyone is just caught
Speaker 2: in this fucking poison matrix that is the Kennedy family legacy.
Speaker 2: Right in the book after Camelot, Bobby told author Jay
Speaker 2: Randy Tara Borelli quote In many ways, Lim was a
Speaker 2: father to me, and he was the best friend I
Speaker 2: will ever have. I have also read interviews with RFK
Speaker 2: Junior's brothers, I think with David, where David was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's kind of jealous of Bobby because like, none of
Speaker 2: us had any male authority figure, any adults, male adults
Speaker 2: interested in us after Dad died. Right, he got Lim
Speaker 2: and he was the only one right, as opposed to
Speaker 2: what Oppendheimer said of him being the sinister for us
Speaker 2: that like, well, at least RFK Jr.
Speaker 3: Had somebody had some right, whether it's a role model
Speaker 3: or just some sort of guardian, some sort of gud
Speaker 3: and some sort of Yeah.
Speaker 2: And as a spoiler, David's story is going to end
Speaker 2: a lotch faster and a lot worse than RFK Junior stuff.
Speaker 2: So maybe Lim having something kept him from spending out
Speaker 2: as much.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That said, it is beyond arguing that Lim is not
Speaker 2: what most people would call a responsible guardian. That said,
Speaker 2: any kind of normal childhood for Bobby was completely off
Speaker 2: the table at this point. Lim after RFK dies, he's
Speaker 2: on safari when JFK dies, and after RFK gets killed,
Speaker 2: Lim takes him on us. Sorry, your dad died Safari.
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll get you another turtle.
Speaker 2: Who knows, Yeah, get you another turtle. I've spent my
Speaker 2: time expressing issues with Oppenheimer's biography, but I do think
Speaker 2: his description of this trip, this second death Safari, can
Speaker 2: FaZe how damned weird it was. With professional thirty five
Speaker 2: millimeter cameras, Bobby and Billings documented their African adventure, which
Speaker 2: also included a rafting trip in Egypt's Valley of the Kings,
Speaker 2: and oddly, a VIP visit to a nightclub to watch
Speaker 2: the gyrations of a bevy of belly dancers hosted by
Speaker 2: members of the Egyptian Supreme Court, an evening of salacious
Speaker 2: interest more to the hormonal adolescent than to his gay,
Speaker 2: middle aged saparone. The Safari photos became quite lucrative because,
Speaker 2: at that time, in the wake of the latest Kennedy tragedy,
Speaker 2: anything a Camelot air did became front page media. Father
Speaker 2: aware of the demand building's broker to deal with Life
Speaker 2: magazine for an interview about their adventure and for the photos.
Speaker 2: The questionable story was put out that young Bobby wanted
Speaker 2: to use the money to build a memorial to his father,
Speaker 2: in the Serengeti National Park and uh yeah, the pictures
Speaker 2: sell for a lot of money. He gets to watch
Speaker 2: a what sounds like almost a strip tease put on
Speaker 2: by the Egyptian Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: A burlesque sort of situation, just.
Speaker 2: A baffling childhood Yeah. Yeah, if you've met members of
Speaker 2: the Egyptian Supreme Court, you have an odd child.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's just like this weird like Western rosie sort
Speaker 3: of like cript celebration, yeah, ring like thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It is very Game of Thrones in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when they get back home from this very strange Safari,
Speaker 2: Bobby continues doing shitloads of drugs and most consequentially introducing
Speaker 2: his brothers to drugs, and he does not limit himself
Speaker 2: to just dosing them. One of the people who sold
Speaker 2: acid to Bobby was a neighbor kid, John Kelly, who
Speaker 2: recalled that Bobby fed doses of acid to his parakeet.
Speaker 2: He soon expanded to other drugs, like mescaline, which he
Speaker 2: pushed his younger brother David to try. David was scared.
Speaker 2: David did not want to experiment with drugs, with psychedelics,
Speaker 2: you know, it certainly wasn't ready as soon as Bobby was.
Speaker 2: But Bobby basically like bullies him kind of until he
Speaker 2: takes a shitload of mescaline. And David is a young
Speaker 2: boy too young to be doing shitloads of mescaline who
Speaker 2: has lost his dad and is traumatized, and that can
Speaker 2: make a trip nocked. He has a bad time of it, right,
Speaker 2: and Kelly recalls that Bobby's instinct seems to be to
Speaker 2: increase his younger to fuck with his younger brother, right
Speaker 2: when so David hallucinates that Bobby's laying like or standing
Speaker 2: up against like a bush or something, and there's leaves
Speaker 2: pressing against him, and David hallucinates that the leaves are sharp,
Speaker 2: and he's like, Bobby, get away, they'll cut you. And
Speaker 2: Bobby laughs and he plunges into the leaves and then
Speaker 2: pretends he's been impaled and fakes his own yes, and
Speaker 2: this prompts David to cry, you're dying just like daddy.
