Hello Measles My Old Friend, I’ve Come to Talk With You Again

  Death and Human Services Secretary RFK, Jr. relentlessly soldiers on against all enemies. His search-and-destroy hit list includes life-saving vaccines, disease-eradicating research, inoculations, medical breakthroughs, affordable health care, all kinds of programs making life better, healthier, longer.  He has traded renowned health professionals for toadies yearning to bask in RFK’s dark, Trump-reflected light. With a vast array of harpoons thrown at defenseless targets, he leaves the waters covered in human and scientific debris, victims of this Captain Ahab out of New England, armed and dangerous, a fraught mind sailing the ship into an uncertain ocean. .  

The Kennedys. American royalty. A family of men and women from whom America could never get enough. Jackie. Rose. Ethel. Caroline and John Jr. ,How his uncles and father captivated the country: a  young, handsome, charismatic king and his Guinivere, Jackie the Beautiful. Brothers Galahad and Lancelot.

Privileged sons of Hyannisport who bore their oath of noblesse oblige as solemnly as any hand-to-Bible vow. Spellbinding, gifted speakers—JFK’s inauguration speech and “Ich bin ein Berliner” are in the Hall of Fame of American oratory. Uncle Teddy, a voice less silvery but of strong timbre and a confident, rich baritone. His finest hour was his never-to-be-forgotten eulogy for brother Robert, the secretary’s father. Camelot resonated a cadence enriched by Boston accents and a larger-than-life presence in the glamorized fairy tale of the 60’s Kennedys.

 Sen. Robert Kennedy, whose Bob Dylan-esque persona transcended his somewhat nasal, squeaky voice, drew the disaffected and disillusioned to him like a savior.  His lament “Some men see things as they are, and ask why; I dream things that never were, and ask, why not?” attested to his compassionate liberal idealism and lives on as the era’s zeitgeist.  

Percy Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”; RFK was the unacknowledged poet laureate of the political world. Destiny was speeding him toward the 1968 Dem presidential nomination and the White House. Until a Palestinian bullet killed him. Camelot indeed.

But RFK, Jr, scion to the mighty court was no knight in shining armor. The assassinations of his uncle and father scarred him. He ran around with a rich brat pack, vandalizing, stealing, drugging--doing what good antisocial delinquents do, even getting expelled. But he grew up, went to school and crossed to the other side of the road, becoming a lawyer.

But fate threw another gut punch. His spasmatic dysphonia manifested itself for all to hear, at about the same age his uncle became president. With such an imperfect instrument he would never live up to the aura of the Kennedy brothers. Once again, the call of the wild howled in his soul. The bete-noir of the aristocratic Cape Cod Kennedys resurrected by a cruel blow of biological science, the prodigal son’s destiny as heir to the family legacy taken away. 

Now he sits atop Health and Human Services, the guardian of the nation’s health, commander of a vast fleet of institutional powers once filled with experienced, battle-hardened officers to lead the fight. It was the model and envy of the world. His tenure so far has been more Blackbeard than Hornblower. Every slash, every termination, every cut in funds a bitter blow for revenge on the world of biology, nature, science that dealt him cruel blows.

Children are now far more vulnerable; adults stand at much higher risk, as Kennedy wars on healing, curing, and preventing disease. As medical, scientific, and health experts try desperately to call him back to shore, Ahab’s sociopathic, personal campaign sails further on, as the rest of us swim desperately to stay afloat in his deadly wake.