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Speaker 1: Also media. Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a

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Speaker 1: podcast that's not about the election. But this week I'm

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Speaker 1: bringing back a special buddy, my good friend from the

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty election, who I have ripped through a hole

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Speaker 1: in time and pulled into the future, Cody Javn.

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Speaker 2: Hi. Hello everybody. Hey, thank you so much for the

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Speaker 2: comment of production, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: Tody. Hello, Yeah, yeah, welcome to the I don't know

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Speaker 1: if it's I wouldn't say it's the worst year ever

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Speaker 1: yet because really, as much as everybody's unhappy, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty was pretty bad. I keep going back before

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Speaker 1: the more people died still in twenty twenty.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I've actually been working on an update

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Speaker 2: to that song, and I'm like going back and forth, like, well,

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Speaker 2: the worst year ever will get maybe it'll be a

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Speaker 2: bit better than last time, but then it wouldn't be

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Speaker 2: the worst you're ever? Yeah yeah, yeah, but uh, you

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Speaker 2: know there's still time. It might not be pandemic bad,

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Speaker 2: but you know, if Donald Trump becomes the president again, that.

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Speaker 1: That's that could be worse. That could be worse. You know,

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Speaker 1: that could be worse. Yeah, I mean it's it's I

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Speaker 1: have mixed feelings, you know, as we go through this

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Speaker 1: horse race, Cody, because it feels like, you know, the

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Speaker 1: upside of if Donald Trump gets a second term is

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Speaker 1: you will finally be punished for all of your many crimes.

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Speaker 1: But the downside is that I might be punished for

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Speaker 1: all of my many crimes.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: That's that's tough.

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Speaker 2: I know justice is a little wonky, it's a little unbalanced.

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Speaker 2: You know, we can't always get full pure justice that

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Speaker 2: we want. Sometimes we have to make our own sacrifices.

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Speaker 2: So you're gonna have to sacrifice your self order to

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Speaker 2: see me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, that's more or less what I learned

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Speaker 1: from one of the Batman movies. Cody, what do you

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Speaker 1: think of will in fight it to get other? Because

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Speaker 1: all we do is in fight as.

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Speaker 2: Well, just not al We're just not going to get

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Speaker 2: along together.

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Speaker 1: It's just it's just too accurate. Everyone will be unhappy together.

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Speaker 2: Before the You want everybody to get pumped before the chorus.

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Speaker 2: But if everyone's but then we go or not or not?

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Speaker 1: I think everyone knows that's a lie.

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Speaker 2: I think I was wearing this shirt when we recorded

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Speaker 2: that song. Oh that's fun. It's the time capsule.

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Speaker 1: It's a time capsule.

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Speaker 2: Remember when it was worse in a lot of ways.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, when I was, when I was huddled in my

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Speaker 1: tiny efficiency with all of my beans and ammunition. And

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Speaker 1: now I'm I'm huddled in my house with all of

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Speaker 1: my beans and Ammunitionally, life has really changed for me now, Cody,

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Speaker 1: when it comes to the election, you know, we can

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Speaker 1: sit here, you and I and jawbone about old Joe R.

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Speaker 1: Biden or old Donald, old Jay Trump, whatever his middle

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Speaker 1: name is.

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Speaker 2: I forget John.

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Speaker 1: I believe John. Okay, cool, great, great great.

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Speaker 2: I need that Donald John president, I believe is the name.

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Speaker 1: I don't think there's very much either of us can

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Speaker 1: say that that will matter here, right, even though people

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Speaker 1: on the internet keep coming into like any comment you

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Speaker 1: make about the election going, oh so you want Trump

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Speaker 1: to win or whatever, Like nobody who listens to us

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Speaker 1: like matter. The entire election is going to come down

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Speaker 1: to like one hundred thousand people in five to seven

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Speaker 1: swing states. Right, Yeah, so let's talk about a guy

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Speaker 1: who actually could influence the election. The most popular third

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Speaker 1: party candidate in like a generation, assuming that is roughly

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Speaker 1: twenty five years something like that. Yeah, Bobby F. Kennedy Junior,

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Speaker 1: RS Junior. Yes, currently polling it n percent a lot

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Speaker 1: of places. It depends on where you go, But like

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Speaker 1: I think nationally that's broadly accurate. I also think that

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of flex in those numbers. You know,

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Speaker 1: you're talking pulling nine or ten percent in like three

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Speaker 1: plus plus or minus three four percent, you know, error rates.

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Speaker 1: So could he very well could wind up not being

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Speaker 1: influential at all, but he could siphon away enough votes

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Speaker 1: to cost Biden the election or cost Trump the elections.

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Speaker 2: Kind of a toss I don't really know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a toss up. I think most

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Speaker 1: of what I've seen has led me to expect he's

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Speaker 1: probably takes more votes away from Trump. But I also

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Speaker 1: think so that's yeah, nothing conclusive.

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Speaker 2: It's really hard to say that, right any Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: but that's what it's. That's what it seems like for sure.

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Speaker 1: Either way, he definitely could be the decider of the election.

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Speaker 1: It's not impossible. Given again how kind of narrow things

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Speaker 1: are probably going to come down in a handful of

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Speaker 1: swing states, it's not impossible that he winds up having

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Speaker 1: a pretty sizable impact. So I figured we should talk

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Speaker 1: about the guy, especially because, in kind of a remarkable

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Speaker 1: turn of events, a bunch of articles I think Vanity

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Speaker 1: Fair published the first one, have come out in the

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Speaker 1: last week accusing him or publishing allegations that he's sexually

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Speaker 1: assaulted women, and he has had kind of a unique

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Speaker 1: response in which he's basically said, yeah, maybe he might

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Speaker 1: hear more about this, yeah, because he apologizes, like how

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Speaker 1: can I make this right? When he was reached out

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Speaker 1: to directly by one of the women, and his public

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Speaker 1: statements have been like, yeah, you'll probably hear more about this.

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Speaker 2: I mean, he said even when he's he'll mentioned that

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Speaker 2: even when he started running, he's like, yeah, I got

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Speaker 2: a lot of skeletons in my closet.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, he's done a lot of bad stuff. He

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Speaker 1: was essentially like, I didn't need that dog, But I

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Speaker 1: didn't need that yeah what she did. What I have

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Speaker 1: read now every piece of writing I can find on

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Speaker 1: our FK Junior, I've gone through a biography of the

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Speaker 1: Kennedy family. I have gone through a biography of the

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Speaker 1: Kennedy family, specifically after the assassinations of JFK and RFK.

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Speaker 1: I have gone through a biography of Bobby Kennedy and

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Speaker 1: as many articles as I could find on the matter.

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Speaker 1: And I will tell you two things. Number one, he

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Speaker 1: definitely ate that dog. And number two, I'm actually not

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Speaker 1: surprised that he both is perfectly willing to admit that

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Speaker 1: he sexually assaulted people genuinely thinks that he feels bad

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Speaker 1: about it. Now I'm not saying he actually does, because

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Speaker 1: I think the act of being a Kennedy might be

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Speaker 1: fundamentally deranging. And primarily what we'll be talking about in

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Speaker 1: these episodes, this is not a list. Well, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk about some fucked up shit that Bobby Kennedy did,

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Speaker 1: but mostly what we're talking about is the creation of

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Speaker 1: the Kennedys as a concept is maybe the most profoundly

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Speaker 1: abusive thing that's ever happened to a group of children. Yeah, like,

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Speaker 1: that's that's really the story.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you're creating a royal family from scratch basically.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, and with none of the royal families.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I don't get these these sins from

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Speaker 1: looking at the current members of the House of windsor

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Speaker 1: that it's good for you to be a member of

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Speaker 1: the House of windsor it seems bad, but there's a

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Speaker 1: support and work outside of the family set up. The

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Speaker 1: whole country is kind of a supporting right for the

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Speaker 1: royal family, and so usually there's limits on how far

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Speaker 1: out they spiral. That didn't exist for the Kennedys, and

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Speaker 1: that's part of anyway, it's an interesting story. So we're

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Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna talk about that this week, Cody. But

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Speaker 1: first I wanted to ask, how do you feel about

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Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy? You know, how do you feel about the

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Speaker 1: Actually I scratched that, how do you feel about the Kennedys.

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Speaker 2: I have no strong opinions in that, Like I'm not

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Speaker 2: a huge Kennedy fan, and I you know, mixed. I

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Speaker 2: think I would say probably depending on the Kennedy we're

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Speaker 2: talking about. I don't like political like dynasties and like

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Speaker 2: that aspect of it. I'm just like very much against

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Speaker 2: and about him specifically. It seems like he's got a

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Speaker 2: lot of problems and a lot of stances that I

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Speaker 2: disagree with heavily. So I would say I'm generally anti,

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Speaker 2: but not in a way that I can articulate for.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you land kind of about where Bernie Sanders is

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Speaker 1: did with one one, one giant exception. Anyway, let's move

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Speaker 1: on to ending the cold open and moving on to

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Speaker 1: the hot open, and we're back. That was a Bernie

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Speaker 1: Sanders shot the president joke. I don't actually know.

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Speaker 2: I was like, I was like, wait what you oh right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's been a long enough time the last

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Speaker 1: one of those, you know, that's that's the bit on

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Speaker 1: this show. Anyway, let's talk about the Kennedy So I'm

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Speaker 1: going to start this the first kind of half of

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Speaker 1: this episode maybe is actually going to be an overview

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Speaker 1: of like how the Kennedys became the Kennedys, because and

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Speaker 1: this is not you know, there are there's there are

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Speaker 1: so many people who are like Kennedy historians and Kennedy

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Speaker 1: fan experts. I'm not going to pretend that this is

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Speaker 1: a comprehensive history of the family. And I'm actually not

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Speaker 1: going to talk much about the bad shit that Joe

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Speaker 1: Kennedy or JFK or the original RFK did. We'll cover

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Speaker 1: some of that, because like there's kind of a lot

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Speaker 1: in the story of how they became a thing, and

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Speaker 1: we're focusing mostly on RFK this week. So this story

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Speaker 1: is important for how it sets up the way in

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Speaker 1: which he and his siblings and cousins, his peers in

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Speaker 1: like coageous members of the Kennedy family, how they were raised. Right,

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Speaker 1: So don't come to this being like, wow, Robert didn't

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Speaker 1: really mention, you know, what Joe Kennedy did to Rosemary Kennedy,

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Speaker 1: the lombotomy. He didn't talk about RFK. Why you're tapping

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Speaker 1: Martin Luther King junior. And it's not because those aren't important.

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Speaker 1: It's because like that doesn't factor in as much to

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Speaker 1: like what RFK Junior experienced as a kid, right, And

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Speaker 1: so that's kind of the focus with which we're covering

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Speaker 1: the background here, right. Like many Irish families, the Kennedys

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Speaker 1: first entered the United States during a rough period for

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Speaker 1: Ireland the late eighteen forties. Unlike most of the refugees

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Speaker 1: who fled there in that time, twenty six year old

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Speaker 1: Patrick Kennedy was not fleeing starvation and death and depression.

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Speaker 1: He was the son of a pretty comfortable man financially,

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Speaker 1: a big farmer in County Wexford with eighty acres, So

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Speaker 1: like a guy who's doing pretty well. So Patrick comes

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Speaker 1: because he's not going to inherit this land. That's not

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Speaker 1: the way shit works at the time, and he wants

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Speaker 1: to strike it rich, right, So his goal is specifically

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Speaker 1: not this is my only chance at survival. It's America.

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Speaker 1: Is my chance to make a name for myself, right,

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Speaker 1: because I'm not going to inherit anything. Yeah, the American dream.

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Speaker 1: He never returns to the old Country or sees his

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Speaker 1: family again, but he does meet a hot lady on

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Speaker 1: the boat over, and that's not half bad. They get

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Speaker 1: married in Boston shortly after arriving. This generation does not

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Speaker 1: make it out of Boston, you know, like a lot

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Speaker 1: of Irish people in that period, they are kind of

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Speaker 1: trapped there. Patrick gets a job as a cooper. In

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Speaker 1: his free time, he gets his wife pregnant. They have

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Speaker 1: four kids, the last of whom is finally a son,

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Speaker 1: Patrick Joseph Patrick, the first, the original Patrick, having been

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Speaker 1: put on this earth just to make Patrick. Joseph dies

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Speaker 1: immediately after his son is born of colera, just instating

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Speaker 1: all right, got it done, got it done, made sure

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Speaker 1: that baby made it out of the birth canal, and

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Speaker 1: then drop the fuck dead. Yeah, yeah, dedicated, he knew, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: exactly exactly. He's like one of those mosquito. He's like

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Speaker 1: a salmon returning to yeah. Yeah, yeah, Samon returning to

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Speaker 1: Boston to spawn. Yeah. So, in total, the first Kennedy

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Speaker 1: family patriarch only lived nine years and died never having

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Speaker 1: made any kind of fortune or real impact himself. He

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Speaker 1: is going to be the last Kennedy patriarch to kind

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Speaker 1: of have a quiet, unimportant death right within the kind

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Speaker 1: of the context of how the nation sees it, since

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Speaker 1: Patrick Joseph the baby is because he's less than a

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Speaker 1: year old. I think when his dad dies was the

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Speaker 1: only male left in the family. The job of making

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Speaker 1: a fortune fell entirely on his shoulders, and his earliest

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Speaker 1: memories were basically that, like, everyone is expecting me to

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Speaker 1: figure out how to make something of this family, right.

