A stinging portrait of just how badly the Kennedy men treated women

[mahatmakanejeeves]

A stinging portrait of just how badly the Kennedy men treated women

Maureen Callahan’s “Ask Not” delivers damning details about the exploits of three generations of the storied family.

Review by Nina Burleigh
July 10, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. EDT



Marilyn Monroe with President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy in 1962. (Cecil Stoughton/White House)

When the B-52s first sang about “heroes falling to the ground like Hell’s magnet pulls me down,” JFK had been dead for only 15 years and was still a mostly unblemished national icon. Stories about how he treated women had been leaking out, but not until the #MeToo era did we learn just how abominably he and other revered and influential men behaved.

Journalist Maureen Callahan has worked for the New York Post and the Daily Mail — tabloids that have never met a Kennedy they didn’t love to trash. In her new book, “Ask Not,” she has stitched together a stinging portrait of the depredations of not just John F. Kennedy but of three generations of Kennedy men. It’s a group portrait that reminds us that former president Donald Trump is hardly an outlier among powerful men.

Relying on a vast array of sources from the obscure (the White House “kennel-keeper”) to the best-selling (Kitty Kelley) and her own reportage, Callahan takes a critical look at the Kennedy men through the lens of the miserable and sometimes abused wives and girlfriends in their lives.

She identifies the wellspring of misogyny in Irish Catholic patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. in Boston during the Gilded Age, and traces it anecdote by anecdote down through JFK, RFK and Teddy, and the litter of boomer generation men — boys hatched by three Kennedy wives Callahan depicts as humiliated breeders and political props, driven to madness and alcoholism. At the top is matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, a champion procreator who gave birth to nine living babies, including one who would become the 35th president, and two future senators.



(Little, Brown)

{snip}

Nina Burleigh is the author of seven books, including “The Trump Women: Part of the Deal” and, most recently, the novel “Zero Visibility Possible.”

[Aussie105]

1. There were subtle suggestions a long time ago

that Marilyn Monroe got 'used' by JFK.

Nothing much came of that though.

Being a predatory Alpha male was more common in those days, I guess.

https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a41336664/blonde-true-story-marilyn-monroe-jfk/

[no_hypocrisy]

2. And Bobby "inherited" Marilyn from his brother.

And he used her too.

[valleyrogue]

8. Not true.

I know it is easy after decades of sensationalist b.s. to believe any horseshit out there about the Kennedys, but the fact is there was no "affair" between MM and RFK. None, zip. Outside of her friendship with Peter and Pat Kennedy Lawford, MM wasn't close to the rest of the Kennedys at all for the simple reason she lived on the West Coast like the Lawfords, while the Kennedy family lived in the East. As for RFK, Ethel was the center of his universe, a rare partnership indeed they had. She continues to carry the torch for him years after his death.

I'd like people like this tabloid author to say what she says to Ethel's face. Chickenshit, of course.

[shrike3]

6. And accepted, too.

[raccoon]

3. I wonder if William Kennedy Smith is covered in that book.

[Intractable]

4. RFK jr apparently has lived up to the reputation of the previous generations.

RFK Jr. Was a Compulsive Womanizer, and Yes, We Should Care
:
The Post matters here. The Murdoch paper is the chief source on details of the womanizing, and journalists tend to steer away from its reporting unless verified elsewhere. Occasionally, though, it produces actual tough journalism, and it did so shortly after Mary Kennedy died, when a friend of hers gave the tabloid two diaries, dated 2001, kept by Bobby.

The documents—which neither Kennedy nor his lawyer ever denied were his—total 398 pages, each with a “ledger” in the back, on which he listed 37 women by first name only and ranked them with numbers one through 10. Like a kid in high school, Kennedy used the numbers to represent “how far” they had gone toward sexual intercourse. One entry logged three women in a day.

A source who has seen the diaries said: “What was interesting was that he portrays himself as a victim in all of the encounters with women. He was ogling after women in the environmental movement.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/174667/rfk-jr-compulsive-womanizer

[shrike3]

5. She's not the first to say it.

JFK and RFK did some great things. But ...

[valleyrogue]

7. Sounds like sensationalistic b.s.

The fact of the matter is one can say anything about a dead public figure--literally make shit up, even--without worrying about lawsuits. I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to the Kennedys, I take everything written about them with a giant grain of salt.

A lot more money has been made OFF the Kennedy name than BY them.

[democrattotheend]

9. I'm surprised she includes RFK (Sr) in that

I know JFK and Teddy were womanizers, but I thought RFK was happily married and faithful to his wife.