Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The RFK Episodes

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Robert and Cody continue the epic tale of Bobby Kennedy Jr, falconer and rotting animal carcass connoisseur.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cool Zone Media. Oh God, yeah! It's Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that just made you reconsider listening to this podcast, because that's not an appropriate sound to make for a bunch of people driving to work, gardening with their kids in the yard. I apologize for that. We're not gonna go back. You can't edit audio, you know, it's impossible.

You know, if that dream were real, if you could, by God, we would change this podcast. Oh my God, if only. There's so many things would be different if we could edit audio and video. What's exciting, Robert, is that we may or may not release video at some point at an undisclosed time Maybe maybe not allegedly who knows will be

That finally mm-hmm listeners will get to see Cody and I make faces Maybe that were maybe they won't include those Just an honest reaction I really enjoyed Cody's face Yeah, yeah, or maybe we'll all get to hmm Just an honest reaction. I really enjoyed Cody's face. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe we'll all get to... I don't want to make any of those jokes. Let's move on. Cody,

how are we feeling about Bobby Kennedy, you know, as we roll into part two? Right now, he's not a bad guy, you know? My feeling is that he never had a chance. Yeah, right, that is, the bastardry here is primarily, not to, because again, he is admitted to sexually, basically admitted to sexually assaulting people,

so I'm not trying to whitewash RFK Junior either, but like, the primary bastard of the story is the concept of the Kynesty dynasty and what it does to these kids, yeah. Not good, not good good never had a chance really bad Really bad just the it's like if you if it's like scientists in the lab We're trying to cook up the worst way to raise people like I just watched the movie

They cloned Tyrone, which is I don't want to like good for for you, but excellent excellent really really really cool yeah, really really good movie and The Kennedy's kind of feel like the reverse of that premise if instead of you know I don't know how to say this but going too bad, but it's like somebody It's like a bunch of creepy scientists We're trying to like design a ruling dynasty in a lab and just completely fucked up at it You know like the experiment did not work Or like a more ambitious like dog tooth. Yeah

I don't know what this is like raise our kids in the most like fucked up way possible. Yeah yeah, I think about like those um, those like Those fucking nerds who keep winding up in the media every like three months the news will decide Let's have a little circus around these like we have to have as many Kids as possible because we're exceptionally smart. Yeah, we have a responsibility and I hit my kids but for science reasons You know and then you ask them for the science reasons and they're like I saw a tiger do it once Man what else do you when they get sick do you eat your young because I have seen a cat do that I have seen it eat its own kittens as the kitten was ill are you doing that are you gonna eat your sick kids? So that predators don't smell them. You know no you're not doing that cuz we don't take parenting advice from Tigers

Data points from Tiger This is I mean I last episode I kept wanting to like bring them up because this is just that we've got to have as many as possible. Our army is being created by us and our children. All I hope I and I again, this is the not to whitewash R.F.K. Jr., but I actually walked away very rare for me, but I walked away more sympathetic towards him than I was because it's just not again, not that he he doesn't have agency in the bad things. He's done. My god. How could this story have ended? Well, okay Yeah, I mean, it's the you know, it's how you

Create empathy for like villains in stories like well, if you know their backstory then yeah understand how they got that way It doesn't use their actions at that point, but you're like, oh man, never had a chance. It honestly makes them scarier. I talk about the sympathetic young Hitler a lot, but another young Hitler story is when he was a young man living independently as a poor artist in Vienna, he was kept afloat by his dad's old government pension, which he gave up, which rendered him completely

destitute because his sister had a kid and she needed the money more. You can find in the Hitler story a truly selfless act because he wasn't always destined to be fucking Hitler. And you kind of have to accept that with most of you. No one's destined to be Hitler. There's some five-year-olds out there torturing cats and stuff. Maybe those people, right? Maybe it happens occasionally, but that's not the story we're talking about today,

for sure. No, he loves animals, actually. Yeah, he loves them. He did maybe kill that endangered turtle, but you know, someone should have stopped him. That was the adults, and at this point, Sergeant Shriver shouldn't have let him steal an endangered turtle.

Probably shouldn't have let him do that. Maybe that was the start, maybe the start of it all. It's just like, well, you know, your uncle just died. Sure, abducted turtle. Take the turtle, come on, there you go. Little treat. Africa's got plenty of them. Yeah. Speaking of things, Africa's got a lot of,

probably podcasts, cold opens. And this podcast, Cold Open, is done. It's time to warm it up That's right. That's right Mm-hmm. I just made that up. It wasn't a great Cody. It's good. Can I be in your band if you send me that audio file? I will turn that into a hit. Yeah, he's already a hit I'm gonna turn that into a hit along with that clip. We found of Rush Limbaugh saying bust female vaginal walls, Cody That's a great one.

It's in the Dr. Laura episodes. You're gonna love it. Really good stuff. I won't actually love it. Really horrible thing to hear. Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my

life and so many others forever, rippling out for generations. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women's sports. Every day I'm bringing you the stakes, stars, stats, and stories to keep you up to date. Good Game is where we go to celebrate, debate, and dissect the teamwork, competition, and rivalries that we love to watch. Join us. Let's have some fun. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast,

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Bobby Jr. was at his boarding school, Georgetown Prep, which was run by Jesuits and had a reputation for being one of those places you sent rich boys to turn them into responsible members of the power elite. Bobby was sleeping in his dorm room when his dad was assassinated and was woken by one of the fathers or whatever. I don't know if it's a father

or if it's like more of a monk type deal, but one of the Jesuits guys comes down and is like, hey, a chartered car has come for you in the night. I'm not gonna explain why, but you probably, you're a Kennedy at this point, you probably can assume a bad thing happened. The pattern, the pattern is establishing itself. Yeah, so he is taken to the Kennedy compound

at Hickory Hill. The whole experience is obviously his dad got shot to death, right? That's traumatic, you know? There's no way for that not to be traumatic. Bobby and his siblings are ushered in to see their father before like while he's still technically alive But like and that's like a hideous. I don't know. I Can't say that's the wrong thing to do

Right thing but like what condition like how is he is he even how responsive is he is that gonna be more traumatic? But still seeing him at some point where he's technically alive, does that help? I don't know. Everyone's different. What definitely does not help is that this whole period, every moment of this where they're outside the compound and outside of that hospital room, they're surrounded by press, right? To an extent that like even today is probably pretty rare, right? Like the sheer degree of attention on them has to make this even harder to handle than just having your dad shot to death in public.

