The American obsession with Camelot is a strange, enduring fever. We love the teeth, the sailboats, the touch football on the lawn at Hyannis Port, and the sense that for a brief window in the 1960s, royalty actually lived in the White House. But there is a much darker side to the ledger. If you’ve picked up Maureen Callahan’s recent book, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It isn’t just a collection of old gossip. It's an indictment.
It’s brutal.
For decades, the Kennedy men were protected by a sophisticated machinery of silence, wealth, and a complicit press corps that looked the other way while "great men" did terrible things. We’re talking about a pattern of behavior that spans generations. It’s not just Jack. It’s Bobby. It’s Ted. It’s the patriarch, Joe Sr. The book asks a question that many of us are finally ready to answer: At what point does the political legacy stop outweighing the human wreckage left in the wake of these men?
Honestly, the stories are hard to stomach if you have any empathy for the women involved. From Rosemary Kennedy’s lobotomy to the tragic, lonely death of Marilyn Monroe, and the haunting silence of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, the "Kennedy Curse" starts to look less like bad luck and more like a series of predictable consequences for a family that viewed women as disposable.
The Lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy: The Original Sin
Before we get to the mistresses and the movie stars, we have to talk about Rosemary. She was the third child of Joe and Rose. She was beautiful, but she struggled. Today, we’d probably say she had a learning disability or perhaps a behavioral disorder that made her "difficult" in the eyes of a family obsessed with perfection and competitive vigor.
Joe Kennedy Sr. couldn't have a "defective" child tarnishing the brand.
In 1941, without telling his wife, Joe authorized a prefrontal lobotomy on 23-year-old Rosemary. The procedure was horrific. She was awake. They had her recite prayers and songs while they scraped away at her brain until she became incoherent. It failed—spectacularly. Rosemary was left with the mental capacity of a two-year-old, unable to walk or speak for a long time, and was promptly hidden away in an institution in Wisconsin for the rest of her life.
The family told people she was a recluse. They lied. They erased her. It was a cold-blooded move to protect the political trajectory of her brothers. If you want to understand the thesis of Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, it starts right there. It starts with a father who would rather hollow out his daughter's brain than admit the family wasn't genetically superior.
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Jacqueline Kennedy: The Architecture of a Myth
Jackie is often portrayed as the ultimate stoic. The pillbox hat. The blood-stained pink suit. But Callahan’s work and various historical accounts suggest a woman who was essentially trapped in a gilded cage of her own making. She knew about the affairs. She knew about the "stenographers" and the starlets.
There's a story that Jackie once walked into the kitchen at the White House and saw a woman she didn't recognize. She reportedly told a staffer, "That’s the one who’s supposed to be sleeping with my husband."
Think about the psychological toll of that.
She wasn't just a wife; she was the Chief Branding Officer for the Kennedy administration. She created "Camelot." She sat for those Life Magazine interviews after the assassination and carefully curated the image of JFK as a scholarly, heroic leader. She did this while knowing that he had spent much of their marriage humiliated her. The tragedy of Jackie isn't just the assassination; it's the fact that she spent her life protecting the reputation of a man who rarely protected her.
Marilyn Monroe and the Danger of the Inner Circle
We can't talk about the Kennedys and women without Marilyn. The "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" performance at Madison Square Garden wasn't just a song; it was a public breakdown disguised as a tribute. By that point, she had allegedly been passed between Jack and Bobby like a shared secret.
Marilyn was vulnerable. She was also dangerous because she kept a diary.
The narrative in Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed highlights how Marilyn was treated not as a person, but as a security risk. When she became too demanding—when she started calling the White House or talking about marriage—she was cut off. Coldly. The details of her final days remain a swamp of conspiracy and sadness, but the core truth is undeniable: she was a fragile woman who sought love from a family that only dealt in power.
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When she died, the Kennedy machine didn't mourn. They moved to ensure no fingerprints were left behind.
Chappaquiddick and the Life of Mary Jo Kopechne
If Rosemary was the original sin, Chappaquiddick was the moment the mask slipped for good. In 1969, Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Martha’s Vineyard. He escaped. Mary Jo Kopechne, a young campaign worker, did not.
She didn't die from the impact.
She likely died of suffocation in an air pocket inside the submerged car, waiting for hours for a rescue that never came because Ted Kennedy didn't report the accident until the next morning. He went back to his hotel. He spoke to his lawyers. He worried about his career while a 28-year-old woman was gasping for air in the dark.
The most disgusting part? The way the family and their allies tried to paint Mary Jo as just another "party girl" to diminish the tragedy. She wasn't. She was a dedicated professional, a "Boiler Room Girl" who believed in the Kennedy vision. And she was left to die because a Kennedy panicked.
The Bobby Kennedy Paradox
Bobby is often seen as the "good" Kennedy—the soul of the family, the one who cared about civil rights and the poor. And maybe he did. But his personal life was just as messy and, according to Callahan, just as destructive.
His marriage to Ethel was a marathon of endurance. He was reportedly involved with his brother’s widow, Jackie, and had a string of affairs that Ethel simply had to ignore while raising their eleven children. There is a specific kind of cruelty in the way these men compartmentalized their public "morality" and their private appetites.
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Why This Book Matters Now
You might wonder why we’re still talking about this. JFK has been dead for over sixty years. Ted is gone. Why dig it all up?
Because the culture that allowed this to happen hasn't fully vanished. We still have a tendency to excuse the personal failings of powerful men if we like their politics. Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed serves as a vital correction to the sanitized history we’re usually fed. It forces us to look at the collateral damage of "greatness."
The "women they destroyed" aren't just footnotes. They were sisters, wives, daughters, and professionals. They had lives that were ended or diminished to keep a specific brand of American royalty on its pedestal.
Moving Beyond the Camelot Myth
If you’re looking for a way to process this history, start by shifting your perspective on who the "main characters" of the 20th century really were. The Kennedy men were the ones with the microphones, but the women were the ones who paid the bills in blood and silence.
- Read the primary sources: Look into the letters of Rosemary Kennedy or the various biographies of Jackie that focus on her life after the White House (like those by Sarah Bradford).
- Question the "Curse" narrative: Every time you hear about the "Kennedy Curse," remind yourself that many of these tragedies were the result of reckless choices, not mystical fate.
- Support modern accountability: The #MeToo movement changed how we view these power dynamics, but applying that lens retroactively helps us understand how power was consolidated in the first place.
The Kennedy story is a Greek tragedy, but we’ve been rooting for the wrong characters. It’s time to stop looking at the men on the sailboats and start looking at the women they left behind.
Actionable Insight: To truly understand the power dynamics discussed in Ask Not, compare the press coverage of the 1960s with the investigative journalism of today. The "gentleman's agreement" between the media and the Kennedys is a masterclass in how public perception is manufactured. If you want to dive deeper into how the media specifically protected JFK, look for the memoirs of Ben Bradlee or the reporting of Seymour Hersh in The Dark Side of Camelot. These texts, combined with Callahan’s recent work, provide a fuller, albeit darker, picture of the American political machine.