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Speaker 1: All of his sisters and his mom are obsessively focused

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Speaker 1: on just his health and well being.

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Speaker 2: It's a lot of pressure. Google Gaga, I'm just a

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Speaker 2: y fucking baby. What do you want me to do? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, right, it's a lot of pressure, and it's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can see how this is going to make a

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Speaker 1: man who is narcissistically focused.

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Speaker 2: On like being the one guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, God,

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Speaker 2: what a complex.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not great right out of the gate. The

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Speaker 1: thing that the Kennedys have been doing since before they

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Speaker 1: had any money is putting such a so much pressure

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Speaker 1: on their young men that the kind of only way

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Speaker 1: for them to grow up is completely deranged.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: That sometimes makes a guy who's really good at making

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Speaker 1: money or being the present.

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Speaker 2: But it can Yeah, can help that a lot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like, yeah, putting immense pressure and then dying, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and then dying immediately.

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Speaker 1: They're so good at that, Yeah, dying tragically young and

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Speaker 1: putting a lot of pressure on their young men. So

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Speaker 1: Patrick Joseph goes to a Catholic school. He helps his

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Speaker 1: their mother work in the small shop that the family owned.

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Speaker 1: He takes on odd jobs as a teenager, working hard

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Speaker 1: for his family, but never quite able to get ahead.

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Speaker 1: This changed when he was twenty two and he sees

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Speaker 1: a damaged old saloon building for sale on Haymarket Street.

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Speaker 1: He gets loans from his sisters and his mom, and

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Speaker 1: soon he has got he's got a business. He's got

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Speaker 1: an actual bar going, and he is very good at

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Speaker 1: running a bar. He is a competent business owner. And

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Speaker 1: he is because when you're the way politics works in

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Speaker 1: this time, Right, the city is largely run by Democrats

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Speaker 1: who are not Irish and who do not want Irish

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Speaker 1: people anywhere near power, but who are kind of reliant

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Speaker 1: upon them for votes. Right, So Irish folks are restricted

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Speaker 1: in what jobs they can hold in the local power

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Speaker 1: structure there, as you're probably aware of by stereotypes. They're

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Speaker 1: welcome to become police officers. There's a few local elected

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Speaker 1: offices that they're able to take, but for most of

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Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds, higher elected offices are pretty closed

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Speaker 1: to Irish immigrants. And you know, once Patrick Joseph buis

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Speaker 1: his bar, the status quo is starting to change. And

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Speaker 1: because he's now a business owner, and because bars are

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Speaker 1: you know, a social center in his society, he kind

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Speaker 1: of immediately gets shunted into a part of the kind

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Speaker 1: of power structure, right, because like that that's where a

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Speaker 1: lot of dealing happens. That's social business.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Socially you're paying bribes right as a business owner, right

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Speaker 1: to like, to the police, to everything. Like you just

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Speaker 1: kind of wind up involved. Right. The actual government at

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Speaker 1: the time is hideously corrupt and incompetent and provides basically

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Speaker 1: no security or like meaningful services to people in the city,

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Speaker 1: and as a result, in this period of time, it's

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Speaker 1: best to look at the Democratic Party as kind of

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Speaker 1: a mafia. But it's not just a mafia that like

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Speaker 1: takes bribes from people and is hideously corrupted. Also is

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Speaker 1: where you get your social services. If you are in

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Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and you are providing them with your vote,

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Speaker 1: they offer you primitive forms of welfare and a kind

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Speaker 1: of social stability. The Democratic Party is a shadow state

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Speaker 1: in Boston, right, this is the only plate part of

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Speaker 1: the country that has something like this, but that you

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Speaker 1: can't think of the party as like what it is

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Speaker 1: now right, where it's like this is you know how

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Speaker 1: we get and change policy. It's the party is almost

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Speaker 1: like a social club that guarantees me some kind of

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Speaker 1: stability in exchange for my vote, right, and in exchange

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Speaker 1: for some all my money sometimes. Right. The Democratic Party

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Speaker 1: is generally described as a machine, and it is corrupt

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Speaker 1: as hell. It runs a lot of it runs on

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Speaker 1: bribes and strong arm violence. Right. There is a violent

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Speaker 1: mafia aspect to political parties in this period in Boston

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Speaker 1: in particular, but it's also kind of the best your best,

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Speaker 1: Like if you're coming from Ireland as an Irish refugee

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Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen hundreds. The way this system works,

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Speaker 1: you might say, is a lot better than the way

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Speaker 1: the last system you, yeah, worked, right.

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Speaker 2: He was beneficial. Let's bind this and yeah.

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Speaker 1: I have some degree of agency here. Yeah. Patrick Joseph

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Speaker 1: proved an able assistant to some of the more established

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Speaker 1: local men, and his businesses flourished. Soon he had several bars,

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Speaker 1: and then he owned part of a hotel, and then

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Speaker 1: he owned a liquor importing company. In eighteen eighty four

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Speaker 1: he was elected to the Democratic Club of his ward,

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Speaker 1: and in eighteen eighty six he and a group of

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Speaker 1: allies took power in the ward and elected Patrick Joseph

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Speaker 1: to the State Senate. This is better than Irish people

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Speaker 1: who had been able to do in the generation previously, right,

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Speaker 1: But it's kind of going to be the top of

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Speaker 1: where he's able to reach to, Like, there's this isiing

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Speaker 1: to like yeah, yeah, the old democratic power structure still

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Speaker 1: is able to keep the Irish from getting too much

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Speaker 1: higher than that. Right now, Like a good Irish boy,

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Speaker 1: he marries a girl named Mary from a family that

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Speaker 1: happened to have more money than his family, and by

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Speaker 1: this point he's got a bit of money too. You know,

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Speaker 1: he's not rich the way there're going to be a

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Speaker 1: generation later. But the Kennedy's are very comfortable at this

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Speaker 1: point in time, and Patrick Joseph keeps sliding up the

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Speaker 1: greasy poll of Democratic Party politics state legislator is as

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Speaker 1: high as he's going to rise. But you know he

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Speaker 1: doesn't take this sitting down. A lot of his bills,

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Speaker 1: the things he tries to get through in the state

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Speaker 1: legislature gets stymied by this kind of ossified power structure

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Speaker 1: that doesn't like this upity Irish kid. But PJ succeeds

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Speaker 1: in building an army of loyal goons at the local level.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety eight, he launched an ambitious attempt to

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Speaker 1: oust his rival, Martin Lomasney for control of the city

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Speaker 1: democratic nominating process. And it doesn't quite work. But I

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Speaker 1: want to describe how that went by reading a quote

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Speaker 1: from a book called The Kennedys by Peter Collier and

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Speaker 1: David Horowitz. Quote, playing by the rules of the day,

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Speaker 1: PJ had his troops put up blockades around the convention site.

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Speaker 1: They kept rivals out until the Mahatma that's the nickname

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Speaker 1: for his rival, disguised his delegates as a funeral procession

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Speaker 1: and smuggled them through Kennedy's lines in ahearse that's.

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Speaker 2: Wild, right, Yeah, the by gone days. Honestly, gotta try something.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't seem than.

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Speaker 1: How it shit's working now, you know, maybe we could

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Speaker 1: have a little bit more slapstick elements.

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Speaker 2: Comedy of errors in their politics.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth it's worth a try, Cody. That's That's

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Speaker 1: where I'm gonna land now. This Collier in Horowitz book

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Speaker 1: is controversial among Kennedy nerds because it does make claims about,

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Speaker 1: for example, the next Joe Kennedy's involvement with organized crime

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Speaker 1: that are not really provable, and it generally it seems

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Speaker 1: to have done what a lot of Kennedy books do,

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Speaker 1: which is it there's often multiple stories about what happens

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Speaker 1: with the Kennedy's, and it usually believes the most salacious version.

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Speaker 1: Right that said, there's also it includes just a lot

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Speaker 1: of interviews with Kennedy's who were in and arout like

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Speaker 1: members of the family. And so you even with these

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Speaker 1: things that are when they're very when they're sources, people

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Speaker 1: will question our issues with you can't just discard them

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Speaker 1: because sometimes like, oh, this is where David Kennedy gave

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Speaker 1: his side of events, right, and like so we can't

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Speaker 1: just ignore entirely these books either. But a lot of

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Speaker 1: Kennedy history is tabloid gossip, right because they're the Kennedy

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Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you want the the you want the clicks.

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Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Like that's what we're doing here, right, We're

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Speaker 1: all getting clicks from the Kennedy. It's the Kennedy industrial Complex.

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Speaker 1: Gobble up your salacious crumbs. Yeah yeah, Wow, what a

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00:19:30,800 --> 00:19:34,800
Speaker 1: great Star Wars reference cody for you somewhere. George Lucas

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Speaker 1: just got like a little trigger of dopamine into the

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Speaker 1: bath for him, continued editing his cut of Redtails three,

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Speaker 1: which no one but him and his two friends. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: of course I'll watch. I would watch any of the

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Speaker 1: movies that that George Lucas is producing for no one

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Speaker 1: but him and his friends. It's crazy man branch. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's let's do. Let's do. Let's do a mission impossible

380
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Speaker 1: to break into the George Lucas ranch.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, watches terrible movies.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this is just these are just unwatchable. One

383
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Speaker 1: of them was literally just Morbius, and I know he

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Speaker 1: hasn't seen the original Morbius. He just happened to make

385
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Speaker 1: the identical movies.

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Speaker 2: Some frame just like it.

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Speaker 1: He built his own AI and recreated Jared leto independently

388
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Speaker 1: generational terror. So Patrick Joseph's story mostly isn't interesting to

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Speaker 1: us other than that he wound up topping out kind

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Speaker 1: of the highest level of power available to an Irish

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Speaker 1: immigrant son at this stage. He probably probably fair to

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Speaker 1: say he pushes how high someone like like no can do. Yeah, yeah,

393
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Speaker 1: not the only person doing that, but certainly one of

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Speaker 1: them right, certainly on that edge. He kind of winds

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Speaker 1: up as a ward boss and a moderately wealthy small

396
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Speaker 1: business owner. And his son, Joseph P. Kennedy, was born

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Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty eight, kind of midway through his dad's

398
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Speaker 1: journey up the Democratic Party ladder. We can infer that

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Speaker 1: Patrick Joseph and his wife never quite got over the

400
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Speaker 1: frustration of being locked artificially out of advancing further. Mary

401
00:21:16,320 --> 00:21:19,720
Speaker 1: Augusta insisted on Joseph Patrick as the name for their

402
00:21:19,760 --> 00:21:23,800
Speaker 1: son rather than Patrick Joseph, because there's two stories. One

403
00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:25,720
Speaker 1: is that she didn't want him to be a junior, right,

404
00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:27,600
Speaker 1: thought that might be bad for him in some way,

405
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Speaker 1: It might be bad for his advancement. There's also claims

406
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Speaker 1: that she told relatives that she thought that Joseph Patrick

407
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Speaker 1: sounded less Irish than Patrick Joseph and honestly, those are

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Speaker 1: the two most Irish names I can conceive of.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if I had to rank them, she's right.

410
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Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm not going to do the accent. But

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Speaker 1: hearing I hear both of those names and an Irish

412
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Speaker 1: accent in my head.

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Speaker 2: One half the other. Yeah, really not really moving the

414
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Speaker 2: needle munch there.

415
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Speaker 1: Yeah, ah, yeah, nobody's gonna think Joseph Patrick's and irishman

416
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Speaker 1: not a very c but yeah, yeah, I don't really

417
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Speaker 1: know how much that worked for you. Horowitzen Collier, right.

418
00:22:05,760 --> 00:22:07,679
Speaker 1: She was proud of the status in the community that

419
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Speaker 1: Pj's political activity brought, you know where that for proper people,

420
00:22:10,880 --> 00:22:13,159
Speaker 1: the Bostonians had moved away from the Irish is of

421
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:17,359
Speaker 1: fearing contagion, politics had become a faintly disreputable profession. She

422
00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:20,000
Speaker 1: wanted Joe to be somebody in a way that her husband,

423
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Speaker 1: whatever his place in the hierarchy of Irish Boston, was

424
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Speaker 1: not sometimes Joe went with his father on his rounds

425
00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:28,159
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. He remembered one election

426
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Speaker 1: day when they were walking down the street and a

427
00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:32,600
Speaker 1: Kennedy lieutenant dashed up and proudly reported that he had

428
00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:34,639
Speaker 1: already voted one hundred and twenty eight guys.

429
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Oh that's gold.

430
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Speaker 1: That's the good stuff. That's just the good stuff. That's

431
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Speaker 1: that good Old timy got one and twenty.

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Speaker 2: I go out and participated in democracy as many Again.

433
00:22:55,080 --> 00:22:58,639
Speaker 1: I feel kind of similarly about democracy these days that

434
00:22:58,760 --> 00:23:00,760
Speaker 1: I do towards sports, where it's like, can't just let

435
00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:02,760
Speaker 1: them take all the all the crazy drugs they want.

436
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:04,640
Speaker 1: Let's see who can be the best at drugs. Yeah,

437
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:07,200
Speaker 1: let everybody cheats. Who's the best at cheating? Just go

438
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 1: for it? Why not give them all knives?

439
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:12,080
Speaker 2: Fuck it? Yeah, with the knife party now.

440
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:18,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody wants to get inside the Knife Party convention.

441
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:25,160
Speaker 2: Dangerous place, it wasn't there's two knives, Yeah, too many knives.

