The Kennedy Klan, one of the most dysfunctional families ever to stain American public life, has just released a remarkable whitewashing of one of the Klan Patriarch’s worst offenses against women, the murder of his own daughter to avoid embarrassment to the family. The body of Rosemary Kennedy, who lived almost her whole life in an institution, died at the age of 86. But Rosemary Kennedy died when her parents had her lobotomized in 1941 because she was sleeping with London taxi drivers while her father was Ambassador to the Court of St. James.
The CNN story states that Rosemary was “born mentally retarded” and quotes her sister writing in 1961,
“Early in life Rosemary was different,” she wrote. “She was slower to crawl, slower to walk and speak. … Rosemary was mentally retarded.”
Yet even CNN notes,
Her retardation may have stemmed from brain damage at birth. But in her own diaries before the lobotomy she chronicled a life of tea dances, dress fittings, trips to Europe and a visit to the Roosevelt White House.
Preserved by her mother’s secretary, the diaries came to light in 1995, in a book. And while they revealed no great secrets, the three diaries — written between 1936 and 1938 — described people she met and concerts and operas she attended.
As she got older, however, her father worried that his daughter’s mild condition would lead her into situations that could damage the family’s reputation.
A woman who wrote in her diaries about “the people she met and concerts and operas she attended” was lobotomized because Kennedy women couldn’t sleep with inappropriate men. For Kennedy men, however, there were other options, as her brothers showed. The most public display of contempt for women was given by the worst of the lot, Ted Kennedy, when he disposed of an inappropriate woman by driving her off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. Of course, he did finally talk to the police….the next morning.
I pity anyone unfortunate enough to be born into such a family. But especially I pity the women.
Is there a definitive book relating to the lobotomy and various other negative caveats regarding the Kennedy family out there? I’m not familiar with the matter but this is pretty shocking and interesting at the same time.
I recall a bit of a kerfuffle when Laurence Leamer’s book “The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family” came out: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0449911713/qid=1105212114/sr=2-3/ref=pd_ka_b_2_3/102-2799063-7351313 . The remarkable trail of abuse of women that the Kennedy men have left in their trail has been rather well documented in the mainstream media, so you don’t need to dip into the kooky internet conspiracy sites to believe that Joseph and Rose Kennedy raised a clan of men accustomed to abusing their female partners and siblings. (That extends even to the disregard for safety shown by one of the family members who generally seemed a decent fellow and who actually worked for a living, John F. Kennedy, Jr., who flew a plane controlled with foot pedals with a broken foot; the plane crash killed him, his wife, and his wife’s sister: http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/1999/07/20/reckless/ .)
You may think that he is a sloppy scholar with low “standards of evidence” for his books, but Thomas DiLorenzo agrees with you about this case. He posted at http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/007027.html the following blog, which is very much like yours —
January 09, 2005
The Atrocious Kennedys (a.k.a., “America’s Royalty”)
Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo at January 9, 2005 08:09 PM
There is no better example of how corrupt and dishonest the “mainstream media” are than how it never misses a chance to refer to the Kennedy family as “America’s royalty” or “America’s first family.” JFK Jr. (R.I.P.), was routinely called “America’s Prince.”
An American Atrocity is more like it. Keeping in mind that Webster’s defines the word “atrocious” as “shockingly wicked, cruel, or brutal . . . shockingly bad or tasteless; abominable,” consider the short obituary for Rosemary Kennedy, sister of Senator Ted Kennedy, who passed away last Friday, from page A-23 of the Sunday, Jan. 9 New York Times.
Rosemary was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. But, writes the Times, “Rosemary’s mild mental retardation would lead her into a situation that could damage the family’s reputation, and [ so her father, Joe Kennedy, Sr.] arranged for her to have a lobotomy. She was 23.”
Being only mildly retarded and the daughter of a multimillionaire, Rosemary could have lived a long, decent life, maybe even marrying, and enjoying the love of her family. But since she “had taken to sneaking out of the convent where she was staying at the time” and “there was a dread fear of pregnancy, disease, and disgrace,” the “first family’s” patriarch decided that she needed a lobotomy, an operation on the brain in which the frontal lobes of one’s brains are scraped away. After the operation, the Times, writes, poor Rosemary was “reduced to an infantlike state, mumbling words and sitting for hours, staring at walls.” She was institutionalized in Wisconsin in 1949, and remained there in this state until she died last Friday.
Meanwhile, the Kennedy family made as much political hay of her situation as it could, founding the Special Olympics in her honor. I’m sure she would have been very happy about that, if only she could have comprenended it.
I wonder what kind of lesson this event taught the young Kennedy boys about how they should treat the women in their lives?
I’m saddened to see the very shallow discussion of Rosemary’s plight and the Kennedy’s contribution to the lives of the mentally retarded. We’re having a discussion on the same subject over on my blog, hopefully with a little historical perspective, and some personal experience. Feel free to join in.
http://jimbuie.blogs.com/journal/2005/01/rosemary_kenned.html
Mr. Buie states that talking about the terrible behavior of some of the powerful Kennedy men toward women is just politics. He can read that into it if he wants, but more than anything else it shows how he wishes to use the issue to make political points. My points would stand even if the Kennedys were Republicans or Independents.
The fact of the matter is that Joseph Kennedy, a truly nasty and vicious person if ever there were one, had his daughter gotten out of the picture because she was inconvenient. As a very wealthy and powerful family, the Kennedys could cover their tracks and portray their dysfunctional and predatory family relationships as saintly because they were involved in setting up the Special Olympics (a worthy cause, to be sure). That doesn’t cover up the criminality and abuse that characterizes a disturbing portion of their family history.
joe kennedy was selfish and arrogant. i think it is pathetic the way he treated his daughter. if he could not take care of her, adoption was always an incentive for a good life when she was a baby.