Kennedy Agonistes

I hate the Kennedys. It's got a lot to do with hagiography like this, which court pages like Theodore Sorenson and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. served to a suppliant press and a public willing to believe in golden gods. This review of JFK nephew Christopher Lawford does perform an essential task: revealing that the Kennedy clan/junta is the house of Atreus and Thebes, with Hamlet, King Lear, and Hotspur all rolled int one:

Their legacy still means something, even now, after all the humiliations and conservative counterassaults. They were not really even a dynasty, like the Bushes – their enemies made short work of that ambition. But at least for those of us in blue-precinct America, the Kennedy name is a distant trumpet that still sounds out the best of what our country stands for. When white-maned Teddy again takes the lead in confronting a Manchurian Supreme Court nominee, when Caroline Kennedy invokes her father's legacy in her books, when Bobby Jr. rallies a crowd to stand up against the poisonous pillaging of corporate polluters, we're reminded once more of why principled progressive leadership matters.

If you need quick Pepto-Bismol, consult Gore Vidal's "The Holy Family" (found in his superb collection United States: Essays: 1952-1992) and Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot.