It’s not easy to write about a buffoon like Robert Kennedy Jr.
He’s so clearly unhinged…..so obviously batshit crazy……his brain cells so devastatingly desperate for oxygen, that pointing any of these things out to him face to face almost feels unfair. Like giving an autistic child a noogie. He is incapable of communicating outside of a bubble that requires factual information. His worm-eaten brain is only capable of Trumpian sound-bytes, and spouting the types of things you might hear in Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. His years as a heroin junkie surely have not helped. He looks like a slab of overcooked meat. I would question a Dairy Queen manager who hired him. The fact that he’s the director of a government agency is wild enough. The fact that it happens to be the one in charge of our collective health is simply mind-blowing. If anything screams that we are no longer a serious nation, it is this. Robert Kennedy makes Linda McMahon look like Evita Perón.
The name is still golden. Kennedy. American royalty. His uncle and father, for all their faults, became political saints. They were visionaries. They made us see the good not only in ourselves, but in others. They inspired. Various Kennedy brothers and children and grandchildren subsequently went into the family business. Some with great distinction. Others, not so much. But none of them went down the path of Alex Jones and the Lizard People. None of them have their own siblings standing up and saying “this crazy fucker isn’t even welcome at Thanksgiving anymore”.
If Robert Kennedy was not born into his family, he’d be the guy in the hoodie who hangs around the food court at the mall trying to engage all the high school girls. He is the reason America went to war to against England in 1775. Bloodlines ain’t enough, Bubba. Just look at Prince Andrew. That fucking pervert has to pay for his own parking these days. Even King Charles was smart enough not to put him in charge of England’s NHS. Hiring the guy with the magical last name BECAUSE he has that name is as fucking dumb as electing a guy President for the same reason.
My favorite RFK Jr bits are when he’s confronted with some crazy shit he said, categorically denies that he said it, and then is confronted with the actual tape of him saying it. He squirms. His craggy face buries itself into his skull. His croak of a voice starts squeaking like my dog digging into a new toy. He flails his arms and lashes out like somebody swatting bugs away. He’ll claim “context”. Or audio/video manipulation. At once point yesterday he simply claimed deafness. It is riveting television. Like launching somebody who can’t swim into the deep end of the pool.
He either doesn’t trust science, or is too dumb to understand it. It matters little which when he can decide if you local pharmacy can stock the latest Covid vaccines. To be clear, he’s clearly anti-vax when it comes to your kids. His own kids HAVE been vaccinated. But way too many of you are not getting this bit. To be clear. Every fucking right wing douche-bag suggesting that vaccines are bad are getting vaccines themselves. They simply use the issue the same way fake Christians cling to the abortion cudgel. Right wing “family values” politicians have been slipping through the back doors of Planned Parenthoods since they stopped using coat hangers. The gay-baiters are frequently gay. The ones “protecting the children” are frequently pedophiles. They don’t give a shit about you. They don’t give a shit about your kids. They don’t give a shit about the unborn. Their aim is to rile you up. To suggest that the Lizard People are all “woke” and “progressive”. To dumb you down enough so that you would actually take medical advice from a guy who does not believe in modern medicine.
And to be fair, it works. Way too many out there are dumb as fucking rocks. They are the reason kids are still dying from the measles, and why polio might yet come out of retirement. Would you choose as your primary care physician one who did not go to medical school, became a decades long junkie, and bragged about a maggot in his brain?
Take all the time you need.
At one point yesterday during the hearings, Kennedy claimed that the Covid vaccine was responsible for more deaths than the virus itself (even though he didn’t know how many died during the epidemic). This seemed to stun ever warm and fuzzy Republicans….as Kennedy just minutes before had said that President Trump deserved the “Nobel Prize” for ramping up vaccine production so quickly during the pandemic.
This logical disconnect was reiterated back to him. Slowly. As if he were a child.
The President deserved the Nobel Prize for kick-starting the process to quicky develop a Covid-19 vaccine……THAT KILLED PEOPLE.
The absurdity of the moment hung in the air like Covid droplets. Kennedy’s face looked like somebody had just hit him with a cinder block. The worm had clearly taken over.
And then everybody just kinda shrugged and moved on.
Doomed.
—tf