Although Ted was very young when Rosemary had her lobotomy, these family values are part of his heritage.
RIP Rosemary.
Well, at least they didn't send her down to the riverside with her brother Teddy...
Her famous family, however, feared that Rosemary might get pregnant, catch a venereal disease, or otherwise embarrass the Kennedys. To prevent this, she became one of the first Americans to undergo a prefrontal lobotomy, having the frontal lobes of her brain surgically scraped off in 1942.
This resulted in Ms. Kennedy's paralysis, incoherence, and incontinence...
...and she was still one of the least embarrassing members of the family. How is it that Rosemary got lobotomized and Ted didn't?
Weren't the rest of the Kennedys as well? Or was it the drinking and other drugs?
Their fears were probably well grounded while her brothers were around....
I still can't believe Joe Kennedy did this
And the Kennedy's nag us about human rights
Bleeping hypocrites!
To be perfectly fair, lobotomy was quite popular in the US from the 30s through the 50s, to treat a wide variety of mental health problems. There is considerable evidence that it may actually have been quite effective in many cases. Its decline in popularity is due at least as much to the development of alternatives such as medication as it is to discovery of bad effects.
Most people's opinion of it is based on One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and other highly unscientific depictions in the media. There are believed to be somewhere around 50,000 Americans still around who were lobotomized. Many of them have lived quite normal and successful lives, although we will of course never know exactly what their lives would have been like without the surgery.
To give some credit, Eunice Shriver has sponsored the special olympics and contributed a lot to the handi-capped. Her pence for the work of her vicious father and her weak, if pious mother.
What a sad, sad story. Those who made such a decision for Rosemary lived in far greater darkness than she ever did.
Actually, they did discuss this. Trouble is for years they never mentioned this was never the procedure in use for mental retardation and that that was here problem, not a psychiatric one for which the procedure was employed.
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
They didn't want her to get married and split up the family wealth. The old man was a barbarian and so is his son.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
Now there's an interesting bit of information.
I think Joseph Kennedy was accursed. He made his fortunes in illegal alcohol activities and money-under-the-table politics. And he was one of the very few fathers I've known who actually encouraged his sons to go into politics.
It is a crime what they did to her. And then they spend their lives promoting Speical Olympics events?? Total heartless hypocrites, the entire family. They still call them "American royalty"!? Considering how most royal families have acted over the centuries, it probably applies to them but in negative ways, not the glamorous ones. They are our own "Camelot" of course...and the media LOVES them forever.
Be interesting to know how old Teddy was fore he could tie is own shoes. Now, he can't reach the laces I guess.
I had heard this many years ago. The Kennedy's had a way of keeping it from the public, just as all dems have with anything in their closet.