Speaker 3: Oh god, oh boy, Oh no, that's so bad.
Speaker 2: Oh Bobby, that's.
Speaker 3: Like so bad, like being on that drug. And no,
Speaker 3: he thought that was really happening.
Speaker 2: And guess guess which Kennedy is gonna wind up dying
Speaker 2: up a drug overdose.
Speaker 3: That's such a fucked up d D David.
Speaker 2: Yeah, real bad stuff, very bad behavior. Don't do that,
Speaker 2: like lean into.
Speaker 3: To pretend that you are especially not just like to
Speaker 3: pretend that, Oh my god, it's so fucked up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the weird things. You know how America
Speaker 2: has kind of processed nine to eleven eventually by making
Speaker 2: a shipload of nine to eleven jokes. Bobby and his
Speaker 2: generation of Kennedy's processed the assassinations by making a lot
Speaker 2: of Dead Kennedy jokes, like more, even more than the
Speaker 2: band The Dead Kennedy's death, if actually ever made jokes,
Speaker 2: is just the name of the band anyway. The closest
Speaker 2: the Kennedy's had to an heir apparent was Ted Kennedy,
Speaker 2: who is a senator, who becomes a senator and is
Speaker 2: you know somebody do people do still think? You know,
Speaker 2: in the wake of rfk's death, Hey, he could be
Speaker 2: the president. You know, he's pretty good looking, smart, he's
Speaker 2: obviously starting to have success in politics. But within a
Speaker 2: year of rfk's demise, Ted is involved in the infamous
Speaker 2: chap Equitic incident, which fucking Republicans would not stop talking about,
Speaker 2: and it is a pretty bad situation. He is probably drunk,
Speaker 2: he drives off of a bridge, he abandons his the
Speaker 2: crash afterwards, and he abandons his twenty eight year old passenger,
Speaker 2: Mary Joe Kopekney, who drowns. Right, you know, the best
Speaker 2: case scenario is that Ted is so drunk that he's
Speaker 2: not really aware of what he's doing. I guess some
Speaker 2: people will argue it was just an accident. But he
Speaker 2: leaves afterwards and he goes to sleep, and it's like,
Speaker 2: is bad he does not he does a bad thing.
Speaker 3: He does a bad thing.
Speaker 2: I will say, Yeah, Now this is again like I
Speaker 2: don't know how you want to. We're not going to
Speaker 2: dissect fucking chap equitdic God. You can find so much
Speaker 2: of that if you really want to. What matters to
Speaker 2: us today is that it more or less punctures heads
Speaker 2: shot at the presidency, right, That is not really going
Speaker 2: to be in the concresce.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I kind of took them out of that.
Speaker 2: Now you could argue, and I think this is the
Speaker 2: strongest argument that he is probably the best politician in
Speaker 2: terms of technical skill, of any of his generation. Of
Speaker 2: the Kennedy's right, some of this is just because he's
Speaker 2: alive long enough to really have a full political career.
Speaker 2: But he's a very influential man in Congress. He winds
Speaker 2: up being kind of like, arguably most influential Democrat in
Speaker 2: Congress for a significant period of time. And that's you know,
Speaker 2: a lot for a family for most people. But that
Speaker 2: is a far cry from the vision Joe Kennedy had
Speaker 2: for his family, and even further from the rosy image
Speaker 2: of Camelot perpetuated in the public memory. Talk about a
Speaker 2: Kennedy curse had been a thing for about as long
Speaker 2: as anyone in the family could remember, but once RFK died,
Speaker 2: it went from something to and kind of a half
Speaker 2: joke sort of deal to something the upcoming generation felt
Speaker 2: deep within their bones as destiny. Even Joe Kennedy, the
Speaker 2: man whose ambition had started this all, seemed to feel
Speaker 2: a sense of woe at what he now saw coming
Speaker 2: for his grandchildren. Chris Lawfer, JFK's nephew, later claimed, sometimes
Speaker 2: Grandpa would look at us as if he wanted to
Speaker 2: say something. His mouth would move sort of convulsively, as
Speaker 2: if some words were trying to get out. Then this
Speaker 2: cloudy look would come over his eyes and he'd slouched
Speaker 2: down into his wheelchair and the attendant would wheel him
Speaker 2: off and that in the that biography, Maybe it was
Speaker 2: just he you know, he was stroking out, he couldn't come.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's that he's maybe he regretted, like, oh, I
Speaker 2: may my entire family to calamity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe sorry for the pressure I yeah created for you, all.
