'Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy! Kennedy!'

In her latest exclusive column for the Byline Supplement, Bonnie Greer investigates why Robert F Kennedy Junior's own family are fighting against his campaign for President

Robert Kennedy Jr speaks at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington 24 May 2024. Photo: SOPA Images Limited/Alamy

If you live long enough, you will have your very own Kennedy tragedy, trauma, tirade, to remember.

My lifetime, so far, includes two assassinations: the lunchtime, live-on-TV, murder of the of 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy; and the early evening shooting in a pantry after a live-on-TV address, five years later, of his younger brother, his former Attorney General, Robert Francis Kennedy.

This latter murder caused Jackie Kennedy to flee the country with her two children in tow citing the reason as “They’re killing Kennedys”.

Then came baby brother Edward Moore Kennedy, elected to the Senate in 1962, the first year that he was eligible to be there, caught up in a tragic incident the year after Bobby Kennedy’s death. A young woman died after a crash in a car he had been driving. He did not report the incident until the next day.

And then, in the summer of 1999, the Crown Prince JFK Junior’s death in a plane crash, the plane piloted by him, and in which his wife and her sister also died.

Now another chapter merges in the saga of America’s very own House Of Atreus: that of Bobby’s son, Robert F Kennedy Junior.