They are subjected to a massive public show of mourning at the funeral of their dad. There's like a hobo march for RFK because he was such like so beloved by so many like poor and struggling people. Like he really is. And again, we can argue like how fair is it? There's some bad stuff he did, but like that love is real,

and that contributes to how RFK Jr. and his siblings are processing all of this. Ethel Kennedy, Bobby's mom's kind of collapses after her husband gets murdered. And I have a lot of criticisms of Ethel, but like, again, you got 11 kids and your husband to get shot to death. Sure. I mean Yeah, like what are you gonna do like it's so easy to judge how people react to these sort of things But what's the good reaction?

It's not what she did, but I can't say that like I would have done better as Ethel, you know Yeah but I can't say that like I would have done better as Ethel, you know? Yeah. The big change, the biggest difference between how the Kennedy family as a unit reacts to JFK getting shot. I was gonna say JFK getting blown away, but how many more Billy Joel references are necessary in this episode? A few. Probably one more,

but maybe not that one. Only one more, I don't know. But there's a big difference between how the family reacts to JFK getting killed and to RFK getting killed. Because when JFK gets killed, RFK is there and he is there to remold the family around him and make them feel like we still have a pretty bright future. We're going to move forward. That's not there after he dies, right? Teddy Kennedy is kind of the family patriarch

at this point and he tries. This is not Teddy will become a more capable and responsible person He is not at this point as we will talk about and like, you know To a little bit of like like how could he be like what what do you do here? Right, like like you have had to the two patriarchs of the family like a two or three like not too Like but like within very short or it's like a four-year period it's very Short period of time like assassinated right like yeah at that point You're like is are we all gonna get assassinated like what's like? What is if I'm teddy what I'm most like should we keep doing this?

What is this seems like this might have been a really bad plan What are we what are we doing? Yeah, one of the Kennedy cousins, who's in the compound of the family, later recalled to Horowitz and Collier for their book, "'It was so different from Jack's death. There had been a coming together. Uncle Bobby had seen to that. In a strange way, we'd felt even more like Kennedys

than ever, proud at what Jack had been, determined that our time would come again. But once Uncle Bobby died, there was just this sense of splitting apart.'" RFK Jr. was only an occasional presence at the Kennedy compound in Hickory Hill at that point. One of the ways she reacts to RFK getting killed is she is kind of permanently angry at her sons forever. And in a way that's really hard to forgive and that must have been devastating to them.

The youngest children and girls were, according to Collier and Horowitz, immune to her temper. She's not shitty to her girls. She's not shitty to the little kids, but she is really bad to Joe, Bobby Jr., and David. Right? Quote, she told Joe he must be the man of the house now and allowed him to sit in his dead father's chair at the dinner table. But when he hit his younger sister, Carrie, for making noise, she gave him the infantile punishment of having to walk up and down the stairs a hundred times.

Later Joe went into the yard and in a moment of tenderness took the hands of his younger brothers and sisters and began to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, their father's favorite song. Meanwhile Ethel kept saying to Bobby Jr. and David, get out of here as if the house itself with all the pictures of family triumphs were a sanctuary they defiled with their presence. What you've got here is these kids are reacting to their uncle and dad getting shot,

these boys by acting out. Joe, who's the oldest is like being kind of a bully. He hits his younger siblings a lot. He like tackles them, he fights, but like that's not abnormal. It's not great. It's certain something you want to deal with like tackles them, he fights, but like, that's not abnormal, it's not great, it's certain something you got, you wanna deal with that behavior,

you don't wanna ignore it, but like, you're not a bad person as a 12 year old boy, something like that, because like, that's how you react. That's an indicator that he's dealing with something and going through it, not that like, he needs to be like the target of your ire, and your, like everything that you're feeling shouldn't be targeted at these kids.

And Ethel's only response is you're disgracing the family, like how fucking dare you get the hell out of here, right? That is her go-to parenting move for the boys. Bobby Jr. also acts out constantly, and his particular style, he's less violent, but he seems to think the best way for him to get attention. And nobody's really got time to give attention to Bobby Jr., right?

He has like servants and stuff. He gets like technically attention, but not from the people he needs it from, right? And he tries to get it by playing pranks. And he, this is- I'm gonna say, that's what it sounds like he would do. Yeah. Yeah, he's a pranker.

And he does one of these, he plays a prank at his dad's memorial. So there's a neighbor and friend of the family, Philip Kirby, who's like this rich kid who lives nearby. He's part of the memorial service for RFK. And he recalls, before it starts, the priest gives him a bell to ring during the liturgy. And the priest says, I'll touch you in the shoulder when it's time for you to ring it, right?

So you don't time it wrong. And Bobby starts tapping him randomly during the services a bit. So he rings the bell when there's not supposed to be any kind of music or noise. And like Kirby, this is like the biggest funeral in national history, or at least since JFK. He is like weeping in tears because he has fucked this up and he looks back and he sees RFK Jr. holding in laughter.

Cause it's a very little kid thing to do. It is also on the mean side of pranks. Oh yeah, I mean, if you're a kid, you're not gonna really be able to grasp that it's mean. Not a moral actor in the same way. Right, but man, that sucks for that guy. Sorry, Philip. Oh man.

The pranks continued a week after his dad's funeral. David Kennedy, the younger of the Kennedy, the this generation Kennedy brothers has a birthday. This is obviously a fragile time for everybody. The first birthday for one of RFK's sons after his death. Bobby Jr. decides the right thing to do is to poison everybody. And I'm gonna read a quote

from biographer Jerry Oppenheimer here. Bobby had spiked everyone's milk with a laxative, infuriated his mother, demanded, just leave home, get out of my life. Good choice. And like- I mean, things aren't going well. That is wild. It's very bad behavior to poison your family, you know?

Yeah. There's certainly a punishment that's now, we can always talk about what kind of punishment should parents do. You shouldn boys should get away with poisoning the family, but get out of my life What a devastating thing to say to your child after you day after his dad is set Yeah, right at that point. I mean just let me get into politics and wait a few years And I will like fucking he is these boys are all abandonment issues, the guy, like that is the Kennedy boys of this generation. Soon after, possibly to make up for the ruined party, Ethel flies the kids with Ted Kennedy,

cause again, he's around a lot. He's kind of in the, sometimes trying to be a father. He's also very young. He's a party boy. He is not mature enough to be responsible. And like really, it's kind of unreasonable to expect a man of that age to suddenly take on the duties of being the head of this family of kids who aren't yours,

who belong to your murdered brother. That's a lot to ask of Ted. But he doesn't do a great job at it, right? He does seem to be trying very hard. Ethel takes them all on this chartered boat ride, right? And during this chartered boat trip, Ethel's mood swung wildly. And RFK

Jr. is as usual pushing boundaries and fucking around with his siblings. Ethel grew furious at him and David and dragged them both below decks and beats them with a hairbrush. This is the first time something like this has happened. I don't think she had been physically violent with them before. It is a really like searing moment for RFK Jr. and for David. Yeah, they remember it. Of course they do. Yeah, and again, you know, on Ethel's side of things,

it's not good to do this. I might say that like, yeah, you can't expect any kind of perfectly rational behavior from a woman in this situation, but this has a horrible impact on our kids. That's beyond the pale. That's like not like. Yeah, the beating, I think we've crossed the line from just saying, the situation, but this has a horrible impact on our kids. That's beyond the pale.

