On RFK Jr., Harry Belafonte, Donald Trump, Colin Powell, Robert De Niro, Idi Amin, and more
It was said that Arnold Schwarzenegger was “the first Republican Kennedy.” At the time, he was running for office in California and married to Maria Shriver, who is the daughter of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president. As a Democrat. Most of the warm words I hear about him, however — in fact, all of them — are from Republicans, or at least people on the populist right.
RFK Jr. has enjoyed a welcome at Fox News. He does not seem out of place.
Big question: Who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? That is, who is he besides the son of an American icon, and the nephew of another one? Or two other ones?
Mona Charen, as usual, has the goods. She wrote a column summarizing the longtime activism of the new presidential candidate. That column is here.
In 2003, Mona wrote a book called “Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First.” Among the admirers of this book was William F. Buckley Jr., with whom Mona had begun her career. He wrote,
I prayed that such a book would be written but doubted anything so wonderfully readable and instructive at the same time would come along. But here is Mona Charen’s great explication of the central conflict of our times.
She is still at it, unflinchingly.
As Mona details in her column, RFK Jr. is fervently anti-vaccine. He is a promoter of the idea that childhood vaccines cause autism. He is a crusader against vaccines for COVID-19. And so on.
He believes that the CIA offed his uncle, the president. Tim Weiner, a historian of the CIA, had a notable response to that:
I cannot emphasize enough that this is a lie first promulgated by the KGB in 1967, and that RFK Jr is acting as a useful idiot for the Kremlin. https://t.co/PeSm6JGi00
— tim weiner (@Folly_and_Glory) May 10, 2023
On the Ukraine war, RFK Jr. repeats the Kremlin line. He blames Putin’s invasion on America and the West. (Same as Donald Trump.) He was a fan and booster of Hugo Chávez. He has called for the banning of such organizations as the American Enterprise Institute for their views on climate change.
Etc., etc.
For years, conservatives looked on RFK Jr. with horror and pity. But if you talk the way he does about vaccines, and about Russia and Ukraine, and about some other things — you’re going to pick up a great many new admirers.
Trump may be lucky that Kennedy is running in the Democratic, rather than the Republican, Party.
Over the years, I have not written a great deal about RFK Jr. I saw him in Davos a time or two. Once, he was in the company of Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, whom he introduced as “my colleague.” (Man, was she pretty. Unbelievable.)
In 2005, I wrote a piece called “All the Uglier: What Katrina whipped up.” Katrina, of course, was the hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast, and New Orleans in particular. My piece began,
For years, many of us have noted and analyzed the phenomenon of Bush hatred — and all the unreason, hysteria, and meanness packed into it. But Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken the phenomenon to a new level. A natural disaster has been made all the uglier by the politics surrounding it.
Yes. And here is some more:
Exhibit A in the awfulness of Katrina reaction was the piece by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for The Huffington Post (a prominent website). The title over the piece was Biblical: “For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind.” RFK Jr., of course, is not only the bearer of an illustrious name; he is a leader of the environmentalist movement in America.
“As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast,” Kennedy wrote, “it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.” Kennedy is concerned here about a memo that Barbour, as a lobbyist, wrote in 2001. It urged the administration to follow an anti-Kyoto course.
Later in his piece, Kennedy wrote, “Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and — now — Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.”
The author concluded, “In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.”
Needless to say, RFK Jr. was wrong about the sparing of New Orleans. He was forced to write an update: “Alas, the reprieve for New Orleans was only temporary. But Haley Barbour still has much to answer for.” In Kennedy’s scribblings, much of the Left’s ugliness about Katrina and the Republicans is encapsulated.
A question: Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. right or left? Right-wing or left-wing? I don’t think it really matters, frankly. Indeed, I’m not sure the question applies. Right and left can get jumbled up. Mr. Kennedy is involved in some kookery. And I have never known America so vulnerable to that kind of thing.
What accounts for it? Social media? “Silo-ization”?
To be continued . . .
• Harry Belafonte has been an American icon for a long time. All of my life, certainly. He died the week before last, at 96. Belafonte was an actor, a singer, an activist. He was also one of the handsomest men in America. I saw him in Carnegie Hall once, in his later years — sitting in the audience. I can’t remember who was performing. Belafonte still looked like Belafonte.
I know a lady who lived in the same building as he in about 1960. She had come from Central America. “Guapo?” I asked her. (“Was he handsome?”) She answered, “Guapissimo.”
