In life, there are certain inevitabilities. In the United States, those inevitabilities include death, taxes, and hearing about the Kennedys. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. making a splash in the 2024 presidential race (and now endorsing Trump), Caroline Kennedy’s son Jack Schlossberg covering said race for Vogue, and rumors of the post-J. Lo Ben Affleck dating Kick Kennedy, it feels as though the media spotlight is circling back once again to America’s royal family.
For generations of Americans, especially those in the Northeast, a fascination with the Kennedys is nothing new. The ambition and glamour, public service and philanthropic triumphs, tragic deaths and scandals are all part of this family’s legacy, and so many people have watched and lived through each one with them. The American Kennedy obsession was a parasocial relationship before we even had a name for it. What might be harder to explain is that even as younger generations of Americans are further and further removed from the most famous and politically significant Kennedys, there’s still a fascination.
Why are so many people invested in Jack Schlossberg, perhaps best known for making goofy little lip-sync TikToks, reasserting his family’s legacy? Why, in the case of Kick, are they still rubbing elbows with movie stars and entertainment moguls — or at least being rumored to? And what are we to make of the RFK Jr. of it all: the brain worm and the separate bear and whale carcasses? Is having a parasite in your cranium and playing around with animal bones somehow more or less embarrassing when you’re a Kennedy? What does the family name mean in 2024?
For a better understanding of the Kennedys and this current moment, we turned to Barbara Perry, a Kennedy expert and professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, an organization that specializes in presidential scholarship. I got to speak with Perry about why the Kennedys occupy such a special place in the American psyche, what Camelot means to politics, why some people are so desperate to see Schlossberg shed his silly goose era and run for office, and why RFK Jr. is so weird. She had answers for most of these burning questions.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Barbara, I’m here to ask you about Kennedys in the news. RFK Jr. is a Kennedy. Jack Schlossberg is a Kennedy. Taylor Swift dated a Kennedy. Ben Affleck might be dating a Kennedy. The Kennedys are everywhere again.
Well there’s just so many of them and there’s so many to date. Every American could probably date one, and maybe even marry one at this point!
That’s the dream, isn’t it? We’re into something like the third generation of, or Kennedy family 3.0, at this point.
Kennedy 3.0 is a really good way to describe it, but this goes all the way back probably to Jack Schlossberg’s third great-grandfather.