That's like not like... Yeah, the beating, I think we've crossed the line from just saying this shit. It was the first time. Was it the last time? Like, did it become a pattern after that? Or was it just like, yeah? I don't get the impression that she is a present enough parent for there to have been much many patterns at all, other than she repeatedly tells them to leave, get out of here, you're

not welcome at home. Yeah, that is the big pattern is her saying get out of here You are no longer welcome at the family compound You're no longer welcome like Bobby's gonna spend time like hiding out like camping and hiding and like out buildings and stuff because it's not supposed To be there. He spends a lot of his childhood just like living with other families who are kind of adjacent to the Kennedys. Yeah, it's messed up, right? Not gonna be good. Yeah. Yeah.

Ethel only expresses more and more frustration with her kids after this. She exiles Bobby Jr. back to a private school, this time a new one, a place called Millbrook. And Millbrook is, you watched Arrested Development, right? Obviously you did. You know how like, fucking Buster is, he went to that school. He's a Milford man. Yeah, a Milford man.

You've never seen nor heard? Milford is a parody of Millbrook, right? Because this is the place where like, not just the sons of the rich and famous are sent, but it's the sons that are having problems, right? You send them there to get disciplined and to get like straightened out, right? One teacher described it as quote,

a place where the rich and famous would tuck their children away, right? If you're wondering what that was a reference to, it's a reference to Millbrook. RFK Jr. is just one of what would become a long line of rich boys with behavioral problems whose parents didn't wanna deal with them full time. And Millbrook is also located very near the mansion

where Timothy Leary kept all of his acid and his friends on acid. And drugs are not hard to come by for Millbrook kids. And it's this unique situation of, people don't really know about drugs. There's like a vague understanding of like maybe marijuana, but even then that's not very visible. And like LSD is so fucking new.

And so adults don't really know, they just notice like, wow, these kids are behaving really weird. But even then that's not very visible and like LSD is so fucking new and so Adults don't really know they just notice like why these kids are behaving really weird and they don't really notice that like yeah Bobby Kennedy is just always fucking on drugs now like from this point forward. He is always on drugs, you know No, and it's funny because it seems like at this point mostly it's pot Oppenheimer because he's going to wind up addicted to heroin Oppenheimer treats pot like heroin and his biography of Bobby Where he's like and he was getting every day. I was like, yeah, he's 15, you know, like I know a lot like half of the people I know I'm not saying you should you shouldn't do until you're older kids Wait a little bit my opinion your brain developed and stuff and all that I'm gonna say 90 plus percent of people who smoke pot when they're 16, 15, 17, like it's fine, you know?

You'll be okay. You'll be okay, people generally are. Bobby is not though, I will say that. But I don't know that I'm gonna blame the drugs. I think the drugs are more a symptom of this kid's disastrous early life. Being a Kennedy and having just lost his dad, none of the adults at Millbrook seem to have known

how to handle him. Like, how do we discipline this kid? We're kind of now marketing a lot on the fact that a Kennedy goes here. It's kind of a selling point to other rich families. So like, there's no, he kind of comes and goes as he pleases and he spends most of his free time getting fucked up or hunting small animals

with his hawk, Morgan LaFay. His primary hobby is taking acid and going hawking. Like hunting with his hawk. So he got to bring his hawk. He does get to bring his hawk. His hawk is with him all the time. It is always in the room. People who live with him as like roommates

at these boarding schools say that they're just bird shitting everywhere all the time. Like if you are living with Bobby Kennedy, there is bird shit everywhere constantly cause he is never far from his fucking birds. What a weird guy. He loves this. What a weird guy.

During this period of time, there is one adult who is a consistent presence in RFK Jr's life. And it's a guy named Lim Billings. And we will talk about old Lim, but first, Cody, speaking of Billings, get your Billings from the companies that support our podcast by sending them your money. Yeah, I'm getting my money out right now.

Yeah, Lim those Billings on over to him, you know? Lim him out. Lim it to win it. Anyway, we're done. Here's ads. It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, a backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks, two abortion clinics, and a lesbian bar. But this isn't his story.

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sheriff's department has failed to solve it. In Lost Hills, Dark Canyon, we're investigating what happened to Mitrice Richardson. Listen to Lost Hills, Dark Canyon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm back. So Lim Billings was a former New York ad executive who had been very deep friends. He's like JFK's oldest friend and like so close that Joe Kennedy who is not like the most emotional man in the world considers limb basically part of the family, right?

He has a house or he has a room at the Kennedy compound, right? He's that close with the family Yeah, and he is also gay. He is in love with JFK There are a lot of rumors that swirl around whether or not they had any kind of physical relationship I don't actually think there's any evidence of it. It seems like the kind of thing that was not uncommon with a lot of particularly very prominent gaming back then were like, I am in love with this person and my love takes the form since there's no kind of relationship that's possible.

Maybe, you know, obviously they're probably not actually interested in reciprocating it that way, but I become basically like their closest confidant. I'm always watching out for them. I'm the guy who is like. Yeah, constant companion. Constant companion. My buddy who, yeah.

Yeah, there's a movie I like to talk about a lot, If... Which is the first Malcolm McDowell movie. And it's a movie about British. Not the Imaginary Friends movie from the Twisted Mind of John Krasinski? No. That's called if as well.

That's also called if. Much worse movie. This if is an absolutely like incredible piece of cinema that everyone should watch. It is about a British boarding school. It's one of my favorite films. And McDowell has said later that like, yeah, we didn't, of the director, I didn't know at the time that he was gay, but now I can see that he was,

and his way of like kind of making love to me was the way that he shot me, right? When he was filming me, you know? I think about that when I think of Lim Billings, right? Yeah, yeah. Where you just have this intense, like attraction and admiration, but like you can't express it in the way you want to,

so you find more like socially acceptable ways to do that. Exactly, exactly. And that's kind of Lim. And Lim is obviously absolutely shattered by the JFK assassination, right? This destroys him as a person. He starts drinking heavily. He's never a really functional adult, right?

