Is The Kennedy Family Actually Cursed?

Comes now word from Hyannis Port of the death by drug overdose of a 22-year-old granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, the latest in a long line of Kennedys whose lives have been altered or cut short by drugs and alcohol.

The young woman, according to news reports, struggled with depression and other issues.

So the question in the media that recurs at times like these is whether the Kennedy family is actually cursed.

One might think so at first glance.

A brief history of the Kennedys, for those just tuning in: Joe Kennedy, the progenitor, made his fortune initially as a bootlegger.

He put his money into real estate, specifically the Chicago Merchandise Mart, which the family still owns and which generates a living wage, if you’re a Kennedy, even today.

That’s how the Kennedys can all afford to be Kennedys.

Joe was a piece of work, an America Firster, and a Nazi sympathizer.

FDR, then President, exiled Joe to London as the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’, mostly to keep Kennedy from making further mischief in Washington.

Joe was a good provider but otherwise not much of a family man. According to biographers, he actually brought his Hollywood girlfriend, Gloria Swanson, to the family dinner table in Brookline, Massachusetts.

He was still married at the time.

Joe wanted his son, Joe Jr., to be President, but Joe Jr. died in action in World War II.
His next son, John F. Kennedy, did become President and was cut down, as was his brother Bobby, five years later.

I’ll spare you the recital of Kennedy lawlessness and drug-and-alcohol-fueled early mortality; suffice it to say it’s a long, sad story that takes us to the young woman whose life ended yesterday in her grandmother Ethel’s home on Cape Cod.

So the media is making a case that the family is cursed.

I would say the Kennedys are cursed only if fame is a curse.

If you read the compelling Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, by Beth Macy, you’ll discover that in some sense, we are all Kennedys now.

America is in the grip of a massive drug addiction problem, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

People are dying by the tens of thousands due to painkiller abuse.

Not just individual lives but entire communities are being destroyed.

Small town law enforcement and court systems, doctors and hospitals, therapists and caregivers simply can’t keep up with the sheer numbers of addicts, dealers, and deaths.

As Carole King sang in Smackwater Jack, “It was a mighty good year…for the undertaker.”

And for the drug companies, and for the prison guards.

The rest of us? Not so much.

Life expectancy has actually decreased, due to the number of overdose deaths each year, a body count that annually rivals the entire American loss of life in the Vietnam War.

So today, American society has caught up with, and perhaps even overtaken, the Kennedy family.

Most of us don’t have mailbox money coming from great-grandpa Joe’s prescient investments in Chicago real estate.

But we don’t really need it.

You can get a lethal dose of oxycotin on the street for eighty bucks.

The Kennedys may have a higher cost of living, but our society today has a lower cost of dying.

The Kennedy curse is that their tragedies are played out in public, for all of us (myself included) to ponder and cluck about.

The curse on the rest of us is that millions of Americans have died or will die of painkiller overdoses, bad drugs, or drug-fueled violence.

The media won’t publicize those losses because we aren’t Kennedys.

The Kennedys seem to lose no more than one or two family members in each generation.

We are losing entire families, entire communities, entire towns to drug addiction.

So who’s really cursed?

I watched as much of both Presidential debates last week as I could stand.

I don’t recall hearing a word about this fatal epidemic.

Maybe if we were all Kennedys, it might be a news story.

But we aren’t. So Kennedy deaths will generate the occasional funeral, while we will bury our dead in silence and shame and an utterly inadequate response from our government.

And that’s the real curse.