Kennedy Clashes, Instagram Drama, and the Art of Public Pettiness

Muckraking in the Kennedy Family: Jack Schlossberg’s Instagram Takedown(s)

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I need to talk about the Kennedys.

For a variety of reasons, it feels like we’re currently living in an absurd hellscape that feels almost beyond belief. I’ve been thinking that if Dante saw the headlines from the past few weeks, he’d think it was a modern-day adaptation of the Inferno that was “too on the nose.”

Rather than focus on the terrible things going on in public life that pose a threat to people and ideals I hold dear, I need to escape into pettiness, and I’m taking you with me.

For decades, this family has peddled themselves as a stoic, almost regal first family of American public life. Having brushed up against actual royals when patriarch Joseph Kennedy was Ambassador to Great Britain in the 1930s, the Kennedys clearly tried to model themselves as a kind of gentry. This was not without hiccups, however. For the “new money” generation, learning how to appear as part of the elite took practice. I will never forget a Kennedy biography I read that mentioned a society dinner where old money women judged matriarch Rose for reapplying her lipstick at the table. How gauche!

Being part of this family and its mystique came with certain unwritten rules. They would not be seen to squabble in public; they would reveal little of their internal life, and not show emotion. You can watch these informal codes of behavior play out in the public behavior of Jackie Kennedy as First Lady. Her televised tour of the renovated White House (immortalized by Natalie Portman in a great performance in an otherwise not-great film) demonstrates this mannered behavior. Whatever private disappointments she felt as the wife of a chronically unfaithful man, or as the daughter-in-law of controlling parents with epic ambitions for their family, we will never know.

This famous photo of her captured years later by a paparazzo is dynamic because the smile hints at a small window into a private life that is almost entirely shielded from public view. We wanted to know her so much because, in part, she was so resolute not to be known.

This was hardly unique to Jackie. All of the Kennedys wanted a certain degree of privacy to maintain private lives that may have been at odds with their public personas or virtues. Significantly, it was also vital to present a united front politically. If any one member dissented from Robert Kennedy’s political stances as Senator, or those of Teddy, or any other Kennedy, it would be inappropriate to say so publicly. Until now.

The inexplicable rise of RFK Jr.’s candidacy has put the Kennedy family in an uncomfortable position. First, during his presidential run, his own siblings came out and publicly endorsed Biden to distance themselves from his more extreme views. Since withdrawing from the race and endorsing Trump, the family has continued to publicly call out his promotion of misinformation and disinformation.

For a long time, I believed the Kennedys would not go gloves off with each other in public until Ethel passed. As Robert F. Kennedy’s widow and RFK Jr.’s mother, I have to wonder what she made of her son’s presidential bid, which drew explicitly on her husband and brother-in-law’s image and legacy to invite an association they themselves would likely have rejected. After Ethel died in October (at which point Bill Clinton felt it was appropriate to describe her as a “flirt” at her funeral (!), the Kennedy kids are figuring out what happens when you stop being polite, and start getting real.

First, I am still floored that Caroline Kennedy released a video via her son’s Instagram of herself reading a formal statement attacking RFK Jr.’s suitability to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I went from not knowing her opinion on almost anything to knowing very specific reasons why she considers RFK. Jr. to be a “predator.” This is simply stunning in the long arc of this family.

What’s even more incredible is the social media work of her son, Jack Schlossberg, on Instagram. Demonstrating the degree to which he’s bringing Bouvier energy to the present, he has taken on a playful but pointed role as public accountability officer for the Kennedy family. Not only did he share his mother’s statement and encourage others to read it, he called out his cousin Patrick Schwarzenegger (son of Arnold and Maria Shriver) by name for not openly disavowing RFK Jr.’s politics using his public platform.

In a caption that notes his cousin has namechecked Jack’s grandparents (JFK and Jackie) to promote the latest season of White Lotus (!), he asks if Patrick believes some of the most unhinged and harmful beliefs peddled by RFK Jr. The fact that Patrick Schwarzenegger would invoke his “Great-uncle” to promote White Lotus is itself insane and gives “we are a fallen nation.” Who cites JFK to promote a TV show in which you appear?

It reminds me of the launch of George, John F. Kennedy Jr.’s magazine on politics and pop culture. He went on Oprah to promote its launch and talked about his memories of his father in public for the first time in 1996. At the time, some criticized this move as cheapening his father’s legacy to sell magazines. Interestingly, when sales began to flag, JFK Jr. created buzz by criticizing his cousins Michael and Joe Kennedy Jr. in the pages of the magazine, calling them “poster boys for bad behavior.” In the essay he wrote on seemingly giving in to bad impulses, he calls both out for having affairs with an underaged babysitter (Michael) and chasing an annulment for political reasons (Joe Kennedy Jr.) saying they "chased an idealized alternative to their life." While critical, it’s hardly as direct and cutting as what Jack Schlossberg is doing now.

JFK Jr. talking about his own father while promoting his magazine also feels so innocent now that RFK Jr. literally copied JFK’s presidential campaign iconography to mount an anti-vaxxer campaign. (As a counterpoint, and perhaps to further troll Patrick cheapening JFK’s name, Jack shared some of his fave clips of his grandfather’s speeches while in office).

But back to Jack Schlossberg’s muckracking, as he calls it.

jackuno

A post shared by @jackuno

Muckrakers were journalists devoted to calling out monopolies and corrupt industry leaders at the turn of the twentieth century. Think Upton Sinclair trying to ruin hot dogs for me forever in The Jungle, or Nellie Bly writing about corrupt mental health institutions (low key my hero). Teddy Roosevelt rose to prominence as a man from an upper-class family who wanted to take on monopolies, expose corruption, and get crooks out of government. Interestingly, Jack Schlossberg is positioning his Insta theater as muckraking journalism, and why not? It feels refreshing for someone in his position to actually eschew privilege (which can include things like silence or an unwillingness to call out shady relatives in public) and risking looking foolish to do so. Little Edie would be proud.

By calling out relatives during contentious campaigns, he reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s own family which often feuded publicly over its internal political divisions. Teddy Roosevelt’s infamous daughter Alice, owner of a pet snake and a throw pillow that said “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me” did not support FDR.

Alice with her pillow

She disparaged him openly in her columns in Ladies’ Home Journal. In one 1932 column she said of him,

He is my father's fourth cousin once removed. . . . Politically, his branch of the family and ours have always been in different camps, and the same surname is about all we have in common. . . . I am a Republican. . . . I am going to vote for Hoover. . . . If I were not a Republican, I would still vote for Mr. Hoover this time." (Source)

Damn. Truly an “I don’t know her” moment, and likely one FDR did not appreciate as he ran for president.

Similarly, I can’t imagine some Kennedys welcome being so exposed by one of their own, but I can only hope the theater it generates online can generate greater awareness of the absolute farce taking place in our national politics.

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