Speak to me not of Kennedys or curses

At what point will America be released from having to care about the Kennedys? Will it be sometime in the 24^th century when the genes of the Brookline Kennedys have spread to the point where most of the people in America have a bit of Kennedy in them?

I can see caring about John F. Kennedy and his siblings because most of them did noteworthy things. But their children and grandchildren? Nah. (Well, maybe Maria Shriver because she’s accomplished a lot on her own). I just can’t give a shit when one of Robert Kennedy’s 53 kids does something. I can’t muster even a sliver of interest of any type in Caroline Kennedy, America’s oldest 5-year-old China doll.

I suppose soon we’ll have to pay attention when one of the grandchildren or great-grandchildren bats an eyelash and in the future you’ll see articles saying “The Kennedy Curse struck again this week as Joseph F. Kennedy Jones VIII, the third cousin once removed of President Kennedy, broke his index finger while playing touch football.”

These people just get less and less interesting the further the genealogical tree branches out. I make it a rule that I care about prominent people but I’m totally uninterested in their family members, unless said family members are noteworthy on their own terms.

It was a shame that the woman who married one of Bobby Kennedy’s kids killed herself but I didn’t think it merited the coverage and attention it got. Regular people kill themselves every day but unless you’re a Capital K Kennedy, it’s just tragedy with a small t. Years ago, that Kennedy relative raped some woman and the national flipped out because it was a serious crime. I guess if women get raped by non-Kennedys, it’s just some garden variety rape and we have those every day so it’s a big yawn from America.

Then every time something bad happens to these people, we have to drag out the hoary old cliché of the Kennedy Curse. Ooooh! The Kennedy Curse! I just got a chill! Some legitimately terrible things did happen to that family, like the two assassinations, but not every single misfortune is due to a curse. The Kennedy gene pool is by now so wide that logically, the probability is greater that more descendants and their spouses will have tragedies befall them so they probably don’t experience any more misfortune than any other family. And the tragedies get less interesting as the gene pool waters down.

I’ve always suspected there is a group of people who wring their hands and clutch their rosaries when something bad happens to the Kennedys but they secretly love it. They wallow in the tragedies like pigs in the mud.

I get that America has no royalty and the Kennedys are our royalty and blah blah. Yes, except they don’t have a designated line of succession and the survivors don’t have the actual power that real royals have. The thing with the Kennedy-royalty analogy is, I’m not all that interested in royalty either. I do think the actual kings and queens are interesting, but try getting me to care about Queen Elizabeth’s cousins or great-nephews.

I should change my last name to Kennedy and see if the country starts caring about me or if it’s a national tragedy if my car battery dies.