Speaker 2: Of this, all of these terrible, terrible things. And he does,
Speaker 2: he lives.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things like I don't know if
Speaker 2: Joe Kennedy made a deal with a devil or some
Speaker 2: sort of like House of Usher, asked cosmic evil right
Speaker 2: to have his success and then have it all ripped
Speaker 2: away when his children die at the last moment of
Speaker 2: his life. But that's kind of what happens, right. He
Speaker 2: lives long enough to see Chap equittic and then he
Speaker 2: fucking drops right after that.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, he made some sort of deal and
Speaker 3: it led to the curse.
Speaker 2: It led to the curse.
Speaker 3: Part of it was you gotta kind of you gotta watch,
Speaker 3: you gotta watch some of it. Yeah, you're done.
Speaker 2: Yeah he made it. And look he made some good calls,
Speaker 2: you know, making Mark Hamill the family Lawyer, great move
Speaker 2: House of Usher, good show. Watch it. Oh it's oh
Speaker 2: my god, it's an incredible Mark Campbell performance. Yeah, really
Speaker 2: really good show. Really good show. Everyone else is playing
Speaker 2: essentially like a Poe character, and Mark Hamill is playing
Speaker 2: like a Lovecraft protagonist. It's quite good. It's quite interesting,
Speaker 2: all right. Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. So I
Speaker 2: will say, you know, you've got that one picture from
Speaker 2: the Collier in Horowitz book, where Grandpa maybe started to
Speaker 2: regret some of his decisions. In his biography of RFK Junior,
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer also talks to a significant number of people who
Speaker 2: are around the family and in the family at this point.
Speaker 2: Pet's a darker picture of what Joe mostly tried to
Speaker 2: pass on to his grandchildren, his twin family mantras where
Speaker 2: Kennedy's don't cry and Kennedy's don't complain, which is whatever
Speaker 2: else not going to help you process everything that's happened
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 3: If Kennedys do die, yeah, you might want those other
Speaker 3: two things.
Speaker 2: Actually they might need to cry. Maybe some complaints are warranted. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but he does live long enough to see his blessings
Speaker 2: turn into curses. His three most prominent sons dead because
Speaker 2: Joe died a while ago, his remaining son disgraced, and
Speaker 2: the vast entitled brood that he had helped create turn
Speaker 2: into a dynasty hurdling inefftably towards doom when he finally
Speaker 2: passed on November eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine. Bobby by this
Speaker 2: point seemed to show less inclination to follow his dad
Speaker 2: into politics and decidedly more of a bent to being
Speaker 2: a we might call like a I got mild gangster,
Speaker 2: you know, like a like a kind of adorable child gangster,
Speaker 2: because he has in this period formed a street gang
Speaker 2: focused or into the street game, made up entirely of
Speaker 2: Kennedy's and their friends, who are also very rich kids
Speaker 2: from this incredibly rich neighborhood with a family compound is located.
Speaker 2: They call themselves the Hannas port Terrors, the HPTs as
Speaker 2: we'll call them.
Speaker 3: The assumptions, the assumptions.
Speaker 2: So Joe Bobby Kennedy's got a street gang, and initially
Speaker 2: it's just his older brother Joe who's seventeen, you know,
Speaker 2: he's fifteen, and his brother David who's fourteen, but a
Speaker 2: bunch of cousins and neighbors join in and they'll they'll
Speaker 2: all dress in black and they'll paint their faces with grease.
Speaker 2: And first off, you know what, kudos guys to painting,
Speaker 2: to being rich white kids who paint your faces with
Speaker 2: grease and aren't doing blackface. You know, they were just
Speaker 2: trying to hide in the night.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's like, well, you know you're who we dodged.
Speaker 2: Kennedy Families isn't great at dodging bullets, but they did
Speaker 2: dodge that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank goodness for that. Difference in motivation to Greece.
Speaker 2: God, their motivation is they're doing pettybags. I imagine were
Speaker 2: also they might have been, might have been, might have been.
Speaker 3: A little treat for them.
Speaker 2: You know, I can't prove they weren't exactly, I can't.
Speaker 2: I can't prove a little justin Trudeau energy wasn't present
Speaker 2: there some of them. Sure sco should drop of that
Speaker 2: a dollip Sistically, One former member of the hyenasport Terrors
Speaker 2: later claimed to the author of the book After Camelot quote,
Speaker 2: we'd shoot off firecrackers to flate people's tires, stick potatoes,
Speaker 2: and the exhaust pipes of cars, turnover trash cans mess
Speaker 2: around with girls, all sorts of mischief. After we did
Speaker 2: our bit, Ethel would get called I know, I don't
Speaker 2: know what mess around with girls want in this context.
Speaker 3: In the context of like vandalism.
Speaker 2: They could be making out with them, they could be
Speaker 2: stealing their underwear, there could be There's a lot of
Speaker 2: mess around, with a lot of room for that to
Speaker 2: be ugly.
Speaker 3: It's an odd item to include on that list. Yeah,
Speaker 3: gang activities.
