Bobby's daughter, Courtney Kennedy, married Paul Hill of the Guildford Four just as he was about to be celebrated in the film In the Name of the Father. Her sister Kerry Kennedy Cuomo (she runs the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights which supports political activists around the world) married Andrew Cuomo, son of Mario, the former governor of New York and the only liberal leader more eloquent than her Uncle Ted. Their cousin Maria Shriver, a TV newscaster, could not have found better macho material than Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose fourth child she is now carrying.From the start, Joe Sr and Rose were aware that self-made royals had to make a great show of their children. When they landed in London before the Second World War to assume their post at the US embassy, the press was charmed by their vigour and wrote about the Kennedys - and their nine kids - as if they were an American experiment in genetics.In their role as specimens, however, the Kennedys had much which they hoped to hide. JFK's Addison disease, an adrenaline deficiency that nearly killed him on several occasions, and forced him to travel with an artillery of medication, and have regular disfiguring cortisone injections, was concealed as malaria which he had contracted during the war.
When President Clinton's supreme-court nominee, Clarence Thomas, was being interrogated about his alleged sexual harassment of his colleague Professor Anita Hill, Ted was rendered mute at the hearings, caught in the twist of his own knickers.Then came Dr Willie Smith, or "Will" as his lawyers made sure to call him when he was on the stand. Tabloid photos of Ted having sex with a blonde on a boat had been so widely distributed that people in Washington began to refer to his "position on offshore drilling". It looked like he might lose for the first time since he was first elected in 1962, especially as voters under 30 had no memories of JFK or Bobby.Ted's reputation had even caught up with his effectiveness as a legislator, the man who fought with great ire and eloquence for women's rights. First for his brother Joe, then for his Uncle Ted.In the 1994 Senate race, it became apparent that years of debauchery and sexual misconduct were taking their toll on Ted's popularity. In keeping with Joe Sr's vision that only a Kennedy can best help a Kennedy, he became, like his father him, the family campaign manager. When his brothers headed for hard drugs after his father's murder, he kept his head down and remained dependable and task-driven amid all the chaos.
"Confusion here," was how he took to answering the telephone at Hickory Hill, his parents' home in Virginia. Shopkeepers here took the papers off the shelves.In political circles, Michael had been regarded as the family's altar boy; he had a calling - a genuine political talent - and had inherited his father's priestly intensity. It was difficult not to notice; Michael and the babysitter were seen alone together all around town. When the Boston papers named the babysitter's parents, the tabloids also published the girl's picture.
The last time the press descended on this village was when The Witches of Eastwick was filmed here, a movie in which Jack Nicholson is haunted by the women in his life.Neighbours of the Kennedys in Cohasset were aware of the situation months before the story broke. In the Seventies, when Bobby's older boys were getting into heroin, Bobby Jr's pet falcon fled the family compound in Hyannis Port and landed in a tree top here, like a rook in a gothic novel trying to tell you something. The girl was the daughter of close and very wealthy family friends, and had cared for Michael's children since she was 12. Two families could go down here.WHEN YOU drive south along the coast from Boston, the terrain becomes postcard pretty Cohasset is prettiest of all. A town of white-steepled churches and mansions by the sea, it has figured in the family's history before. Joe Sr, flush from manipulating the stock market in 1922, rented a summer house here for his family.
His sister, Kathleen, the young Marchioness of Hartington, was killed soon after in a plane crash with her married lover. Eventually, only four of Rose's nine offspring remained.The public, however, has always been in love with the Kennedys because of their sorrows. Their pain has been ours, in the manner of a royal soap opera But lately it's been less easy to identify with them. Joe's annulment has backfired, becoming evidence of superficiality rather than faith. He seemed to want to pacify the public, and that insults them.And alleged sex with a 14-year-old babysitter is a far more serious matter.