Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

IS THE KENNEDY CURSE SELF-INFLICTED?
by Terry Heath, 2006

The recent discharge of Congressman Patrick Kennedy from a Minnesota drug rehabilitation clinic after seeking treatment for a prescription pain addiction and his pleading guilty on June 13th in Washington on driving under the influence of prescription medication has the media pundits again discussing the so-called ‘Kennedy Family Curse’ in which so many members of that Massachusetts political clan have met with personal troubles, accidents and foul play.

So is there a curse on anyone born a Kennedy or can it simply be explained as the arrogant lifestyle that family has chose to live these last one hundred years that has caused their personal downfall time and time again?

The Kennedy Curse. Many political watchers have cited this alleged phenomenon these last six decades to explain many actions of the Kennedy family members and there have even been books written about the many scandals that has beset that cast of infamous characters. Yet when you examine the facts of their family’s history you discover that most of the so-called tragedies brought onto each was self-inflicted.

Many historians and dreamers of American folklore have described the Kennedy brood as America’s First Family of politics. But does this dysfunctional clan of elitists truly represent mainstream America? Or is their alleged curse the result of having too much money, power, leisure time and obsessive compulsion for outrageous risk taking?

Growing up with privilege and opportunity means you’ve also been exposed to temptation and the dark side each of us possess. But most Americans will never be given such an opportunity to be tested with such extremes given a Kennedy. And it’s obvious that many from that family have given in to the temptations offered them because they thought they could get away with it.

Joseph P. Kennedy was the family patriarch and made his fortune as a movie producer before entering government service by becoming America’s Ambassador to England during the early days of World War Two. But he’s also alleged to have been a bootlegger who made a fortune with members of organized crime during America’s Prohibition in the 1920’s.

And, according to numerous biographies written of the man, he was an inveterate womanizer who cheated on his wife for most of their marriage. He considered running for president and believed Franklin Roosevelt would support him in that endeavor but the senior Kennedy’s comments that wartime Britain was going to collapse in the fall of 1940 and that America should stay out of the growing conflict with Nazi Germany because we shouldn’t take on Hitler cost him any support for his own chance at the presidency. So he focused his attention on getting his sons into politics and eventually into the White House upon realizing he would never make it there on his own.

Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. was the first born and namesake of the father and the likable younger Kennedy seemed to be the perfect choice to become America’s first Catholic president. But he was killed during World War Two when the military plane he was piloting on a projected bombing mission against a suspected German V-2 rocket site unexpectedly exploded before he could drop the bombs inside the craft on its target zone. Was that tragic? Yes, it was. But several hundred thousand American soldiers, sailors and marines were also killed in that worldwide conflict so his death was hardly unique.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was the second child and first born daughter but the rebellious youth never followed the edicts set down by her parents, especially by marrying a British citizen in the early 1940’s who was also killed in the war. She was having an affair with a married man in 1948 when both were killed in an civilian airplane accident which, although it was unfortunate for the family, could be explained that since only the rich elite could afford the luxury of motoring around in high-risk planes at that time they had a higher chance of dying in such accidents than poor and middle class citizens who were still traveling by bus and train in the pre-jet airplane era.

A second daughter was determined to be mentally retarded and Papa Kennedy decided to have her lobotomized so she wouldn’t become another potential embarrassment to the family. She then spent the next six decades hidden away from public view until her death from old age a few years back.

Despite John F. Kennedy’s bad luck of being in poor health for most of his youth he was a legitimate war hero for his actions in the Solomon Islands when his P.T. boat was sunk yet he was able to rescue his crew. But he appeared to have a fatalistic attitude about life, his personal reputation and his own longevity when entering public service as a congressman, senator and then president based on the numerous sexual liaisons he made both in and out of the Oval Office and his association with many seedy characters, including numerous members of the underworld that may have helped him win the 1960 election.

His assassination on November 22, 1963, while a tragedy for the nation, was hardly unique, as he was not the first president to die in office or even the first to be assassinated but the fourth chief executive in a ninety-eight year period to meet with foul play.

Robert F. Kennedy seemed to be a man torn between the main loyalties of his life. He was faithful to his brother’s secrets as Attorney General when JFK was in high office. But, after his older sibling’s death, he attempted to change his own image of being ‘the mean Bobby’ to being compassionate to the downtrodden and poor of our society as a New York senator and presidential candidate in 1968.

His assassination by a Palestinian extremist after he appeared to lock up the Democratic Party presidential nomination did change the course of American history so we will never know what he would have done if elected as president. But would his own alleged personal improprieties and inner demons come back to haunt his time in the Oval Office just as it did to Richard Nixon once the nation turned cynical and unenthusiastic over the endless stalemate of the Vietnam War?

Ted Kennedy’s personal problems in public life are well documented so won’t be repeated here. But, suffice to say, most of the setbacks in his own life and public career were brought onto himself by his own boorish self-destructive behavior and cost him his own chance at being president.

So what of the offspring of those children of Joseph Kennedy? This third generation who are now in their forties and fifties? Many of them have had problems that one would expect to find of those growing up the sons and daughters of the privileged.

Drug usage, sex scandals, adultery and allegations of rape have touched this new self-centered generation of Kennedys. Is that a curse or just the expected results from a family used to living on the extreme and getting what they want?

Two of RFK’s sons have died an early death with David Kennedy dying of a drug overdose and Michael Kennedy being killed in a skiing accident several years after he was divorced once it was revealed he was having an affair with the family baby-sitter.

And adultery is not even confined to these three generations of Kennedy men. A daughter of RFK was accused by her husband of infidelity a few years back when their marriage broke up.

But the irony of the two-sided bitter legacy of this disturbed family is the tragic passing of John F. Kennedy, Jr.

By all accounts he seemed to be a normal, well-adjusted young man who was obviously sheltered by his mother from the scandal and temptation chosen by his cousins in their own adolescent growing up. But his death in a plane crash that also killed his wife and sister-in-law could be blamed on his inexperience as a pilot plus a possible arrogance that he could do anything he wanted to try against the advice of others more knowledgeable about flying a small plane at night.

So did even he have a fatalistic invincible attitude about life like all the other Kennedys seemed to possess? It’s sad to say but the myth sprung onto the American public of the Kennedy invincibility was a two-edged sword that led to so many downfalls of those in that family.

You would have to say that if anyone in that family was cursed it would have to have been matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy who lived to the ripe old age of 104 years old yet had to repeatedly cry with sorrow over all of the miscreants she helped spawn.

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com