Joseph Kennedy

Oscar has stated it far more eloquently than I could hope to, and his sentiments echo mine (and thanks for the kind words, by the way). Joe Kennedy was a man of supreme ruthlessness, but people today love to zero in on him to the exclusion of all the other robber barons and grasping industrialists and capitalistic exploiters and sociopathic magnates who populate, and even dominate, every page of our checkered American history. Why does Kennedy merit such intense and relentless scrutiny? Because he was a bootlegger? Because he was an Irish Catholic in an economic landscape dominated by Anglo Saxon Protestants? Jay Gould was a callous, rapacious (not to mention fabulously wealthy) scoundrel, and yet most people don't even know his name. So were the Bronfman's of Canada, so were the Seagram's, and so on, and so on. Many of the millionaire and billionaire dynasties of today were conceived in yesterday's infamy...a fact of life. It's seems a sad truism that those who are exploited and margi... Read more

Not a nice guy, ambitious and devious. I could care less about the bootlegging, without getting into details Prohibition was a bad idea all around. I could care less about the gangster associations, bad as they are, and I'm not condoning them, gangsters sometimes do serve as Robin Hoods and are not completely nefarious. Keep in mind that, whatever their faults, Roosevelt screwed over the Huey Longs, Tom Pendergasts, and Mayor Curleys, and Joe Kennedys that helped him get elected in the first place and, as bad as those guys were they DID help out widows and orphans, they did provide jobs, they did forge some alliances between groups of differing ethnic origins and religions etc. They weren't all bad. As one of my very favorite reviewers edt4 said recently, and I'm paraphrasing, where's all the outrage against the WASP robber barons of the 19th century and the corporate villains screwing this country blind? Kennedy was a gifted man in some ways, but if true, the whole lobotomy thing for... Read more

Not exactly dictator-devil material