Kennedy Legacy Reduced to Sad Comic Strip

Remember Michael Skakel? Nephew of Ethel Kennedy, killer of Martha Moxley, exemplar of the stupid grandson theory? As the AP helpfully explains in between descriptions of Moxley's demise, he is working on an art project. Behold his moral vision:

Skakel, convicted in 2002 of killing Martha Moxley in 1975, participates in a program that lets inmates show another side to their lives. His drawing of his 9-year-old son George will be among those on public display starting Thursday at Capital Community College in Hartford.

The drawing shows the boy wearing a T-shirt that reads “love” and surrounded by colorful animals. A nearby skeleton with sunglasses symbolizes death, but two doves overhead depict triumph over death, said Jeffrey Greene, manager of Community Partners in Action, the nonprofit group that runs the program.

An eyeball in the sky symbolizes God watching over the boy, but a lamb is shown next to a lion.

Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, is serving 20 years to life for bludgeoning Moxley to death with a golf club in wealthy Greenwich. He maintains that he is innocent.

In another piece, Skakel drew a comic strip about the loss of innocence. A young boy wants to play football, but his friends are not home. Then he runs into someone who gives him marijuana to smoke.

Comments

The Democratic Republican | April 28, 2008, 1:28pm | #

wow.

SugarFree | April 28, 2008, 1:35pm | #

"Your husband's work is what we call 'outsider art.' It could be by a mental patient, a hillbilly or a chimpanzee."

"In high school I was voted most likely to be a mental patient, hillbilly or chimpanzee!"

Episiarch | April 28, 2008, 1:41pm | #

I thought the Kennedy legacy was already a sad comic strip.

Fred | April 28, 2008, 1:47pm | #

I'm trying to care about this, but it's just not happening.

Chris Potter | April 28, 2008, 1:48pm | #

No posts on the rLOVEution-powered NV-GOP state convention fiasco over the weekend? Apparently the state GOP apparatchiks suspended the convention because Paul supporters were about to vote in a slate of Ron Paul delegates to the national.

Abdul | April 28, 2008, 1:49pm | #

The giant tumbler of scotch in the picture is symbolic of a Kennedy family breakfast tradition.

TallDave | April 28, 2008, 1:49pm | #

In another piece, Skakel drew a comic strip about the loss of innocence. A young boy wants to play football, but his friends are not home. Then he runs into someone who gives him marijuana to smoke.

Ironicaly, football has killed more people than marijuana.

MP | April 28, 2008, 1:56pm | #

C'mon Kerry. Why kick a man when he's down? In jail, no less? This is beneath you.

TallDave | April 28, 2008, 2:05pm | #

Ironicaly, football has killed more people than marijuana.

Come to think of it, so has Ted Kennedy's car.

Episiarch | April 28, 2008, 2:10pm | #

C'mon Kerry. Why kick a man when he's down? In jail, no less? This is beneath you.

Yeah, Kerry--picking on a convicted murderer with the best defense money could buy who escaped justice for almost 20 years is just downright low.

Bingo | April 28, 2008, 2:11pm | #

No picture to accompany article? Here is an artist's rendition of this magnificent piece of art.

SugarFree | April 28, 2008, 2:12pm | #

I think it's OK for him to sell his art, so long as he can't spend the money on golf clubs.

Taktix® | April 28, 2008, 2:12pm | #

Yeah, Kerry--picking on a convicted murderer with the best defense money could buy who escaped justice for almost 20 years is just downright low.

Once Kerry has children, she'll understand.

DannyK | April 28, 2008, 2:14pm | #

Kerry, how would you feel if somebody picked the craziest, most disreputable member of your family and talked about the "sad decline of the Howleys"? His name isn't even Kennedy, for God's sake. This is beneath you.

Episiarch | April 28, 2008, 2:15pm | #

According to John, Kerry has conceived and aborted many children. Or is a hypocrite for not doing so. Or something like that. It's kind of hard to follow.

scape | April 28, 2008, 2:16pm | #

The drawing shows the boy wearing a T-shirt that reads "love" and surrounded by colorful animals. A nearby skeleton with sunglasses symbolizes death, but two doves overhead depict triumph over death. An eyeball in the sky symbolizes God watching over the boy, but a lamb is shown next to a lion.

"Skakel invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs to seek congruence in seemingly incongruous situations, whether visual or spatial and inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion."

In another piece, Skakel drew a comic strip about the loss of innocence. A young boy wants to play football, but his friends are not home. Then he runs into someone who gives him marijuana to smoke.

"Skakel's 'settings' draw on the style, and substance, of certain time-specific materials to resuscitate their referential possibilities, to pull them out of historical stasis and return them to active symbolic duty, where new adjacencies might reactivate latent meanings."

SugarFree | April 28, 2008, 2:16pm | #

Oh, Bingo... how I long for the ability to post images here directly. The LOLpics I would make for our trolls would be epic.

Son of Mr. Green Genes | April 28, 2008, 2:28pm | #

I smoked the marijuana like a cigarette.

Warren | April 28, 2008, 2:29pm | #

Sounds exactly like all the other prison art done by convicted felons trying to convince people they've "found Jesus" and deserve a reduced sentence.