Speaker 2: If I'm the after Camelot author, I'm immediately be like,
Speaker 2: wait a second, Wait a second. Let let's talk about
Speaker 2: the messenger.
Speaker 3: Let's gettext.
Speaker 2: I'm going to continue to quote from this terror member.
Speaker 2: After we did our bit, Ethel, we get tech calls
Speaker 2: from everyone in town complaining about it. At first, she
Speaker 2: used to say, my kids were home asleep last night.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about. But one night
Speaker 2: she waited up and sure enough she caught me, Bobby
Speaker 2: and David jumping out of one of the second floor
Speaker 2: windows of her home. She chased us all over the
Speaker 2: compound in the middle of the night and her nightgown
Speaker 2: and bare feet, finally losing us somewhere on the stretch
Speaker 2: of beach. Now one of the real through lines in
Speaker 2: all these Kennedy kids' stories is that the adults have
Speaker 2: very little power in these relationships. And it's not because
Speaker 2: they're afraid to discipline their kids. Sometimes when they're around,
Speaker 2: they disciplined them very severely. It's it's that they're just
Speaker 2: not there right, and they're they're not there in large
Speaker 2: from because they have all of these as the Kennedy's,
Speaker 2: They've got this constant web of social political business, out fundraisers,
Speaker 2: all sorts of shit that they have to do because
Speaker 2: of who their family is. And they're also on vacation
Speaker 2: a lot. They're traveling, they don't always want their kids around,
Speaker 2: and they're able to not have their kids around right.
Speaker 2: Half of the brood are away at boarding schools at
Speaker 2: any given time, and the kids at boarding schools have
Speaker 2: access to money and thus drugs, but not any real
Speaker 2: submit supervision. You know, maybe the monk who teaches English
Speaker 2: will take an interest in them, but like that's some
Speaker 2: random monk. He doesn't have a lot of power in
Speaker 2: this relationship, you know.
Speaker 3: And at a certain point, after like a lot of
Speaker 3: the reaction from like her specifically, Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 3: it's just not going to be effective no matter what
Speaker 3: where it's like okay, yeah, you're being this horrible to
Speaker 3: your your small children. Yeah, we don't really care for
Speaker 3: that approval or have like that sense of like, oh,
Speaker 3: we don't want to upset you know the adults.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah became now Another constant through line is, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, this sense of gallows humor that pervades
Speaker 2: the kids as a result of the cloud of death
Speaker 2: that seemed to hang over their family. And I think
Speaker 2: the most passage from this period comes from I'm gonna
Speaker 2: read a passage from the book After Camelot describing this
Speaker 2: one prank had the boys playing in busy Hyanna's port
Speaker 2: tourist traffic, only to have one kid fall to the
Speaker 2: ground while another smacked the back of a car, making
Speaker 2: a loud noise. Then they would all gather around their
Speaker 2: fallen chum and shout hysterical sentiments at the drivers, such
Speaker 2: as you've just killed another Kennedy's. When panicked people came
Speaker 2: to the aid of the young Kennedy sprawled in the
Speaker 2: middle of the road, the boys would milk it for
Speaker 2: all it was worth by trying to get the boy
Speaker 2: to move his legs and then saying it looked as
Speaker 2: if he'd been paralyzed. But then the fallen Kennedy would
Speaker 2: suddenly stand up and walk away. At that, the other
Speaker 2: boys would proclaim, look, it's a Kennedy miracle, and then race,
Speaker 2: Oh god, I gotta say that kind of rules.
Speaker 3: That's exactly if you were a kid and the Kennedy
Speaker 3: and all that stuff, like, of course you killed another Kennedy.
Speaker 3: Such a funny thing.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly funny. It's amazingly funny.
Speaker 3: Like horrific thing. Uh the acid trip? What, yeah, Bobby
Speaker 3: did horrific.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny. That's really funny. That's just actually very
Speaker 2: good comedy.
Speaker 3: He kills another Kennedy.
Speaker 2: That's I'll go so far as to say it that
Speaker 2: might actually even be example of like healthy processing of
Speaker 2: all of this. Right, take like you're taking to some extent,
Speaker 2: you're taking some ownership of this terrible thing that happened
Speaker 2: to your family, right, and maybe that does help a little.
Speaker 3: And you're also taking you you're also like very aware
Speaker 3: of like the world's like eyes, and you're.
Speaker 2: Kind of taking agency as opposed to just being subjected
Speaker 2: to it. You're taking agency on it and like using
Speaker 2: it for your own laughter entertainment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Kind of see it as the healthiest thing that anyone
Speaker 2: has done.
Speaker 1: In this.
Speaker 2: Story.
Speaker 3: It's definitely towards the top in this story of healthy reactions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, just very good comedy.
Speaker 3: It's a Kennedy miracle. It's Kennedy miracles.
