Peter Dykstra: WTF RFK Jr.?

Riverkeeper

In 1997, I produced a documentary on Bobby and The Riverkeeper, John Cronin, for Japan’s TV Asahi.

I spent a day with RFK Jr as he took water samples from an outfall that emptied into a drinking water reservoir in the New York suburbs. I was impressed by how he simultaneously kept his focus on the sample jars that carried the day’s mission, and the long, daunting tasks that awaited the environmental movement.

RFK Jr.'s divergent path

Around the year 2005, RFK Jr began to make two significant breaks with much of the mainstream environmental movement.

An ambitious proposal for a windfarm along Cape Cod’s South Shore divided some locals. Blue-collar fishermen joined some well-heeled sailors in opposing Cape Wind. They found an enthusiastic funder in Bill Koch, estranged brother of Charles and David Koch; and a dynamic mouthpiece in Bobby Kennedy.

RFK Jr said he was sticking up for the fishermen. Green colleagues, feeling betrayed, saw a cynical effort to preserve the view from the Kennedy family compound. After more than 16 tortuous back-and-forth years, Cape Wind’s backers threw in the towel.

Also in 2005, Bobby Kennedy lent his name to a cause whose roots in science denial would end up costing tens of thousands of lives. Concern over a potential link between vaccines and autism went viral (sorry) despite a thorough discrediting within the larger science community. RFK Jr’s more mainstream links began to vanish. By 2017, his name disappeared from the mastheads of NRDC, the Riverkeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance groups, the Pace University Environmental Law Clinic, and more.

Anti-vaxxer

His other legal work continued, including winning a whopping nine-figure judgement against Monsanto and its glyphosate herbicide in 2018.

These days, RFK Jr. is Counsel at Morgan & Morgan, which bills itself as the largest personal injury law firm in the U.S.

But last weekend, Bobby Kennedy took another big step into the rabbit hole: In describing how COVID vaccine advocates have conquered the world, he played the Hitler card:

RFK Jr. told an anti-vaxx rally at the Washington Monument that Anne Frank, the noted Holocaust victim, had it better than today’s employees facing a vaccine mandate.

'Reprehensible and insensitive'

RFK drew predictably strong criticism. His tweet also drew one of the harshest slap-downs in the brief-but-colorful history of Twitter: Kennedy’s wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, came after him like nobody’s business.

Progress, with baggage

(Major irony alert: Hines’s best-known TV role is that of Larry David’s wife in the angst-ridden hit comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm.)

And whatever baggage is attached to his anti-science quackery and bizarre Hitler-baiting, the world is now home to hundreds of River-, Bay-, Lake Keepers and more, thanks to RFK Jr and his colleagues.