If RFK Jr. is a conspiracy theorist, why does he get so much press?
The Kennedy political dynasty is over — right? At least that was the conventional media wisdomafter Joe Kennedy III lost a challenge to Senator Ed Markey in 2020 and instead became the first Kennedy to lose a race in Massachusetts.
Yet — whether or not another Kennedy ever wins elective office — what’s clearly not over is the allure of the Kennedy name. It’s still catnip to the press, as the deluge of news about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign shows. On one hand, mainstream media outlets are devoting themselves to the mission of exposing RFK Jr. as an anti-vaccine, pro-conspiracy crank. But as Donald Trump knows, even negative attention can be useful. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, it gives the son of Robert F. Kennedy a chance to make his case as an alternative to President Biden. And, to a degree that should be troubling to the Biden campaign, Kennedy’s case is resonating with the public. Some surveys give him as much as 20 percent of the vote — not enough to win, but enough to embarrass an incumbent president during primary season.
“It shows that the Kennedy name is still pretty powerful,” said Philip W. Johnston, a Biden supporter, who serves on the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization and has a longtime association with the Kennedy family. If so, there’s a certain perversity to that power when it flows to RFK Jr.
He’s benefiting from the family name even though family members, including his siblings, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Joseph P. Kennedy II, have publicly denounced him for his leadership in the vaccine resistance movement. He’s benefiting from the family name even though the polarizing position he’s taking on vaccines is at odds with his father’s legacy of working to bridge divides rather than create them. He’s benefiting from it even though he does not believe Sirhan Sirhan killed his father and supported his release from prison against the wishes of most of his family. Of course, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also greatly benefiting from the fact that he’s not just any Kennedy but the namesake of a man who remains an iconic figure to many Democrats. That group includes Biden, who keeps a bust of Robert F. Kennedy in the Oval Office and has said that RFK is one of his two heroes (the other is Martin Luther King Jr.).
If Kennedy is a crank and conspiracy theorist, why does he get so much press anyway? The symbiotic relationship between the media and the Kennedy family goes back to the presidency of John F. Kennedy, which was followed by the tragedy of JFK’s assassination in 1963 and, five years later, the assassination of his brother. Other family tragedies ensued, adding to the pathos.
As Rebecca Traister points out in her epic New York Magazine profile of RFK Jr., “As a journalist who has been told for decades that my empathy for the female candidates I often cover is probably overemotional and built too strongly on personal identification, let me just tell you that you should never stand between a white male political journalist over the age of 40 and his feelings about the Kennedys.” Because of those feelings, some journalists may be even more inspired to expose Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for what they see as a betrayal of the true Kennedy legacy. But again, as Trump has proven, exposing a politician as a purveyor of falsehoods and conspiracy theories does not necessarily weaken their appeal with a certain group of voters. Indeed, it can strengthen it.
It’s not that Kennedy’s presidential campaign shouldn’t be covered and it certainly shouldn’t be ignored out of deference to Biden. But isn’t there some line between what’s fair and what fuels dangerous views? The press has no problem marginalizing Marianne Williamson, the other Democrat who is challenging Biden. Most of the recent coverage of Williamson is about her high staff turnover. Yet you can argue that the self-help author who ran for president in 2020 on a “love” platform deserves more serious coverage than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his conspiracy theories.
The media attention paid to Kennedy — of which I am now part — is fueled by a host of factors, including boredom with Biden and another expected showdown with Trump. For the right-wing media, it’s also about the desire to embarrass Biden and the Democrats, and to revisit COVID and the debate over how the pandemic was handled. For others, the Kennedy coverage may spring from a desire to prop up Camelot and then revel once again in how far it has fallen when another Kennedy fails. It’s also summer.
Above all, it shows the power of celebrity and its role in politics. The same power fueled Trump’s political rise and continues to keep it alive. A Kennedy could certainly benefit from the same phenomenon. It might help Joe Kennedy III stage the comeback he’s said to be mulling from his post of US special envoy to Northern Ireland. But it’s hard to see it propelling Robert F. Kennedy Jr. all the way to the White House.
Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at joan.vennochi@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @joan_vennochi.
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