442
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:28,119
Speaker 1: That's not that far off from the fact that at

443
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:30,359
Speaker 1: the r n C and the soft zone around it,

444
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 1: guns are legal, but hard sighted water bottles are not,

445
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:35,240
Speaker 1: nor are soup cans.

446
00:23:35,800 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 2: Or tennis balls.

447
00:23:38,119 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 1: Balls backpacks larger than a certain size. Very funny bag rule.

448
00:23:43,560 --> 00:23:45,960
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, that's big enough to

449
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:48,160
Speaker 1: be a problem, but small enough to be annoying. Why

450
00:23:48,359 --> 00:23:49,440
Speaker 1: why is that your rule?

451
00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:50,959
Speaker 2: That makes no sense?

452
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:54,160
Speaker 1: You just explain what. Yeah, nobody can fit a bomb

453
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:59,159
Speaker 1: in a small backpack. That's what everyone knows. It's okay, everybody,

454
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:02,600
Speaker 1: It's gonna be good. It's going to be a fun convention. Yeah,

455
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 1: speaking of bombs, these products are the bomb. We are back,

456
00:24:14,560 --> 00:24:18,399
Speaker 1: my friends. We had returned to the podcast where we

457
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:22,440
Speaker 1: talk about Bobby Kennedy, but first we're going to talk

458
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 1: about Young Joe Kennedy. Mighty Joe Kennedy Young. We can

459
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 1: infer that he grew. I don't know why I did

460
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:31,800
Speaker 1: a Mighty Joe Young. That's not even a joke. Yeah

461
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:33,880
Speaker 1: you do. You've got it, you know, Cody. It's because

462
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:35,880
Speaker 1: we're hooked up the heart.

463
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 2: Exactly the people. The people are clamoring for more Mighty

464
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 2: Joe Young references.

465
00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:42,200
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, Thank god, we're going to give

466
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:45,679
Speaker 1: it to him. This is going to be what saves

467
00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: content from AI. Honestly, there's not enough Mighty Joe Young

468
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 1: and everyone's online discussions for the AI to make a

469
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:56,719
Speaker 1: good joke about it. They don't even know what it was,

470
00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: you know, to get AI to talk about Hoody and

471
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 1: the Blowfish. What's it gonna do. There's like three comments

472
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:06,720
Speaker 1: about that shit on the modern Internet anyway, Sorry Hoody,

473
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: not sorry to the Blowfish.

474
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 2: No, no, no, they know what they did.

475
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, Young Joe Kennedy, we can infer grew up with

476
00:25:13,640 --> 00:25:16,679
Speaker 1: a certain level of comfort around the idea of mild

477
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: to moderate criminality to further his political ends, right, that

478
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:22,720
Speaker 1: is the norm in his period of time, and it's

479
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 1: there's a lot of debate over how mobbed up this

480
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 1: guy was, but I don't really think any credible sources

481
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:32,199
Speaker 1: say none mobbed up right, right, Yeah, Yeah, It's not

482
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:34,280
Speaker 1: like a lot for his time. It's not a weird

483
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:36,640
Speaker 1: amount for his time, but it's not a nun right,

484
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:39,879
Speaker 1: it's not a zero involvement in organized.

485
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:41,440
Speaker 2: Crime at least plus one.

486
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:43,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, at least a little bit, right. You know.

487
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:46,919
Speaker 1: He also grows up wealthy at this point. The family

488
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:50,160
Speaker 1: is rich, right, They're not mega rich, which this Kennedy

489
00:25:50,200 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: is going to make them mega rich, but they are

490
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:54,879
Speaker 1: extremely comfortable. He has cared for nurses and maids and

491
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: butlers and cooks as a little kid, as a baby,

492
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 1: as a young man, his dad perch is a sixty

493
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: foot yacht that they have like a guy whose job

494
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:07,520
Speaker 1: it is just to pilot the yacht. So they're doing

495
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 1: very well. And it's understood that Joe's job is to

496
00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 1: go where his father could not and establish the name

497
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 1: Kennedy as a name to be reckoned with. As a

498
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: young man, he worked as a uniformed delivery driver for

499
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 1: a fancy hat company. He did other old timey jobs too.

500
00:26:22,400 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 1: Joe Kennedy has all of the old timey jobs. He

501
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,880
Speaker 1: sells candy on the street. Well, he works as a newsboy,

502
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 1: and he's this is my favorite. He has a part

503
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: time job is what's called a sabbath goy, which goy

504
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:37,159
Speaker 1: is a term for gentile for like create like a

505
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: Jewish term for or I think Kiddish term for like gentiles,

506
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 1: right for Christians. And his job was on the Sabbath,

507
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 1: he would go to Orthodox Jewish people's homes to like

508
00:26:47,040 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: light their stoves and light their candles. Nowadays, there's like

509
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:52,720
Speaker 1: automated systems for this because there's certain rules about what

510
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:54,879
Speaker 1: you shouldn't do. But you can also trick God a

511
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: little bit and get away with stuff. Yeah, which is

512
00:26:57,880 --> 00:26:59,400
Speaker 1: my favorite kind of religion.

513
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:03,439
Speaker 2: Oh, just like Hier Kennedy.

514
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:06,959
Speaker 1: Yeah, hired to Kennedy. There's there are some Jewish families

515
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 1: whose ancestors had the patriarch of the Kennedy family lighting

516
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 1: their Sabbath candles. And I don't know, kind of cool.

517
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:15,760
Speaker 1: Maybe it's you, listener, Maybe it's.

518
00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 2: You, Maybe it's you.

519
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:19,640
Speaker 1: Encouraged by his father, he is one of those kids

520
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: you might describe as a child businessman, right. He is

521
00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: a kid who has a lot of business ideas and

522
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: wants to be an entrepreneur. And I you know, I'm

523
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: on record as saying like that's a real big warning sign.

524
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, a kid. We don't need to go

525
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:36,919
Speaker 2: off on a huge tangent. But like a kid is

526
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 2: like super into politics, yeah, or super into business stuff.

527
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 2: Is like, dad, don't let that happen. You can't help

528
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:46,400
Speaker 2: get you get him on drugs.

529
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:50,920
Speaker 1: Look that I've been long on the record that schools

530
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:53,879
Speaker 1: need to have like a little emergency cabinet, where like

531
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 1: if a kid shows too much of an interest in politics,

532
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 1: you know, you give them a little bit of acid,

533
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 1: a little bit of hand herowin, you know, or close it.

534
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 1: Either way, do something different, do something different to their

535
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 1: minds is the important part. So he also it's interesting

536
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:17,679
Speaker 1: there's a period of time where he has an artistic

537
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:19,879
Speaker 1: bent too, so you do get the sense that, like

538
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:21,960
Speaker 1: maybe if someone had given him drugs at the right time,

539
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:23,880
Speaker 1: he might have wound up a very different person. Because

540
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: in addition to trying to start all these small businesses,

541
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:29,240
Speaker 1: he directs plays in the family yard, and he like

542
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: manages these fairly complex productions where he'll get a bunch

543
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: of people, he'll play roles, he'll have other people playing roles,

544
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 1: and he'll also have people collecting money. Like he'll be

545
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 1: actually running both running a business, but also he is

546
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 1: writing plays and like being in the yeah, which is

547
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 1: interesting and for an idea. One of his productions features

548
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: him in an Uncle Sam costume reading essays with titles

549
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: like Columbia the Gym of the Ocean. So it's like,

550
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 1: oh shit, that could be like in the background of

551
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: a BioShock game, like that boy Childhood.

552
00:28:59,560 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 2: It's like it's like a theater kid, but like with

553
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 2: like real sinister yeah, like just this like an adult

554
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 2: and a child just like, yeah, I'm gonna write play

555
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 2: like you're not.

556
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: Like this one's imagination. Yeah, yes, yes.

557
00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 2: Like the goal seems to be like, no, you're going

558
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 2: you want to You want to do the production of

559
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:23,880
Speaker 2: the play. You don't want to write plays and be

560
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 2: in them. You want the Yeah, and.

561
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: You want to be the center of it. Right, and yeah,

562
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: one does get the feeling. Obviously, children can't be diagnosed

563
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: as narcissists, but we also know enough about Joe Kennedy

564
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: to say that it's probably fair to say he was

565
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: a narciss early signs maybe, Yeah, so you know that's

566
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: my I don't like diagnosing people, but really, with Joe Kennedy,

567
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 1: I feel like you can't. Really, it's not a stretch,

568
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: you know. The best example of kind of the kind

569
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: of person he is becoming might be the little baseball

570
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 1: team that young Joe organized, which was named I don't

571
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:00,040
Speaker 1: know why. The reasons are lost the time, but the

572
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: the name of his baseball team is the Assumptions, and

573
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: he makes himself the coach, the business manager, and the

574
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: first baseman. I don't know why. The assumptions.

575
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 2: He's supposed to do everything. Yeah, odd name it's a

576
00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 2: good band name.

577
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: Actually good band name, yeah for sure. Yeah, solid band name. Yeah.

578
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: I want you to make an ass out of you.

579
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:21,840
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I don't know that that joke existed. Man,

580
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,160
Speaker 1: maybe creative, I don't think. Yeah, But it's really kind

581
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:28,160
Speaker 1: of a very strange name. I think it's it's got

582
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: to be that there's that like Babylonian joke, the first

583
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 1: record of like an actual structured joke that like the

584
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: punchline is something like a dog in a bar, and

585
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 1: like nobody actually knows what was supposed to be funny

586
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:41,959
Speaker 1: about it, but like we get, we get that it

587
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:44,959
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a joke. I had this experience.

588
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: I watched a nineteen eighty three live stand up performance

589
00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: with Robin Williams the other night, and I hadn't seen

590
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 1: him live for a while. In the first like ten

591
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 1: minutes or so, because both like the quality of the

592
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: video and because like some of the style of stand

593
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: up that he was doing is just people don't do

594
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: it anymore, I was like, Oh, I wonder if he's

595
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: just not funny anymore. And then he steps into the

596
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: crowd and starts taking things from people, and it becomes

597
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: like the funniest stand up set I've seen in my life.

598
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:15,280
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh no, he was. He is

599
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 1: as good as I remember. There's just some bits in

600
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 1: there that haven't aged. You couldn't do a lot of

601
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 1: what he did. Like he like starts drinking from somebody's

602
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 1: like liquor and like picks up a glass from someone's

603
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: table and drinks from it and makes a joke about

604
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 1: like sorry about the cold source, and then just moves

605
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:34,560
Speaker 1: on and picks up some lady's jacket from her table.

606
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: But like everybody's losing their fucking minds the whole time.

607
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 2: Of course, it's amazing stuff. Yeah, that's a moment you're experiencing.

608
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a moment. And also like we have lost

609
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: the technology to have a man beyond as much cocaine

610
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: as nineteen eighty three Robin Williams says, you just can't do. So, yeah,

611
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: we're talking about fucking Joe Kennedy. Here, he's got the

612
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 1: assumptions his baseball team. He's playing half of the team.

613
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: It sounds like, and I found this line from the

614
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: Collier in Horowitz book particularly enlightening. Some of his teammates

615
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: complained that they were functioning as second fiddles in a

616
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 1: one man band. Kennedy's sister Margaret, to whom he tossed

617
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 1: his glove to put away when he came home from

618
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: a game, always remembered his response, if you can't be captain,

619
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: don't play. And that gives you a lot, right both,

620
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: Like he comes home from the game, like throws his

621
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: glove to his sister, just knowing she'll put it away. Right,

622
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 1: that's kind of says everything about how he's raised and

623
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: his attitude. This is good because Joe Kennedy is the

624
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: guy who starts the Kennedys as a political dynastic. Right,

625
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: he is the patriarch of what the Kennedy's become and why.

626
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 1: I mean, you could say his dad was the one

627
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: who starred them in politics, but it's Joe that makes

628
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 1: them their fortune. And it's Joe who you know, is

629
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: the guy who makes.

630
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 2: Or does right, Like his dad was like, oh, like yeah,

631
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 2: kind of slowly got involved, was like I want to

632
00:32:57,280 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 2: do a politics. I want to be the captain of

633
00:32:59,880 --> 00:33:00,360
Speaker 2: the world.

634
00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: Yes, right, right, And Joe is whatever else you want

635
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,640
Speaker 1: to say about him, an intensely capable man. Right, there's

636
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: no disagreement about that, right. He's also an intensely bad

637
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: man in my opinion. Again, he orders later in life

638
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: ay a lobotomy on his daughter because she's like, likes

639
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: boys too much. Right, that's the gist of what goes down.

640
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 1: We've talked about this in the lobotomy episodes. But uh,

641
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:26,680
Speaker 1: he's capable. He's incredibly good at everything he puts his

642
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: hand to, monstrous things. But he's also just like, no

643
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: one else in the Kennedy family is really going to be.

644
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 1: RFK might have wound up that way, if you know,

645
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: the thing that happened hadn't happened, But like JFK really isn't,

646
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:43,360
Speaker 1: you know, Like JFK is to a significant extent supported

647
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 1: by the folks around him. Joe Kennedy is the most

648
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: capable I think of the Kennedys that I have read about.

