This week, I watched the two-hour documentary on PBS Frontline about his career and controversies.
See the video (currently streaming) here.
See a review of the film online at MedPage Today - here.
- Afterward, at the downtown Los Angeles Central Library, I picked up four books. Two are by RFK Jr - a biography of Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr, who was active in many 1960s civil rights cases (1978), and a memoir "American Values, Lessons I Learned from my Family," 2018. There were also two biographies side by side on the shelf, "RFK Jr," by Jerry Oppenheimer, 2013 (skews negative), and "The Real RFK," by Dick Russell, 2023.
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AI CORNER
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PBS Frontline: “The Rise of RFK Jr.” —
A Complex Portrait of Reinvention and Resilience
PBS Frontline’s latest feature, The Rise of RFK Jr., offers a compelling, evenhanded chronicle of one of the most polarizing and resilient figures in modern American politics. Now serving as Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has lived several lives in one: privileged heir to a storied dynasty, recovering addict turned environmental crusader, political dissident, and unlikely cabinet member in a post-partisan era.
The film opens not with policy but with the trauma that shaped him. Viewers revisit the assassinations of his uncle and father and the “inescapable trauma” that shadowed his adolescence. Frontline does not sensationalize this pain; rather, it positions it as the crucible that forged both his skepticism toward institutions and his lifelong search for moral purpose
From there, the documentary traces Kennedy’s long descent into substance abuse—his arrests for drug possession and near-fatal heroin overdose—then his slow, steady recovery. His candor about addiction, combined with decades of sobriety, gives this section unexpected emotional weight. As one commentator observes, his environmental law career on the Hudson River “became his redemption.” Frontline gives ample space to this rebirth, portraying his litigation against polluters as both personal therapy and public service.
In its middle acts, the film tackles Kennedy’s foray into health controversies without caricature. While acknowledging that some of his past claims drew sharp scientific criticism, the narrative resists reducing him to a fringe figure. Instead, it frames his skepticism as part of a larger distrust of authority that was amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Archival footage and interviews show how his rhetoric resonated with citizens who felt alienated by government mandates, even as it alienated much of his own family.
The final chapters move briskly through his 2024 independent presidential run, its collapse, and his later decision to work with political opponents—including Donald Trump—before accepting a role in the current administration. Rather than passing judgment, Frontline treats these choices as the latest expression of Kennedy’s lifelong tug-of-war between rebellion and belonging.
Visually, the film alternates glossy archival material with intimate new interviews. Its tone is sober but not unsympathetic: Kennedy appears neither martyr nor menace, but a complicated man driven by conscience, ego, and a genuine desire to heal—himself and the country.
The result is one of Frontline’s most absorbing character studies in years: a portrait of a man who has repeatedly courted controversy yet emerged, through endurance and reinvention, as a consequential public figure. Viewers of any political stripe will likely come away with the same impression—whatever one thinks of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his story is inseparable from the American experiment itself.
##I ran into RFK Jr on a Dulles-LAX flight last spring.