After this point. Now, depending on who you read, opinions on Lim vary. Jerry Oppenheimer, who published the 2015 biography of RFK Jr. is incredibly homophobic. And he, I kept waiting for there to be like some evidence that Lim had abused RFK Jr. or done something really bad, but like he really just seems to want us to be shocked by the fact that Lim was gay

and see that as inherently sinister. He also alleges that Lim enabled Bobby's drug use. From what I have read in other sources, I kind of think it was the opposite. Lim is never fully functional after JFK dies. He becomes an alcoholic. And when RFK Jr. starts doing drugs, Lim as the adult in the situation doesn't stop him.

And he should have, does not attempt to limit his access to drugs at all, but he starts doing them. And I don't think he's pushing RFK Jr. I think he is just like, yeah, sure, why the fuck not? Right? Right. Now the fact that Lim is gay and in love with Jack, with JFK, shouldn't be totally dismissed though.

Not because he abused Bobby, but because I think he may have put added pressure on him to follow his uncle Jack. There's an allegation that I think probably does have legs that he is kind of trying to groom Bobby into being like JFK And it kind of for a sweet reason of he like he wants his dead best friend back, right? No, like it's a very sweet. Yeah Yeah, like the cloning things like right right got to exist again. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very sad story

But not one that I think I don't see limb is like a villain. Now, obviously he's not the best influence of the- Right, at this point. To be the one adult in Bobby's life. Yeah, this seems unhealthy at best. Yeah, but it's unhealthy because everyone is just caught in this fucking poison matrix that is the Kennedy family legacy, right? In the book, after Camelot,

Bobby told author J. Randy Tereberelli, quote, in many ways, Lim was a father to me and he was the best friend I will ever have. I have also read interviews with RFK Jr.'s brothers, I think with David, where David was like, yeah, I was kind of jealous of Bobby because like none of us had any male authority figure, any male adults interested in us after dad died.

He got Lim and he was the only one, as opposed to what Oppenheimer said of him being the sinister force that like, well, at least RFK Junior had somebody. Had some, whether it's a role model or just some sort of guardian, some sort of guidance some sort of yeah And as a spoiler David's story is gonna end a lot

Faster and a lot worse than RFK jr. Stuff so maybe limb having something kept him from spinning out as much I don't know yeah That said it is beyond arguing that limb is not what most people would call a responsible guardian That said any kind of normal childhood for Bobby was completely off the table at this point. Lim after RFK dies, he's on safari when JFK dies. And after RFK gets killed, Lim takes him on a sorry your dad died safari?

Maybe we'll get you another turtle, who knows? Yeah, get you another turtle. I've spent my time expressing issues with Oppenheimer's biography, but I do think his description of this trip, this second death safari, can phase how damned weird it was. With professional 35 millimeter cameras, Bobby and Billings documented their African adventure,

which also included a rafting trip to Egypt's Valley of the Kings, and oddly, a VIP visit to a nightclub to watch the gyrations of a bevy of belly dancers, hosted by members of the Egyptian Supreme Court. An evening of salacious interest, more to the hormonal adolescent than to his gay, middle-aged sapperone.

The safari photos became quite lucrative, because at that time, in the wake of the latest Kennedy tragedy, anything a Camelot heir did became front-page media father. Aware of the demand, Billings brokered a deal with Life Magazine for an interview about their adventure and for the photos. The questionable story was put out that young Bobby wanted to use the money to build a memorial

to his father in the Serengeti National Park. And yeah, the pictures sell for a lot of money. He gets to watch what sounds like almost a strip tease put on by the Egyptian Supreme Court. Yeah, like some sort of burlesque sort of situation. Just a baffling childhood. Yeah. if you've met members of the Egyptian Supreme Court you have an odd child yeah it's like this weird like Westerosi sort of like trip celebration yeah like thing

yeah yeah yeah it is very Game of Thrones in a lot of ways right yeah so when they get back home from this very strange safari, Bobby continues doing shitloads of drugs and most consequentially introducing his brothers to drugs. And he does not limit himself to just dosing them. One of the people who sold acid to Bobby was a neighbor kid, John Kelly, who recalled that Bobby fed doses of acid to his parakeet. He soon expanded to other drugs like mescaline, which he pushed his younger brother, David, to try. David was scared.

David did not want to experiment with drugs, with psychedelics. He certainly wasn't ready as soon as Bobby was, but Bobby basically bullies him kind of until he takes a shitload of mescaline. And David is a young boy, too young to be doing shitloads of mescaline, who has lost his dad and is traumatized

and that can make a trip not, he has a bad time of it, right? And Kelly recalls that Bobby's instinct seems to be to increase his younger, to fuck with his younger brother, right? When David, so David hallucinates that Bobby's laying like, or standing up against like a bush or something and there's leaves pressing against him.

And David hallucinates that the leaves are sharp and he's like, Bobby, get away, they'll cut you. And Bobby laughs and he plunges into the leaves and then pretends he's been impaled and fakes his own death. And this prompts David to cry, you're dying just like daddy. Oh god. Oh boy.

Oh god. Oh no. That's so bad. Oh god. Oh boy. Oh god. Oh no. That's so bad. Oh Bobby. That's like so bad. Like being on that drug and oh, he thought that was really happening. Oh that's so.

And guess which Kennedy's gonna wind up dying of a drug overdose. That's such a fucked up prank. Yeah, ding ding David. Yeah. God. Real bad stuff ding David. Yeah. Real bad stuff. Very bad behavior. Don't do that.

To lean into it, to pretend that you are. Especially after your dad gets assassinated. Oh, I'll go to the leaves, but to pretend that, oh my God, it's so fucked up. Yeah. One of the weird things, you know how America has kind of processed 9-11 eventually by making a shitload of 9-11 jokes?

Yeah. Bobby and his generation of Kennedys processed the assassinations by making a lot of dead Kennedy jokes. Like even more than the band the dead Kennedys did. I don't know if they actually ever made jokes about it or it was just the name of the band. Anyway, the closest the Kennedys had to an heir apparent

was Ted Kennedy, who is a senator, who becomes a senator and is, you know, somebody do people do still think, you know, in the wake of RFK's death, hey, he could be the president. You know, he's pretty good looking, smart. He's obviously starting to have success in politics. But within a year of RFK's demise, Ted is involved in the infamous Chappaquiddick incident,

which fucking Republicans would not stop talking about. And it is a pretty bad situation. He is probably drunk. He drives off of a bridge, he abandons the crash afterwards, and he abandons his 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopeckne, who drowns, right? The best case scenario is that Ted is so drunk that he's not really aware of what he's doing.

