- 6 weeks ago
Assassinations, plane crashes, and tragic accidents - the Kennedy family has faced endless tragedies spanning generations. Is it all just bad luck, or is there truly a Kennedy family curse? Join us as we trace the family tree from Irish immigrants to political royalty, examining the devastating losses that have plagued one of America's most prominent families.
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00:00Do you ever buy anything of this Kennedy curse thing?
00:04Welcome to Ms. Mojo, where we'll be doing a deep dive into the Kennedy family's troubled past.
00:10My wife and I have given nine hostages to forge her.
00:13The Kennedy family is easily one of the most prominent families in American history.
00:18John F. Kennedy is the most famous, serving as president from 1961 to 1963,
00:23when a tragic fate ended his term early.
00:26President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas.
00:30Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy.
00:33She called, oh no, the motorcade sped on.
00:36Many other tragedies have befallen the Kennedys over the years,
00:39causing many to wonder if the family is cursed.
00:42At first, it's easy to sound skeptical, but if we analyze the complete family history,
00:47could it sound plausible?
00:49Today, we're going to explore that question,
00:51so you can decide for yourself whether the Kennedy bloodline is cursed or not.
00:55Joe and Rose raised their children with the sense that they were superhuman,
01:02invulnerable, golden children,
01:05and they felt that nothing was ever going to happen to them.
01:08The family descends from an Irish clan.
01:11In 1849, Patrick Kennedy and Bridget Murphy sailed to Boston,
01:15where they had five children, including Patrick Joseph P.J. Kennedy.
01:19P.J. Kennedy was a Massachusetts state legislator from 1884 to 1895,
01:24and had four children of his own, including Joseph Patrick Joe Kennedy Sr.,
01:29who also went into politics and fathered nine children.
01:32Joe Kennedy's insecurity about being an Irish Catholic fed his drive and his ambition
01:38that he was going to prove to people that he was as good as they thought that he was.
01:43Joe Kennedy is now viewed as the primary patriarch of the Kennedy family.
01:47Many of his nine children went on to start their own families, resulting in multiple bloodlines.
01:53From their oldest, Joseph Jr., to their youngest, Ted.
02:00The Kennedys aren't just any family.
02:03They're a family on a mission.
02:05Joe's oldest son was Joseph Jr., who was born in 1914.
02:10Joe had massive ambitions for his firstborn child, hoping he'd one day become president.
02:14He was the heir apparent. Joe Jr.'s father and mother believed that he would be the one
02:20to carry the standard for the family.
02:24Unfortunately, Jr. died in 1944 while serving in World War II.
02:28It was one of the family's first major tragedies.
02:31This made John F. Kennedy the oldest child, who was born in 1917.
02:35Jack really wasn't ready for the role that he was about to take on.
02:39First of all, he was young.
02:42And second of all, all the attention up to that point had been on grooming Joe.
02:49But the Kennedys always find a way to make their dreams come true.
02:54At 43 years old, JFK became the youngest elected president in U.S. history.
02:59He also became the youngest president to be assassinated in 1963, when he was fatally shot in Texas.
03:05We were in school. All of a sudden, we were just told the president was dead.
03:10It just wasn't, it seemed possible.
03:14How do you feel now?
03:16Like a daze. You don't know what's going on. Why? Why did it happen?
03:21Who would have done such a thing, is the question.
03:23This incident is still widely debated, as the presumed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot a few days later.
03:30Oswald's motivations remain unclear, fueling conspiracy theories about the incident.
03:34There was definitely an incentive at that time to wrap it up nice and neat.
03:39One lone, disenchanted young man who worked here in the School Book Depository and had a rifle that day.
03:46It's unsatisfying, but it's a much more simplistic explanation that would not bring us to the brink of war with the Soviet Union at that time.
03:53JFK's term is also remembered for his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
03:57This 13-day standoff occurred between the U.S. and the Soviet Union over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.
04:03If it weren't for JFK's efforts to de-escalate the situation, the incident could have escalated into a nuclear catastrophe.
04:10Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right.
04:15Not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom here in this hemisphere, and we hope around the world.
04:24Outside of politics, his death isn't the only personal misfortune JFK faced.
04:28He suffered from multiple health issues, which he sought to keep secret.
04:32He contracted scarlet fever as a boy and had extreme back pain during adulthood.
04:36Jack finds a doctor who says, the only way to relieve this pain is surgery, but there are really terrible risks.
