Kerry Kennedy, one of RFK’s gazillion offspring, is proving that not only does bias make you stupid, bias plus Trump Derangement makes you a lousy sister.
She has allowed herself to be co-opted by the Biden campaign to undermine her own brother’s maverick Presidential run. It is planning on using Kerry Kennedy and other family members to condemn RFK Jr. in swing states if he makes it onto their ballots (despite the DNC’s conscerted efforts to block him. You know: democracy!) “I’ve told the Biden campaign that I’ll campaign wherever they want me to go,” she told the New York Times. For its part, the campaign says, “We’re honored to have the Kennedys’ support, and we look forward to working with them to spread the message on the campaign trail about how the president is carrying on the Kennedy legacy,” in the words of Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokeswoman.
How exactly would Joe Biden carry on “the Kennedy legacy”? Youth and vigah? Dazzling exchanges with reporters? Throbbing charisma? Bedding young women instead of just sniffing them? Exciting oratory? Solidarity with campus protests? Maybe Hitt means the legacy of Joe Kennedy Sr. when he was a doddering fixer for his scandal-addicted sons.
Let’s be clear: Baby Bobby has a lot of repulsive policy ideas, including advocating legal punishment for anyone who doesn’t agree with climate change hysterics. He’s not just a “Wuhan vaccines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be” advocate, he’s an anti-vaccinations in general fanatic. Would he be a worse President than Joe Biden? Would it be better to be mauled by a Kodiak bear or eaten by a Killer Whale?
His sister doesn’t have to support her wacko brother whom she claims to love, of course. Joining Biden’s effort to denigrate him coast to coast, however, is bad family ethics. Unconditional love means, at very least, not shivving a family member in the back when he’s in the fight of his life. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asked to comment on his sister’s perfidy, texted the Times, “I think I’ll stay out of this controversy.”
That’s how his sister should be handling this as well.
I also have to ask why anyone cares who Kerry Kennedy thinks should be President, except that they might attache extra significance to the fact that she is setting out to hurt her own brother’s campaign. Kennedy is, then, deriving undeserved influence from her name alone, just like her wayward brother.
Her own judgment is permanently dubious: after all, she married Andrew Cuomo.
Ethics Alarms 
So funny how these second and third generation Democratic party advocates for democracy act as if they are America’s nobility. Worse, they get away with it with the aid of the enabling media and the commoner party operatives and sycophants.
But clearly, Junior’s run is bad for the Kennedy family brand and business. If they’re going to hold onto their gravitas in anything other than commercial real estate, they can’t be known going forward as being related to a guy who ran the third-party campaign that ended up electing the most reprehensible Republican of all time. They’d be cast into the wilderness for the rest of time.
And who knows, the Kennedys may in fact have substantial holdings in Wales!
Well, RFK Sr. had a significant role in electing the second most reprehensible GOP President, Richard Nixon, and many believe Teddy was responsible for Carter losing his re-election bid to Reagan
Very astute. Of course, you’re a presidential historian in your non-existent spare time. But this time, we’re talking TRUMP! Boy, what is it about the Kennedys? They are truly made of Teflon. Maybe it’s so much of the American populus’ inextinguishable craving for American royalty to swoon over. After all, they do it in Europe!
So this is the fourth Kennedy to run for president — it strikes me that they are garnering progressively (sic) less and less support with each one.
Biden is carrying on the Kennedy legacy. Biden is pushing for NATO membership for Ukraine and Kennedy parked a bunch of nuclear tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey and expanded our role in Southeast Asia. We know how close to WW3 we were then. We are damn near there under Biden.
“He’s not just a “Wuhan vaccines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be” advocate, he’s an anti-vaccinations in general fanatic. “
I’m curious about this. I’ve heard him labeled an anti-vax fanatic by many in the media. But I heard him speak on the topic in a long form interview and he sounded relatively sane, particularly given what we now know about the pharmaceutical industry post-Covid.
Specifically, he talked about the Chickenpox vaccine. He said it’s part of the mandatory vaccine schedule for children here in the US, but in the UK they’ve now either dropped it completely or made it optional, I forget which. The reason is that they’ve found a big increase in Shingles cases later in life for people who had the Chickenpox vaccine vs. those who were allowed to have Chickenpox itself in childhood.
So basically we’re trading a disease in which, according to Johns Hopkins, “symptoms are usually mild in children”, for one in which, according to the New York Dept. of Health, “for about one (1) person in five (5), severe pain can continue even after the rash clears up”, and in rare cases can lead to “pneumonia, hearing problems, blindness, brain inflammation (encephalitis) or death.”
Kennedy’s point was that we shouldn’t blindly get rid of all vaccines, but neither should we blindly accept them as a panacea without doing proper research and looking at the big picture of their effects, rather than just their effect on the specific disease they are targeted at. Maybe there are other interviews of his you’ve heard that tend more towards the fanatical, but to me he sounded refreshingly rational.
This thinking effectively makes Kennedy “anti-science” in the world of Democrats, and therefore eligible for cancellation and ridicule.