Speaker 2: That's a good line. Back at Millbrook, Bobby cultivated a
Speaker 2: by this point probably understandable reputation for being out of
Speaker 2: control and very odd. Like any kid, he had folks
Speaker 2: who got along with him and people who thought he
Speaker 2: was a dick. You can find people being like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was like the bully of the school. You can
Speaker 2: find people being like, yeah, he was like kind of
Speaker 2: a chill dude. He was a little bit of a
Speaker 2: loner and outsider. I'm not I wasn't around right. I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna say everyone does agree about one thing, which
Speaker 2: is that he was really specifically weird about his hawk
Speaker 2: and dead animals.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was gonna say, like, yeah, his dorm smelled
Speaker 3: like bird shit. Yep, that was the thing everybody thought.
Speaker 2: Boy Cody, it's about to get a lot weirder, But
Speaker 2: first it's about to be ads. Oh okay, we're back Cody,
Speaker 2: you had a follow up question, what do.
Speaker 3: You mean by his relationship with dead animals?
Speaker 2: Great question, Cody, Great question. So let's go back to
Speaker 2: the undeniable reality that I don't know, like a month
Speaker 2: or two time flat circle right now. But it became
Speaker 2: public knowledge that RFK Junior, serious third party presidential candidate
Speaker 2: with like a possibly historic chunk of the votes certainly
Speaker 2: looked like that at that point in the election, had
Speaker 2: part of his brain eaten by a worm that got
Speaker 2: in there, presumably for some weird meat he ate and
Speaker 2: then died after eating part of his brain. Right the claim.
Speaker 2: That's the claim, and the claim came out during divorce proceedings, right,
Speaker 2: And this is part of RFK trying to basically argue
Speaker 2: his alimony should be amended in light of his disability.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And as a result of that aspect of it, I
Speaker 2: have seen people doubting was he just lying? You know,
Speaker 2: maybe there was no worm. He's bullshitting like and I'm
Speaker 2: going to say this, a survey of his childhood makes
Speaker 2: me feel, yeah, that brain worm was probably real. Probably
Speaker 2: this is the story that we're about to tell that
Speaker 2: makes me feel that way. So as an adult, one
Speaker 2: of the sources we have on Bobby's life is this
Speaker 2: book called The River Keepers, which he co writes, I think,
Speaker 2: and it's related to he works for an environmental charity
Speaker 2: called the River Keepers, and his book on that includes
Speaker 2: a deeply sanitized and kind of short version of his
Speaker 2: own backstory. And one of the things he talks about
Speaker 2: is his time at Millbrook that he spent with what
Speaker 2: he calls an informal falconry program. And this is the
Speaker 2: very sanitized version of how that his falconry at Millbrook went.
Speaker 2: In the autumn, we captured and trained kestrels, red tails,
Speaker 2: and immature passage hawks on their first migration. I've caught
Speaker 2: upwards of fifty hawks a day squatting atop a ridge
Speaker 2: line on Schinnemunk Mountain in the Hudson Valley. In autumn,
Speaker 2: we flew wild redtails, falcons, and ghost shocks and pioneered
Speaker 2: many of the game hawking techniques still used by American falconers.
Speaker 2: We talked about hawks every spare moment. So maybe that's
Speaker 2: all true. It can coexist with what I'm about to
Speaker 2: read next. But Jerry Oppenheimer, biographer talks to one of
Speaker 2: Bobby's child falcon Rebuddies who describes him very differently and
Speaker 2: in a much less camera friendly manner Mill Brooks, and
Speaker 2: this is his falcon rebuddy talking years later, millbrooks motto
Speaker 2: was non Sibby said, kuntsis Latin for not for oneself,
Speaker 2: but for all. Everyone had to participate in required community service,
Speaker 2: whether it be working in the school post office, washing dishes,
Speaker 2: performing grounds maintenance, or handling the zoo's inhabitants. Bobby had
Speaker 2: chosen the latter, But the way he described his falcon
Speaker 2: and birding interest in his book was not the way
Speaker 2: Beer Regard, who is that's the kid telling the story
Speaker 2: who later went on to teach ornithology at the University
Speaker 2: of North Carolina, remembered to Beer Regard, who was one
Speaker 2: of the leaders of the falconry group at Millbrook, Bobby's
Speaker 2: pursuit of the sport was more like a scene out
Speaker 2: of a horror movie. Myself and a couple of others
Speaker 2: had our hawks, and we'd go out in the countryside
Speaker 2: hunting rabbits and squirrels. But one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: I didn't spend much time with Bobby was his idea
Speaker 2: a falconry next to the school there was a cowpit
Speaker 2: where the local dairy farmers threw their dead cows, and
Speaker 2: it was full of rats. Bobby would take his hawk
Speaker 2: and go hunting rats in the midst of the rotting
Speaker 2: cow carcasses, and he's sort of reveled and how off
Speaker 2: the wall that was now Beer Regard expressed disgust at
Speaker 2: Bobby for wanting to be in such a disgusting environment.