But he had some ugly views and did some ugly things.
Along with righteous ones. He campaigned for civil rights in America. He aided the King family, financially. Decades after that, he promoted educational efforts in Africa.
But he was a friend and champion of Fidel Castro, and a friend and champion of that dictatorship. He was a fan of Hugo Chávez. (Lot of that goin’ around.) During a meeting with Chávez in 2005, he called President George W. Bush “the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world.”
You should judge a life in its totality, if you have to judge it at all. We all make mistakes. None of us can ’scape whipping. But for Belafonte’s Castroism alone . . .
I mean, I think of all the political prisoners, some of whom I have known personally. I think of all those who were killed.
It’s hard to get beyond that.
• Here is an article about Donald Trump and his CNN “townhall.” The former president — and future president? — was the usual spigot of lies and nastiness. He is almost a parody of populism.
As I was reading, I had a thought, not for the first time: Young people would be shocked at how much emphasis Republicans and conservatives placed on virtue, once upon a time. Honor, character — all that. They would be shocked.
But I remember, I was there. I also know that revivals occur . . .
• In the mid-1990s, Colin Powell made a startling statement. It sounded so old-fashioned — quaint. He said that America had lost a “sense of shame.” And we needed to restore that sense.
Agree.
Shamelessness is a “superpower” today. It ought to be something disqualifying, and repented of.
(That’s old-fashioned!)
• Staying with the mid-1990s — I had another memory. Lately, we’ve been talking about old folk in presidential contests. During the 1996 GOP primaries, there was a bumper sticker, which said, as I recall, “Thurmond-Helms: Don’t let 200 years of experience go to waste.”
• This was some good news:
New York City officials said Tuesday that the city will require all of its elementary schools to employ phonics programs in teaching children to read, saying alternate systems that have been in place for years are failing.
(Article here.)
One language note, if I may: That should be “alternative systems.” People mess up “alternative” and “alternate.” They say, for example, “alternate universe” when they mean “alternative universe.” The ladies at the country club? They lunch on alternate Tuesdays.
• Remarking on demography, Danielle Crittenden said, “The younger generations are reproducing at the same rate as pandas.” I loved that. “Nicely formulated,” WFB would say.
• When it comes to babymaking, a certain elderly actor is doing his part. “Robert De Niro, at 79, becomes a father for the 7th time.” The article informs us that De Niro’s eldest child is 51. And he has a newborn. That’s quite a span, wouldn’t you say?
(Saul Bellow, you may recall, fathered a child at 84.)
• In a book called “Children of Monsters,” I wrote about Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda. He had 60 children, born between 1948 or so and 1996. Twenty-one mothers in all.
Here is a taste of Amin’s governing style — if that’s the right phrase — drawn from my book:
When appearing somewhere in Uganda, he would have along with him a son or daughter whose mother hailed from the particular area.
• A pooch named “Buddy Holly” was awarded Best in Show by the Westminster Kennel Club this year. As this news story explains, he is a petit basset griffon Vendéen. To me, that almost sounds like a musical instrument from the French Baroque.
• Sticking with prizes — the Pulitzers have been announced. I thought the following was rather amazing:
One of the best moments in John Archibald’s life came in 2018, when he won a Pulitzer Prize for columns published by Alabama Media Group, the largest news publisher in the state.
He topped that on Monday. Mr. Archibald won a second prize, for local reporting, as part of a team of journalists that included his son, Ramsey Archibald, investigating a municipal police force.
“I feel stunned,” Mr. Archibald, 60, said in an interview as the win was announced. “It’s a great honor. And to do it with your kid — I’m telling you, that’s gold.”
Gold indeed. Marvelous. (For the article, go here.)
• Feel like a little music? I have a review for you — here, of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera. The Met has a new production.
• Photo or two, maybe? At a dog run, in New York City, they were having a celebration of some kind:
Pawty animals.
A humble little lending library, in Town and Country, Mo.:
And how about this?
A Subway that also has an ice-cream parlor? Why didn’t they think of that ages ago?
Oh, one more thing, related:
That was in Saint Charles, Mo. A Cracker Barrel menu is one of the most beautiful sights in all the world. Gimme them biscuits. (Do you know about Pappy O’Daniel, of American political lore? Pappy “Pass the Biscuits” O’Daniel? A favorite of Bob Novak’s.)
Thank you, everyone, and catch you later.
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