Jerry Oppenheimer is a bestselling biographer who has written two books about the Kennedy family, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and The Dark Side of the Dream, and The Other Mrs. Kennedy: Ethel Skakel Kennedy, An American Drama of Power, Privilege, and Politics.
The Kennedy family is refusing to ‘take blame or responsibility’ for the behavior of President John F. Kennedy’s quirky only grandson, Jack Schlossberg, declaring he’s more ‘Schlossberg than Kennedy,’ insiders have exclusively told DailyMail.com.
The sources say Jack, who turned 32 last month, has matured with the ‘looks and attitude’ of his father, the eccentric and very private Edwin Schlossberg, 73, rather than Jack’s beloved mother, Caroline Kennedy, 67, who was JFK’s only daughter, and who never took her husband’s name.
The elder Schlossberg is a designer and artist was once described as ‘Camelot’s egghead-in-residence,’ and ‘a well-to-do hippie-yuppie who’s self-consciously interesting…a Renaissance man without a renaissance,’ in a lengthy SPY magazine profile.
A progressive millennial Democrat, his son, Jack, has ignited ‘an embarrassing earthquake’ within the Kennedy family by regularly appearing on social media, and infamously berating people ranging from his second-cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to conservative journalist Megyn Kelly with hateful and bizarre rants.
But according to a family insider: ‘Members of the Kennedy family, although embarrassed by and for Jack, are adamant that they feel no blame or responsibility for his boorish online shenanigans.
‘They feel Jack’s dark persona is a clear case of “like father, like son”. That he’s a chip off the old block who inherited more the traits and characteristics of his father than having the Kennedy attributes of his mother.’
And Jack has himself made that distinction.
The Kennedys are said to have chalked up Jack Schlossberg’s eccentric behavior and recent public antics to his father’s side of the family, inside sources tell DailyMail.com
Schlossberg, 32, who is President John F. Kennedy’s only grandson, has raised eyebrows over his bizarre and controversial presence online
In an Instagram post last November, he compared his physical characteristics to his father, rather than his mother.
‘I am my father’s schnoz,’ he sarcastically wrote, suggesting he has more Schlossberg DNA than Kennedy.
And in response to suggestions that his famed Kennedy ancestry is overplayed, he declared he’s just ‘a Jew named Schlossberg.’
Most would agree that he doesn’t resemble his handsome grandfather, JFK, or any other male Kennedy for that matter.
In one Instagram post he also curiously noted that he didn’t look like the actors, ‘Penn Badgley or Adam Driver,’ but weirdly noted: ‘I look like Audrey Hepburn.’
Jack’s father, Ed Schlossberg, is from a well-to-do, but publicly little-known New York City Jewish merchant family in the textile business.
He married Caroline Kennedy in Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church on Cape Cod on July 19, 1986, after courting her for several years. The two met while they both worked at the Metropolitan Museum.
‘It was like a story line out of a Woody Allen movie,’ a friend of the couple noted.
Schlossberg is the only son of Caroline Kennedy and her husband Ed Schlossberg, a designer and artist once described as ‘as Camelot’s egghead-in-residence’
The elder Schlossberg, 79, married Caroline Kennedy in Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church, on Cape Cod, on July 19, 1986, after courting her for several years
At the time of the wedding, Schlossberg had a Ph.D in science and literature from Columbia, and was the author of nine books, among them, The Home Computer Handbook, The Pocket Calculator Game Book, and The All-New Fact-Filled 1977-78 CB Guide.
As an outsider who wed into America’s most famous – and infamous – clan Ed Schlossberg has always avoided giving interviews and has despised publicity regarding his private life – a trait also inherited by his son who avoids the press, but savors expressing himself controversially online.
Most recently, however, Jack Schlossberg deleted his accounts on X and Instagram after engaging in a series of social media spats with Kelly and DailyMail.com columnist Maureen Callahan.
‘I’m sorry to everyone I hurt. I was wrong,’ he wrote in his final post last week. ‘I’m deleting all my social media. Forever. It’s been fun. Thanks anyways everyone.’
On a podcast with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, Schlossberg tried to explain his social media posts.
‘I use my judgment to make posts that I think are funny or silly but have a purpose, either to make you think this guy’s crazy. “Why is he talking about his own family that way?”