You know what’s (tragically) funny?…Anthony Fauci, speaking for big Pharma, could unveil a new drug that promised a 90% reduction in heart disease by stopping the flow of blood through the heart, and 80% of Democrats would call him a hero and most of them would sign up their heart-disease riddled parents for the trial, giving scant thought to what was being promised.
Again and again, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. In July, Kennedy said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told FOX News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism. In a 2021 podcast he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines.
“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy said.
From an AP article I’ll cite.
RFK Jr. says he’s not anti-vaccine. His record shows the opposite. It’s one of many inconsistencies | AP News
Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…
Honestly, if the AP says it looks like a duck and quacks like duck, there’s a good chance it’s a swan. Or a giraffe.
And we all know how reliable the AP is. You might be suffering from Gell-Mann Amnesia.
“Again and again, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. In July, Kennedy said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told FOX News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism.”
I went back and watched the FOX interview. It wasn’t particularly easy to find. The link goes to another article about the interview. (By the way, in my opinion the link is deceptive. Due to the words linked, a casual reader would assume it was a link to evidence of the debunking of the belief that vaccines cause autism, reinforcing the claim that there’s plenty of evidence that the idea was debunked. I was hoping to find some of that evidence at the other end of the link. Instead I found the article quoting the Kennedy interview, which should properly have been linked to “told FOX News”. Was that misdirection careless or deliberate?) In the interview, Kennedy did say he believes vaccines cause autism, but he immediately qualified it by saying all he’s asking for is “good science”. He says, “Vaccines are exempt from placebo-controlled trials.” If that’s accurate, then maybe the science on vaccines isn’t so good after all.
There is no link or any way to identify which podcast interview they’re referring to, so no way to verify the quote or get any context.
“In a 2021 podcast he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines.”
Did you go through the same pandemic I just went through? Pre-pandemic, I would have read this and thought, “Kennedy is a Kook!” Now I think, “Resist CDC guidlines? That’s sage advice.” If the CDC told me to get plenty of fluids I’d think twice about it.
“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy said.” If it’s true he said that, it’s worrisome. Unfortunately , again there’s no link to the podcast in question, so no way to verify it or get any context on the quote.
A couple of other choice quotes from the AP article:
Kennedy also has received substantial support from activists who have spread misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines…
Have you seen the Babylon Bee t-shirt that has “Experts” on one side of the grid and “Conspiracy Theorists” on the other, with about 17 hash marks under “Conspiracy Theorists” and a blank slate under “Experts”? Hilarious.
I think Jack has been justly critical of people who condemn Trump based on his being supported by some less than savory individuals and groups. Even if you accept the AP line about “activists who spread misinformation”, this falls into the same basket.
During the past several years, Kennedy has cultivated his ties to the far right. He has appeared on Infowars, the channel run by Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. He has granted interviews to Trump ally Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. After he headlined a stop on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist road show put together by former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, he was photographed backstage with Flynn, Charlene Bollinger and Trump ally Roger Stone.
Really? Photographed backstage with Michael Flynn et al.? The horror. Same rebuttal as the previous quote. Also, independent media and the right wing media are the only ones who will give Kennedy a chance to speak. Of course he’s gone there to get his message out.
Maybe Kennedy really is an anti-vax extremist. He’s certainly painted that way by the left leaning main-stream media. But I’ve grown to distrust everything they say, a state of affairs they’ve earned and I don’t think anybody here can fault me for. Conversely, when I actually listen to Kennedy talk, and not just read media commentary about him, at least on this topic, he comes off as being well reasoned and open to correction, but justifiably and completely sceptical of the pharmaceutical industry, a scepticism I share. I think they’ve earned it too.
Edit: I Googled RFK “safe and effective”. Here’s what I found:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4626145-rfk-jr-no-vaccine-safe-effective-interview-excerpt-misused/
I really urge you to listen to him speak, and not just take what the AP says about him at face value. You may still not like RFK, but your loathing for the AP will undoubtedly increase.
“I really urge you to listen to him speak.”
“Jon,” are you a paid RFK, Jr. political operative? Are you posting canned campaign talking points as purported comments? Sounds like it to me.
Yes, Bill. You caught me. I’ve been posting random comments here (albeit infrequently) since at least 2020, lying in wait so I can ensnare the multitudes of Ethics Alarms readers once I feel the time is right to overwhelm them with Kennedy talking points and flip them to our cause. That should be enough to swing the election and then finally rid the country of the scourge that is vaccines.
Back to reality, of the three major candidates, or maybe of the two major, one minor, and numerous inconsequential candidates, I do lean towards Kennedy. It’s not so much that I like him. I realize he has some SERIOUS flaws. But I dislike the other two so much that Kennedy seems absolutely statesmanlike to me in comparison. I think a big part of why I’m willing to overlook his flaws is the Covid vaccine. Jack said elsewhere in this thread it was a tangent. For me it was a defining moment, a turning point in my political outlook.
In any case, I don’t see my posts in this thread as so much pro-Kennedy as anti-mainstream media gaslighting and deceitfulness. Despite how much I dislike him, I defend Trump in pretty much the same way, though not here often (or ever) since there’s no real need.