649
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: And it's not for nothing that by the time he

650
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 1: comes around, he is our our Now we are in

651
00:33:57,280 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 1: our second generation of Kennedy boys who are raised by

652
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 1: a crowd of sisters and aunts who make the boy

653
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 1: or the boys their primary responsibility, right, and Joe is

654
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 1: the first era in which this is happening, and the

655
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:14,359
Speaker 1: Kennedy's are kind of wealthy. Right, So he grows up

656
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,200
Speaker 1: egocentric and obsessed with the idea of proving his own

657
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:20,040
Speaker 1: in the family's greatness. But he is also the last

658
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: Kennedy that where they're like, there's enough connection to the

659
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: real world that he's really capable of understanding it or succeeds.

660
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: I think, because things are going to get a lot

661
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:35,440
Speaker 1: more deranged after this point, right, I don't fully know why,

662
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 1: but that's kind of my read.

663
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the pressure that we've talked about so

664
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 2: far is one aspect of it. But then like you

665
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 2: just add like, oh, yeah, you're also growing up wealthy

666
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:47,840
Speaker 2: end of story.

667
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, at a certain point, it's like making

668
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 1: copies of clones or whatever. You've just like introduced too

669
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: many transcription errors that.

670
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 2: Have gotten a multiple situation.

671
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's exactly. It's the multiplay. He is actually

672
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: inspired by the Kennedy family.

673
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:03,520
Speaker 2: True.

674
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: So Joe does well enough that with some of his

675
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: dad's money, he gets accepted to Harvard, where one classmate

676
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: said he quotes sucked up to important people quite ingloriously

677
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: and without scruple, which sounds about right to me. He

678
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 1: is a bad student, shockingly bad when it comes to

679
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 1: technical stuff like finance, and this is shocking because he's

680
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 1: going to be one of the most successful bankers of

681
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: all time. So I kind of think Harvard might just

682
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: suck as a school because he's clearly not bad at this.

683
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 2: He's also like at that point, like organized so many

684
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:36,879
Speaker 2: different things and like, yeah, been able, like you're saying,

685
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 2: like very capable of the manager, like all the things.

686
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, this might this might just speak to the quality

687
00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:49,320
Speaker 1: of Harvard's education at the time. He's not wildly successful

688
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: socially either. He's not great with people, but he does

689
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:55,200
Speaker 1: manage to catch the eye of the Mayor's daughter, the

690
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:58,759
Speaker 1: mayor of I think Boston's daughter Rose Fitzgerald, from which

691
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: I think John gets the f at Kennedy. I think

692
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: that's why fitz Gerald comes into the family. Joe becomes

693
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 1: a banker. Long story short, again, this is not we

694
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 1: could actually maybe will do a whole series of episodes

695
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: on Joe. But he becomes a banker. He starts as

696
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:16,360
Speaker 1: an examiner for the state government with all of the

697
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:20,600
Speaker 1: corruption that implies. Right again, the debate is like how

698
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 1: mobbed up was he? But there's no no involvement in

699
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: corruption and crime if you're anywhere close to this part

700
00:36:26,040 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: of the political process in the period, right there's.

701
00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 2: No zero before he got some stuff on you, You've got.

702
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: Something going on right before long, through some complicated and

703
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:38,840
Speaker 1: questionable financial maneuvering, he's able to put together the loans

704
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: and investments to buy a bank of his own, and

705
00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: Joe Kennedy becomes the nation's youngest bank president at age

706
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 1: twenty five. His goal at this point is to become

707
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: a millionaire by age thirty five, which is a sign

708
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 1: of how modest his ambitions were compared to where they

709
00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: were end up would end up. And for an idea

710
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: of that, he dies worth at least like half a

711
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:01,239
Speaker 1: billion dollars, you know, he's extraordinarily well, like half a

712
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: billion dollars, and we're talking a while ago. He passes

713
00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:06,799
Speaker 1: in like seventy sixty nine something like that, so like

714
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: that's a lot more money.

715
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 2: He became a billionaire.

716
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,400
Speaker 1: Base yeah, yeah, e fact, yeah, for all intents purses.

717
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 1: Right now, there are again persistent allegations that he was

718
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 1: heavily involved in bootlegging and more serious crimes during the

719
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 1: prohibition years. Years. I don't think this is true that

720
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:26,200
Speaker 1: he's like a bootlegger doing like actual like fucking Capone,

721
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 1: you know, kind of shit. I think it is kind

722
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:32,240
Speaker 1: of the sorts of corruption that a lot more people

723
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 1: are involved in. His biographer, David Nassau, claims to have

724
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:38,360
Speaker 1: found no hard or even very soft evidence of like

725
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: bootlegging and researching his book The Patriarch, And I believe

726
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: David when he's like, I would have loved to have

727
00:37:43,680 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: that in my book about him, Like that's fun.

728
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:46,800
Speaker 2: I just can't.

729
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, speaking of not being involved in bootlegging, I

730
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: can't prove any of our advertisers are involved in bootlegging.

731
00:37:56,719 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 1: No hard evidence, no hard evidence, no proof. You know,

732
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:02,320
Speaker 1: a lot of allegations, all make some of them, but

733
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:11,759
Speaker 1: no proof. Ah, we're back. So most of these allegations

734
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 1: of bootlegging and really serious criminal involvement from Joe don't

735
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,440
Speaker 1: crop up until the late sixties, so they're part of

736
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: the mythos around the Kennedy assassinations.

737
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:22,239
Speaker 2: Right.

738
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: As this article for history dot Com notes, various mafia

739
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:28,239
Speaker 1: characters came out of the woodwork to back up the

740
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:32,160
Speaker 1: accusations against Kennedy. Al Capone's piano tuner said that he

741
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:36,000
Speaker 1: overheard conversations between scarface and the elder Kennedy. The ex

742
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 1: wife of another Chicago mobster, claimed her son used to

743
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 1: do business with Kennedy. NASA doesn't believe these stories, mostly

744
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,480
Speaker 1: because Richard Nixon, when he was running against JFK in

745
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:48,120
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty hired a team of opposition researchers to investigate

746
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: the Kennedy clan. They found all sorts of dirt on

747
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:54,080
Speaker 1: Joe Kennedy, says Nasau, but not that he was a bootlegger.

748
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 1: And I think that's a fair way to listen out.

749
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, he's doing crimes because you have

750
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 1: to to be involved in politics and business banking at

751
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:06,279
Speaker 1: his level. There's not people who own banks today who

752
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:09,719
Speaker 1: aren't doing some crimes. Right, But he's not running rum

753
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 1: because why would he be, right, what's the Yeah, where

754
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: does that get Joe? Yeah, so where he does make

755
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:19,880
Speaker 1: his fortune is as shady as bootlegging. Hollywood, and again,

756
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: Hollywood in the twenties is also very organized crime. A

757
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 1: lot of the Hollywood studio families got their start as

758
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 1: like these were primarily like Jewish gangsters in the East

759
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:31,920
Speaker 1: Coast who move over to the West Coast for a

760
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:34,600
Speaker 1: variety of reasons. But like that is the root of

761
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:38,839
Speaker 1: a lot of early cinema money. Right, it does come

762
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:41,040
Speaker 1: out of crime, because like a lot of it's porn, right,

763
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:43,440
Speaker 1: Like that's that's how a big chunk of this industry

764
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 1: gets its start. Joe Kennedy buys a dying studio and

765
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: he reorganizes it to mass produce what we would now

766
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 1: call b movies. Nasau thinks this is where a huge

767
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,839
Speaker 1: amount of his early money comes from, right, And he's

768
00:39:57,960 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 1: he's able to make this profitable not just because like

769
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: the movies make money, but because he is one of

770
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:05,320
Speaker 1: the first CEOs to demand his pay and stock options,

771
00:40:05,520 --> 00:40:08,240
Speaker 1: and he is really good at manipulating stock prices.

772
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:10,520
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, we love to do that.

773
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:11,560
Speaker 1: We love we love to do.

774
00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 2: That's making fake money.

775
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 1: And a lot of what he's doing is stuff that

776
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: is illegal. Now we would say, like he's insider trading now,

777
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:22,840
Speaker 1: but it's not illegal back then, right, So, like it's shady,

778
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 1: but he's really not breaking the law as much as

779
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 1: people would think. Right. Joe is a guy with a

780
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 1: lot of eyes everywhere, and so he sees the nineteen

781
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:34,160
Speaker 1: twenty nine crash coming and he sells off basically everything

782
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: he's got and then he shorts the entire US economy

783
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: basically like he shorts the stock market, and that is

784
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:44,320
Speaker 1: the primary source of the Kennedy fortune. Right, he bets

785
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:47,239
Speaker 1: all of this money that he's accumulated on the Great

786
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: Depression happening, and Black Tuesday makes him one of the

787
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:52,879
Speaker 1: richest men in the country. That is the Kennedy money.

788
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 1: They short in America.

789
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 2: That's so darkly poetic.

790
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, nice work, he can get it. Yeah, you know,

791
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 1: maybe I'll do something like that for this fucking election,

792
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: to throw all my money on RFK.

793
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:11,799
Speaker 2: I mean, where there's some there's there's a way to

794
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:14,240
Speaker 2: bet against America that will make share so much money.

795
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, there's a certain kind of betting on America

796
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:19,360
Speaker 1: that will always work. The trouble is figuring out in

797
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:22,719
Speaker 1: any given moment what that kind of betting against America is.

798
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: Joe's always going to be great at making money. This

799
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: is a thing that he never really loses his head for.

800
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 1: And again he dies worth half a billion dollars or so.

801
00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's kind of unclear entirely. And

802
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: this is where the Kennedy family fortune comes from. Because

803
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 1: no subsequent members of his family are nearly this successful,

804
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:44,600
Speaker 1: and they don't have to be. But Joe never managed

805
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: to build up momentum in the area that mattered most

806
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: to him, which is elected office. Right, as we'll talk about,

807
00:41:50,520 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: he's influential in politics. He becomes a powerful man, but

808
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 1: he doesn't like get elected places. That's not really how

809
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: he makes his way in. And so as he starts

810
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:04,399
Speaker 1: having kids in the early nineteen hundreds, nine of them,

811
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: he lets the boys know that a lot is expected

812
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 1: of them, Right, I am having use because like me,

813
00:42:10,640 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: I want, like my dad said with me, I want

814
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: you to go further than I went, right, I want

815
00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:17,279
Speaker 1: to I want the Kennedys are going to run this

816
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: fucking country.

817
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 2: That's so much like, yeah, like I did better than

818
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,320
Speaker 2: my dad, and you're gonna do better than me. Also,

819
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:26,760
Speaker 2: I'm worth five hundred million dollars.

820
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,480
Speaker 1: Yes, it's the it's the difference because like, the healthy

821
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:31,440
Speaker 1: version of that is like I want my kid to

822
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 1: be like happier than me, to have ID which is

823
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: the whole reason why we have civilization. Right, everybody, basically

824
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:42,680
Speaker 1: everybody normal feels that way. But some people feel the

825
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 1: toxic version of this, which is my kid had better

826
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: do better than me, or there's going to be held

827
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: a pack.

828
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:49,120
Speaker 2: And like do better, you know, in a like a

829
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 2: warp sort of like whatever your personal idea of success is, yeah,

830
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 2: in which case is running everything, running everything right, capital right,

831
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 2: because if you're not the captain, there's not worth.

832
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:02,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, why fucking play if you're not the captain.

833
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:02,640
Speaker 2: Right.

834
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: He spent his later working life and his period of

835
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 1: greatest influence adjacent to elected power. In World War One,

836
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:11,399
Speaker 1: he's on I think it's the war production border something.

837
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:14,360
Speaker 1: He's helping to organize war production. Right. So because he's

838
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 1: he's good at this kind of stuff, right, he's a

839
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:17,839
Speaker 1: good guy to put in that job, and he does

840
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 1: well at it.

841
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 2: He's not charismatic or likable in the way that can

842
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:22,360
Speaker 2: get you elected.

843
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:24,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's he is a good man to have

844
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 1: doing a lot of nuts and bolt shit right. In

845
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,080
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, FDR appoints him to be the first

846
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 1: head of the SEC. He is the first Security's inn

847
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 1: Exchange commission guy we have and it's the guy that's

848
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: short extended. He wasn't technically doing crimes, but it was legal,

849
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 1: then mother was legal.

850
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:44,399
Speaker 2: Then that's gone so much.

851
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: Post Man's great yeah, he love to say it. His

852
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: final reward is a cushy gig as US Ambassador to

853
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 1: Great Britain kind of as at the last you know,

854
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:57,479
Speaker 1: a couple of years, Like it's like thirty eight to forty,

855
00:43:57,520 --> 00:44:00,080
Speaker 1: so it's like in that last period, right as a

856
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 1: World War two starts, and the reason why he has

857
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:05,960
Speaker 1: to stop being the US Ambassador to Great Britain is

858
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: that he kind of wants the Nazis to win. And

859
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 1: like during the Battle of Britain he makes a statement

860
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:15,440
Speaker 1: that democracy is finished in England and maybe finished in

861
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:16,279
Speaker 1: the US too.

862
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:21,879
Speaker 2: Great man, you can't say stuff like that, and you can.

863
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:26,479
Speaker 1: He thought he was almost able to. Yeah, a couple

864
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:28,799
Speaker 1: of things had broken different, you might have been able

865
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 1: to say that in the US, but you are right.

866
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 1: You're not able to say that in the US. And

867
00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:35,720
Speaker 1: this is kind of he gets sort of disgraced by this, Right.

868
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 2: That's good.

869
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that party.

870
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:40,919
Speaker 2: We love when people get disgraced for saying things like that. Yeah,

871
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 2: it's good.

872
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 1: It's not popular to say that to people who are

873
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: actively getting bombed and who are like responding to being

874
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 1: bombed the way the British did in World War Two.

875
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:51,240
Speaker 1: You're not going to be very welcome on the island

876
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: much longer. Reading a room might be why he didn't

877
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:56,760
Speaker 1: wasn't good at getting elected.

878
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:02,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, seems like maybe he didn't read wind. Yeah yeah, yeah.

879
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he's his first son, the first of the

880
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: Kennedy boys, Joe Junior, was born in nineteen fifteen, and

881
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:14,919
Speaker 1: he's pretty clearly groomed for the presidency, right. I don't

882
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 1: know how discreet the plan is to make him president,

883
00:45:17,520 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 1: but he's like, I want you to go as far

884
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:21,560
Speaker 1: as possible, right, and to do that you have to

885
00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 1: like make a name for yourself and extend sort of

886
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,839
Speaker 1: the glory of the family. And also it's not just you.

887
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: I've got all these other kids. I've got you know,

888
00:45:31,400 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy, I've got Robert Kennedy, I've got Ted Kennedy,

889
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:37,760
Speaker 1: and all of them are going to bs to compete

890
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,239
Speaker 1: as kids whenever they're like swimming, when they're playing like

891
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 1: football in the yard, when they're doing it, like they're

892
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: constantly in competition with each other, and Joe is constantly

893
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 1: setting them in competition with each other, and they are

894
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: all raised go as far as you can do more

895
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: than I was able to do, and you are constantly

896
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:58,280
Speaker 1: measuring yourself against your brothers. Right. This has very early

897
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:01,799
Speaker 1: on some calamitous results for the family because when World

898
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: War Two breaks out, this competition extends to wartime service.

899
00:46:06,080 --> 00:46:09,080
Speaker 1: The elder Kennedy Boys, which came to include John F.

900
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: Kennedy in nineteen seventeen and then Robert didn't just join

901
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 1: the military. They had to do the most impressive things

902
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:18,520
Speaker 1: they could do in the military. John becomes a pt

903
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 1: boat commander and we're not going to go into the

904
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: whole Pt one oh nine story, but his ship goes down.

905
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: There's I think a lot of people argue because of

906
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: mistakes that he and others made right that like they

907
00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:32,840
Speaker 1: fucked up, which is why this happened in the first place.

908
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: But he does legitimately help get a lot of the

909
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:38,360
Speaker 1: survivors out, like in a way that is heroic, and

910
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 1: Joe is able to spin this into an act of

911
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 1: this whole thing into an act of heroism, right, And

912
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 1: it's kind of have to ignore the fact that there

913
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 1: were some fuck ups along the line, but it works. Liker.

914
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:51,360
Speaker 1: The pr version of this plays right because America is

915
00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: looking for war heroes at that time and they find

916
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 1: one in JFK. This spurs Joe, his brother has now

917
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: become a public war hero. And Joe is, you know,

918
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: by any one stretch of the imagination, doing a heroic thing.

919
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: He is a bomber pilot flying bombing missions daylight raids

920
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: over Western Europe, one of the most insanely things and

921
00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 1: insanely dangerous things any group of human beings has ever done. Right,

922
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: and he flies the required there's something like twenty missions

923
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 1: you have to fly, and at that point you can stop,

924
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:26,560
Speaker 1: right because it's so dangerous, like once you've redid. Yeah,

925
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:29,120
Speaker 1: But when he hits that, he's like, that's not enough.

926
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:31,799
Speaker 1: I still have not you know, like I have to

927
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: measure myself against JFK. So he keeps doing missions after

928
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: the point at which he wouldn't have had to continue

929
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: doing missions, and he gets shot down and killed late

930
00:47:40,960 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: in the war, and hey, that he's a hero in

931
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: my book, Like that had to be done, like the

932
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 1: like fighting the Nazis. And he goes down fighting the Nazis.

933
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 1: But you can already see this competition legacy thing is

934
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:55,799
Speaker 1: getting the.

935
00:47:55,719 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 2: First kill killed, yes, yes, God, especially like after like

936
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 2: your Dad's like, I don't know the Nazis are aren't

937
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 2: so bad.

938
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 1: Right, and that maybe that's part of why they have

939
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,319
Speaker 1: to go in so hard for like World War Two.

940
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 1: We don't like this. Actually, Dan did not want me

941
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:24,879
Speaker 1: flying bombing missions over here. Yeah, but yeah, so again,

942
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 1: and you know there's there's debate over aspects of this,

943
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:30,879
Speaker 1: but that is what happens. Joe goes down and thus

944
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: JFK is going to become the first and so far

945
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:39,880
Speaker 1: only Kennedy president. His brother and I'm YadA YadA ying

946
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:42,920
Speaker 1: a lot here, but Robert also gets into politics and

947
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: is very successful early on. He is one of Joe

948
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:49,680
Speaker 1: McCarthy's guys for a period of time. He is like

949
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: involved in the Lavender scare, but he kind of gets

950
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 1: edged out because Roy Cohne, who like doesn't like him.

951
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:00,160
Speaker 1: He and Roy Cohne kind of are like enemies in it,

952
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:04,839
Speaker 1: but not because RFK is like better about McCarthyism, right,

953
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: he is pretty invested in McCarthyism. That said, he becomes

954
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 1: the attorney General of the country when his brother is

955
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:15,359
Speaker 1: the president. He's going to be a congressman after that,

956
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:18,719
Speaker 1: but it's during this brief era where his brother is

957
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:22,120
Speaker 1: the president and he's the attorney general. This era just

958
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:25,440
Speaker 1: lasts a couple years. But this is Camelot, right, this

959
00:49:25,600 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 1: is the period of time that people call camelot, and

960
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:34,640
Speaker 1: it's legitimately like a heady time to be a Kennedy.

961
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 1: And this is the period of time, this very brief

962
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:41,560
Speaker 1: period where JFK is the president, RFK is the Attorney General.

963
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: And it's very clear to everyone after JFK finishes being

964
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,480
Speaker 1: the president, Bobby Kennedy's probably going to become president.

965
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:48,719
Speaker 2: Right.

966
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of people who doubt that even

967
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 1: at the time. He is that kind of and he

968
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: does his again, he like wiretaps Martin Luther King Junior.

969
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:59,560
Speaker 1: You know, like there's a lot to criticize about this,

970
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 1: but from the perspective of the populace, these are two handsome, young, intelligent,

971
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:08,400
Speaker 1: capable men. One of them is the president. His brother's

972
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:11,319
Speaker 1: probably going to be president next. The American economy is

973
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:15,160
Speaker 1: like half of the world economy. Of course, people remember

974
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 1: this is a golden age, you know, yeah, I know.

975
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 1: And it says a lot that it lasts, yeah, like

976
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 1: two years something like that. You know, it's times not

977
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 1: a long period, you know. So and again, but this

978
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:30,840
Speaker 1: is the period that that RFK Junior, our RFK junior,

979
00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 1: the subject of these episodes, is going to have his

980
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 1: first memories. And Robert Francis Kennedy Junior was born on

981
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: January seventeenth, nineteen fifty four, in the Georgetown University Hospital.

982
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: His father, Robert, had married a member of the wealthy

983
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:50,719
Speaker 1: Scackle family, also part of the budding US aristocracy. This

984
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 1: part gets left out a lot in the histories, but

985
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:57,200
Speaker 1: rfk's wife is Ethel Kennedy originally Ethel Skakel, and they're

986
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: they're kind of a unique sort of quiverful type, you know,

987
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:02,360
Speaker 1: the quiver FLEs like believe we need to have as

988
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:06,160
Speaker 1: many kids as possible to create soldiers for the army

989
00:51:06,160 --> 00:51:09,399
Speaker 1: of God. We're going to gain control of the nation

990
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 1: by swarming them with our kids, who will take your

991
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 1: trip doctors in power. Ethel and RFK believe that, but

992
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: just for themselves, Like not everyone should do this, but

993
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:21,840
Speaker 1: we are going to have all of the children possible

994
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:24,920
Speaker 1: so that we can we can flood the government with

995
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:27,520
Speaker 1: Kennedy's who will take control of the levels of power.

996
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 1: They have eleven kids, you know, like you're not doing

997
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 1: that unless you really have a reason, right and Ethel

998
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:38,680
Speaker 1: is a very driven woman. She's a controversial woman. One

999
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: depiction of her is she's basically a saint, and the

1000
00:51:41,040 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 1: other depiction is she's kind of a monster. It winds

1001
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:45,840
Speaker 1: up in the middle one way or the other. But

1002
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 1: she's a she's a very driven person. There's no arguing

1003
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:51,359
Speaker 1: with that. And like, within sort of the context of

1004
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: what can be done in this family, the boys are

1005
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:56,759
Speaker 1: going to be the ones who hold office, but you

1006
00:51:56,960 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 1: can you can be part of the Kennedy greatness by

1007
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: creating a bunch of those boys, right and creating some

1008
00:52:04,640 --> 00:52:06,799
Speaker 1: daughters who are going to help raise and take care

1009
00:52:06,840 --> 00:52:09,440
Speaker 1: of those boys, because the women in the family are

1010
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: focused on the men, right. And yeah, her, her whole

1011
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: thing is I'm in a birth an aristocracy all on

1012
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:20,200
Speaker 1: my own. RFK Junior from a very young age. The

1013
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:22,360
Speaker 1: primary thing everyone knows about him is that he is

1014
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:25,840
Speaker 1: always obsessed with animals. He is he kind of is

1015
00:52:25,880 --> 00:52:28,840
Speaker 1: almost maybe even a savant with animals. He is really

1016
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 1: good and with every kind of animal he loves. He

1017
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:35,759
Speaker 1: loves everything that's not human beings. Meethel claimed that as

1018
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:38,840
Speaker 1: a baby, he is fascinated by the bugs hees crawling

1019
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 1: in the garden before he is ten. He has a

1020
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:44,279
Speaker 1: whole menagerie, a swarm of pets, and some of these

1021
00:52:44,280 --> 00:52:47,319
Speaker 1: are normal, rich kid pets. He's got a horse, obviously, right,

1022
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 1: he's a Kennedy, of course, of course. Yeah. But there's

1023
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 1: also weird stuff. He has pet raccoons, he has pet lizards.

1024
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:56,880
Speaker 1: He has thousands of crickets to feed the lizards. In

1025
00:52:56,920 --> 00:52:59,799
Speaker 1: the book RFK Junior Robert F. Kennedy Junior and the

1026
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 1: Dark Side of the Dream, biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, who I

1027
00:53:03,239 --> 00:53:05,800
Speaker 1: do not like, tells this story. The two thousand and

1028
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,120
Speaker 1: eight thriller Snakes on a Plane could have been based

1029
00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 1: on an experience Bobby had as a kid when he

1030
00:53:10,640 --> 00:53:12,719
Speaker 1: took a sack of his pet reptiles and a poet

1031
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:15,759
Speaker 1: a flight from Washington National to LaGuardia in New York,

1032
00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 1: and all of the slithery, scary things accidentally got loose

1033
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 1: mid flight as female passengers screamed and may have jumped

1034
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:24,520
Speaker 1: up onto their seats. Bobby crawled around and gathered them

1035
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: all up.

1036
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 2: Oh that's I mean, this is.

1037
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 1: More like it's hard not to like having do it.

1038
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 2: A Snakes on a play just like liking animals A lot.

1039
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:40,520
Speaker 2: I dig that he posted a video the other day

1040
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:43,319
Speaker 2: of just like I found this weird lizard, and he

1041
00:53:43,560 --> 00:53:45,640
Speaker 2: explained what it was and like what it did, and

1042
00:53:45,680 --> 00:53:47,879
Speaker 2: he just seems to That's.

1043
00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:49,799
Speaker 1: One thing that I think is absolutely true of him

1044
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:52,160
Speaker 1: is that not only does he like and raise animals,

1045
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,680
Speaker 1: but he understands a lot about them. He actually spends

1046
00:53:54,680 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 1: a lot of his life like on all of these

1047
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,520
Speaker 1: sort of like safaris. He spends you know, months of

1048
00:53:59,520 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 1: his life with native tribes and the Amazon and shit.

1049
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:05,080
Speaker 1: Like he again, it's not weird that he got a worm.

1050
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:05,359
Speaker 2: In his brain.

1051
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:07,920
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No, a lot of his life in the

1052
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: wild eating bush.

1053
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:12,160
Speaker 2: Meat, yeah, and dougs and dogs.

1054
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:13,680
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. Yeah, probably where he.

1055
00:54:13,680 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 2: Got that brain worm. Very very unsurprising that they had

1056
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:20,160
Speaker 2: a worm part of his brain, Yeah, allegedly.

1057
00:54:20,640 --> 00:54:23,640
Speaker 1: Yeah. There are some mysteries about RFK Junior. That's not

1058
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:29,320
Speaker 1: one of salves early on solved early on. Now again,

1059
00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:33,120
Speaker 1: this biography by Oppenheimer, like the one by Collier and Horowitz,

1060
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good criticisms, but I will make

1061
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:39,080
Speaker 1: again he starts he's making snakes on a plane. Comparisons

1062
00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:41,359
Speaker 1: the RFK Junior book. I've got part of why I

1063
00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:45,160
Speaker 1: like it is it it's published before he's a political figure.