D.A. Ridgely | April 28, 2008, 2:34pm | #

Herewith, a poster from the community college with what appears from the description to be the Skakel piece at the far left. If you magnify enough, there appears to be a golf club under the tree and a car with a man and younger woman plummeting into the river. Or maybe not.

scape | April 28, 2008, 2:36pm | #

No picture to accompany article?

Here's a pdf flyer from the gallery that has some of the artwork from the show. One of Skakel's is on the far left.

Ravac | April 28, 2008, 2:43pm | #

@ D.A. Ridgely

Man his kid has a big head.

Dogzilla | April 28, 2008, 2:47pm | #

I'm almost as excited about this as I am about Charles Manson's next album. Or was that Shirley Manson?

Jonathan Hohensee | April 28, 2008, 2:49pm | #

Come to think of it, so has Ted Kennedy's car.
If I was in the Senate, every word out of my mouth would be either a lead-up or a punchline to a Mary Jo Kopechne joke.

Ken Shultz | April 28, 2008, 2:51pm | #

"C'mon Kerry. Why kick a man when he's down? In jail, no less? This is beneath you."

Yeah, there isn't anything funny about any of this.

...just like there isn't anything funny about Michael Kennedy, apparently, screwing a fourteen year-old babysitter, going into rehab and subsequently dying in an accident while playing football on skis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kennedy

Yeah, I'm ashamed for any of you who think there's anything funny about any of this.

And if all these Kennedy stories were put together into some kind of graphic novel form, featuring those incidents along with, I don't know, the Chappaquiddick incident, a Pappa Joe Kennedy pausing amid an anti-semitic diatribe only to say that Democracy is finished, Sargent Shriver's daughter marrying Arnold Schwarzenegger, John John arguing with his wife about whether they were supposed to be headed to Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, William Kennedy Smith beating a rape charge, all of it interspersed with various drug busts and overdoses...

There isn't anything funny about any of that. ...and if somebody put it all together in a graphic novel, I might buy it but I wouldn't think it was funny. ...and God forbid they made it into a movie!

...but if they did, they should call it "The Aristocrats".

I mean, for goodness' sake, Howley, the man's in jail!

Michael Kennedy | April 28, 2008, 2:51pm | #

Ironicaly, football has killed more people than marijuana.

Especially when played on skis...

Brandybuck | April 28, 2008, 2:54pm | #

I don't care how fscking artistic murderers can be, or how emotionally sensitive their works, I want them locked up behind bars!

Blue | April 28, 2008, 2:56pm | #

The whole football/marijuana thing happened to me when I was 14.

Good times.

Colin | April 28, 2008, 2:58pm | #

I wonder how often he gets raped in prison.

I mean, how many people can say they've had sex with a Kennedy?

sage | April 28, 2008, 3:00pm | #

Yeah, Kerry, what's wrong with you? Next thing you know some "Reason" writer will be posting pictures of a crying daughter whose dad got his ass handed to him while trying to get reelected!

Oh, wait...

ChrisO | April 28, 2008, 3:01pm | #

I wonder how often he gets raped in prison.


Somehow, I suspect that Kennedys don't get sent to the pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

Ethan | April 28, 2008, 3:06pm | #

The drawing shows the boy wearing a T-shirt that reads “love” and surrounded by colorful animals. A nearby skeleton with sunglasses symbolizes death, but two doves overhead depict triumph over death...
An eyeball in the sky symbolizes God watching over the boy, but a lamb is shown next to a lion.

Boy, that's some real deep use of symbolism there. Faulkner ain't got nothing on this guy.

R C Dean | April 28, 2008, 3:07pm | #

I mean, how many people can say they've had sex with a Kennedy?

Including JFK? Probably quite a few.

edna | April 28, 2008, 3:42pm | #

Kerry, how would you feel if somebody picked the craziest, most disreputable member of your family ...? skakel was maybe in the top 20, but no higher. he just killed one female.

BakedPenguin | April 28, 2008, 3:50pm | #

sage - good times. Best Headline Ever.

The Wine Commonsewer | April 28, 2008, 5:14pm | #

Jonathan Hohensee | April 28, 2008, 2:49pm | #
Come to think of it, so has Ted Kennedy's car.
If I was in the Senate, every word out of my mouth would be either a lead-up or a punchline to a Mary Jo Kopechne joke.

One of GWB's redeeming qualities is to refer to Teddy Kennedy as CHAPPY!

See if I can get this posted before my Internet goes south again. Yes, it is 1992. At least here at Casa de las Rocas Grandes.

blaupanzer | April 28, 2008, 5:33pm | #

Why does anyone care about this loser?

mediageek | April 29, 2008, 1:33am | #

I suggest that we move to incorporate sarcastic statements about "kicking *insert name of well-connected, political type who gets busted committing a crime* while s/he's down" into a new meme and/or Hit and Run in-joke.

All in favor?

RL | April 29, 2008, 7:49am | #

I find the art work kind of protective, nothing more. I never trust anything that Mark Furman points a finger at anyway. I think this whole Kennedy cousin case was revenge for the OJ trial.