Speaker 2: Wanted to go hunt rats in this rotting cow carcass
Speaker 2: graveyard rather than going to like a well maintained chunk
Speaker 2: of the woods and doing the thing that right right,
Speaker 2: and one gets the feeling. I think his discuss comes from.
Speaker 2: This is something Bobby did specifically to freak out preppier
Speaker 2: rich kids like Beer Regard. Right, you know, he is
Speaker 2: also a rich kid, but he is not preppy, and
Speaker 2: he wants to kind of freak the normies.
Speaker 3: He's a little freaking.
Speaker 2: He's also no one goes to the rotting corpse pit
Speaker 2: because it's a rotting corpse pit, so he can get
Speaker 2: high there. He can do drugs, he can take acid,
Speaker 2: can He spends a lot of time hunting rats and
Speaker 2: taking acid at a like fucking pit of bloated cow carcasses.
Speaker 2: That is a big chunk of Bobbby Junior's childhood.
Speaker 3: And that's a little choko Bobby's brain. That's gonna right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the kids who visited the pit with Bobby,
Speaker 2: maybe because Bobby had drugs and he wanted to score them,
Speaker 2: was the son of a Republican horse trainer, Jamie Fanning.
Speaker 2: And Jamie Fanning gives us this description of RFK Junior
Speaker 2: and his late teens on the cusp of adulthood, and
Speaker 2: it is the most incredible description I have read of
Speaker 2: a subject. For these episodes, I still to this day
Speaker 2: see him standing there in his black necktie that he
Speaker 2: wore every day over a blue Oxford Brooks Brothers shirt
Speaker 2: and a beat up tweed jacket, and wearing the wildest
Speaker 2: bell bottoms that were purple with day glow green stripes
Speaker 2: like he was some soul band guy, and in his
Speaker 2: funky boots, and there he was hunting rats out of
Speaker 2: that pile of dead sheep and cow carcasses. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: bets were funky, amazing, amazing paragraph well, oh cows and sheep,
Speaker 2: cows and sheep yeah yeah, So debate and the sources
Speaker 2: was it just thousands of rotting cow carcasses. By either way,
Speaker 2: Bobby loves carcass.
Speaker 3: Apparently he loves being around them, he really does.
Speaker 2: He seems to be comforted by death. I don't know,
Speaker 2: and it's Fanning. I think this description from Fanning is
Speaker 2: the most accurate of some competing descriptions of child RFK Junior.
Speaker 2: Because he's an edgy kid. He has been traumatized by
Speaker 2: some seriously dark shit. He has a deranged, unhealthy family life.
Speaker 2: He's got infinite money, but only one adult who cares
Speaker 2: about him, and that adult is not doing it in
Speaker 2: the healthiest way, and he develops this edge. Maybe part
Speaker 2: of it is just like surrounding yourself with death, kind
Speaker 2: of like in the sense that maybe a goth would
Speaker 2: later because there's been so much in your life, but
Speaker 2: also some of its freaking out people is maybe the
Speaker 2: only way you know to get attention.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, attention and keepeople at a distance and yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and would continue. He was such an
Speaker 2: edgy kid that that thing, the cow carcasses thing, as
Speaker 2: bizarre as it was to be over there hunting these
Speaker 2: rats out of this pile of dead carcasses, was almost
Speaker 2: normal for him. It was a pretty dark grim time.
Speaker 2: He was miserable and he was angry. It only got
Speaker 2: worse with the drugs. And we most of the sources
Speaker 2: we have on earlier RFK life are self serving in
Speaker 2: some nature, right, everybody's got an agenda. These are the Kennedys.
Speaker 2: But I think Fanning has probably got it right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that that is that just feels like a person to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like an actual like an actual human being who's
Speaker 3: dealt with all these things we've talked about, and like
Speaker 3: the little the little stories of him growing up and
Speaker 3: like you know, like being a little a little fucker
Speaker 3: right right, asshole trying to cause trouble and then gets
Speaker 3: darker and darker, and he's gonna his humor is gonna
Speaker 3: get darker and darker. His like environment, he's going to
Speaker 3: want to be Yeah that I don't know. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: the brainworm.
Speaker 2: And the brain worm the brain worm doesn't now out heroin?
Speaker 2: What else? What else doesn't help Cody is heroin, which
Speaker 2: makes it way into his drug rotation. And look, we
Speaker 2: can talk about the potential benefits of psychedelics. I don't
Speaker 2: know anybody who's like improve their life problems unless though,
Speaker 2: unless those problems are just I am dying of horrible
Speaker 2: pain with heroin. That's really the one thing that's.
