The Only Good Kennedy

Now here are some of the, at once, saddest and most absurd words I've ever read. I'm serious! This is from an obituary for Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Read – and be appalled: “Her sister Rosemary learned to read and write with the help of special tutors and for a while had a lively social life of tea dances and trips to Europe. But as Rosemary got older, her father worried his daughter's mild condition would lead her into situations that could damage the family's reputation, and he authorized a lobotomy in the hope of calming her mood swings. She ended up in worse condition and lived out the rest of her days in an institution, dying in 2005.”

Now – savor that for a moment. To begin with, can you imagine the irony of Joseph Kennedy worring that his somewhat-unstable daughter might get herself "into situations that could damage the family's reputation” -- given that he was a notorious womanizer and already, in his own time, considered one of the most evil men in the country? Not to mention his goat-like gaggle of male offspring, including JFK, who had whores trucked into the White House on tour buses? But to add to the enormity we have the use of prefrontal lobotomy, which is a polite way of describing the process of putting someone to virtual brain death through surgery -- “the” preferred method, in those benighted times, of dealing with psychosis, but also, as in this case, with a “mild condition” -- provided the person with the "mild condition" came from a family with plenty of money. Yeah – turn the kid into a zombie, that's the ticket! No one wants a loony hanging around this family, no siree! Wow – imagine if everyone with “mood swings” these days was packed off to the nearest lobotomatorium. What a windfall it would be to the psychiatric establishment – as it, in fact, was... back then. But at least Rosemary, bless her heart, had the gumption to live to the ripe old age of 86 – so she continued to be a thorn in the paw of the Kennedy dynasty... a skeleton in their closet... a flaw in the otherwise clear and idyllic picture of “Camelot”... and a clear reflection of the heart of evil in the Kennedy clan.