Another nail in the coffin of the curse of Camelot

GAWD strewth! Why is it that the great unwashed mass feel the need to embrace a national hero to make their own tawdry, uninspiring and pointless lives seem somehow worthwhile?
We've only just got through a peroid where old Timmy Fischer was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and now the whole world's going berko over someone named John John.
I'll bet all of you a flamin' quid that 95 out of every 100 Septic Tanks wouldn't have spared a moment's thought in the last 10 years for our dear departed JFK Junior before he got himself splashed all over the Atlantic and the daily blurbs the other day.
Now we've been treated to flippin' days of this Another Nail in the Coffin of Camelot pile of pelican poop from the world's media mongrels.
So help me Gawd, I'm going to spew if those maggots run that grainy black and white photo one more time of JFK Jnr as a little boy of three. You know the one. Where the grieving Jackie pushes him forward, whispering that a salute would not only make a great photo opportunity but be a laid-down misere for the female vote when his own tilt at the White House came around.
Listen to the obits and you'd think this third-rate law student, second-rate magazine publisher and doesn't-rate pilot was God's gift to the western world.
I haven't seen such a beat-up since our very own three-initialled hero – JO'K – the Wild One – carked it a few decades back.
The way we carried on after O'Keefe died you'd think Australia would be damned lucky just to be able to carry on under the circumstances.
We conveniently forgot that he hadn't had a hit for yonks and was the perpetually pissed and permanently washed-up undercard in the music tent at the Gympie Show when he finally pegged out.
Is this death thing the way to go to become immortal?
Crickey, maybe I should take a terminal tumble next time I'm out catching a wave on my trusty Malibu? Fair dinkum, it'd be grand to sit back on the point with a shiny halo on my head and a VB longneck pressed to the lips and soak in the accolades being poured over my dear-departed body.
I can hear them now. What a columnist! What an all-round bonza bloke. And what an eye for the sheilas, eh! Legendary stuff. I'll need the Kennedy clan's brilliant spindoctors in on it, of course, to whip up the rhetoric And an obliging media to paint me as the patron saint of all scribes. Of all time. And for ever.
Just like they're doing to this son of JFK right now.
No-one likes to see anyone taken before their time, but everyone seems to be conveniently overlooking the fact that this bungling amateur Bigglesworth risked a night flight in crappy weather that all the experts say was foolhardy in the extreme.
Just like his dad's cockpit always got him into trouble, it seems John John just didn't have enough guts to say no when his pretty little bride, Carolyn, pouted and demanded they make the trip after being delayed for some hours in the city.
And I reckon that some time down the track after the dust from the ashes has settled, the grieving Bessettes who have lost Carolyn and her sister Lauren to the chilly waters off the Kennedy compound at Marsha's Wineyard are going to turn on this spoiled rich boy with the silver spoon in his mouth, the Kennedy aura of invincibility in his head and a pressure bandage on his bunged-up leg.
JFK Jnr might one day have made a name of himself but he stuffed up big time. He went to water, taking two innocents with him, so let's also forget this other flamin' claptrap being recycled ad nauseam about the so-called Kennedy curse.
Look at all the Kennedy deaths, all the scandals and tragedies over the years, and they've brought it all on themselves.
So the Kennedys now have been involved in four air crashes; three fatal, one badly injuring Senator "It's never really summer until Teddy drives on the footpath" Kennedy.
Joseph, the eldest son, started the rot by going for a burton in wartime England aged 29. Countless poorer men copped it in the trenches where they belonged.
You see, this exceptionally rich family flies far more than most people, so it stands to reason they're going to crash more. Especially when they pilot planes themselves and end up in a muff dive because don't have the good sense to say "no" to a pretty face.
Look at JFK's assassination in 1963 to appreciate how the clan's death wish continues. What possessed him to drive in an open car through streets flanked by high-rise buildings when everyone knew he was poking his presidential pecker into a little bit of Monroe pussy, sometimes having to go through his brother's cloaca for the privilege?
It was only a matter of time before jealousy forced someone to take a pot-shot at the lucky sonofabitch.
Same with Robert some years later. Has a presidential hopeful ever been gunned down leaving a hotel by the front stairs like every one else would?
No. Bobby had to sneak out through the kitchen and everyone knows that kitchens are full of chefs who are crazy, crazy people. And who has guns? Right. The crazies.
Then there were the drug and skiing deaths among the younger Kennedys. Why? Because they could afford to get on both the drugs and the piste. It's as simple as that.
No, the only time I felt a little sorry for the Kennedys was when the youngest of the nine children, Edward, accidentally drove off that bridge at Chappaquiddick in 1969, killing his trusty aide Mary Jo Kopechne only moments after promoting her to a head job in his campaign office to help him fight an upcoming poll.
While some of his siblings might have ducked for cover and allowed the clan's propaganda machine to spin into protective action, Teddy Kennedy showed what he was made of by reporting the accident the very next day.
No, this mythology of a deadly curse afflicting the unfortunate Kennedys has to be nipped in the bud right here and now.
I can tell you now that the little womenfolk in the Lavendar clan have put up with the curse for generations without making a single, solitary fuss about it.
They just get on with their lives – and so should what remains of the Kennedy family.

Clarrie Lavendar is one of Australia's leading and best-loved columnists and writes regularly for The Bug.