THE KENNEDY SEX SCANDALS
July 8, 2003

by Joe Sobran

     Someday a major university -- Harvard comes to mind 
-- should publish THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF KENNEDY SCANDALS. 
It would fill more volumes than THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 
BRITANNICA.

     Of course this project will have to wait until the 
dust settles. New Kennedy scandals keep happening at a 
pace that defies cataloguing, even as old ones come to 
light.

     John Kennedy has been dead nearly forty years, but 
we're still learning fresh details of his sex life, not 
to mention his medical history. About the only drug he 
didn't take, or need, was Viagra. On November 22, 1963, 
he was only just beginning to make headlines. A new 
biography reveals that he was "frolicking," to use the 
technical journalistic term, with a young White House 
intern during his presidency.

     I heard rumors about Kennedy's adulteries while he 
was president, but of course I didn't believe them, any 
more than I would have believed someone who told me that 
Shakespeare didn't write those plays. It was too 
fantastic. Nutty, even.

     Another new book reports that John Kennedy Jr.'s 
marriage was pretty rocky at the time of his death four 
years ago. That I can believe. It's sad, because this is 
the only Kennedy I've ever heard nice gossip about: a 
friend who knew him tells me he was a very decent young 
man, unlike most of the rude and bullying boors who 
compose the family often described as "America's 
royalty."

     And another man, no longer young, has recently 
claimed to be President Kennedy's illegitimate son. Am I 
right? I'm losing track. That's why we need an 
encyclopedia. The "K" volume might be fatter than all the 
others put together.

     The latest episode concerns Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, 
daughter of Bobby Kennedy and wife of the son of New 
York's former governor Mario Cuomo. Her marriage has 
split up, "allegedly," as we journalists say, over her 
affair with a married man, who sort of denies it. (The 
cad has gone back to his wife.)

     This is a departure from precedent. In the Kennedy 
family it's always been the men who have played around, 
or "frolicked" -- with interns, actresses, gangsters' 
molls, ambassadors' wives, babysitters, waitresses, 
Marilyn Monroe, Fiddle, and Faddle -- while the Kennedy 
women have largely behaved themselves, like good Irish 
girls.

     It seems like only yesterday when Kerry married 
Andrew. I happened to pass the wedding in Washington 
while it was in progress; you couldn't get close to the 
church because of all the police. As I gawked, who should 
step out of the church but Arnold Schwarzenegger with 
another man, taking a break from the ceremony. Arnold lit 
a fat cigar and I remember thinking he was wearing the 
biggest tuxedo I'd ever seen. I wanted to compliment his 
tailor.

     "What's Arnold doing here?" I wondered; then I 
remembered that he was married to a Kennedy girl, Maria 
Shriver. At the time I didn't realize I was looking at a 
possible future governor of California.

     This is as good a time as any to mention that 
TERMINATOR 3 is a real stinker. I blame the script and 
the director; Arnold gives his usual nuanced character 
portrayal of the robot, capturing all the pathos of a 
machine that realizes it's of "obsolete design." Critics 
may scoff, but I can't see John Gielgud in his prime 
handling the role any better than Arnold does. But I 
digress.

     Anyway, I respect the Kennedys' privacy, if they 
still have any. But if I could say one thing to Kerry, it 
would be this: It seems to me that if Arnold 
Schwarzenegger -- and I'm not going to spell it again -- 
shows up for your wedding, you have a special obligation 
to try to make the marriage work. I'll leave it at that.

     Tragedy has dogged the Kennedy family. It claimed 
three of the four sons of the patriarch, Joseph Kennedy 
-- Joe Jr., Jack, and Bobby -- passing over only 
(wouldn't you know) Teddy, before stalking the next 
generation. I wonder if even Arnold's tailor would be 
equal to the challenge of Teddy. It would be like making 
a tuxedo for an especially corpulent walrus.

     Yet in his day, by all accounts, Teddy was 
especially generous in sowing the Kennedy seed hither and 
yond and then some. Sociobiologists might say that the 
Kennedy genes were urgently seeking to replicate 
themselves. I prefer to say that the Kennedys just like 
to frolic.

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