Clearly, it's not driving off a bridge and running away, leaving a staffer to die by suffocation. Or telling jokes about it later. It's also not offering to collude with the Russians to interfere with a US presidential election -- in 1984. And it's not allegations of sexual assault, as in the "waitress sandwich" incident that includes former Senator Chris Dodd. 

That's just one Kennedy, mind you (Ted, if the memories are too distant at this point). There are also allegations of statutory rape, forcible rape, and even an alleged murder involving other members of the Kennedy clan. Did any of these cause the Kennedys as a group to publicly denounce and disown their own family members and call their actions a "betrayal" of their values?

Not to my recollection. To get disavowed as a Kennedy, you apparently have to do something truly unconscionable ... like endorsing a Republican:

Multiple members of the Kennedy family denounced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to endorse former President Donald Trump, calling the move a "betrayal."

"We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride," said a statement signed by five of the former independent presidential candidate's siblings.

"We believe in Harris and Walz," the statement continued. "Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story."

It's a sad story, all right, but not in the way the Kennedys think.

John Podhoretz hits pretty close to the mark here:

Of all the repellent Kennedy spectacles of the past 60 years, today's spectacle of Kennedys disavowing other Kennedys for not being good Kennedys is really the kind of false aristocratic creepiness that makes me want to, you know, drive off a bridge.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 24, 2024

What exactly is a "good Kennedy," anyway? A Democrat? That's how the family's spokespeople seem to be framing it here, in an unintentionally comic way. "We believe in Harris and Walz," they declare as though it were a matter of religious faith. And let's not forget that it was just a hot second or two ago that they professed their belief in Joe Biden too, and then sat quietly while the Democrat Party brahmins pushed him out of the nomination that they rigged the primaries to hand him. 

All that is happening here is a political disagreement, and all families have them. I have friends and family members who are progressives, and who vehemently disagree with my politics. I love them, and they love me, but we don't agree and we don't pretend to do so. My value as a family member does not begin and end for them on politics, nor theirs for me. And this happens in every American family, at every level and in every community. Even if we made those disagreements public, we wouldn't presume to describe such differences as a "betrayal" of the family's values, and wouldn't presume to have a monopoly on them in the first place. 

That's because we're Americans who are also adults, not raving Chicken Littles who think we have The Received Political Wisdom knit into our blue-blood DNA.

I don't make this point as a defense of Robert Kennedy, Jr, at least not primarily. He's also a progressive and someone who has indulged in some pretty wacky conspiracy thinking over the years. He also makes some good points too on occasion, a reminder that no side, faction, or ideology has a monopoly on complete truth. Had the rest of the Kennedys merely said, "We disagree with our family member and think he's entirely misguided in his decision," that would have sufficed. Instead, they publicly shamed him as a traitor and an apostate, accusing him of being "for sale," and of discrediting the family name in which RFK Jr has a legitimate claim as well.

Religions are less vicious to heretics. This isn't the language of a family, even a dysfunctional family. It's the reaction of a cult leadership clique to an apostate. 

And it's a tragedy that is so absurd that it almost tips over into farce. But at least it can be a cautionary tale about the dangers of replacing real faith and religion with politics and electoral blood sport, a trend that we have seen accelerating in American life for longer than Donald Trump's been involved in it. Family and faith in God should be our touchstones for a healthy culture and community life, not making power and party politics into our gods and scriptures. 

Perhaps it can also serve as a final nail in the coffin of the fantasy that the Kennedys are admirable or worth considering. Those days passed a long time ago, and should have ended when someone found Ted's car off the bridge in Chappaquiddick with the corpse of Mary Jo Kopechne in it.