Very revealing book – Kennedy family.

0:00 Speaker 1 This is the other side of Midnight. I’m Frank Morano talking with Maureen Callahan. Her book is Ask Not the Kennedy’s and the Women They Destroyed? Maureen, let me ask you this an aspect of the Kennedy romantic life that has gotten so much attention since the sixties. Really you deal with at length in the chapter titled The Bombshell

0:23 Part Three, and that has to do with Marilyn Monroe. There’s been all these rumors, maybe more than rumors, that both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, universally regarded as just an incredible icon of beauty and sexuality in America at that time.

0:42 What does your research suggest about what the truth is regarding John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and their relationships with Marilyn Monroe.

0:53 Speaker 2 Oh my god, Frank, it’s more sordid and sad than one would ever know from looking at it from the outside, and the veneer of just sheer glamour and beauty and wealth and same and power. You know, Marilyn Monroe was the world’s biggest sex symbol at this time, and she was reduced to feeling like nothing by Joe By sorry,

1:24 Jack Kennedy, then the sitting President of the United States, his brother Bobby, who was serving as his attorney general. Both brothers were sexually involved with her at the same time, and in fact, the night that Marilyn infamously sayg Happy Birthday, mister President to Jack at Madison Square Garden in front of a televised audience, fifteen minutes prior, she had been

1:49 backstage with Bobby in the green room and they had had sex. And this was a dynamic that for Marilyn, who had grown up an abandoned child, cycled through foster homes where she was molested and abused, and then went into the Hollywood system, she felt an incredible validation that these two extremely powerful, extremely intelligent men were vying for her.

2:21 That was what her psyche was processing all of this ass For the Kennedys, she was a plaything. She was a notch on their belt. She was a person they would put on the phone so they could show their father they were in bed with the great Marilyn Monroe.

2:41 And when Jack cut off his relationship with her, and he did it, he just ghosted her immediately once Jackie saw that Madison Square Garden performance, and she said, I am going to divorce you, and I am going to take the children, and I am going to cost you a second term and the entire world will know why

2:58 unless you end this now. And he did. He ended it, and he fobbed Marilyn off on Bobby, who was also trying to make his retreat. And Marilyn had become very inconvenient. And in the book, you know, i’d outline what we have learned, even fairly recently about the hours leading up to her death and in her house caught on tape

3:25 demanding to know where is it? Where the f is it? Seemingly in reference to her diary, was Bobby Kennedy.

3:33 Speaker 1 Wow, my goodness. So I know you said that jack tried to pawn Marilyn off on Bobby when he was trying to make a clean break. But they there was a time before that where they were both sleeping with her, and both brothers knew of the relationship that the other one was having with her, right, yes, And you.

3:55 Speaker 2 Know, to sort of circle back to what you were saying about Joe and what the Kennedy boys men learned about women and how they regarded women from him. This was something that they also They really had no sexual boundaries.

4:12 The Kennedy men were very sexually incestuous. Joe, for example, had bet it a very famous movie star, Marlena Dietrich, and so Jack went after her as well, and and that was a It was a competition of sorts among each other. After Jack was assassinated, I go into this in the book quite a bit. Bobby and Jackie began

4:39 an affair. I think today we would consider that and recognize that as a trauma bond more than anything. They were the two people closest to Jack and the two people most destroyed by his death. But you know, it seems as though that kind of stuff that would strike most of us as kind of creepy, kind of weird,

5:07 kind of not emotionally sexually healthy, was a way of life for the Kennedy men.

5:15 Speaker 1 Wow, if people just Tunia, we’re talking with Maureen Callahan. She’s the author of Ask Not the Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed. Mareen, you’ve been very generous with your time. Stick with me in two more minutes if you can, though, sure, how do the Kennedy men reconcile being Catholic. And clearly this pride they have in being Catholic and doing all

5:39 the things that Catholics are expected to do, like have large families and so forth, go to church regularly, how do they reconcile that with the adultery, the philandering, the blatant mistreatment of women.

5:53 Speaker 2 I are you Catholic? Frank?

5:57 Speaker 1 I was raised Catholic. I identify more as being episcopalia in these days.

6:01 Speaker 2 Okay, so I was raised Catholic, and I have found that there is no greater hypocrisy than the Catholic Church, which has spent you know, its entire existence hiding the worst among of child abusers. What have you? And I think that for the Kennedys, they religion is a thing that they hide behind. It is something that offers constant forgiveness,

6:29 no matter the heinousness of your acts, or the true depths or authenticity of your contrition. You know, I think the thing that turned that began as Jack Kennedy’s was considered his his his greatest hurdle to overcome, which was convincing America that as a Catholic he could be an agnostic president, that his religion would not affect the way

6:55 he governed. In the end, for the Kennedys, it actually turned out to be one of their their greatest benefits really, And you know, the Catholic Church also, I think uh does drama almost better than than any anyone going right.

7:18 So you know, when when Jack is assassinated, Jackie immediately draws upon her her greatest gift, really, which was you know, as an actress who understood theater and the Catholic Church, you know, really is a huge part of that. But as to whether they I just I don’t think it.

7:43 I don’t think it matters to them. I don’t think it ever really has. You know, women who have married into the Kennedy family historically this is what they’re told. You may have married in, but you’re not a blood Kennedy.

7:57 You’re not a real Kennedy. So never forget your place. You’re a second class citizen. Even if you have a Kennedy child or a bunch of them, you’re never really a Kennedy. And when they’re tired of you, or you’ve served your purpose, or a new shiny woman comes along, then you’re to go quietly.

