The Poolish - Oops! All Robert F. Kennedy Jr Edition, 1 September 2024

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and more news involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Look, I usually avoid doing more than one news story a week about a single public figure but August has just been the month of This One Guy, for this time only, I’ve decided that The Poolish is dropping every story it’s ever done about Robert F. Kennedy Jr and hoping this will be the end of it. There are some old reruns in here and some new ones, so just to catch you all the way up to speed…

Old Man Yells At Cloud

Robert F. Kennedy Junior is a man who has spent a very large amount of his time as a public figure trying to convince the world that he isn’t a crank.

That shouldn’t be difficult because his name is not only literally Kennedy, but, and I’m sorry in advance for how much I’m going to use the L word here, Literally Robert Kennedy Literally Junior. There are like 50 Kennedys and he’s one of the very few who are only one step removed from one of the Big Three. He could shut his mouth and say and do nothing and play videogames all day until he died and he’d still be renowned as one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.

Unfortunately, by virtue of spending decades in very close proximity to JFK levels of conspiracy theory radiation, he has succumbed to an unfortunate level of crankery that he keeps needing to urge the American people to disregard. Like the guy in the movie who keeps insisting he was not bitten by a zombie but is suspiciously hiding his arm.

“I’m not anti-vaccine, I’m just supicious of the Jews,” says man attempting to extract a foot from his mouth while three other feet fly straight into it

His attempt to blunt rumours of his crankery hit another setback last week when he promised Twitter user “Concerned Citizen” (handle @BGatesIsaPyscho [sic]) that, when elected, he is going to stop the crime of “chemtrails.”

Now, I’m kind of assuming and/or hoping that most of my readers don’t need this explained but in the event that you’ve never heard of the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory, it’s the product of people not knowing how cloud formation works looking up into the sky and fearing that the condensation trails left behind by aircraft (literally warm moist engines creating clouds as they fly through a freezing upper atmosphere) are insidious chemicals being sprayed upon the population below.

“Conerned Citizen” also happens to be near the top of the most “community noted” Twitter accounts, a list that includes all of the biggest fake news spreaders on the site as well as a solid circle Venn diagram of Elon Musk’s best friends.

For RFK Jr to be literal Kennedy-level close to the inner workings of government for his entire life and yet not realise that the chemtrails thing is beyond Alex Jones levels of nonsense and bordering on David Icke levels of nonense should be an immediate disqualiication from holding public office, but we are nevertheless living in a world in which the “Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya” guy was already president once so everything is unfortunately on the table now.

How Am I Supposed to Write a Funny Headline About RFK Jr Having Brain Worms?

There’s a weirdly specific internet cliche about people with consistently and often increasingly incorrect views, baffling in their dedication despite the extraordinary resilience of the facts. We say these people have brain worms. It’s a funny turn of phrase, everyone laughs.

It’s exactly the type of accusation levied at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent years running amok on a weirdly narrow and specific crusade of anti-vaccination all the while claiming he isn’t ant-vaccination while running an organization that pays him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to oppose vaccines and on the down-low won’t commit to whether he believes in the germ theory of disease.

So what are we comedy writers supposed to do with the information that the New York Times just dug up about how RFKJ went to a doctor in 2010 with symptoms frighteningly consistent with his family’s history of brain tumours, at which time he discovered that, and I’m literally quoting Bobby here, “a worm … got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”?

No, I said comedy writers, not the worm farmers.

Just a tip, though: You think that parasites getting into your brain might be one of those public health concerns that might be assisted by exactly the kind of confidence in health science that you’ve spent a career trying to undermine? You ever think of that, Bob?

Look How Happy RFK Jr Is to Join the Trump Ticket!

This week, Independent candidate for US President Robert F Kennedy Jr.—yes, of those Kennedys—shocked the nation by suspending his campaign and endorsing Donald Trump for President.

Kennedy has long enjoyed a status as American royalty thanks to his last name, but royalty in America falls along party lines and Bobby, much as he’s tried, has never been able to shake the fact that he’s much more popular with Republicans than with his home team, the Democrats. In Royal terms it’s like, I guess, a Tudor misfit spending his life trying to quietly shoo away all the Stuarts that keep following him around.

Maybe it’s something to do with all his Alex Jones tier conspiracy theories, or him betting on his ability to turn liberal America against health science, or maybe he just matches the Republican freak better, or maybe it’s one hundred percent definitely all of what I just said.

But B-Ken to the J-R always held firm that he was not a Republican. He was Democrat to the bone, even as recently as three months ago he was adamant that he would never, ever sink so low as to attach himself to a MAGA ticket. And their animosity was mutual.

Nevertheless, after initially announcing his presidential ambition in a campaign to primary Biden for the Democratic ticket, then failing that and continuing his campaign as an Independent, then failing that and resorting to begging Harris for a job in her administration, Bobby K-Joon has accepted his fate and officially endorsed Donald Trump in exchange for some job, just fucking any job, in a potential Trump government.

And man, just look at how happy he is!

Finally, after denying their love for a lifetime, Kennedy has accepted his fate and joined the ticket he truly believes in, certainly not just the only one that will accept his pre-Enlightenment notions of health quackery. He’s found his real family.

Baseless suggestions that he looks like a crevasse just opened up inside his soul and swallowed his remaining will to live are mere insidious propaganda. Robert is thrilled to be among his new family. They tell him that he is very handsome and smart and right about the Jews.

RFK Jr is the Gift that Keeps On Giving