Caroline Kennedy will not be a Senator, and her aborted attempt at being appointed one basically destroyed the reputation of the last Kennedy left who anyone liked.

Caroline was a quiet pretend lawyer who wrote some nice little books and probably sat on some charitable boards or something, no one was sure, but it was always nice to see her out, endorsing Barack Obama and looking pleasant and normal, for a Kennedy. Hah. Now her life is a mess, with everyone hearing about her failed marriage and learning that she (like all of us, but still) punctuates every utterance with "like, um, y'know." Suddenly the Governor of New York is ratting on a Kennedy's nanny and tax issues to the tabloids! And god, this is a classic line:

Several sources close to Ted Kennedy were "furious" that one of Caroline's allies invoked his brain cancer and his fatigue-induced seizure on Tuesday.

"No Kennedy would have said that," said a Kennedy family source.

Ok, source, but the Kennedys have traditionally demonstrated a willingness to say and do all sorts of crazy terrible stuff—maybe the quote should've read "in the past, no one would've reported on a Kennedy saying that, until they were dead." 'Cause honestly?

The Kennedy political dynasty began with a humble Massachusetts State Senator who birthed a mobbed-up fixer named Joe, who bought his kids public office with his bootlegging money (probably!) and connections to the Chicago mob (possibly!). He always wanted his eldest son, Joe Jr, to be President, but Joe Jr died in the War, and each additional son was somehow worse than the last. Jack was a chronically ill womanizer, Bobby wiretapped Martin Luther King and swerved left in the late '60s when it became politically expedient, torpedoing the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, and Ted was a drunk who actually killed a woman. (He became a much better citizen and Senator at some point after he gave up his presidential dreams in the '80s.)

And their kids! John-John started a fancy magazine called George about politics-as-celebrity, thus symbolizing everything wrong with the '90s and Democrats, Caroline turned out to be an entitled empty-headed princess after years spent gracefully out of the limelight, Bobby Jr is a publicity whore who spouts the crazy vaccines cause autism nonsense, and Patrick J. Kennedy, Ted's son, is a Congressman who also has problems with pills and, like dad, drunk driving. This is not even mentioning the one who died of a drug overdose (David), the tangentially-related one who was convicted of murder (Michael Skakel! Remember him?), and all the Kennedys who died in plane crashes, car crashes, and skiing incidents.

The only Kennedy "curse" is that they're a family of rich assholes and each succeeding generation is dumber than the previous one.