There is only one question for any woman who gets involved with a Kennedy man: What could you possibly be thinking?
The latest such scandal to rock America involves the married former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Democratic party royalty turned Trump supporter) and Olivia Nuzzi (a glamorous, young star reporter sent to cover him for New York Magazine).
Their respective partners have been blindsided by an alleged affair that was apparently never consummated but did reportedly involve some ‘demure’ nude photographs sent by Nuzzi to Bobby Jr. via text message.
On Friday, however, the New York Post published claims that the pair had also engaged in ‘FaceTime sex’.
Details of the alleged relationship emerged some ten days ago when New York Magazine announced the 31-year-old reporter was on leave pending an investigation into her conduct.
Asked last week by Fox News whether he had any ‘regrets’ over the incident, 70-year-old Bobby replied bluntly: ‘I never comment on those kind of stories.’
Yet it’s a story that has shaken the nexus of politics, media and Hollywood, breaking through the noise of the wildest presidential election cycle in American history.
The three Kennedy brothers: John (Jack), Bobby and Edward
A story that once again raises the question of what can possibly explain the increasingly bewildering allure of this dynasty, considering everything we know. And of whether this crisis could finally augur the end of Camelot.
For answers, we have to go back in time. Women and girls historically do not fare well with Kennedy men – be they wives, girlfriends, mistresses, sisters or daughters.
Patriarch Joe Kennedy, a former US ambassador to Britain, was not only politically and financially ruthless, he was also sexually deviant and violent.
Well before he was president, John F. Kennedy would warn any overnight guests of his sisters — many of them teenagers — to lock their bedroom doors at the famed family compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts. ‘The ambassador,’ JFK would say, ‘has a tendency to wander at night.’
Some of these girls, such as Winston Churchill’s future daughter-in-law Pamela Harriman, were raped by Joe. Such atrocities were an open secret at the Hyannis compound – which became something of a death star for women.
Joe’s wife, Rose, was ritually humiliated by the constant presence of his movie-star mistress, Gloria Swanson, at the dinner table. He also had a near decade- long affair with his secretary, Janet Des Rosiers, which began when she was 24 and he was 60.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. with his second wife Mary Richardson Kennedy
‘I used to massage Joe’s scalp and neck with Rose in the living room,’ Des Rosiers said years later. ‘I don’t know what she thought her husband was made of.’ Rose took refuge in prescription pills.
A young JFK, meanwhile, was already evincing what would become manifest among generations of Kennedy men: a sinister incestuousness that would see them all attempt to bed each other’s conquests.
When JFK was running for president, Janet Des Rosiers joined his campaign and one day he slipped her a note. ‘Don’t you think,’ he wrote, ‘it’s about time you found me attractive?’
In 1953, he met the young Jacqueline Bouvier — a highly educated debutante from New York City, with the looks, charm and sophistication to match.
He was a 34-year-old US senator and she a 24-year-old ‘inquiring photographer’ for the Washington Times Herald. She was so smitten that she dumped her fiancé, stockbroker John Husted.
Jackie never uttered a word. She simply removed her engagement ring, slipped it into Husted’s suit pocket and walked away.
Jackie wanted Jack Kennedy – and the big life that was sure to follow – no matter the cost.
She knew that he was a playboy. So was her adored father, but Jackie hadn’t loved him any less, either. Women of her station were bred to accept infidelity, and Jackie thought she could handle it.
She was wrong. There were so many women. Among them Pamela Turnure, her own White House press secretary; and Mimi Alford, a teenage intern who Jack had gotten drunk and had sex with in the First Lady’s bed in the White House while she was away.
Mimi had been a virgin. ‘Short of screaming,’ she later wrote, ‘there was nothing I could do to get him off of me.’
Not only was Marilyn Monroe having an affair with President Kennedy, she was also having an affair with his brother, US Attorney General Robert F Kennedy
JFK had Mimi shuttled around the country as something of a sex toy, forcing her to hole up in motels waiting to be called up for service. In the White House pool, during one of his daily swims, he pointed to his top aide Dave Powers and said to Mimi: ‘Mr Powers looks a little tense. Would you take care of it?’