‘But to be honest, then you get all these retweets, quotes, and everybody flips out about it.
‘I think that the internet is a place where it’s difficult to break through, and it’s difficult to break through especially if you’re not saying something that’s controversial, or at least, somehow unexpected,’ he added.
In February 2013, when I was reporting on a story about him while Jack was a 20-year-old sophomore at Yale, he declined to talk to me, but instead assigned his best friend to act as his spokesman and answer my questions. The friend also asked to remain anonymous.
Like his son, Schlossberg’s father has long been a controversial figure within the Kennedy family, reveals a close source.
A sensitive Kennedy family issue with Ed in the center erupted in the wake of the tragic death of Caroline’s brother, John F. Kennedy Jr. – who was the best man at Ed and Caroline’s nuptials – in a 1999 plane crash that also took the life of his wife Carolyn Bessette and her sister Lauren.
Last week, Jack launched an online attack on journalist Megyn Kelly after she branded him and his mother Caroline Kennedy ‘disgusting’
He later deleted his accounts on X and Instagram after apologizing to ‘everyone I hurt’
In the wake of the crash, a battle was brewing between the Kennedy and Bessette families over burial plans.
Anne Freeman, Bessette’s mother had wanted burial near Greenwich, Connecticut, the location of her family home. But the Besettes feared that the Kennedys might be planning to have the couple buried in the Kennedy family plot in Massachusetts .
To hash out the burial controversy, a secret meeting was held in New York attended by Ed and Ted Kennedy’s wife, Vicki Reggie, according to references in RFK Jr.’s diary.
In the end it was decided that John, Carolyn and Lauren’s bodies would be cremated and their ashes buried at sea.
In his diary, that was leaked to the New York Post, RFK Jr. disclosed that: ‘All the Bessette family knows that Ed hated Carolyn and did everything in his power to make her life miserable and…he bullied, bullied, bullied the shattered, grieving mother.’
Years later, Bobby Jr. would be a target of nasty online remarks by Schlossberg’s son, Jack, who joined with other Kennedys in supporting Joe Biden’s re-election while RFK Jr. was still running as an independent candidate.
He later suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump’s winning Republican presidential bid.
And last month, Jack’s mother, Caroline, who had served as U.S. ambassador to Australia in the Obama administration, sensationally branded RFK Jr., her first cousin, a ‘predator’ just before his Senate confirmation hearing for his role as Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services to ‘Make America Healthy Again.’
Meanwhile, regarding the Bessette controversy, Bobby noted that at the service for the family in Greenwich, Connecticut, he had tried to ‘get through as a good soldier and making only positive comments and thoughts’ about Schlossberg.
Jack pictured with his sisters Tatiana (left) and Rose (center) and their parents at a 2013 ceremony to commemorating the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Ireland
Jack accompanied hiss mother to the American Ballet Theater Spring Gala in 2011
Jack’s parents, Caroline Kennedy and Ed Schlossberg are pictured with his late uncle John Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette in 1998
But RFK Jr. stated at one point Schlossberg had stopped him from delivering a eulogy.
He also said that Carolyn Bessette’s sole surviving sister, Lisa, was told by Schlossberg: ‘Kennedys don’t eulogize non-Kennedys.’
In another diary entry, RFK Jr. wrote that the wife of JFK Jr.’s close cousin Anthony Radziwill, who had died of testicular cancer a month after the plane crash, had called to discuss what she characterized as Schlossberg’s despotic and arrogant behavior.
‘She says she wants to start an “I hate Ed Club,” RFK Jr. wrote. ‘There would be many, many members. John & Carolyn would have certainly applied.’
In another controversy, JFK Jr. and Schlossberg got into a heated dispute after Schlossberg had inserted himself, uninvited into a project for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
Schlossberg wanted to be involved in making a film about President Kennedy’s role in the arts.
When John Jr. heard about it, he was furious, a Kennedy friend told me in an interview for my book.
‘It was all John could talk about,’ the pal recalled.
‘He went on and on about how Ed should have consulted with him and questioned whether Ed should be involved in the project anyway…he saw Ed’s involvement in the tribute as poaching.
‘The two of them sparred, which resulted in the project’s cancellation.’
