Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign is, unfortunately, going better than expected, with the poll averages in which he is included putting him at about 17 percent nationally. This is at least partially due to his family name. But his family? They’re not so thrilled about it, and at this point may be worrying that they lobotomized the wrong one.
They were especially unhappy about a new $7 million ad aired by his PAC during the Super Bowl and the fact that it included images several members of their family who were unable to consent to appearing in the ad on account of how they are deceased.
“My cousin’s Super Bowl ad used our uncle’s faces and my Mother’s. She would be appalled by his deadly health care views,” wrote Bobby Shriver, son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. “Respect for science, vaccines, & health care equity were in her DNA. She strongly supported my health care work at ONECampaign & RED which he opposes.”
The ad was more or less a chopped up version of a famous ad for RFK’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, but with pictures of RFK replacing those of JFK. Clearly that whole $7 million was spent on the ad time, because hell, I probably could have done this, and I am very bad at editing.
Here’s the original, which makes sense given the context of JFK’s presidential campaign, as it addresses his young age and (vaguely) his Catholicism, which was an issue for voters who were concerned he would be answering to the Pope on everything weird bigots.
And here is the RFK remix, which has nothing to do with his candidacy outside of reminding voters who he is related to:
Shriver wasn’t alone in finding the ad distasteful. His brother Mark and his sister Maria retweeted his sentiments themselves.
Upon seeing the tweet, RFK replied to Shriver and apologized, saying he had nothing to do with the ad and it was all his PAC’s doing.
“Bobby. I’m so sorry if that advertisement caused you pain,” he wrote. “The ad was created and aired by the American Values Superpac without any involvement or approvals from my campaign. Federal rules prohibit Superpacs from consulting with me or my staff. I send you and your family my sincerest apologies. God bless you.”
He also apologized from his own account, saying more or less the same thing. Alas, it did not ring all that sincere because he still had the ad as his pinned tweet — and still has it, as I am writing this.
“Our momentum is growing. It’s time for an Independent President to heal the divide in our country,” he wrote, though it’s a bit hard to imagine how a guy who is opposed to vaccines would go about healing anything.
PREVIOUSLY:
A DailyKos writer makes a good point:
𝗜𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻’𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Has America forgotten the man who stood on a stage in Helsinki, Finland, and sided with Vladimir Putin against American intelligence agencies—who accused the foreign leader of interfering in an American election? Is the death of Heather Heyer—who was mowed down in a car by a white supremacist that Donald Trump called “very fine people” [on both sides] lost forever? The vision of refrigerator trucks outside overburdened hospitals holding the corpses of COVID-riddled bodies of our fellow citizens while the president told us to take horse medicine or drink bleach has somehow disappeared down the rabbit hole of time. Hundreds of thousands of us died while the former President and his aides made decisions to provide protective gear based on red states and blue states. “They have to get that gear themselves,” Trump told Fox News, referring to Democratic governors, adding that “they shouldn’t be hitting us,” Trump said in response to critiques from Democratic governors.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/12/2223006/-Is-It-Biden-s-Memory-or-Americans-Forgetting
“At this point may be worrying that they lobotomized the wrong one.”
Savage.