To her everlasting shame, Mimi made her way to Dave, sitting at the lip of the pool, and performed oral sex on him while JFK watched.
Then there was Marilyn Monroe. She was the biggest movie star on the planet, a sex symbol desired by every red-blooded American male, and not only was she having an affair with President Kennedy, she was also having an affair with his brother, US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Very few people knew, but among those who did was Marilyn’s therapist, Dr Ralph Greenson. He was greatly alarmed by what the Kennedy brothers were doing to his patient, and wrote as much to a colleague.
‘Very destructive people,’ Greenson said of the two brothers.
And they were indeed doing grave damage. With JFK having cut off communication with Marilyn after she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him at Madison Square Garden in May 1962 — practically announcing to all the world that she and the president of the United States were having an affair — Bobby had been left to crisis-manage Marilyn, who was now threatening to hold a press conference and tell the truth.
Rosemary Kennedy was 23 years old when she vanished, her name never mentioned at home again
On August 4 that same year, Bobby paid a visit to Marilyn’s home in LA. He did not know – nor did she – that the FBI and CIA had wiretapped Marilyn’s house. On these tapes, recovered decades later, Bobby can be heard yelling at Marilyn viciously.
‘Where is it?’ he demanded. ‘Where the f*** is it?’ Next came the sound of something, or someone, hitting the wall.
Marilyn was found dead the next morning, in her own bed, at the age of 36. Her ex-husband, the legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio, was sure that the Kennedy brothers were, in some way, to blame.
‘I always knew who killed Marilyn,’ he later said. ‘But I didn’t want to start a revolution in this country.’
Jack and Bobby never looked back. Why would they? Women had always been disposable. Their father had made that clear, not just with his philandering and raping but with the disappearance of their sister, Rosemary.
She was 23 years old when she vanished, her name never mentioned at home again.
It was only after Joe died in 1969, at 81, that her siblings learned the truth: Joe had secretly, forcibly lobotomised Rosemary, leaving her with the mental and physical capabilities of a two-year-old.
They were told that Joe, in his desperation to fix Rosemary’s learning disabilities, had made a terrible but honest mistake.
Not so. Joe, a Nazi sympathiser who had taken Rosemary to London as his ‘companion’ while serving as ambassador, had likely been sexually abusing his daughter, whose increasingly volatile outbursts threatened to expose him. And so he had her silenced and shipped across America to be cared for by nurses and nuns.
Rosemary suffered a fate worse than death.
The litany abounds: Mary Jo Kopechne, the 28-year-old aide who JFK’s younger brother, senator Ted Kennedy, left to die in 1969 after his car veered off a bridge and plunged into a pond on Chappaquiddick Island.
Kopechne was alive for hours, struggling to breathe through a tiny air pocket, while Ted made his escape, passing houses with lights on, pay phones and the fire department, before reaching his inn and going to sleep.
When, the next morning, he finally reported the accident – after showering, shaving and having a hearty breakfast – Mary Jo had been dead for hours. She could have been saved.Carolyn Bessette, anointed ‘America’s Princess’ upon her marriage to JFK Jr.
Carolyn Bessette, anointed ‘America’s Princess’ upon her marriage to JFK Jr., was accused of being a drug addict, a shrew, a shallow viper who had fatally delayed take-off by getting a pedicure
Pamela Kelley, a teenage girl who, one decade later, was left paralysed for life by Joe Kennedy II (Bobby’s son), who recklessly rolled his Jeep in Nantucket. The media called this Joe’s ‘mishap’ and he walked with a $100 fine.
Carolyn Bessette, anointed ‘America’s Princess’ upon her marriage to JFK Jr., son of JFK and Jackie. He was the most desired man in the world, ostensibly the total package: gorgeous, wealthy, a future US president.