I guess some people will argue it was just an accident, but he leaves afterwards and he goes to sleep and it's like, it's bad. He does not, he does a bad thing. He does a bad thing. I will say. Yeah. Now this is again, like, I don't know how you want to, we're not going to dissect fucking chapiquitic. God, you can find so much of that if you really want to. What matters to us today is that it more or less punctures Ted's shot at the presidency, right? That is not really gonna be in the cards.

That's not gonna, yeah. Yeah. Kind of took the steam out of that. Now, you could argue, and I think this is the strongest argument, that he is probably the best politician in terms of technical skill of any of his generation of the Kennedys, right?

Some of this is just because he's alive long enough to really have a full political career. But he's a very influential man in Congress. He winds up being kind of like arguably most influential Democrat in Congress for a significant period of time. And that's, you know, a lot for a family for most people, but that is a far cry from the vision Joe Kennedy had for his family and even further from the rosy image of Camelot perpetuated in the public memory.

Talk about a Kennedy curse had been a thing for about as long as anyone in the family could remember. But once RFK died, it went from something that had been kind of a half joke sort of deal to something the upcoming generation felt deep within their bones as destiny. Even Joe Kennedy, the man whose ambition had started this all, seemed to feel a sense of woe at what he now saw coming for his grandchildren. Chris Loeffer, JFK's nephew, later claimed, Sometimes grandpa would look at us as if he wanted to say something. His mouth would move sort of convulsively, as if some words were trying to get out.

Then this cloudy look would come over his eyes, and he'd slouch down into his wheelchair, and the attendant would wheel him off And that in the but that biography maybe it was just he you know he was stroking out He couldn't I mean yeah, there's a lot of things maybe it's that he's like maybe he regretted like oh I'm sorry my entire family to calamity. Yeah, yeah, maybe sorry for the pressure yes, I Yeah created for you that led to all of this.

All of these terrible, terrible things. And he does, he lives, you know, it's one of those things like, I don't know if Joe Kennedy made a deal with the devil or some sort of like house of usher ass cosmic evil, right? To have his success and then have it all ripped away when his children die at the last moment of his life. But that's kind of what happens, right?

He lives long enough to see Chappaquiddick and then he fucking drops right after that, you know? Yeah, he made some sort of deal and it led to the curse. It led to the curse. Part of it was you gotta watch some of it, but then you're done. And look, he made some good calls, making Mark Hamill the family lawyer, great move. House of Usher, good show you're done. Yeah, he made it look he made some good calls You know making Mark Hamill the family lawyer great move house of usher. Good show watch it. Oh, it's go my god

It's an incredible Mark Hamill performance. Yeah. Yeah, really really good show really good show Everyone else is playing essentially like a Poe character and Mark Hamill is playing like a Lovecraft protagonist Okay, it's quite good. It's quite good. That's interesting, all right, okay. I enjoyed it a lot. So I will say, you've got that one picture from the Collier and Horowitz book where Grandpa maybe started to regret some of his decisions. In his biography of RFK Jr., Oppenheimer also talks

to a significant number of people who are around the family and in the family at this point. Paints a darker picture of what Joe mostly tried to pass on to his grandchildren. His twin family mantras were, Kennedy's don't cry and Kennedy's don't complain, which is, whatever else, not gonna help you process everything that's happened to them.

If Kennedy's do die, you might want those other two things to actually work through that. They might need to cry. Maybe some complaints are warranted. But he does live long enough to see his blessings turn into curses. to actually work through that. They might need to cry. Maybe some complaints are warranted. Yeah. But he does live long enough to see his blessings turn into curses. His three most prominent sons dead, cause Joe died a while ago.

His remaining son disgraced, and the vast entitled brood that he had helped create turned into a dynasty, hurtling inevitably towards doom, when he finally passed on November 18th, 1969. Bobby, by this point, seemed to show less inclination to follow his dad into politics and decidedly more of a bent to being a,

we might call like a mild gangster, you know? Like a kind of adorable child gangster because he has, in this period, formed a street gang. Focused around it, his street game made up entirely of Kennedy's and their friends who are also very rich kids from this incredibly rich neighborhood with a family compound is located They call themselves the Hanna sport terrors The HPT's as we'll call them the assumptions So

Bobby Kennedy's got a street gang, and initially it's just his older brother Joe, who's 17, he's 15, and his brother David, he's 14, but a bunch of cousins and neighbors join in, and they'll all dress in black, and they'll paint their faces with grease. And first off, you know what? Kudos, guys, to painting, to being rich white kids

who paint your faces with grease and aren't doing blackface, you know? They were just trying to hide in the night as they did petty in the night. They were so close. Yeah, it's like well. You know you're that whoo We dodged Kennedy family's isn't great at dodging bullets, but they did dodge that one. Yeah for that difference in motivation Grease their motivation is they're doing petty. I imagine some of them were also Little treat for them, you know, extra little bonus. I can't prove they weren't. Yeah, exactly.

I can't prove a little Justin Trudeau energy wasn't present there. Some of them, surely. A skosh, a drop of it, a dollop. Statistically. One former member of the Hyannisport Terrors later claimed to the author of the book after Camelot, quote, we'd shoot off firecrackers,

deflate people's tires, stick potatoes in the exhaust pipes of cars, turn over trash cans, mess around with girls, all sorts of mischief. After we did our bit, Ethel would get called, I don't know what mess around with girls means in this context. In the context of like vandalism and violence,

what do you mean? They could be making out with them, they could be stealing their underwear, there could be, there's a lot of- vandalism and violence. They could be making out with them. They could be stealing their underwear. There could be, there's a lot of- Mess around with. A lot of room for that to be ugly. It's an odd item to include on that list. Yeah. Of your gang activities.

If I'm the after Camelot author, I'm immediately like, wait a second, wait a second. Let's talk about the messing around part. We can unpack that. Just a few more words about that one. A little bit of context. I a few more words about that one. I'm gonna continue the quote from this terror member. After we did our bit,

Ethel would get calls from everyone in town complaining about it. At first, she used to say, my kids were home asleep last night. I don't know what you're talking about. But one night she waded up and sure enough, she caught me, Bobby and David, jumping out of one of the second floor windows of her home.