04:45Alongside this, he struggled with Addison's disease, which affected his adrenal glands, making him constantly exhausted, among other effects.
04:53All these things combined meant Kennedy had to be on a lot of medication constantly.
04:58Vitamins, but other substances too.
05:04Unfortunately, family life didn't provide any respite from personal difficulties.
05:08John and his wife Jacqueline had a miscarriage in 1955, a stillbirth in 1956, and a son born in 1963 who didn't even live two days.
05:18Jack Kennedy was just, you know, consumed with grief.
05:22Jackie was still too weak and unwell to attend the funeral.
05:32It was so tragic.
05:35Jackie never had a chance to hold him.
05:38Only two of their children made it to adulthood, Caroline and John Jr.
05:43Caroline is still alive and had an extensive career as a U.S. ambassador.
05:47President Biden had a great meeting with Prime Minister Albanese in Tokyo.
05:51Everybody is so excited about working together in the Quad and in the Pacific.
05:57So there's a big agenda, and I can't wait to get started.
06:01She's married to an artist named Edwin Schlossberg, and together they've had three children, Rose, Tatiana, and John, who all seem to be living happy and healthy lives.
06:10John Jr., on the other hand, perished in a plane crash in 1999, dying before fathering a single child.
06:17And there are people who, historians, filmmakers, etc., who are going to make money and time studying that.
06:25Another prominent child of Joe was Robert F. Kennedy, born in 1925.
06:30Like his older brother, Robert also pursued politics.
06:33At one level, he was a shy, humble guy who I think would have been perfectly happy to stay in the background.
06:40But at another level, knew that he had to pick up the family standard and rise to the occasion.
06:46In 1965, he was elected as a senator from New York.
06:50Before this, he was one of John's most valued advisors while he was president.
06:54In looking for an attorney general who must lead the fight for law enforcement,
06:58who must administer our laws without favor and with matchless integrity,
07:04I have turned to a man in whom I have found these qualities.
07:08The pair of them are now considered liberal icons, both of them being supporters of the civil rights movement.
07:14In 1968, Robert suffered the same fate as his brother, getting shot by a Palestinian man over his support for Israel.
07:20The great tragedy of this moment is that we actually never get to see what Bobby Kennedy would have been able to accomplish.
07:27Robert's line didn't end with him.
07:29He and his wife Ethel had 11 children together.
07:32Ethel lived until 2024, dying at the grand age of 96.
07:36If she doesn't make it to heaven, none of us got a chance.
07:40So, you know, she's going to go to heaven and he went to heaven.
07:44And I know that.
07:46And they're together right now.
07:48Most of their children are still alive and live to see old age,
07:51but two suffered grisly deaths, furthering the notion of a Kennedy curse.
07:55One son, named David, died due to substance use in 1984.
08:00Another son, called Michael, died in a skiing accident in 1997.
08:04Michael Kennedy was skiing in Aspen and he hit a tree and died.
08:08And this is really what became part of the second wave of the Kennedy curse.
08:14Robert was, of course, the father of RFK Jr., who is currently the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
08:19His appointment was an extremely scandalous outcome.
08:23As RFK Jr., apart from having no formal health or medical expertise,
08:28controversially amplifies a lot of misinformation about health.
08:31People just want to know the truth.
08:34I don't think so.
08:36Mr. Secretary, you don't think so. Thank you.
08:38I don't think so.
08:39I hope everyone recording that got that because they're explaining the Secretary's tenure here.
08:44Among numerous outlandish beliefs on the topic,
08:46he's one of the most vocal opponents to vaccines,
08:49which numerous studies prove is an immensely dangerous ideology.
08:53RFK Jr. is also skeptical of who killed his father and uncle,
08:57believing they were part of a grander conspiracy.
09:00President Biden promised when he was elected that he was going to release those documents.
09:04President Trump promised that he would.
09:06But the CIA doesn't want them to.
09:09And so the question that I think Americans have a right to ask,
09:12including members of, you know, my father and uncle's family, is, why not?
09:17Between 1994 and 2010, Jr. was married to Mary Kennedy.
09:21The media focused on their split to an excessive degree.
09:25In 2012, Mary's body was found in her home after she took her own life.
09:29Before the incident, she discovered that Jr. kept a journal
09:32where he'd taken notes of 37 of his affairs while they were married.
09:36In the program that I'm in, the journal that you're talking about is called Your Fifth Step.
09:43Oh, so it was part of the drug treatment?
