Martin Sheen and Dionne Warwick fire back at Robert F. Kennedy
I’ve very rarely bothered to write about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his 2024 “campaign” for one simple reason: I’m not worried about him. For all the doomsday theories about how his campaign is going to masterfully tilt the election from Joe Biden to Donald Trump, I just don’t see it. That kind of needle is difficult to thread even if you have extraordinary savvy and skill. But Kennedy is a mentally incompetent person. And the people pulling his strings are two bit hucksters who know how to make a buck off an election but don’t know how to make a difference in an election.
We just saw a perfect example of this. Kennedy’s people floated a story about how he’s hosting a fundraiser and Dionne Warwick and Martin Sheen will be special guests. The only problem: someone forgot to tell them about it.
Dionne Warwick, who is very active on social media, quickly fired back and confirmed that she had no knowledge of the event and would “certainly” not be there. She added: “This is absolutely ridiculous. If you are going to lie on my name, at least lie about something cool.”
Martin Sheen isn’t active on social media so it took him a bit longer to respond. But when he did (through his West Wing co-star Bradley Whitford), Sheen not only shot down the story, he made a point of endorsing Joe Biden for 2024.
Even as I’m writing this, there are surely political pundits somewhere who are figuring out how to spin this entire debacle as some kind of masterstroke for Robert F. Kennedy Jr, so they can use it to scare you into believing that Kennedy knows exactly what he’s doing. But in reality, this was the dumbest kind of move possible.
The mainstream media (on both sides) keeps giving all kinds of unearned hype to Robert Kennedy, because they think they can scare people into staying tuned in by pushing the notion of him tipping the balance of 2024. All Kennedy would have to do is, well, nothing, and that media hype would keep coming.
But when you do something stupid like falsely attaching celebrities’ names to your campaign in a way that prompts them to publicly fire back at you, you make it a lot harder for the media to keep acting as your publicist. This kind of move isn’t how you build hype or take advantage of hype. It’s how you screw up the hype you’re being handed. It’s the stuff of blown opportunities and idiots. And it’s why I’m not worried about Robert F. Kennedy or his campaign. Even from a villain standpoint, they don’t really know what they’re doing.