She chased us all over the compound in the middle of the night in her nightgown and bare feet, finally losing us somewhere on the stretch of beach." Now, one of the real through lines in all these Kennedy kids stories is that the adults have very little power in these relationships. And it's not because they're afraid to discipline their kids.

Sometimes when they're around, they discipline them very severely. It's that they're just not there, right? And they're not there in large part because they have all of these as the Kennedy's. They've got this constant web of social, political, business, out, fundraisers, all sorts of shit that they have to do

because of who their family is. And they're also on vacation a lot. They're traveling. They don't always want their kids around and they're able to not have their kids around, right? Half of the brood are away at boarding schools at any given time. And the kids at boarding schools have access to money

and thus drugs, but not any real supervision. Maybe the monk who teaches English will take an interest in them, but like, that's some random monkey, doesn't have a lot of power in this relationship either. And at a certain point after a lot of the reaction from her specifically, I feel like it's just not gonna be effective no matter what.

Where it's like, okay, you're being this horrible to your small children. We don't really care for that approval or have that sense of, oh, we don't wanna upset the adults. Right, yeah, fuck them. Now another constant through line is, as I mentioned earlier, this sense of like, oh, we don't want to upset, you know, the adults. Right. Yeah, fuck them. Now, another constant through line is, as I mentioned earlier, this sense of gallows humor that pervades the kids as a result of the cloud of death that seemed to hang over their family.

And I think the most telling passage from this period comes from, I'm going to read a passage from the book after Camelot describing this. One prank had the boys playing in busy Hyannisport tourist traffic only to have one kid fall to the ground while another smacked the back of a car, making a loud noise. Then they would all gather around their fallen chum and shout hysterical sentiments at the driver such as, You've just killed another Kennedy. That's... When panicked people came to the aid of the young Kennedy sprawled in the middle of the road, the boys would milk it for all it was worth

by trying to get the boy to move his legs. And then saying it looked as if he'd been paralyzed, but then the fallen Kennedy would suddenly stand up and walk away. At that, the other boys would proclaim, look, it's a Kennedy miracle, and then race off. My God. I gotta say, that kinda rules.

That's exactly what you would do if you were a kid in the Kennedy and all that stuff. Right, of course. You killed another Kennedy, it's such a funny thing for a kid to pretend. It's incredibly funny. It's amazingly funny. Like, horrific thing, the acid trip, what Bobby did. Horrific. Yeah.

That's funny. That's really funny. That's just actually very good comedy. You killed another Kennedy. I'll go so far as to say it, that might actually even be an example of like healthy processing of all of this, right? Poor line, yeah. You're taking, to some extent,

you're taking some ownership of this terrible thing that happened to your family, right? And maybe that does help a little bit. And you're also taking, to some extent, you're taking some ownership of this terrible thing that happened to your family, right? And maybe that does help a little bit. And you're also taking, you're also very aware of the world's eyes on you and opinion of others too. And you're kind of taking agency as opposed to just being subjected to it. You're taking agency on it

and using it for your own laughter. Entertainment, yeah, yeah, exactly. I kind of see it as the healthiest thing that anyone has done in this story. It's not the least. It's not the least. It's definitely towards the top in this story of healthy reactions.

Yeah, and again, just very good comedy. It's a Kennedy miracle. It's a Kennedy miracle. That's funny too. That's a good line. Back at Millbrook, Bobby cultivated a, by this point, probably understandable reputation for being out of control and very odd. Like any kid, he had folks who got along with him

and people who thought he was a dick. You can find people being like, yeah, he was like the bully of the school. You can find people being like, yeah, he was like kind of a chill dude. He was a little bit of a loner and outsider. I'm not, I wasn't around, right? I'm just gonna say,

everyone does agree about one thing, which is that he was really specifically weird about his hawk and dead animals. Yeah, I was gonna say like, his dorm smelled like bird shit. Yep. That was the thing everybody thought. Boy Cody, it's about to get a lot weirder,

but first it's about to be ads. Oh, okay. It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, a backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks, two abortion clinics, and a lesbian bar.

But this isn't his story,, and a lesbian bar. But this isn't his story. It's a human story, one that I've become entangled with. I saw as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out. The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces, forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong, life and death. Their once ordinary lives, and wrong, life and death. Their once ordinary lives and mine change forever. It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom.

And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat. Far right, homegrown, religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women's sports. Every day I'm bringing you the stakes, stats, stars, and stories to keep you up to date. If you're new to women's sports, welcome.

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Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to The CINO Show. I'm your host, Cino McFarlane. I'm an addiction specialist. I'm a coach, I'm a translator, and I'm God's middle man. My job is to crack hearts and let the light in and help everyone shift the narrative.

Whether you're get down to sex, drugs, alcohol, love addiction, self-hate, codependency, or anything else of that matter, I wanna help you wake up and I wanna help you get free. I wanna help you unleash your potential, overcome obstacles, and achieve your goals. Most importantly, I don't want you to feel alone. So join me on The Cino Show,

where each week we'll feature a compelling individual with an even more noteworthy story that will be sure to inspire and educate. Listen to The Cino Show every Wednesday on iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back, Cody, you had a follow-up question. What do you mean by his relationship with dead animals?

Great question, Cody, great question. Okay. So, let's go back to the undeniable reality that I don't know, like a month or two, time flat circle right now, but it became public knowledge that RFK Jr., serious third party presidential candidate with like a possibly historic chunk of the vote

certainly looked like that at that point in the election, had part of his brain eaten by a worm that got in there, presumably for some weird meat he ate, and then died after eating part of his brain eaten by a worm that got in there presumably for some weird meat he ate and then died after eating part of his brain, right? That's the claim. That's the claim. And the claim came out during divorce proceedings, right? And this is part of RFK trying to basically argue

his alimony should be amended in light of his disability, right? And as a result of that aspect of it, I have seen people doubting, was he just lying? Maybe there was no worm, he was bullshitting. And I'm gonna say this, a survey of his childhood makes me feel, yeah, that brain worm was probably real. Probably had it.

This is the story that we're about to tell that makes me feel that way. So as an adult, one of the sources we have on Bobby's life is this book called The River Keepers, which he co-writes, I think, and it's related to, he works for an environmental charity called The River Keepers. And his book on that includes a deeply sanitized and kind of short version of his own backstory. And one of the things he talks about is his time at Millbrook that he spent with what

he calls an informal falconry program. And this is the very sanitized version of how that is falconry at Millbrook went. In the autumn, we captured and trained kestrels, redtails, and immature passage hawks on their first migration. I've caught upwards of 50 hawks a day squatting atop a ridge line on Shunamunk Mountain in the Hudson Valley in autumn. We flew wild redtails, falcons, and goshawks, and pioneered many of the game hawking techniques still used by American falconers.

