The Hobo Philosopher

Joseph P. Kennedy

By Richard E. Noble

As Albert Einstein exemplified, perspective is a fascinating phenomenon. Being raised in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area maybe I can present a slightly different picture of that big S.O.B., Joseph P. Kennedy. My oral and street education went something like this.
Joseph P. Kennedy was the product of poor, Irish-immigrant, Catholic heritage. The Irish were basic European waste matter. “Send in the Irish”, was the typical British, military chant whenever they had a situation that required a waste of human life.
In the pre-civil war days of the U.S., the Irish were used where slave owners feared to tread. An Irishmen’s life at ten cents a day was a much better buy than a black slave who may have cost his owner five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars.
With this as his background, Joseph P. Kennedy committed the gravest of sins. He became one of the richest men in America. And how did he do that?
Well, for one thing, it seems that during the Depression when all of the established White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Republicans were selling out the U. S. as fast as they could, shipping $100,000 in gold bars alone, out of the country each week; that S.O.B., Kennedy, was risking every penny he had buying up abandoned America as fast as he could. He bought closed factories, and discontinued breweries (alcohol, an Irish Catholic traditional beverage that he knew would never die) and everything else that he could get his hands on. He became so knowledgeable of the stock market and all of its shenanigans that he was hired by the Yellow Cab Company to save their butt. He locked himself in a room with a bank of telephones and a bunch of ticker tape machines and by out-playing all the little rich boys at their own game he saved the Yellow Cab Company and the jobs of their thousands of workers.
He went on to volunteer to patch up the loopholes in the stock market for F.D.R. An act that surely didn’t please a whole lot of the little, rich boys who made their fortunes wallowing in those holes, but a job that has been successful up and until this new age of international and domestic swindling. Joe considered this act for F.D.R. his greatest act of patriotism.
After that the big S.O.B. opened up his own neighborhood bank, and loaned money out to poor Irishmen who would never have got a dime elsewhere to buy homes, businesses and barrooms all over the area.
His bank prospered and grew and he became one of the super wealthy.
He then went on to inspire his children with the malicious notion that this was the greatest country in the world, where even poor, dumb, maligned, drunken Irishmen could become rich and famous.
Two of these children died in World War II, one in a fighter plane and one by accident. Two of his other boys grew up to have their heads blown off by ungrateful, jealous Americans because of the Kennedy boys attempts to make their country a better place for all peoples to live.
There was a time in America when Joseph P. Kennedy would have been considered an American Hero.
So much for perspective, hey?

Richard Edward Noble is a freelance writer. He has published 6 books. Contact him at richardedwardnoble@fairpoint.net for information concerning sales, discounts and special offers.