Truth was, JFK Jr. was dim, entitled and had a habit of bullying his girlfriends into risky stunts that nearly cost them their lives.
When he crashed the plane he was piloting in 1999, killing himself, Carolyn and her sister Lauren, it was Carolyn who was blamed. She was accused of being a drug addict, a shrew, a shallow viper who had fatally delayed take-off by getting a pedicure.
The formal investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that pilot error alone caused the crash: JFK Jr. did not have sufficient training to fly that night. He ignored multiple warnings not to fly in a thickening haze. He didn’t file a flight plan and had cut off all communication with ground control. In his hubris, he nearly crashed into a packed American Airlines jet.
But Carolyn was the scapegoat — just as her good friend Mary Richardson, second wife of RFK Jr., would become a decade later.
Mary Jo Kopechne, the 28-year-old aide who JFK’s younger brother, senator Ted Kennedy, was left to die in 1969 after his car veered off a bridge and plunged into a pond
Mary had idolised the Kennedy family. She had been roommates with Bobby Jr’s sister Kerry at boarding school, and marrying him had been the culmination of a dream.
But in 2012, after four children and 18 years of marriage, Bobby wanted a divorce. Mary had reportedly discovered the contact information of at least 43 rumoured mistresses in his cellphone. She had also found her husband’s ‘sex diaries’ — lists of women he’d had affairs with, including some friends of Mary’s.
He had gone with Mary to see her therapist, Dr Sheena Hankin, who specialised in high-profile clients. Bobby asked Hankin to declare Mary mentally ill.
Your wife isn’t mentally ill, Hankin told him. She is depressed and she is angry, but she is not mentally ill.
In Bobby’s telling, he was the victim, enduring a deeply disturbed, alcoholic wife.
Nonetheless, he flaunted his new relationship with Hollywood actress Cheryl Hines, despite the torment it would likely cause his wife. On May 16, 2012, Mary walked out to her barn and hanged herself.
Bobby went to the New York Times and spoke of how troubled his wife was. At her funeral, in his eulogy, he said: ‘I know I did everything I could to help her.’
Yet after the burial, after the news media packed up and left, Bobby had one final act of cruelty to exact. A week later, in the dead of night, without telling Mary’s siblings or getting a permit, he had her coffin exhumed from the Kennedy family plot and reburied far away and alone.
At the time, a Kennedy spokesman claimed the decision was made due to the plot being too ‘closely surrounded by other graves, with no room for expansion’.
Olivia Nuzzi has lost her fiancé, Ryan Lizza — himself a journalist. She will also most likely lose her job at New York Magazine. Will all this loss have been worth it?
And what, then, of this latest scandal? Olivia Nuzzi is finding herself similarly discarded. Insiders from RFK Jr’s camp have said that Nuzzi was ‘aggressive’, that her actions have been ‘scary’ and that he – poor Bobby, victim of all these women who just can’t resist him – was ‘chased by porn’ (those alleged nudes Nuzzi sent).
RFK Jr. has also reportedly threatened to sue her, both civilly and criminally. It’s typical Kennedy bullying, meant to terrorise a troublesome woman into retreat and silence – though Kennedys rarely, if ever, sue, because that would require them to open their own books, or cellphones, as the case may be.
Nuzzi, meanwhile, has lost her fiancé, Ryan Lizza — himself a journalist. She will also most likely lose her job at New York Magazine. Will all this loss have been worth it? And why would an otherwise bright and accomplished young woman get involved with the likes of RFK Jr.?
Even now, as American women have come to recognise how dangerous this family can be, too many remain ensorcelled by the myth, perhaps deluded by the thought that they, surely, will find their prince among Kennedy men.
For the Kennedys, quixotically, remain American royalty, despite the ugly truth: only their women bear the blame, suffer the public humiliations and are meant to feel grateful for all of it.
- Maureen Callahan is the author of Ask Not: The Kennedys And The Women They Destroyed (Harper Collins).