We talked about hawks every spare moment." So maybe that's all true. It can coexist with what I'm about to read next, but Jerry Oppenheimer, biographer, talks to one of Bobby's child falconry buddies who describes him very differently and in a much less camera friendly manner. Millbrooks and this is his falconry buddy talking years later. Millbrooks motto was non sibi sed cuntis, Latin for not for oneself but for all. Everyone had to participate in required community service, whether it be working in the school

post office, washing dishes, performing grounds maintenance, or handling the zoo's inhabitants. Bobby had chosen the latter, but the way he described his falcon and birding interest in his book was not the way Beauregard, who is the kid telling the story, who later went on to teach ornithology at the University of North Carolina, remembered. To Beauregard, who was one of the leaders of the falconry group at Millbrook, Bobby's pursuit of the sport was more like a scene out of a horror movie. Myself and a couple of others had our hawks and we'd go out in the countryside hunting rabbits and squirrels.

But one of the reasons why I didn't spend much time with Bobby was his idea of falconry. Next to the school there was a cow pit where the local dairy farmers threw their dead cows and it was full of rats. Bobby would take his hawk and go hunting rats in the midst of the rotting cow carcasses and he sort of reveled in how off the wall that was. Now, Beauregard expressed disgust at Bobby for wanting to be in such a disgusting environment, wanting to go hunt rats in this rotting cow carcass graveyard

rather than going to like a well-maintained chunk of the woods and doing the thing that you would assume is the pleasant part. Yeah, like being nature, fresh air. Right, right. And one gets the feeling, I think his disgust comes from, this is something Bobby did specifically to freak out preppier rich kids like Beauregard, right? He is also a rich kid, but he is not preppy,

and he wants to kind of freak the normies, right? He's a little freak. Yeah, he's also, no one goes to the rotting corpse pit because it's a rotting corpse pit, so he can get high there. He can do drugs. He can take acid. He spends a lot of time hunting rats

and taking acid at a fucking pit of bloated cow carcasses. That is a big chunk of Bobby Jr's childhood. And that's a little chunk of Bobby's brain that's gonna go from that. Yeah, right? Yeah. One of the kids who visited the pit with Bobby, mainly because Bobby had drugs and he wanted to score them,

was the son of a Republican horse trainer, Jamie Fanning. And Jamie Fanning gives us this description of RFK Jr. and his late teens on the cusp of adulthood. And it is the most incredible description I have read of a subject for these episodes. I still to this day see him standing there in his black necktie that he wore every day over a blue Oxford Brooks Brothers shirt

and a beat up tweed jacket and wearing the wildest bell bottoms that were purple with day glow green stripes like he was some soul band guy and in his funky boots. And there he was hunting rats out of that pile of dead sheep and cow carcasses. Yeah, I bet his boobs were funky. Oh.

What an amazing, amazing paragraph. Oh. Unwell. Cows and sheep. Cows and sheep, yeah, yeah. So debate in the sources, was it just thousands of rotting cow carcasses, were there sheep carcasses? Were there sheep involved in that?

Come on. Either way,ting cow carcasses? Were there sheep carcasses? Were there sheep involved? Come on. Either way, Bobby loves carcasses. Apparently, he loves being around them. He really does. He seems to be comforted by death. So weird. I don't know. And it's fanning.

I think this description from fanning is the most accurate of some competing descriptions of child RFK Jr. Because he's an edgy kid. He has been traumatized by some seriously dark shit, he has a deranged and unhealthy family life. He's got infinite money, but only one adult who cares about him and that adult is not doing it in the healthiest way. And he develops this edge.

Maybe part of it is just like surrounding yourself with death, kind of like in the sense that maybe a goth would later because there's been so much in your life, but also some bits, freaking out people is maybe the only way you know to get attention, right? Yeah, attention and keep people at a distance and yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Fanning would continue,

he was such an edgy kid that that thing, the cow carcasses thing, as bizarre as it was to be over there, hunting these rats out of this pile of dead carcasses Was almost normal for him. It was a pretty dark grim time. He was miserable and he was angry It only got worse with the drugs And we most of the sources we have on early rfk life are self-serving in some nature, right? Everybody's got an agenda. These are the kennedys, but I think fanning has probably got it right

Yeah, that that is that just feels like a person to me. You know? Yeah, like an actual human being who's dealt with all these things we've talked about and the little stories of him growing up and being a little fucker, right? Little piece of shit, right? Yeah. Little fucking asshole trying to cause trouble

and then gets darker and darker and his's gonna his humor is gonna get darker and darker his Yeah, like Environment he's gonna want to be yeah that I don't know Yeah, and the brain worm and the brain worm the brain worm doesn't help now Heroin what else what also doesn't help Cody is heroin which makes it way into his drug rotation And look we can talk about the potential benefits of psychedelics I don't know anybody who's like Improved their life problems unless though unless those problems are just I am dying of horrible pain with heroin. That's really the one thing

It's good. Right. You know, there's like oh I took mushrooms and like I saw something Today or yesterday of like 80% people take mushrooms like they can quit smoking easily Yeah, and it's literally just because they're like, ah, that's stupid. Like they have the thought of like, I shouldn't do that and they don't. Yeah, it has intense potential. Sure. Yeah.

Like, oh, I took mushrooms, I stopped smoking. It's like, oh, I took heroin, I stopped smoking because I died. Yeah. I mean, heroin will help you in, again, one very, it's great as a painkiller, but that's only useful in certain situations. And Bobby- Heroin's something you save to the end. It's great as a painkiller, but that's only useful in certain situations. And Bobby-

Heroin is something you shave to the end. It's great as a painkiller, but it works very well as an emotional painkiller, but not in a way that helps the problem, right? If you actually, if you have like, you had your leg blown off by a mine, yeah, some heroin might be the right thing for you in the moment, right?

That's probably real good to get some heroin in there. If you are mourning your dad and your uncle and the collapse of your family and all of the pressure you're under, the fact that your mom doesn't love you, heroin's probably not gonna help. Yeah, and the spotlight and like all the everything. Yeah.

Now, that said, despite the fact that he is now heroin is in the mix, it's pot that's gonna get Bobby in his first real trouble. He was arrested for the first time in Barnesdale, Massachusetts for marijuana possession at age 16. Now, one of the fun parts of the RFK Jr. story is that he always has this endearingly tense relationship

with the cops. I don't think he likes the police, at least not as a young man. One story Oppenheimer tells is of RFK Jr. and the terrors. They're sticking potatoes into gas pipes one night and they get caught by a cop and everyone runs away. And the only one who can't escape is Bobby Shriver, who is his cousin.