Speaker 3: Good, right. You know, there's like, oh, I took mushrooms
Speaker 3: and like I saw something today or yesterday of like
Speaker 3: eighty percent people take mushrooms like they can quit smoking easily. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it's literally just because they're like, uh stupid. Oh,
Speaker 3: like I have the thought of like I shouldn't do that,
Speaker 3: and they don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has intense potential.
Speaker 3: Sure, Yeah, Like oh I took mushrooms, I stopped smoking.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh I took heroin, stop smoking because I died?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or like heroin will help you in again one
Speaker 2: very It's great as a pain killer, but that's only
Speaker 2: useful in certain situations, and.
Speaker 3: Bobby, heroin is something you saved to the end.
Speaker 2: It's great as a pain killer, but it works very
Speaker 2: well as an emotional pain killer, but not in a
Speaker 2: way that helps the problem. Right, if you actually if
Speaker 2: you have like you had your leg blown off by
Speaker 2: a mind, Yes, a heroin might be the right thing
Speaker 2: for you in the moment, right, that's probably real good
Speaker 2: to get heroin in there. If you are mourning your
Speaker 2: dad and your uncle and the collapse of your family
Speaker 2: and all of the pressure you're under, the fact that
Speaker 2: your mom doesn't love you. Heroin's probably not gonna.
Speaker 3: Help in the spotlight like all the thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now that said, despite the fact that he is now
Speaker 2: Heroin is in the mix, it's pot that's gonna get Bobby.
Speaker 2: In his first real trouble, he was arrested for the
Speaker 2: first time in Barnsdale, Massachusetts, for marijuana possession at age sixteen. Now,
Speaker 2: one of the fun parts of the RFK Junior story
Speaker 2: is that he always has this endearingly tense relationship with
Speaker 2: the cops. I don't think he likes the police, at
Speaker 2: least not as a young man. One story Oppenheimer tells
Speaker 2: is a RFK Junior and the Terrors. They're sticking potatoes
Speaker 2: into gas pipes one night and they get caught by
Speaker 2: a cop and everyone runs away, and the only one
Speaker 2: who can't escape is Bobby Shriver, who is his cousin.
Speaker 2: Bobby Junior is kind of something in his favor. Even
Speaker 2: though he's escaped, goes back to confront the cop to
Speaker 2: try and rescue his cousin. You know which to say something,
Speaker 2: And here's how Oppenheimer describes it. Seeing that his cousin
Speaker 2: was in the clutches of a policeman. Bobby defiantly reappeared
Speaker 2: from his hiding place and sauntered up to them. What
Speaker 2: have you got in there, the policeman asked, noting that
Speaker 2: Bobby had his hand inside his coat. I have a
Speaker 2: hawk and he's trained to kill cops. Bobby answered, you're lying,
Speaker 2: the policeman said, but Bobby kept advancing towards him until
Speaker 2: they were only inches apart, whereupon he pulled the hawk
Speaker 2: out and shoved the raptor's beak into the face of
Speaker 2: the cop, who jumped back with a hand on his gun.
Speaker 3: I have a hawk. It was trained to kill cops.
Speaker 2: It's really cool.
Speaker 3: You still got some bangers, like despite it all.
Speaker 1: Part of the cop you're lying, you want to find out.
Speaker 2: It's such an only someone who has grown up in
Speaker 2: that degree of privilege who would like in that situation
Speaker 2: with a cop shove a hawk and near and like
Speaker 2: bold power were power to you, buddy, You're the only
Speaker 2: guy who's ever been in that situation, and I'm glad
Speaker 2: you did it.
Speaker 3: You might you might not be the only guy who's
Speaker 3: ever shouted like I got a hawk, Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 3: you're the one who did.
Speaker 2: You're the only one who did and lived. Right, there's
Speaker 2: a dead Hawker out there. Wow, what a tale.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Bobby's arrest was big news. You know, the media
Speaker 2: circus lights up around it, YadA YadA, YadA, and he
Speaker 2: and his cousin, He's arrested with Bobby Shreiver for pot possession.
Speaker 2: This is different from the Hawk thing. They go before
Speaker 2: a juvenile court judge and they get a slap on
Speaker 2: the wrist, right, you know, they get a punishment. It's
Speaker 2: not all that serious. Really. The worst thing about it
Speaker 2: is the media thing around it. And Bobby had actually
Speaker 2: been expelled from Millbrook a few weeks earlier because of
Speaker 2: his drug use, because the leadership at the school was
Speaker 2: really mostly word that he was going to o D
Speaker 2: on the property and they were like, you know, what's
Speaker 2: not going to be good for this schools continuing to
Speaker 2: have people is a fucking dead Kennedy like, get him out.
