Famous families
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 3:08 pmThe Kennedys
The Kennedy family are a family descending from the marriage of the Irish-Americans Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and prominent in American politics and government. Their political involvement hasn't revolved around the Democratic Party and its liberal side. Harvard educations have been frequent among them, and they have contributed heavily to that university's Kennedy School of Government. The wealth, glamour, and photogenic quality of the family members elevated them to iconic status over the past half-century.
With the election of President John F. Kennedy, he and his two then surviving brothers all held prominent positions in the Federal government, and received intensive publicity, often emphasizing their youth (relative to comparably influential politicians), allure, education and their collective future in politics.
The family has undergone (then, before, and since) a series of deaths and other reverses that could not be fully remedied by wealth, sometimes called "the Kennedy curse"; it has included the assassinations of brothers John and Paul, four aircraft crashes (Joe Jr, Kathleen, Edward, and John Jr), a failed prefrontal lobotomy on Rose Marie, carried out in the hope of calming the young woman's violent outbursts but resulting in severe mental retardation, and at least three sets of allegations against individual family members and their relatives by marriage, including a murder conviction and a controversial fatal single-car crash. Just how severely these events restricted the family's influence is unknowable, but the assumption that even the last surviving brother's role was drastically diminished is popular. On the other hand, a number of Kennedy family members have since held high office, and the idea that the family's influence was snuffed out in the 1960s is an exaggeration.
The Kennedy family are a family descending from the marriage of the Irish-Americans Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and prominent in American politics and government. Their political involvement hasn't revolved around the Democratic Party and its liberal side. Harvard educations have been frequent among them, and they have contributed heavily to that university's Kennedy School of Government. The wealth, glamour, and photogenic quality of the family members elevated them to iconic status over the past half-century.
With the election of President John F. Kennedy, he and his two then surviving brothers all held prominent positions in the Federal government, and received intensive publicity, often emphasizing their youth (relative to comparably influential politicians), allure, education and their collective future in politics.
The family has undergone (then, before, and since) a series of deaths and other reverses that could not be fully remedied by wealth, sometimes called "the Kennedy curse"; it has included the assassinations of brothers John and Paul, four aircraft crashes (Joe Jr, Kathleen, Edward, and John Jr), a failed prefrontal lobotomy on Rose Marie, carried out in the hope of calming the young woman's violent outbursts but resulting in severe mental retardation, and at least three sets of allegations against individual family members and their relatives by marriage, including a murder conviction and a controversial fatal single-car crash. Just how severely these events restricted the family's influence is unknowable, but the assumption that even the last surviving brother's role was drastically diminished is popular. On the other hand, a number of Kennedy family members have since held high office, and the idea that the family's influence was snuffed out in the 1960s is an exaggeration.