If the criteria is speaking, RFKJ easily comes out ahead of Trump or Biden (or Harris). But then so does [Fill in Name of Funniest Example Here.]
I’d probably consider voting for [Fill in Name of Funniest Example Here.] ahead of Biden and Trump, too.
(That was meant as a joke. I’d never vote for [Fill in Name of Funniest Example Here.], at least not on a first ballot.)
But, Jon, [Fill in Name of Funniest Example Here] has always been misrepresented in the news media and unfairly vilified for daring to have politically incorrect opinions as well as for coming from an atypical background for a potential elected leader!!!
So true.
One other clarification. By suggesting you listen to Kennedy, my intention wasn’t that you would be swayed to vote for him, but that you would see that the AP article you linked to was a hit job rather than an accurate representation of the views he articulates, at least currently. I think a fair question to ask would be if he really holds those views or has just moderated how he presents himself for the election, but that’s not what the article said.
at least currently.
Yep. That’s a big question mark.
I will say my overall view on vaccines, and medicine in general, has changed due to what I saw during the pandemic. I’m much more sceptical of the party line.
I heard a vaccine researcher a couple of years ago. (I think she was either Danish or Dutch, I can’t remember which. I’m sorry I don’t have more specific information on her or her research.) She was focused on looking at overall outcomes for vaccines.
Setting aside the Covid vaccine, I don’t think anyone would argue that vacccines in general don’t do a pretty good job preventing whatever disease they’re designed to prevent. However, she said that before her there wasn’t much research into long term life outcomes of people taking or not taking a specific vaccine.
According to her, some vaccines did pretty well in terms of long term outcomes, some not so much, and that it would behoove us to consider this and weigh it out in deciding whether a vaccine should be given or not. I think this was exemplified by the Covid vaccine: you have a medical treatment with the word “vaccine” at the end of it, and everybody assumes it’s a panacea with magical qualities to end illness, despite there being no research to validate that.
Why on earth would I listen to anything a Kennedy had to say about anything? They’re idiots. And they prey upon women.
Old Bill wrote: Why on earth would I listen to anything a Kennedy had to say about anything? They’re idiots. And they prey upon women.
Now Bill, if we start crossing off the names of the presidential candidates who are idiots and prey upon women, we’re not going to have anyone left to vote for, are we?
….not even Hillary!
I was going to buy a new laptop anyway, so don’t worry about the keyboard.
Whew!
And I’m thrilled you have a sense of Huma…
I heard a vaccine researcher a couple of years ago. (I think she was either Danish or Dutch, I can’t remember which. I’m sorry I don’t have more specific information on her or her research.) She was focused on looking at overall outcomes for vaccines.
She came up in a podcast I was watching yesterday. Her name is Christine Stabell Benn. She’s a Danish researcher at the University of Southern Denmark.
Here’s a link to the video of her from 2 years ago on the program Unherd:
That doesn’t seem to be working. It just has that circle going round and round. If it doesn’t appear in this comment, it can be found by googling “Christine Stabell Benn Unherd podcast”.
No vaccinations are “safe” as in “no risk at all.” There have always been fatalities, and always will be. Without the vaccines, the fatalities would be unimaginably more.
Different times, different perceptions.
If memory serves, from reading a biography of Abigail Adams, early in her marriage there was a vaccine available against smallpox. My recollection is that about 5 or 10% of all those getting vaccinated ended up getting smallpox, which was quite a deadly disease.
Nonetheless, people (including her husband John) lined up to get vaccinated. They saw the risk/reward ratio as being in their favor, especially for someone like Adams who wanted to be a lawyer.
Somehow I suspect that efficacy rate would not be applauded these days.
In the John Adams miniseries on HBO, it shows Abigail having all of her kids vaccinated. But it was absolutely a smart risk, because smallpox was deadly at a high rate.
Yeah, it’s been several years since I read that book.
One other thing that stood out — especially as it relates to infectious diseases — was that the small town she used to live in was decimated by a whooping cough epidemic. I think hundreds died during that outbreak.
We easily forget just how much vaccines have improved our lives and life expectancy. During the 19th Century I believe infectious diseases of various kinds were the leading cause of death in the United States. They were a big reason so many children did not live through their childhood.
Vaccines have been a series of wonder drugs. So much so that I think scientists and public health folks have tended to stray far afield in labeling shots as ‘vaccines’.
Yes, I’m looking at the flu shots and covid shots.
“Nonetheless, people (including her husband John) lined up to get vaccinated. They saw the risk/reward ratio as being in their favor, especially for someone like Adams who wanted to be a lawyer.”
This begs for a lawyer joke agreeing that the higher the number of lawyers infected with smallpox, the more favorable the ratio.
I tagged him as an extreme anti-vaxxer long before a Presidential run was a twinkle in his eye, and the Wuhan vaccine problems, over-hyping, etc, are a tangent. They were created in a rush, and in fact did help us get out of the hysteria, even if it was placebo effect.
But I don’t need the AP—which we already know is a hack progressive mouthpiece now—to know RFK Jr. Factcheck.org, the closet we have to an almost fair factcheck organization, did a pretty thorough report on RFKJ’s “vaccines cause autism” nonsense.