8:16 Speaker 1 I guess one question that a lot of people are going to ask, is, even though the Kennedy’s always had money, even though they have often had power, even though they have almost always been famous, how do they get away with this? I mean, there has been some instances of Kennedy men getting convicted of certain crimes, But it seems

8:38 like criminality is pervasive in a lot of the activities of various Kennedy men, And it might seem hard to believe for a lot of folks that they could almost always get away with this. What does your research suggest of how they’re able to continually get away with this pattern of criminality.

8:58 Speaker 2 Honestly, it can go for anything, to they stand before a judge who happens to be a Kennedy family friend, to leveraging a media that has long been sympathetic to the Kennedys. They leverage their history of family tragedy. You know, in the book, I write about a young woman named Pamela Kelly who in the late seventies was paralyzed in

9:22 a jeep accident wholly preventable. A jeep driven by Joe Kennedy, the third one of Bobby’s kids, flipped over paralyzed this poor girl for life. He went in front of a judge who was a friend of the Kennedy’s. The judge said, I don’t think Jale’s going to do anything. You’re going to have one hundred dollars. Fine, you have a great name,

9:43 go do something with it. Or you have a woman like Patricia Bowman, who credibly accused William Kennedy Smith of rape and Palm Beach in the nineties, who with the help of the New York Times, was shredded. She was denigrated as before she ever went to trial, a single mother, out late, wearing a skirt, she was having drinks, she

10:15 was a little wild. Was she divorced, did she ever have an abortion? What does her father do? Is he a donor to Republicans? All of a sudden in the mainstream media, in the paper of Record, you have a woman before she sees her day in court, shredded in the national media. And this is always with the help

10:36 of the Kennedys, always.

10:40 Speaker 1 My goodness, and just because Joe Kennedy the third is currently serving as the Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Just as point of a clarification, that Pamela Kelly story I think was about the fellow that they call Joe Kennedy junior, who was one of Bobby’s kids, not Joe Kennedy the third, who’s his son?

10:59 Speaker 2 Right, No, it was Joe Kennedy’s third.

11:05 Speaker 1 I see, Okay, So I thought they called Joe Kennedy. Okay, so the one that’s.

11:10 Speaker 2 Say, we may be crossing crossing wires, but he has been active politically for.

11:16 Speaker 1 Many years, the former congressman years years ago, right, Okay, Yeah, And and that’s part of the problem. That’s my issue is I don’t like that they they don’t stick with the traditional naming of who’s the second, and who’s the who’s junior, and who’s the third and so forth. I think they should go consecutive with it. Hey, let me

11:36 in with this, because, as the audience knows, I have been very fond of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I started as a skeptic with a lot of the anti vaccine stuff, but he really has won me over with a lot of the different things that he’s been saying about the political process. He’s been kind enough to come on the

11:54 show many times, and we always have a pretty good conversation. And I always get dogged by a lot of listeners sounds like rightly so, based on some of your writing about what became of his wife, Mary and how she killed herself, Just on behalf of the folks that feel like it might be unfair to blame Robert F. Kennedy

12:18 Junior for what happened with Mary Richardson Kennedy, A lot of people go through bad divorces, and a lot of people deal with things like depression, and a lot of people unfortunately end up killing themselves. Is it unfair to blame Robert F. Kennedy Junior for what happened with his wife?

12:38 Putting aside what you just said about how he has kind of demonized his ex wife after she has killed herself, can we point the finger to him specifically about what happened with Mary Richards and Kennedy?

12:53 Speaker 2 Many people who knew Mary say yes, I don’t know if you happen to see this tweet by Billy Baldwin Alec Baldwin’s brother, who was a close friend of Mary’s. He and his wife were close friends with Mary’s, and he tweeted about a year ago that someday the truth will come out. You know, there were many nights that

13:13 Mary cried on my shoulder. If these wolves could talk about what a terrible man this was and is. Bobby told Mary she would be better off dead when she was at her lowest and he had left her. She was the mother of their four children. He was trying to starve her out. He had cut off her twenty

13:32 thousand dollars a month court approved monthly stipend to raise the children and run the home. So you had Mary now at the school run American Royalty, begging other mothers for twenty bucks so she could load up on her groceries or fill up her gas tank. Okay, this was someone who was out to humiliate her in the most

13:57 public way possible. When she died. He fought her siblings, who only wanted her body to bury in their own family plot. He fought them tooth and nail. He won.

14:10 Speaker 2 He buried her with great fanfare, great publicity in the Kennedy family plot. One week later, without the proper permits, without alerting anyone, he had her coffin dug up in the middle of the night and moved seven hundred feet away to be buried alone on the side of a hill facing traffic. I have a problem with someone who

14:38 treats women, let alone the mother of his children, this way, and deems themselves fit for the highest office in the land.

14:47 Speaker 1 I have no defense for that. Maureen. Well, it’s a fascinating book. I hope people check it out. The book is called Ask Not the Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed. It’s been my pleasure this last hour to chat with its author, Maureen Callahan. Maureen, I hope we can chat again soon. It’s always a treup talking to me.

15:05 Speaker 2 Love too, Frank, thank you for having me. It felt like five minutes. It was such a fun conversation.

15:09 Speaker 1 Indeed, if you want to comment on any portion of our conversation, you could give me a call. Six four six seven two zero zero six three five six four six seven two zero zero six three five. I’m Frank moreno straight ahead