Trump's Fellow Weirdo Robert Kennedy Jr. Sawed Off Whale's Head Like Some ‘Criminal Minds’ Unsub

Moby Dick with a splash of Se7en

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heard that a dead whale had washed up on Squaw Island in Hyannis Port, he raced down to the beach, hacked off the poor creature’s head with a chainsaw, and strapped it to the roof of the family minivan with a bungee cord for the five-hour drive back to Mount Kisco, New York.

Kennedy’s daughter Kick told Town & Country magazine this story in 2012 as a quirky example of their father’s “eccentric environmentalism.” The word “eccentric” is doing a lot of coverage for rich dummy behavior. Kennedy has a bizarre history of animal abuse. Although he probably hasn’t eaten a barbecued dog, he voluntarily confessed to having dumped a dead bear in Central Park. No, it’s not as bad as it sounds: After a woman ran over and killed the bear cub, he took the carcass with the intention of skinning it later and eating the meat. Actually, that’s even worse than it sounds. It’s gross and unnecessary considering Kennedy isn’t some poor mountaineer who barely keeps his family fed. His net worth is at least two Big Macs. (PETA claims eating road kill is safer than consuming meat purchased commercially, but I don’t entirely trust PETA’s motives here.)

The Town & Country article states that Kennedy “likes to study animal skulls and skeletons,” which is fine if you’re doing so under controlled circumstances. When you’re harvesting whale carcasses, you might as well have an assistant named Igor.

Dead Worm That Ate Part Of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Brain Won’t Endorse Him Either

It should surprise no one who’s followed Kennedy’s political career, but his whale head transportation plan was a complete disaster.

“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kick said. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.”

This might’ve seen normal to Mr. Brain Worm’s daughter but in fact, it’s a violation of federal law to go Leatherface on a dead whale and strap its head to the roof of your car like dead Aunt Edna in National Lampoon’s Vacation. Of course, most laws only loosely apply to rich white men, so Kick apparently didn’t worry much about sharing this twisted story with the public. When I was a kid, a McDonald’s drive-thru in Ocala, Florida, once left an extra apple pie in my family’s order that we didn’t pay for but ate anyway and we vowed never to discuss it. (Feels good to finally get this off my chest after 40 years.)

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Can we at long last forget about Camelot?

This whale of a tale resurfaced a few days after Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign and immediately endorsed Donald Trump, cementing the MAGA movement’s total weirdo image. You can just picture Trump and Kennedy on some isolated island where they hunt people for sport, and Trump would definitely cheat and not give them the full 30 minute head start.

Kick Kennedy’s Town & Country interview was titled “Camelot Continued: Kick Kennedy’s Private Tour of the Family Compound,” because the media has never abandoned that Camelot dream. The musical Camelot starring Richard Burton and my beloved Julie Andrews premiered on October 1960, just before John F. Kennedy was elected. After his 1963 assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy mentioned in a Life magazine interview that Camelot was JFK’s favorite musical and he enjoyed listening to the cast recording before going to bed. (JFK’s Harvard classmate Alan Jay Lerner wrote the book and lyrics for Camelot.)

In the interview, Jackie Kennedy quoted lyrics from the musical’s final number: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot!” She added, “There’ll be great presidents again … but there will never be another Camelot.”

Life magazine thought the Camelot bit was a little over the top, but Jackie wouldn’t accept any changes and apparently edited the story herself in a historic low point for journalism — although I haven’t read the New York Times today.

“Camelot” was never an objective or even spontaneous description of the Kennedy era. It was contrived after the fact by JFK’s grieving widow. Lerner claimed in his memoir, The Street Where I Live, that shortly after the Life article’s release, a touring production of Camelot in Chicago was stopped after the lines Jackie quoted were sung: “There was a sudden wail from the audience. It was not a muffled sob; it was a loud, almost primitive cry of pain. The play stopped, and for almost five minutes everyone in the theater — on the stage, in the wings, in the pit, and in the audience — wept without restraint. Then the play continued.”

The musical wouldn’t have continued for long. This was the last song. Camelot didn’t continue either. The whole point of the song is that Camelot existed for “one brief, shining moment” and then flamed out, like the Spice Girls. All that’s left are the memories of what King Arthur achieved. No one holds out hope for a Camelot revival featuring Arthur’s uninspiring relatives. (I admit I did have high hopes for the musical Camelot’s revival that Aaron Sorkin wrote. They were quickly dashed.)

There was some talk about Camelot’s return with Bill Clinton during the 1992 election. He was also young and optimistic, but he was hardly royalty and a snooty media sneered at the notion, particularly Maureen Dowd at the New York Times who’s always had it in for the Clintons — perhaps because she never forgot they were from Arkansas and didn’t even summer someplace decent. No, Hillary Clinton was more often cast as Lady Macbeth than Guenevere.

I did find it interesting to read the Kick Kennedy interview in hindsight. She acknowledged her nepo baby status before the term even existed: “I was born with a sticker — a name — that has made me totally uninterested in the fame factor of success,” she said, like someone who never had to equate success with actual survival.
“I see all my actor friends really going for it in that way because it’s such a big part of the job, but it kind of turns me off. I’m frightened of it, or at least uninterested, unamused.”

“I am unamused” has the appropriate “Kennedys as American aristocracy” feel.

The interview doesn’t bother hiding its stealth promotion for Kick’s cousin, Joe Kennedy, who ran for Congress that year. Whatever you might’ve thought about the Kennedy dynasty, though, they were at least loyal Democrats who advanced progressive causes and cared about civil rights.

Trump Wants To Give Every American Their Own Otisburg

Kick told the luxury lifestyle magazine Resident in 2014 that her father instilled in her “a love for animals and the environment.” The Resident’s fact-checking staff apparently missed the part in the Town & Country article where Kick casually mentioned that her father dismembered a whale.

“I’ve been really connected to water issues since I can remember, as my father made it his passion,” she told Resident. “We knew what PCPs were before we knew how to tie our shoes. I've also spent so much time on the water, whether it's sailing with friends and family or doing a river cleanup on the Hudson.”

Here’s the kicker: Kick is named after her great-aunt Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, who was JFK’s younger sister. Kick’s choice in husbands (No. 1 was Anglican, No. 2 was divorced) didn’t please her mother, Rose, who disowned her. When she died in a 1948 plane crash, Rose didn’t even attend her funeral.

Kick told Town & Country: “I always thought Dad and I were the same person, but I got fascinated by Kick a few years ago, and it’s funny how similar we are. She was fun and social and a performer in many ways. Of course, I don't think my parents would ever call my own death divine retribution. Well, maybe if I became a Republican."

This was 2012 and the Republican presidential nominee was Mitt Romney, whose environmental record isn’t great but at least he didn’t have an overtly supervillain approach to climate change like Donald Trump, who Robert Kennedy wants to put back in the White House. RFK Jr. is the Kennedys’ Duke of Windsor, openly supporting a monster for his own personal glory. He’s forever associated his family’s name with anti-vax crackpot conspiracy theories and random whale slaughter. That’s truly the end of Camelot.

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