STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

HBO FILM “ETHEL”: A Falsified “Documentary Of Ethel Kennedy a.k.a Ethel Skakel:”  Calumny and Disgrace -Real True Story. 

As most of my readers know by now, I write blogs about things I usually know about or have been involved in directly or indirectly.  Contrary to many of my readers’ assumption,  I am not retired and am very active in building my 28th start-up company,  writing books and of course writing these blogs.  What the blogs have afforded me is the opportunity to pervade my impressions about current events in faster time and to a wider audience in real time.  I don’t look for a specific target to ‘attack’ or ‘delineate’ but they appear all the time!   It’s absolutely amazing to me how ‘falsehoods’ and ‘lies’ becomes distorted reality in our daily diet of compulsion and guilt-  part of our compulsive need to have a hero or a villain.

  In the field of American politics , the blog has become very effective in revealing the ‘truth ‘ from the perspective of an ‘individual’ who has been privy to a certain truths of political events or the endless myth-making  propagated by politicians and their dysfunctional scions. 

  This is particularly true of the forthcoming HBO Special entitled  “Ethel” a ‘tribute’ by HBO to Ethel Kennedy [maiden name Skakel].   The honest and sensitive review of this HBO show came to my attention through the write-up in the NY Times by Alessandra Stanley.

Unfortunately,  the writer could not really describe how ‘despicable’  Ethel and her family really were and are.  The myth of the Kennedys perpetuate despite obvious revelations of debauchery, chicanery, deceit and murder committed by Ed Kennedy and assassinations executed by elements of our government on President Kennedy’s watch.

 I am not here to judge the worthiness of the murdered Kennedys but suffice it to say that as the sons of a prominent Irish Catholic Gangster like Joseph Kennedy (who served as the ‘protection’ unit of the Mafia) both Bob and John paid dearly (with their lives) for their father’s nefarious accounts receivable.  This was particularly true of Bob Kennedy who, after having been warned by the mob, that his father had to pay for the ‘illegal votes’ that were exhumed in the John Kennedy Presidential election that had not been ‘repaid’.   As for John Kennedy, between him and his brother, they had created such international morass within the CIA and the national security area.  All of Ted Sorensen’s paeans to John Kennedy and his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis were at best fiction.  The Cuban Missile crisis was created by John Kennedy and his perceived ineffectualness by the Soviet Leader Khrushchev, the butcher of the Ukraine.

but I digress…..let me get back to Ethel.

  I would not have anything to say about her except for the fact that she and her family lived in the 1968 in Greenwich, Connecticut.  And it happened that a young intern, yours truly, decided to leave a prestigious Cornell University Medical College with a MD degree to engage in a Rotating Internship in the very wealthy suburban (at that time unknown) Greenwich Hospital.  In fact, my advisor at Cornell Medical College, tried to discourage me from my attending a ‘secondary quality internship’ like Greenwich Hospital.  At the time , this hospital was known as a ‘rich persons’ detox unit.  And boy was that true!!!

Now back to the article and my involvement with the Skakel family of Greenwich, Connecticut.  Let me first inform you that as a physician in 1968 I was not obligated by any medical rules or prohibitions to describe my patient’s conditions.  Normally,  I won’t do that unless one of my patient’s impeded  the national security of this country  or intended to harm someone ( e.g. the horrible Aurora massacre-by the way,  he was sane at the time of killing his innocent victims). 

Ethel and the Skakel family was described by her daughter, Rory Kennedy as ‘spirited, athletic’ and ‘she  inherited  a healthy disregard for authority in all its’ forms’. 

 Translated into the world of a hardworking, underpaid intern that meant Ethel and her brood and family were ‘admitted on a weekly basis for URIs’ (upper respiratory infections).  In more prosaic English, Ethel and Skakel family were known to us interns and residents “as rich, drunk Irish trash”.  They were continuously admitted to the ER of Greenwich Hospital with the covert understanding from Dr Christie , the Medical Director , that they would never be identified as “addicts, alcoholics, drug abusers,” constantly in trouble with the law.  As Ethel’s more infamous daughter,  Kerry Kennedy,  proudly said, “Ethel, mum, has a long history of dealing with cops”.   This is the same disgraceful daughter who was arrested after having swerved into a tractor-trailor in Westchester, County , NY and then driving off.  She had taken prescription sleeping pills before getting behind the wheel .  Of course, let’s not forget, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, describing his parents as “a happy marriage’. This is the same man [by the way the Kennedy/Skalal families were known as ‘not too bright] whose estranged wife Mary Richardson Kennedy would eventually hang herself in the barn of her NY State Bedford family estate in May of this year.

 So what is the point of this HBO special and these myths that are perpetuated?

  Once again, I point out in my blogs that narratives are created by individuals and nations in order to perpetuate their image. That image is important to keep as clean as possible irrespective of the truth.  Because the image of a Happy Camelot in the case of the Kennedy family is, as we know now,  completely false.  But that image or remnants of that image as tattered as it is, might allow the scions of that family a chance to return to politics and business in a way that permits the public to forget the egregious travesties of the past committed by their namesake.

  In the case of Bob Kennedy,  a man who had gone from a McCarthyite acolyte,  burnishing  the effete disgrace of Roy Shine,  accusing decent people of anti-american activities to a “Valiant crusader” of civil rights  embraced by the Far Left … when in fact,  he had ordered more illegal covert operations domestically and internationally than any other Attorney General in the history of the United States.

In summary,  Ethel was and is a ‘parasite’ of our society.  She lives on having accomplished nothing of significance.  She was and is an abusive, disgusting individual if not for her wealth, we interns would have been more than happy to dump back into the ‘gutter’ where she belonged in order to make space for more worthy clients who were ‘poor’ and ‘not defiant of authority’ and were ‘grateful ‘  for the countless  hours doctors put into the ER,  treating heart attacks and even flotsam and jetsam of our society ---Skakel and Kennedys.

  This blog is clearly just an opening shot at the family myths created by politicians like the Kennedys and now the Clintons.  Especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--- The Black Widow  (Foster, Stevens etc).

  HBO –you can do better than producing fiction as ‘fact’. Be careful!!! You may be losing your credibility as well!!
Thanks.  NY Times and Alessandra Stanley.