The Kennedy Running As The Influencer Slop Peddler Candidate For Congress

Nineties kids might remember a Michael Keaton movie called Multiplicity, where Keaton creates a machine to make copies of himself that are increasingly, to use a word that’s now marginally acceptable again in social circles, retarded. The Kennedy legacy is currently in a mid-stage Multiplicity plotline thanks to the bizarre New York congressional candidacy of Jack Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s son and John F. Kennedy’s 33-year-old grandson.

Phase one of the Multiplicity machine was, of course, John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, who, despite whatever you might think of their politics, were impactful and important Americans, to live forever in the history books. The next generation was JFK, Jr. and RFK, Jr., flawed, charismatic protagonists with mixed legacies. Schlossberg, on the other hand, according to the New York Times, skipped out on the first day of his campaign to take a nap. One departing campaign member called Schlossberg’s efforts a “dollar store flower bouquet.” “The colors might be nice to look at for a few days,” he said, “But since the flowers lack roots, they can’t last very long.”

Schlossberg started his campaign when longtime Congressman Jerry Nadler announced his retirement. He did it in the most annoying millennial way possible: touring the country and making a YouTube series out of a van. He called the show “serious — and insane. Just like me.”

Insane is right. He’s posted videos of himself dancing shirtless on Instagram, made weird jokes about “having a son” with Usha Vance, and appears to have plagiarized an Instagram live message about the invasion of Venezuela from Massachusetts representative Seth Moulton. There has been massive staff turnover and budgetary disputes. This happens in a lot of inexperienced political campaigns, particularly when they have big budgets and a high Q rating, but anyone who follows the Kennedy mythos can see the warning signs.

I watched all of “Love Story,” Ryan Murphy’s occasionally laughable but mostly excellent miniseries about JFK, Jr. and Caroline Bessette’s doomed romance in the 1990s. Jack Schlossberg’s life has eerie parallels to JFK, Jr.’s, though put through the Multiplicity machine to create a very 2026 recipe of confusion and slop. Both JFK, Jr. and Schlossberg have dealt with the truest legacy of the Kennedy family: tragedy and death. JFK had the loss of both his parents, which put him in a weird position of being close to the head of the family. Schlossberg lost his sister Tatiana last year. I won’t mock his grief, but Schlossberg has got to heed the warning signs. Nothing good ever comes from trying to bring back Camelot, which appeared once in the American mist, like Brigadoon, never to return.

JFK, Jr. had George Magazine, which, for all its ridiculousness, was a legitimate shot at creating a media empire. Schlossberg, on the other hand, wrote a half dozen freelance articles for Vogue in 2024 and worked for four months for John Kerry, helping to plan a “conference on oceans.” When a debate moderator asked him for accomplishments that would indicate he would be a good congressman, Schlossberg cited his own campaign, saying it “excited people.”

“While you may not think that content creation and building a following based on speaking out for what you believe in at a time when others were unwilling, taking on your family members, traveling the country to every single swing state, serving as a delegate at the D.N.C., is an experience, I do,” Mr. Schlossberg told the moderator, according to the New York Times.

Jack Schlossberg is playing a dangerous game with the Kennedy Monkey Paw. The good-looking golden boy with an unlimited trust fund never wins in this scenario. We can only hope that we’re already so far down the Multiplicity timeline that this ends in comedy, not tragedy, and that the next generation is so dumb that all they can manage to do is fall down the stairs or back the car into the garage door.

***

Neal Pollack is the author of 12 semi-bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction and is a three-time Jeopardy! champion.