Speaker 2: And after he gets arrested, they start to claim basically
Speaker 2: he got kicked out of the school because of that. Right,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't want to say we did it
Speaker 2: for this reason, right, Nobody really wants to it's best
Speaker 2: if it kind of comes down to being part of
Speaker 2: the arrest. The family backlash against Bobby is intense and
Speaker 2: utterly impotent. At the same time, Ethel told her son,
Speaker 2: I'm throwing you out of the family, but no effort
Speaker 2: was made to stop Bobby, who is at this point
Speaker 2: sixteen years old, from taking six hundred dollars out of
Speaker 2: his savings account, buying a used Ford Falcon and driving
Speaker 2: across the country with two friends. He sells the car
Speaker 2: when they get to Fresno, and he and one friend
Speaker 2: continue on hopping trains and living with homeless people until
Speaker 2: they wash up in Texas for months. Bobby Kennedy is
Speaker 2: completely out of touch with any adult, but occasionally limb Billings,
Speaker 2: and Bob would later recall this as one of the
Speaker 2: happiest times of his youth quote, I was writing around
Speaker 2: with bums. It was good I could be one of
Speaker 2: them and not a Kennedy. And like, if you want
Speaker 2: an idea of how toxic being a Kennedy is. His
Speaker 2: fondest childhood memory is being homeless, Yeah, like willingly homeless.
Speaker 3: Yeah basically yeah, but like yeah, hiding.
Speaker 2: Because we're all we're all equally filthy you know at
Speaker 2: this point, you know, we're not bathing, we're not changing
Speaker 2: our clothes, like we look the same that they do,
Speaker 2: and they just kind of treat me as one of them.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows who I am. Yeah, it says a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean about again, didn't have a chance.
Speaker 2: Never had a chance. He has a next scent when
Speaker 2: he gets back from this road trip train hopping trip
Speaker 2: to a less reputable boarding school in the woods that's like,
Speaker 2: this is where you send the real problem kids. It's
Speaker 2: near Boston. He continues to do drugs while he's there,
Speaker 2: and he develops a notable reputation as not a racist.
Speaker 2: He is very Oppenheimer quotes, and Oppenheimer quotes is like, wow,
Speaker 2: a white guy that black people like, right, But he
Speaker 2: does quote several black students at this school who were
Speaker 2: like militant activists, like kind of black panther adjacent in
Speaker 2: the day, and we're like, yeah, Bobby was actually really cool,
Speaker 2: Like we liked hanging out with Bobby, Like he didn't
Speaker 2: no issues with Bobby.
Speaker 3: Was clearly not a racist person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly not racist. So we'll give him that here too.
Speaker 2: Bobby Kennedy Junior graduated from this last boarding school in
Speaker 2: June of nineteen seventy two. He was now an adult.
Speaker 2: You will not be surprised to hear that his grades
Speaker 2: were not impressive. His extra curriculars at this point are
Speaker 2: basically just drugs and hanging out next to a cavern
Speaker 2: of rotting meat with my hawk men. Of this mattered
Speaker 2: to the Harvard Admissions board. RFK Junior was a legacy.
Speaker 2: His family had money and a with the Kennedy you
Speaker 2: never know, they could wind up congressman or president. So
Speaker 2: you might as well get that Harvard stank on him, right,
Speaker 2: And that's where Bobby's going to spend the mid seventies
Speaker 2: studying and getting real into heroin. And we will talk
Speaker 2: about that in part three, but for now, for this week, Cody,
Speaker 2: we're done with RFK Junior. How are you feeling? Where
Speaker 2: are we on? Are we on the boy at this point?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: You know, still some uh mixed in the sense that
Speaker 3: like sorry, Bobby, sorry, I get it, Yeah, but you
Speaker 3: gotta get it together. Also the rotten meat things, so
Speaker 3: like yeah, yeah, I'm just like I'm I'm very curious
Speaker 3: about where that thread leads because you don't stop there,
Speaker 3: like that's not like probably the most fucked up thing
Speaker 3: you're you're going to be doing in relation to dead
Speaker 3: animal carcasses. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I yeah, I'm going to think about the hawk a lot.
Speaker 3: The hawk.
Speaker 2: The hawk is a real like that's a fascinating.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating talk about his train to kill cops.
Speaker 2: That's such a good life. There's some really he definitely
Speaker 2: had at one point. Maybe he's lost it now, but
Speaker 2: he had at one point some of that Kennedy charisma.
Speaker 2: Because that and the whole you've just killed.
Speaker 3: It killed the Kennedy so good. It's a Kennedy miracle.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly funny.
Speaker 3: I've got a hawk and it kills cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah all yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And but you know the other stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good luck to him.
Speaker 1: It turns out it doesn't turn out great, Cody.
Speaker 3: Right, well, I can still say good luck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, good luck and good night, Cody Pluggables.
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