1064
00:54:45,160 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 1: It comes out in twenty fifteen, so it is not

1065
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 1: tainted by everything that's happening now, right, So that is

1066
00:54:49,719 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: a really useful perspective to have on the man. And

1067
00:54:52,200 --> 00:54:54,160
Speaker 1: it talks to a shitload of people, a lot of

1068
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:56,560
Speaker 1: primary sources who grew up with him, so you can't

1069
00:54:56,560 --> 00:55:00,520
Speaker 1: ignore it. But Oppenheimer is like super homophobic. Talk about

1070
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 1: that later, and like you can even see some of

1071
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:07,320
Speaker 1: like the bullshit where he's like probably female passengers screamed

1072
00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:09,479
Speaker 1: and jumped up onto their seating. Well know what said that?

1073
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: You just you just want it to be more like

1074
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:13,279
Speaker 1: snakes on the plane than maybe it was.

1075
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:16,400
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and that passage like did ping me. I

1076
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:18,359
Speaker 2: was like, wait, yes, yeah it should. He's basic.

1077
00:55:18,680 --> 00:55:21,520
Speaker 1: Yah, it's not a good biography. He's not a good biographer.

1078
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:23,520
Speaker 1: But you also can't discard it because there's just a

1079
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:25,319
Speaker 1: lot of ship that we get from it that we

1080
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:26,560
Speaker 1: don't get anywhere else.

1081
00:55:26,600 --> 00:55:28,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's the first part of the story

1082
00:55:28,880 --> 00:55:31,440
Speaker 2: is true. Great, thanks for telling me that. He right,

1083
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 2: he probably did. Look, he's not I don't think Oppenheimer

1084
00:55:34,640 --> 00:55:35,400
Speaker 2: makes shit up.

1085
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:36,399
Speaker 1: I think he's just.

1086
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:43,760
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, this says your suject right.

1087
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:47,680
Speaker 1: Right right, So yeah. While modern quiverful families have shitloaded

1088
00:55:47,719 --> 00:55:49,920
Speaker 1: kids in the hope of flooding our democracy, Ethel and

1089
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:51,839
Speaker 1: Robert did the same thing with the knowledge that their

1090
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:55,399
Speaker 1: children are definitely going to inherit political power. They are

1091
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:58,399
Speaker 1: consciously breeding a ruling class. By the time r. FK

1092
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 1: Junior is eight, everyone knows RFK is going to be

1093
00:56:01,480 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 1: the president when John has done in office, and you know,

1094
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:06,480
Speaker 1: no one's really sure about Teddy, but it seems like,

1095
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:08,680
Speaker 1: you know, he's probably gonna winde up. And obviously Teddy

1096
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:12,080
Speaker 1: Kennedy is an incredibly successful politician. If a certain thing

1097
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about later hadn't happened, he might have

1098
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:18,280
Speaker 1: been the president. It is not unrealistic in this period

1099
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:21,280
Speaker 1: where RFK Junior is making his earliest memories, to expect

1100
00:56:21,360 --> 00:56:24,960
Speaker 1: the country might see three separate Kennedy presidencies, maybe in

1101
00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:27,839
Speaker 1: a row. It's not wild at that point to think

1102
00:56:27,880 --> 00:56:31,160
Speaker 1: we might have twenty four straight years Kennedy's running the country.

1103
00:56:31,200 --> 00:56:35,400
Speaker 1: You know, that's not a bad prediction to make in

1104
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:38,560
Speaker 1: this period of time. And as a result, all eyes

1105
00:56:38,800 --> 00:56:41,640
Speaker 1: from the beginning of his life are on RFK Junior

1106
00:56:41,680 --> 00:56:44,799
Speaker 1: and his generation of Kennedy's because everyone knows if they're

1107
00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 1: not going to be president, they'll probably be in Congress.

1108
00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:49,319
Speaker 1: Some of them might be judges, you know, someone might

1109
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:52,879
Speaker 1: be governors. Right, these are the people who are going

1110
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:56,080
Speaker 1: to run the country. And the whole country knows this.

1111
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:58,200
Speaker 1: And so all of these Kennedy kids grow up under

1112
00:56:58,200 --> 00:57:01,720
Speaker 1: an insane microscope, the degree of and it's a pressure

1113
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:04,960
Speaker 1: that was completely absent from Joe Kennedy and from JFK

1114
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:06,920
Speaker 1: and RFK. Right, they have the pressure off you need

1115
00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: to be president, but there's not the amount of spotlight.

1116
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:14,960
Speaker 2: All the public perception pressure. It's just like within the family,

1117
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:17,560
Speaker 2: you have your dad telling you got to do this,

1118
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:20,720
Speaker 2: and now the world is saying and you're going to.

1119
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:23,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, And all of you are going to we're all

1120
00:57:23,200 --> 00:57:26,840
Speaker 1: expecting that yes. And I want to quote now from

1121
00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 1: the book The Kennedys by Collier in Horowitz. They were,

1122
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:32,720
Speaker 1: as one journalist had remarked, America's children. Yet while they

1123
00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 1: had been in the spotlight all their lives, they had

1124
00:57:34,680 --> 00:57:37,800
Speaker 1: a curious innocence. The important outsiders attached to being a

1125
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 1: Kennedy amused them. They goked back at the tourists who

1126
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: peeked through the hedges at Hayannas. They scooped up sand

1127
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:45,880
Speaker 1: from the public beach and sold it as Kennedy sand

1128
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: for a dollar a bag. They stood at the fence

1129
00:57:48,280 --> 00:57:51,480
Speaker 1: and answered Kennedy questions. What does Jackie eat for breakfast?

1130
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 1: Where did the Kennedy shop? For a quarter? Apiece asked

1131
00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:57,160
Speaker 1: what it meant to be a Kennedy. Bobby's son David

1132
00:57:57,200 --> 00:57:59,680
Speaker 1: had once replied and means that we're exactly the same

1133
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:07,480
Speaker 1: as if everybody else, except better. Things are going well

1134
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:08,320
Speaker 1: with these kids.

1135
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:11,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, people should be raised.

1136
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:15,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to continue that quote. They competed with

1137
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:18,680
Speaker 1: other children in swim meets and sailing contests, succeeding so

1138
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:21,680
Speaker 1: well that Haannisport officials barred them from a certain number

1139
00:58:21,720 --> 00:58:24,600
Speaker 1: of these competitions every season so that other residents could

1140
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:27,360
Speaker 1: win some ribbons. The competition within their own group was

1141
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: far more intense, far more metaphoric of what they saw

1142
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 1: as the challenge of their lives. Each of them was

1143
00:58:32,160 --> 00:58:34,880
Speaker 1: always looking for an opening to outperform some rival in

1144
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:37,600
Speaker 1: the family, always searching for an opportunity to improve his

1145
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:40,200
Speaker 1: or her standing, always wondering if someone in an age

1146
00:58:40,280 --> 00:58:43,240
Speaker 1: orability group just above them would slip, always aware above

1147
00:58:43,240 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: all else that their parents were watching and assessing their

1148
00:58:45,960 --> 00:58:48,440
Speaker 1: performance to see which of them had it. If the

1149
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:50,960
Speaker 1: Beale Street house, where some of the prior Kennedy generation

1150
00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:53,920
Speaker 1: were born, had been an enigma of latency, the compound

1151
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:56,800
Speaker 1: where this generation gathered every summer was a training ground

1152
00:58:57,000 --> 00:58:59,560
Speaker 1: to recapture the achieved greatness that had once belonged to

1153
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:02,640
Speaker 1: the family. As Chris Lawford said later, we were all,

1154
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:04,920
Speaker 1: every one of us raised to be president.

1155
00:59:05,120 --> 00:59:06,360
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1156
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:07,000
Speaker 1: So that's great.

1157
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 2: That's cool.

1158
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 1: Good way to raise kids.

1159
00:59:08,480 --> 00:59:08,840
Speaker 2: That's good.

1160
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:09,640
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1161
00:59:09,680 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 2: And they all turned out normal.

1162
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:13,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they all turned out normal. Speaking of normal,

1163
00:59:14,160 --> 00:59:17,680
Speaker 1: one story RFK Junior is later going to tell of

1164
00:59:17,720 --> 00:59:19,680
Speaker 1: his childhood is about one of his few visits to

1165
00:59:19,720 --> 00:59:22,960
Speaker 1: the Oval Office during the Camelot period. He brings a

1166
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:25,800
Speaker 1: salamander in to give to his uncle, the President as

1167
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:28,840
Speaker 1: a gift. There's a photo of JFK with the salamander,

1168
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:31,600
Speaker 1: poking it with a presidential pin while Bobby sits nearby.

1169
00:59:32,040 --> 00:59:33,480
Speaker 1: And this picture is going to be one of the

1170
00:59:33,520 --> 00:59:37,280
Speaker 1: few artifacts to tie RFK Junior forever with the glorious

1171
00:59:37,320 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 1: side of the Kennedy myth. This is his brief shining

1172
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:44,560
Speaker 1: moment inside the limelight, inhabited by his glorious doomed elders.

1173
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:47,760
Speaker 1: The salamander, by the way, is later given a home

1174
00:59:47,800 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 1: in the White House Fountain. So don't worry. It winds up,

1175
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 1: winds up better than all of the kids.

1176
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:56,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, considering salamander wise.

1177
00:59:58,120 --> 01:00:02,160
Speaker 1: Yes, salamander wise, that's a very sick salamander. Lots of

1178
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: salamander kids like you gotta wind up? What's even there

1179
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:08,200
Speaker 1: for a salamander? After the White House found and I

1180
01:00:08,240 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: don't know how you move up for that salamander. You

1181
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:14,320
Speaker 1: know it was a fountain. I guess maybe they became

1182
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 1: salamander artists. You know, there's a bunch of salamanders living

1183
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:20,800
Speaker 1: in fucking Dimes Square in New York right now with podcasts.

1184
01:00:20,800 --> 01:00:25,760
Speaker 2: Who knows, oh how the salamander has fallen.

1185
01:00:28,400 --> 01:00:30,880
Speaker 1: A great upside from the kind of having the kind

1186
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:33,120
Speaker 1: of money so absurd that your house has a name,

1187
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 1: is that you're almost immediately able to indulge in your

1188
01:00:35,880 --> 01:00:38,840
Speaker 1: pettiest interests and obsessions a normal kid. You find it

1189
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: your kid likes animals, you buy him a picture book,

1190
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:44,400
Speaker 1: right they like dinosaurs, you get him a book with dinosaurs.

1191
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:47,560
Speaker 1: Maybe you buy him a model replica of a dinosaur

1192
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:49,800
Speaker 1: bone or something like that, if they're really into it.

1193
01:00:49,840 --> 01:00:53,280
Speaker 1: You know, RFK Junior, because he likes animals, gets regular

1194
01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 1: safaris to Africa, and he is on safari when JFK

1195
01:00:57,880 --> 01:01:00,760
Speaker 1: is gunned down by Merenard Montgomery sand there's one cold

1196
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:04,400
Speaker 1: November day. This story from Oppenheimer's book really gives an

1197
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 1: understanding of the kind of privilege these children dealt. Within quote,

1198
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:10,800
Speaker 1: Bobby had been taken on a safari in Kenya and

1199
01:01:10,840 --> 01:01:14,080
Speaker 1: participated in the capture of a huge leopard tortoise. Because

1200
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:16,080
Speaker 1: he was a scion of Camelot, he was permitted to

1201
01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:18,520
Speaker 1: bring it home in a suitcase unquestioned, as if he

1202
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:20,920
Speaker 1: were a diplomat. It helped that his escort was his

1203
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:23,960
Speaker 1: aunt Eunice's husband, Sergeant Shriver, who then headed the JFK

1204
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:27,360
Speaker 1: Established Peace Corps. Many years later, the turtle stuffed was

1205
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:30,120
Speaker 1: on display, along with a multitude of other Kennedy memorabilia,

1206
01:01:30,160 --> 01:01:32,240
Speaker 1: in the din of Bobby's own Hickory Hill like a

1207
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:35,480
Speaker 1: state in the fashionable New York City suburb of Mount Kisco.

1208
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:40,360
Speaker 1: She's such a taking an endured dangered turtle.

1209
01:01:40,080 --> 01:01:41,000
Speaker 2: Hog with him.

1210
01:01:41,040 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 1: How he's like eight or nine. Kennedy dies to be

1211
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:50,200
Speaker 1: to be importing in dangered turtles.

1212
01:01:50,440 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 2: Sergeant like uncle.

1213
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:55,520
Speaker 1: Like what sergeant Shrever is his name? Yeah? Yeah, this

1214
01:01:55,640 --> 01:01:59,160
Speaker 1: is this is fucking what's her name? I forget her?

1215
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:04,080
Speaker 1: Shriver's a great grandpa or dad? I think dad, probably

1216
01:02:04,560 --> 01:02:07,360
Speaker 1: just based on age. So the loss of JFK is

1217
01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:10,600
Speaker 1: obviously a crushing blow to Kennedy family morale. But the

1218
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:13,440
Speaker 1: dream doesn't die with him, right. He was president for

1219
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:15,680
Speaker 1: a couple of years, you know, very popular. When he

1220
01:02:15,680 --> 01:02:18,240
Speaker 1: gets blown away, what else do you have to say?

1221
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:21,840
Speaker 1: And then you know you've got RFK waiting in the wings.

1222
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 2: Now.

