Double standards
Taki
New York
After his second smash-up in three weeks, Patrick Kennedy was escorted home by obliging cops and to hell with any test for booze or drugs. Tests are for the lower orders, not Kennedys. Chappaquidding one’s way out of trouble is in the Kennedy tradition. A smash-up is followed by a cover-up, then by denial of responsibility due to circumstances beyond their control, all neatly presented in a press conference for genuflecting hacks, and then on to rehab. Congressman Kennedy says that he doesn’t remember anything about the crash. He would, wouldn’t he? He was speeding, driving in the wrong lane and, after smashing into a barrier, was unsteady on his feet, his speech slurred and his eyes red and watery. Witnesses at a local bar said he had been drinking. Kennedy insists he had not. The cops took his word. A nice touch, that.
Thirty-two years ago, his father Senator Ted and his cousin Joe, also a Congressman, flew into Athens as guests of the newly elected democratic government following seven years of military rule. Ted and Joe rang me up for dinner, and asked my then American girlfriend to bring along a couple of her friends. She did, and we lived to regret it. After Joe and I had left for a nightclub, Teddy got horribly drunk, undressed himself and started to break poppers. The girl, Anita Clifford, panicked and ran all the way to my house, where she proceeded to ring her father in Connecticut. A prominent attorney, he flew over the next day to confront the senator but Teddy and Joe had flown out that day to visit ... the Pope — on Gianni Agnelli’s private jet, to boot. I was so angry that I put the story on the UPI wire, but the Athens bureau chief at the time, John Rigos, a very close friend of mine, refused to send it. ‘Why make enemies of such powerful people?’ This was 1974, only five years after Chappaquiddick. Three years later, when I started this column in The Spectator, the story saw the light of day. A few American papers picked it up, but it was mostly ignored, although never denied by Kennedy or his office. Mind you, there was no crime committed against Anita. It was her word against his, as far as the drugs and the shedding of clothes were concerned. Unlike five years earlier, no one died. What bothers me about the latest Kennedy mess is the double standard. Unnamed superiors forbade the cops from giving Kennedy a sobriety test. Now, of course, it’s too late, and we’ll never know whether it was booze, cocaine, pot, crystal meth, you name it. Personally, I don’t believe a word any Kennedy says. Patrick Kennedy is known as the dumbest member of Congress, which is quite a feat. He was in rehab only last Christmas, assaulted an airport guard a couple of years ago after he tried to squeeze an oversize piece of luggage through the metal detector (he settled the suit for 25,000 greenbacks), and soon after that caused $28,000 worth of damage to a rented yacht in Martha’s Vineyard. The coast guard was called in to escort a female off the rented boat after a battle royal. Kennedy’s insurance coughed up.
The Kennedy saga is a sad one. Two brothers assassinated, another killed flying a dangerous mission in the closing days of the second world war, a sister also killed in a flying accident, one Kennedy dead via an overdose, another killed while skiing — no wonder the media and even the fuzz cut them some slack. Not to mention the death of John Kennedy Jr and his wife and sister-in-law. I used to be quite friendly with Pat Lawford and Jean Smith, but we eventually fell out. The Kennedys are like gangsters of old. One is either totally loyal to them, or one gets the chop. After I began to protest at the horrendous manners exhibited by clan members like Robert Kennedy Jr and his cousin William Smith, Steve Smith (no longer with us) made a veiled threat. I told him to shove it, and it was the end of a not-so-beautiful friendship. Back in those days, everyone was taking drugs in public places, and the Kennedys would suddenly appear and grab other people’s stashes. In 1982, there was an ugly incident at Xenon, the Bagel nightclub, in which Matthew Kennedy and I were involved. Much too sordid to mention in the elegant pages of the Speccie.
I suppose people in power always take advantage, and, as I said, the Kennedys have certainly paid a very heavy price. But just as Prescott refuses to resign over getting caught out — just think of Lambton and Jellicoe — so do the Kennedys believe that the world owes them. Patrick Kennedy has no business being in Congress, just as Ted Kennedy had no business running for the presidency after having left a young woman to die in a car while he covered his tracks.
Once upon a time none of these people could have remained in politics, but then, once upon a time, Two Jags would have been the laughing stock of his local, not a Don Giovanni. Shame on you, Tracey Temple.
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