09:44Yeah, it was part of my, you know, my recovery.
09:50Some of RFK's other grandchildren have also tragically fallen victim to the alleged curse.
09:55Robert's granddaughter, Saoirse, born to his fifth child, Courtney,
09:58died in 2019 of substance use, aged only 22.
10:02Saoirse's cousins, Maeve and Gideon, drowned in a canoeing accident in 2020.
10:06They went missing last Thursday on the Chesapeake Bay.
10:08Maryland Natural Resources Police say McKean's body was found just after 5.30 last night,
10:14about two and a half miles south of her mother's home in Shadyside.
10:18Another influential child of Joseph was Eunice, who was born in 1921 and lived until 2009.
10:24She founded the Special Olympics and had five children with Sergeant Shriver,
10:29one of whom was married to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
10:31I didn't want to run for office.
10:32You didn't want to be in politics.
10:33Yeah, I didn't want to be in politics.
10:35I didn't want to work at Special Olympics at the time.
10:38I didn't want to work in the government.
10:40And Arnold represented, for me, somebody who lived on the West Coast,
10:44who had a freedom that I had never seen before.
10:48And I was like, I'm gonna go over there.
10:50That leaves us with five children of Joe Kennedy we've not discussed.
10:54His eldest daughter, Rosemary, had an exceedingly tragic life.
10:58She developed slowly growing up and was placed in various schools for children with learning disabilities.
11:03When she was 22, her sister Eunice claimed she was, quote, irritable and difficult.
11:07As she hit puberty, Rosemary goes to being somebody who is quite uncontrollable.
11:15There are sexual urges and she's found with men.
11:19The family decided to treat her with a lobotomy, a medical procedure now considered extremely outdated.
11:25It left her unable to speak, and she was barely able to move,
11:28so she spent the next six decades of her life in a care home.
11:31Years later, my Aunt Eunice played a critical role in recognizing the rights of people who have intellectual disabilities.
11:42Joe's second daughter, Kathleen, married British Army officer Lord Hardington in 1944,
11:48only for the young man to die four months later.
11:50In 1948, Kathleen also perished in a fatal plane crash.
11:54Joe Kennedy never sees his daughter again except in a casket.
12:00Jack learns that his beloved sister, Kick, has died in France.
12:05Jack Kennedy is a man who doesn't cry, who rarely shows emotions,
12:09but that day, Jack Kennedy breaks down.
12:11Another daughter of Joe's was Patricia, who aspired to become a film producer,
12:16but was unable to due to the misogyny of the era.
12:19But at least she lived until 2006.
12:21Meanwhile, Joe's youngest daughter was Jean,
12:24who served as U.S. ambassador to Ireland in the 90s and died at age 92 in 2020.
12:29Mother and dad, too, very much, sort of steered us in a direction
12:35and made it very clear that we had a responsibility being in America to do something for our country.
12:44That was very, very clear.
12:47Finally, there's Ted Kennedy, who was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts for almost 50 years.
12:53Ted died of a brain tumor in 2009, aged 77.
12:56His biggest controversy occurred in 1969, when he accidentally drove his car off a bridge,
13:02leading to the death of his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechny.
13:05However, Kennedy's initial failure to report the accident led to legal issues that derailed his own presidential prospects
13:11and spawned a new rash of conspiracy theories.
13:14Including such questions as whether the girl might still be alive somewhere out of that immediate area.
13:21Whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.
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13:42All these tragedies combined have led to the hypothesis that the Kennedys exist under a cloud of doom.
13:48The family, inexplicably, seems prone to assassinations, plane crashes, and general misfortunes.
13:54Those kids are so lucky to have you.
13:56No, they're not lucky at all.
13:58They're not lucky.
14:02I'm scared.
14:03I'm scared.
14:05I'm scared.
14:05Ted Kennedy wasn't the first one to contemplate a family curse, but his words did give it more prominence.
14:11To this day, the idea persists.
14:13I think our family, the Kennedy family, has had to endure these things in a very open way.
14:22There are tons of skeptics of the theory, who instead claim that the curse is a myth.
14:26They believe it's exaggerated simply so the Kennedys can avoid taking blame for their mistakes.
14:30They argue that the biggest curse they suffer is having too much money and power.
14:34Some people enjoy a life that's normal and mediocre.
14:39Other people respond to challenges and adventure and attainment.
14:44That's who we are.
14:45What do you think?
14:46Is the Kennedy bloodline cursed or are they just unlucky?
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