1223
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 1: One of the things that does happen here that is

1224
01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 1: kind of devastating to the Kennedy family. Jackie Kennedy had

1225
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 1: been a pretty influential person in the family and she

1226
01:02:31,040 --> 01:02:33,480
Speaker 1: marries someone else after he dies, which you know, I'm

1227
01:02:33,480 --> 01:02:35,680
Speaker 1: not shitting on her for that, right, Like that's a

1228
01:02:35,680 --> 01:02:38,560
Speaker 1: perfectly normal thing to do at a certain point, but

1229
01:02:38,640 --> 01:02:41,720
Speaker 1: she she is both a major purveyor of the Camelot

1230
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:44,160
Speaker 1: myths and people will say Jackie Kennedy kind of creates it.

1231
01:02:44,200 --> 01:02:47,000
Speaker 1: But she also kind of bounces from being in the

1232
01:02:47,040 --> 01:02:51,040
Speaker 1: family after this, which, like, I don't blame her again,

1233
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:54,479
Speaker 1: it seems like it's the healthiest thing for you get

1234
01:02:54,520 --> 01:02:59,439
Speaker 1: your family. It seems like a boundary setting to me. Yeah,

1235
01:02:59,520 --> 01:03:02,080
Speaker 1: I thinkio NASAs might just have had a really good

1236
01:03:02,080 --> 01:03:05,200
Speaker 1: head on her shoulders. But this does mean that now

1237
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:07,920
Speaker 1: the entire weight of the family's dreams are on R.

1238
01:03:08,040 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 1: FK and Ethel Kennedy. You know, with the most glorious

1239
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:16,000
Speaker 1: Kennedy out of the picture, the family legacy suddenly feels

1240
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: in doubt too. There's suddenly a questioned like, are we

1241
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:21,320
Speaker 1: going to have this glorious period of Kennedy dominance of

1242
01:03:21,360 --> 01:03:23,160
Speaker 1: the presidency? Are we all going to go on to

1243
01:03:23,160 --> 01:03:26,440
Speaker 1: be the people who run this country? Right? And in

1244
01:03:26,440 --> 01:03:30,240
Speaker 1: short order, the older Kennedys have to because Robert Kennedy

1245
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:33,680
Speaker 1: kind of reorganizes the family, you know, in order to hey,

1246
01:03:33,720 --> 01:03:35,960
Speaker 1: we still have we still got a lot of Kennedy's

1247
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:40,400
Speaker 1: in the game. There's Teddy you know, fifty of us

1248
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:43,080
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, we got plenty. We can take a

1249
01:03:43,080 --> 01:03:47,040
Speaker 1: few more bulletsy in. Yeah, so they you know, the

1250
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 1: older Kennedy's also feel like they need to reclarify their expectations.

1251
01:03:51,640 --> 01:03:56,000
Speaker 1: Grandma Rose constantly repeated her favorite quote from Saint Luke,

1252
01:03:56,120 --> 01:03:59,040
Speaker 1: to whom much is given, much will be required, and

1253
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:02,440
Speaker 1: Bobby passed on the same idea in his own words, saying.

1254
01:04:02,240 --> 01:04:04,840
Speaker 2: This with great America has been very good.

1255
01:04:04,720 --> 01:04:06,919
Speaker 1: To the Kennedy's, we all owe the country a debt

1256
01:04:06,960 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 1: of gratitude and public service. Right, this is a no

1257
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:12,680
Speaker 1: less obliged thing. Right. We're the people who've benefited most

1258
01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:15,240
Speaker 1: from the system, so of course we owe it the most,

1259
01:04:15,360 --> 01:04:17,680
Speaker 1: which I would love if that meant well, we should

1260
01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:20,560
Speaker 1: pay a lot more in taxes as opposed to like,

1261
01:04:20,680 --> 01:04:21,920
Speaker 1: well we should run things.

1262
01:04:21,680 --> 01:04:25,080
Speaker 2: We should have the power to give back well.

1263
01:04:25,120 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: And to be fair. I will say Kennedy's politically have

1264
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:28,960
Speaker 1: tended to be more on the side of rich people

1265
01:04:29,000 --> 01:04:31,200
Speaker 1: should pay more taxes, right will you got to you

1266
01:04:31,240 --> 01:04:34,840
Speaker 1: do have to give them that. But this idea of like,

1267
01:04:34,960 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 1: because we've benefited, we should run things is so poisonous,

1268
01:04:39,520 --> 01:04:41,520
Speaker 1: and it's going to get a lot of them killed. Right,

1269
01:04:41,640 --> 01:04:43,680
Speaker 1: It's about to get urfk.

1270
01:04:43,480 --> 01:04:45,640
Speaker 2: Guilt even though other people killed.

1271
01:04:45,960 --> 01:04:49,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, yep, that is what's coming. In a second,

1272
01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:53,320
Speaker 1: so our FK junior is educated in very elite, expensive

1273
01:04:53,360 --> 01:04:56,760
Speaker 1: private schools. The first Our Lady of Victory was an

1274
01:04:56,760 --> 01:04:59,040
Speaker 1: all white school, and this becomes a problem during the

1275
01:04:59,040 --> 01:05:02,480
Speaker 1: Camelot period because JFK is pro integrating schools, which is

1276
01:05:02,560 --> 01:05:06,320
Speaker 1: great except for people point out, well, your nephew's in

1277
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:09,480
Speaker 1: an all white school. Huh, that's kind of bad. I mean,

1278
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:12,560
Speaker 1: that's yeah, classic fair fair. I don't think the media

1279
01:05:12,640 --> 01:05:15,560
Speaker 1: is wrong to point that out, and the Kennedy's move

1280
01:05:15,640 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 1: him to an integrated private school run by Quakers after

1281
01:05:18,680 --> 01:05:22,200
Speaker 1: that point. The principal at Our Lady of Victory would

1282
01:05:22,280 --> 01:05:25,000
Speaker 1: later claim that the whole story about integration being the

1283
01:05:25,040 --> 01:05:27,800
Speaker 1: issue had been created after the fact. That's not why

1284
01:05:27,800 --> 01:05:31,400
Speaker 1: Bobby gets transferred, because Bobby and his brother Joe skipped

1285
01:05:31,440 --> 01:05:34,120
Speaker 1: school so constantly to fuck around in the woods and

1286
01:05:34,160 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 1: like had to couldn't continue to be students there. And

1287
01:05:37,480 --> 01:05:40,840
Speaker 1: I actually he might not be lying, because that happens

1288
01:05:40,880 --> 01:05:43,520
Speaker 1: several more times, and it's it's going to happen in

1289
01:05:43,560 --> 01:05:45,919
Speaker 1: the future that like, when he has to get kicked

1290
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:48,480
Speaker 1: out of a school, another thing gets made as the

1291
01:05:48,560 --> 01:05:52,919
Speaker 1: scapegoat for it, right, because like, you can't have a

1292
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:55,160
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy and Joe Kennedy get kicked out of a

1293
01:05:55,160 --> 01:05:56,560
Speaker 1: school for just being dog.

1294
01:05:56,360 --> 01:05:58,760
Speaker 2: Shit staying problems. Yeah, exactly right, Yeah.

1295
01:05:58,600 --> 01:06:03,760
Speaker 1: For being problems. Now RFK, because of what's about to happen,

1296
01:06:04,200 --> 01:06:06,360
Speaker 1: gets kind of sainted, and Ethel is going to be

1297
01:06:06,440 --> 01:06:08,520
Speaker 1: like for a period of time, the most admired woman

1298
01:06:08,560 --> 01:06:13,680
Speaker 1: in the country. After his death, they get whitewashed a lot.

1299
01:06:13,960 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 1: You would not call either of these people good parents.

1300
01:06:16,400 --> 01:06:20,200
Speaker 1: I would call them almost criminally bad parents. Now, part

1301
01:06:20,200 --> 01:06:23,200
Speaker 1: of this is that they're always away, right, They are

1302
01:06:23,320 --> 01:06:26,640
Speaker 1: campaigning constantly. RFK has his congressional campaigns, He's going to

1303
01:06:26,680 --> 01:06:30,920
Speaker 1: have his presidential campaign. Ethel is constantly campaigning on his behalf.

1304
01:06:31,320 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 1: She loves being the wife of a powerful man. She

1305
01:06:34,000 --> 01:06:36,760
Speaker 1: loves hosting these big events and fundraisers and stuff and

1306
01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:40,640
Speaker 1: being out in front. And RFK, in addition to always campaigning,

1307
01:06:40,960 --> 01:06:46,320
Speaker 1: loves having Cody so many affairs like there's the like honestly,

1308
01:06:46,360 --> 01:06:48,400
Speaker 1: if there was an Olympics and how many people you

1309
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:50,800
Speaker 1: could cheat on your wife with. RFK is like a

1310
01:06:50,960 --> 01:06:54,360
Speaker 1: solid contender. You know he could have he could yeah,

1311
01:06:54,400 --> 01:07:00,440
Speaker 1: he could have won the gold Yeah, fucking so, you know,

1312
01:07:00,520 --> 01:07:02,880
Speaker 1: while they're doing this, and I don't actually know this

1313
01:07:02,920 --> 01:07:04,439
Speaker 1: may have been that, this may have been a thing

1314
01:07:04,440 --> 01:07:06,840
Speaker 1: that in an age like today, we might actually say

1315
01:07:06,960 --> 01:07:09,920
Speaker 1: is closer to non monogamy. I don't think that he

1316
01:07:10,040 --> 01:07:12,760
Speaker 1: is informing her, But I also she's not dumb. I

1317
01:07:12,800 --> 01:07:15,520
Speaker 1: think she just underslike, that's what is. I'm the wife

1318
01:07:15,560 --> 01:07:17,840
Speaker 1: of a powerful woman and I get these benefits from it,

1319
01:07:17,920 --> 01:07:19,480
Speaker 1: and are a powerful man and I get all these

1320
01:07:19,520 --> 01:07:21,760
Speaker 1: benefits from it. But he is going to fuck around constantly.

1321
01:07:21,840 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 1: We will we will just never talk about it. I'll

1322
01:07:24,440 --> 01:07:26,520
Speaker 1: be angry about it forever. But oh, we never talk

1323
01:07:26,600 --> 01:07:27,040
Speaker 1: about it.

1324
01:07:27,360 --> 01:07:27,640
Speaker 2: Right.

1325
01:07:28,920 --> 01:07:31,880
Speaker 1: They are very good at crafting an image for themselves

1326
01:07:31,960 --> 01:07:35,080
Speaker 1: and at kind of remolding the Kennedy family image to

1327
01:07:35,680 --> 01:07:39,440
Speaker 1: focus around them. And RFK is a great politician. He

1328
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:44,040
Speaker 1: is extremely good at being in politics, at running for election,

1329
01:07:44,160 --> 01:07:47,240
Speaker 1: at building buzz around himself. And he's so good at

1330
01:07:47,280 --> 01:07:49,240
Speaker 1: it that it kind of papers over a lot of

1331
01:07:49,280 --> 01:07:53,440
Speaker 1: the failings he has as a living person. You know,

1332
01:07:53,680 --> 01:07:56,040
Speaker 1: his kids mostly remember during this period that he was

1333
01:07:56,080 --> 01:07:58,680
Speaker 1: the most vocal force in trying to weld the family

1334
01:07:58,720 --> 01:08:03,440
Speaker 1: back together after JFK's death. He also does he's not

1335
01:08:03,560 --> 01:08:07,000
Speaker 1: around as a father. He's not really raising his kids

1336
01:08:07,000 --> 01:08:09,120
Speaker 1: to much of an extent, but he has a check

1337
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:12,400
Speaker 1: book and he kind of indulges his son, Bobby Kennedy

1338
01:08:12,560 --> 01:08:16,320
Speaker 1: Bobby Junior's passions by paying for them. Right, That's how

1339
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:20,080
Speaker 1: RFK kind of raises RFK juniors. Whatever you're into, I've

1340
01:08:20,120 --> 01:08:21,639
Speaker 1: got I've got plenty of money. I have no time

1341
01:08:21,680 --> 01:08:23,479
Speaker 1: for you, but I have money. And as a result,

1342
01:08:23,760 --> 01:08:26,960
Speaker 1: r FK Junior gets into falconry as an eleven year old.

1343
01:08:27,080 --> 01:08:28,640
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, why not?

1344
01:08:28,920 --> 01:08:30,520
Speaker 1: Why not give a falcon.

1345
01:08:33,920 --> 01:08:34,479
Speaker 2: He'll be fine.

1346
01:08:35,680 --> 01:08:38,200
Speaker 1: I do love all of the fucking yeats references to

1347
01:08:38,320 --> 01:08:41,120
Speaker 1: RFK Junior. We do have a falconer. You know, we've

1348
01:08:41,120 --> 01:08:43,960
Speaker 1: got a falconer in this election. Can the falcon hear him?

1349
01:08:44,000 --> 01:08:50,320
Speaker 1: I don't know. Gyre seems to be widening horowitzon Collier

1350
01:08:50,400 --> 01:08:53,200
Speaker 1: right quote. His father had commissioned naturalists from the Bronx

1351
01:08:53,280 --> 01:08:56,439
Speaker 1: Zoo to make him a walk interrarium for his thirteenth birthday.

1352
01:08:56,600 --> 01:08:59,080
Speaker 1: He had encouraged the interest in falconry, although admitting to

1353
01:08:59,120 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: his son that he was just sturbed by the implications

1354
01:09:01,120 --> 01:09:03,519
Speaker 1: of feeding pigeons to the predators. The two of them

1355
01:09:03,520 --> 01:09:06,400
Speaker 1: worked out a compromise the distinctive Kennedy twist. If a

1356
01:09:06,400 --> 01:09:09,160
Speaker 1: pigeon managed to avoid a hawk on two successive flights,

1357
01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:12,200
Speaker 1: it was retired and never forced to face death again.

