“An Open Letter to My 2005 College Commencement Speaker, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
“Kennedy’s Environmental Policy Attack Gets Mixed Reaction from Wilkes Crowd” – Hooley, Isabelle, The Times Leader, May 22nd, 2005
Dear Secretary Kennedy:
It’s been twenty-one years since you gave the keynote address at my commencement at Wilkes University in May 2005. Time flies, doesn’t it? In those two decades, you and I have changed a lot. Your speech left an undeniable impression on me. Imagine my shock and horror to see just how far from its central values you have strayed since then.
At the time, I found your words inspiring. They affirmed my left-leaning values. They made me feel as if I wasn’t alone regarding my concerns for the environment, or the future of democracy. George W. Bush had been re-elected just a few months earlier, and to say I thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket just as I was entering it as a full-fledged, B.A.-wielding adult would be an understatement. In hindsight, my naivete was quaint.
I was twenty-one years old. I was, and still am, something of an idealist. I had no idea that roughly one decade later, a twisted, disgusting caricature of humanity would ascend to our nation’s highest office. His victory would be aided in no small part by the support of people who subscribe to the sort of batshit misinformation that has come to define you since that humid late-spring afternoon. Who would have thought? Certainly not me. You probably wouldn’t have either.
Neither of us could have predicted you being morally disowned by your family, but what did you expect? Inventing and employing pseudo medical terms such as “full-blown autism” in your public discourse? Contributing to the number of deaths from a measles outbreak in Samoa when your anti-vax rhetoric was put into practice? Let’s not forget your history of drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and desecration of animal corpses.
I live in New York now, Mr. Secretary. The thought of you, or anyone else randomly dropping a dead bear cub in the middle of Central Park is the stuff of nightmares. You also decapitated a beached whale and brought that little trophy home with you. There are plenty of things I’ve taken home with me that I later regretted; mostly in the way of discarded books and furniture found on the street. I can safely say that the severed head of a marine mammal wasn’t one of them.
So, yeah. Things change. People do too. These days I’m happily married. I’m gainfully employed. I’m writing every day. I’m even studying sketch comedy and improv in the hopes of putting up my own show. Much like my short-form satire does, it’ll probably skewer the socio-political climate, laughing into a void that is partially of your making. All of which, I guess, is to say…thank you. You’ve inspired me to become the best version of myself by gradually degenerating into the worst version of you.
You’ve given me no shortage of material, and further affirmation of my belief that sooner or later, you and your MAHA cohorts will be judged accordingly. To say nothing of the people who gave you this power in the first place. Be well, and please reconsider the MAHA acronym. Your policies are a joke, but their brand doesn’t need to be the literal stuff of laughter. Say it to yourself again and try not to think of Count von Count.
Kind Regards,
Corey Pajka
Wilkes University, Class of 2005