Bobby Jr. is kind of something in his favor, even though he's escaped, goes back to confront the cop to try and rescue his cousin, you know, which does say something about it. And here's how Oppenheimer describes it. Seeing that his cousin was in the clutches of a policeman, Bobby defiantly reappeared from his hiding place and sauntered up to them.

What have you got in there? The policeman asked, noting that Bobby had his hand inside his coat. I have a hawk and he's trained to kill cops, Bobby answered. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha You're lying the policeman said but Bobby kept advancing towards him until they were only inches apart Whereupon he pulled the hawk out and shoved the Raptors beak into the face of the cop who jumped back with a hand on his gun I have a hawk and he's trained to kill cops That's really cool. He's still got some bangers like despite it all That might be a part of despite it all You're lying

You want to find out my guy? It's such a only someone who has grown up in that degree of privilege who would like in that situation with a cop shove a hawk in your face And like bold power power to you, buddy You're the only guy who's ever been in that situation. Yeah, and I'm glad you did it You might not be the only guys ever shouted like yeah Yeah, yeah, but you're the only one who did you're the only one who did and lived right? Yeah, there's a dead hawker out there Wow what a tale thank you anyway

Bobby's arrest was big news. The media circus lights up around it, yada, yada, yada. And he and his cousin, he's arrested with Bobby Shriver for pot possession. This is different from the hawk thing. They go before a juvenile court judge and they get a slap on the wrist, right? They get a punishment.

It's not all that serious. Yeah, the campus is fine. Really, the worst thing about it is the media thing around it. And Bobby had actually been expelled from Millbrook a few weeks earlier because of his drug use, because the leadership at the school

was really mostly worried that he was gonna OD on the property. And they were like, you know what's not gonna be good for this school continuing to have people enroll here? Another dead Kennedy. Is a fucking dead Kennedy. Like get him out of here.

Wow. And after he gets arrested, they start to claim basically he got kicked out of the school because of that, right? You know, they don't want to say we did it for this reason, right? Nobody really wants to. It's best if it kind of comes down

to being part of the arrest. The family backlash against Bobby is intense and utterly impotent at the same time. Ethel told her son, I'm throwing you out of the family. But no effort was made to stop Bobby, who is at this point 16 years old, from taking $600 out of his savings account, buying a used Ford Falcon and driving across the country with two friends. He sells the car when they get to Fresno and he and one friend continue on,

hopping trains and living with homeless people until they wash up in Texas. For months, Bobby Kennedy is completely out of touch with any adult but occasionally limb billings. And Bobby would later recall this as one of the happiest times of his youth. Quote, I was riding around with bums. It was good. I could be one of them and not a Kennedy." And like, if you want an idea of how toxic being a Kennedy is, his fondest childhood memory is being homeless. Yeah. Like, willingly homeless, right?

Almost on the run, yeah, basically. But like, yeah. Hiding. Because we're all equally filthy, you know, at this point. You know, we're not bathing, we're not changing our clothes. Like, we look the same that they do and they just kind of treat me as one of them. Nobody knows who I am. Yeah, it says a lot about.

I mean, again, didn't have a chance. Never had a chance. He is next sent when he gets back from this road trip, train hopping trip, to a less reputable boarding school in the woods that's like, this is where you send the real problem kids. It's near Boston. He continues to do drugs while he's there

and he develops a notable reputation as not a racist. He is very Oppenheimer quotes, and Oppenheimer quotes was like, wow, a white guy that black people like, right? But he does quote several black students at this school who were like militant activists, like kind of black Panther adjacent in the day. And we're like, yeah, Bobby was actually really cool.

Like we liked hanging out with Bobby. Like he didn't, no issues with Bobby. Was clearly not a racist person. Yeah, clearly not racist. So we'll give him that here too. Bobby Kennedy Jr. graduated from this last boarding school in June of 1972. He was now an adult.

You will not be surprised to hear that his grades were not impressive. His extracurriculars at this point are basically just drugs and hanging out next to a cavern of rotting meat with my hawk. None of this mattered to the Harvard admissions board. RFK Jr. was a legacy. His family had money and hey, with a Kennedy you never know. They could wind up congressman or president.

So you might as well get that Harvard stank on him, right? Sure. And that's where Bobby's gonna spend the mid 70s, studying and getting real into heroin. And we will talk about that in part three. But for now, for this week, Cody, we're done with RFK Junior. How are you feeling?

Where are we on the boy at this point? You know, still some mixed in the sense that like, sorry, Bobby. Sorry. I get it. Yeah. But you gotta get it together also. The rotting meat thing is so like.

Gross. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just like, I'm very curious about where that thread leads. Yeah. Because you don't stop there. Like that's not like probably the most fucked up thing you're gonna be doing in relation to dead animal carcasses.

I don't know. Yeah. I, yeah. I'm gonna think about the hawk a lot. The hawk is a real, like that's a fascinating. It's fascinating. Yeah. He doesn't talk about his hawk. My haw, like that's a fascinating. It's fascinating. Yeah, just- He doesn't talk about his hawk.

My hawk's trained to kill cops. You're lying. That's amazing. His cop fighting hawk. Oh, that's such a good lie. There's some really- It's so cool. He definitely had at one point, maybe he's lost it now, but he had at one point

some of that Kennedy charisma, cause that and the whole, you've just killed a Kennedy. You've just killed a Kennedy so good. It's a Kennedy miracle. It's incredibly funny. I've got a hawk and it kills cops. Yeah all All beggars. Yeah. Yeah, and you know the other stuff. Yeah, good luck to him Mm-hmm. It turns out it doesn't turn out great Cody Well, I can still say good luck. Yeah, exactly.

Good luck and good night. Cody, pluggables? Hi, sure. Hi, hello, hi. Hey, hi. Check out some more news on youtube.com. It's also a podcast if you wanna listen to it instead of look at my face.

And we've got even more news, which is another podcast that we also are doing video now. So check that out on YouTube as well. But you can just listen to it if you don't see my face. Our Patreon dot com slash some more news. And with

me as always is a mention of my band, the Hot Shapes, which you can check out on Bandcamp and SoundCloud for all your hot shapes needs and cloud and sound camp sound camp it. on Bandcamp and Soundcloud for all your hot shapes needs. Bandcloud and Soundcamp. Soundcamp it. All right, everybody. Well, go to hell.

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