1358
01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:15,160
Speaker 1: Struck by the boy's range of interests, Bobby Senior had

1359
01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:19,600
Speaker 1: once remarked that Bobby Junior was just like the President. Unfortunately,

1360
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:21,920
Speaker 1: he was also what some of the adults around the

1361
01:09:21,920 --> 01:09:25,240
Speaker 1: family would politely call rambunctious. This was a kid you

1362
01:09:25,360 --> 01:09:27,680
Speaker 1: could not keep in class or get to obey the

1363
01:09:27,760 --> 01:09:30,840
Speaker 1: rules at all. Starting in seventh grade, he was sent

1364
01:09:30,880 --> 01:09:33,679
Speaker 1: away to a boarding school along with his brother Joe

1365
01:09:33,680 --> 01:09:35,160
Speaker 1: to stay out of his mom and dad's hair.

1366
01:09:35,360 --> 01:09:35,519
Speaker 2: Well.

1367
01:09:35,560 --> 01:09:39,080
Speaker 1: They enjoyed being famous and powerful at private school, RFK

1368
01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:42,320
Speaker 1: Junior reinforced his reputation as the poster child for what

1369
01:09:42,360 --> 01:09:46,840
Speaker 1: we now call EIGHTYHD. One classmate later noted, he could

1370
01:09:46,840 --> 01:09:49,760
Speaker 1: climb straight up the wall like ten feet and we

1371
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:52,439
Speaker 1: would just be standing there watching in awe. He was

1372
01:09:52,439 --> 01:09:54,519
Speaker 1: always real skinny and lanky, and he could get a

1373
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:56,960
Speaker 1: real good grip on the bricks, and he had absolutely

1374
01:09:57,040 --> 01:10:00,639
Speaker 1: no fear. He climbed up that wall like he was man.

1375
01:10:01,400 --> 01:10:06,559
Speaker 2: That's that's good for him. Yeah, is like literally the

1376
01:10:07,160 --> 01:10:09,479
Speaker 2: great power, great responsibility quote from earlier. Yeah, it's just

1377
01:10:09,720 --> 01:10:11,519
Speaker 2: that's he's just he's a spider man.

1378
01:10:11,680 --> 01:10:13,960
Speaker 1: He's literally literally a spider man. It is like one

1379
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:16,760
Speaker 1: of those Obviously over medication is a problem, but I've

1380
01:10:16,800 --> 01:10:19,559
Speaker 1: never read about a kid who needed ADHD treatment more

1381
01:10:19,600 --> 01:10:24,120
Speaker 1: than our FKG. Yeah, like it's he really literally running No.

1382
01:10:24,360 --> 01:10:27,120
Speaker 2: No, that's supposed to be a phrase that's supposed to

1383
01:10:27,160 --> 01:10:30,960
Speaker 2: be just the thing that you say. Also, like if

1384
01:10:31,000 --> 01:10:32,760
Speaker 2: you're you know, growing up, and you're like, oh I

1385
01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:36,960
Speaker 2: can I got to take this uh exotic turtle. Like,

1386
01:10:37,320 --> 01:10:39,800
Speaker 2: if you're breaking the rules, you're not gonna want to

1387
01:10:39,800 --> 01:10:40,559
Speaker 2: follow the rules.

1388
01:10:40,640 --> 01:10:42,080
Speaker 1: So I don't even know if you call it breaking

1389
01:10:42,120 --> 01:10:44,000
Speaker 1: the rules. There's note even a concept in his head

1390
01:10:44,040 --> 01:10:47,040
Speaker 1: that there are rules for him exactly, you know, right right, Yeah,

1391
01:10:48,040 --> 01:10:50,400
Speaker 1: his mom wanted him to join the football team at

1392
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:53,479
Speaker 1: the at the Fancy of Millbrook at this point, private

1393
01:10:53,520 --> 01:10:56,400
Speaker 1: school that he's at. But r f K Junior is

1394
01:10:56,479 --> 01:11:00,680
Speaker 1: not a great football guy. He is actually not like

1395
01:11:00,720 --> 01:11:03,680
Speaker 1: a jock character like he would imagine you think a

1396
01:11:03,680 --> 01:11:06,439
Speaker 1: boy like Clone High their JFK. They have him portrayed

1397
01:11:06,479 --> 01:11:09,759
Speaker 1: as like the football captain brotheran JFK had that public

1398
01:11:09,800 --> 01:11:13,559
Speaker 1: personality at least. RFK Junior is a weird kid. He

1399
01:11:13,720 --> 01:11:17,800
Speaker 1: is defiantly weird. He dedicates most of his time to

1400
01:11:17,880 --> 01:11:21,080
Speaker 1: playing with his hawk, Morgan le Fay, who he would

1401
01:11:21,120 --> 01:11:24,519
Speaker 1: take to school for show and tell sessions During the week.

1402
01:11:24,600 --> 01:11:27,160
Speaker 1: He lived under strict discipline, but occasionally he and his

1403
01:11:27,200 --> 01:11:29,320
Speaker 1: older brother Joe would be allowed to show off what

1404
01:11:29,400 --> 01:11:31,760
Speaker 1: being a Kennedy meant to their classmates. And I'm going

1405
01:11:31,800 --> 01:11:35,360
Speaker 1: to quote again from Oppenheimer's book here. On weekends, one

1406
01:11:35,360 --> 01:11:38,280
Speaker 1: of the Kennedy's many helpers, or Ethel Kennedy herself, usually

1407
01:11:38,280 --> 01:11:40,439
Speaker 1: with two dogs in here convertible, would arrive to pick

1408
01:11:40,520 --> 01:11:42,840
Speaker 1: up Bobby and his brother Joe, and then someone would

1409
01:11:42,840 --> 01:11:45,759
Speaker 1: return them on Sunday evening. She had once invited Bobby's

1410
01:11:45,880 --> 01:11:47,880
Speaker 1: entire class and some of his teachers for a field

1411
01:11:47,960 --> 01:11:50,080
Speaker 1: day at Hickory Hill, where they swam in the pool,

1412
01:11:50,160 --> 01:11:53,120
Speaker 1: toured Bobby's menagerie of animals, and watched the surfer film

1413
01:11:53,120 --> 01:11:55,840
Speaker 1: The Endless Summer in the pool cabana. As one class

1414
01:11:55,840 --> 01:11:58,280
Speaker 1: member who made the tour recalled, it was a circus

1415
01:11:58,320 --> 01:12:00,760
Speaker 1: out there, and they mean that litter because of all

1416
01:12:00,800 --> 01:12:06,160
Speaker 1: of the wild animals yeah, right, yeah. But then on

1417
01:12:06,280 --> 01:12:10,000
Speaker 1: June fifth, nineteen sixty eight, Robert F. Kennedy was gunned

1418
01:12:10,000 --> 01:12:14,240
Speaker 1: down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Like his brother,

1419
01:12:14,280 --> 01:12:16,680
Speaker 1: there are going to be decades of debate and conspiracy

1420
01:12:16,720 --> 01:12:19,000
Speaker 1: theories as to whether or not Sir Hans Sirhan, who's

1421
01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:21,400
Speaker 1: officially the gunman, had rather done it. I have my

1422
01:12:21,439 --> 01:12:25,000
Speaker 1: own theories about a certain mister Sanders, but we don't

1423
01:12:25,000 --> 01:12:26,840
Speaker 1: need to get into that today, right, I will say

1424
01:12:27,080 --> 01:12:31,080
Speaker 1: RFK Junior subscribes to these theories. He does not believe

1425
01:12:31,080 --> 01:12:32,960
Speaker 1: it's last I checked. He doesn't think that Sir Hans

1426
01:12:32,960 --> 01:12:34,839
Speaker 1: Sirhan is who killed his dad, right.

1427
01:12:34,800 --> 01:12:36,759
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, he's very Yeah, he's got.

1428
01:12:36,760 --> 01:12:39,600
Speaker 1: And like like like with any Kennedy I kind of

1429
01:12:39,640 --> 01:12:41,760
Speaker 1: feel about Kennedy conspiracy theories the way I do. With

1430
01:12:41,800 --> 01:12:43,519
Speaker 1: this election. People will say, like, oh, so and so

1431
01:12:43,640 --> 01:12:46,160
Speaker 1: is definitely gonna win or definitely not. It's impossible. No,

1432
01:12:46,680 --> 01:12:48,719
Speaker 1: neither of them has less than a thirty percent chance

1433
01:12:48,720 --> 01:12:52,559
Speaker 1: of winning. And like every Kennedy conspiracy theory, twenty percent chances, right,

1434
01:12:52,960 --> 01:12:54,880
Speaker 1: twenty percent chance it wasn't, sir. I'll give it. I'll

1435
01:12:54,880 --> 01:12:59,240
Speaker 1: give it that, you know, it's not my odds on bet,

1436
01:12:59,280 --> 01:13:01,439
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of shady ship that went down,

1437
01:13:01,479 --> 01:13:04,320
Speaker 1: and I'm not I'm not, you know, gonta rule anything

1438
01:13:04,360 --> 01:13:06,880
Speaker 1: out entirely here, But that doesn't really matter. It does

1439
01:13:06,960 --> 01:13:10,120
Speaker 1: matter that RFK Junior subscribes to these theories, and it

1440
01:13:10,240 --> 01:13:14,600
Speaker 1: matters that when RFK dies, he takes the dream of

1441
01:13:14,640 --> 01:13:17,479
Speaker 1: the Kennedy dynasty with him, and the son who bore

1442
01:13:17,520 --> 01:13:19,559
Speaker 1: his name is never going to be the same. And

1443
01:13:19,560 --> 01:13:21,680
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about all of that. Cody in

1444
01:13:21,800 --> 01:13:31,160
Speaker 1: part Dukes ah mm hm, Cody, Hi, Shody pluggable Yo.

1445
01:13:30,479 --> 01:13:36,200
Speaker 2: Yody, Yeah, I got some plugs to plug. Check out

1446
01:13:36,200 --> 01:13:38,880
Speaker 2: Some More News. It's on YouTube, uh and we've got

1447
01:13:38,880 --> 01:13:42,240
Speaker 2: a Patreon dot com slash Some More News. Even More

1448
01:13:42,240 --> 01:13:44,559
Speaker 2: News is a podcast we also do. Sometimes you do

1449
01:13:44,600 --> 01:13:47,200
Speaker 2: a podcast called way Less News because who wants to

1450
01:13:47,200 --> 01:13:48,080
Speaker 2: talk about the news?

1451
01:13:49,160 --> 01:13:50,880
Speaker 1: Absolutely no one anymore Nobody.

1452
01:13:51,439 --> 01:13:53,800
Speaker 2: Check in. My band's called the Hot Shapes. We've got

1453
01:13:53,800 --> 01:13:56,960
Speaker 2: an album called Laverne. It's on band camp and SoundCloud.

1454
01:13:57,240 --> 01:13:59,880
Speaker 1: You should have called him The Assumptions. Cody, Uh, I M.

1455
01:14:00,160 --> 01:14:02,800
Speaker 2: Now I might start another band called the Assumptions.

1456
01:14:02,840 --> 01:14:06,400
Speaker 1: Who knows it's an RFK Deep or Joe Kennedy Deep Cut.

1457
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:08,400
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, check all that stuff out.

1458
01:14:08,600 --> 01:14:11,160
Speaker 1: Invite Cody to your band. Look, Mighty Mighty boss Tones,

1459
01:14:11,200 --> 01:14:12,920
Speaker 1: we know you lost a singer because he became a

1460
01:14:12,960 --> 01:14:17,080
Speaker 1: COVID denier after that George Floyd album. You know, invite Cody. Yeah,

1461
01:14:17,200 --> 01:14:19,759
Speaker 1: you know, knock on wood, Cody, knock on every.

1462
01:14:19,600 --> 01:14:23,760
Speaker 2: Band that lost a member that in the supergroup that

1463
01:14:23,880 --> 01:14:28,680
Speaker 2: is like anti vax supergroup. I'll replace whomever or the other, you.

1464
01:14:28,600 --> 01:14:30,640
Speaker 1: Know what, you know what, I think we finally need

1465
01:14:30,680 --> 01:14:33,320
Speaker 1: to merge the surviving members of Lincoln Park with all

1466
01:14:33,400 --> 01:14:36,000
Speaker 1: of the non crazy members of the Mighty Mighty boss Tones.

1467
01:14:36,320 --> 01:14:38,200
Speaker 1: Is that going to make good music? There's not a

1468
01:14:38,280 --> 01:14:41,559
Speaker 1: chance in hell. Absolutely not need animal in any way.

1469
01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:42,759
Speaker 1: But I want to hear that album.

1470
01:14:42,920 --> 01:14:45,479
Speaker 2: You know, it's called Novelty Music and I love.

1471
01:14:48,600 --> 01:14:57,360
Speaker 1: It anyway, Go to Hell. I Love You. Behind the

1472
01:14:57,400 --> 01:15:00,360
Speaker 1: Bastards is a production a cool Zone Media. For more

1473
01:15:00,360 --> 01:15:04,240
Speaker 1: from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,

1474
01:15:04,360 --> 01:15:07,640
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1475
01:15:07,680 --> 01:15:09,240
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.