Speaking of distractions...

... Taylor Swift showed up at a Kennedy wedding — she's dating Conor Kennedy — and was told to leave.

“They texted me an hour before the wedding and asked if they could come,” Vicki Kennedy said. “I responded with a very clear, ‘Please do not come.’ They came anyway. ... I personally went up to Ms. Swift, whose entrance distracted the entire event, politely introduced myself to her, and asked her as nicely as I could to leave. It was like talking to a ghost. She seemed to look right past me.”

She seemed to look right past me.... Why do I find that so funny?

ADDED: Was Swift invited?

Conor was reportedly invited solo to the wedding of Kyle Kennedy and Liam Kerr last Saturday — but never sent a response, according to Victoria Kennedy....

The wedding-crashing couple, despite Victoria’s protestations, apparently danced the night away at the reception without any further complaints.

A Swift spokeswoman denied the reports of any mixup, insisting the singer was definitely on the guest list.

“There is no truth to that,” said Paula Erikson. “Taylor was invited to the wedding, and the bride thanked her profusely.”

There are 3 separate etiquette issues here. 1. Should Swift have attended, given her degree of invitedness? I don't know all the facts, but more probably should have been done by Conor. 2. Once Swift arrived, should she have been confronted? Maybe not. Finally: 3. Afterwards, should one blab about the whole thing to the press? That question is easy: no. The clearest violation of etiquette is Vicki's in airing her grievances to the press and deliberately humiliating and embarrassing Swift. I love the way she claimed to have been polite and nice in her own impolite and not nice statement to the press. Going public and presenting yourself in a flattering light? Horrid!

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral gets 4-and-a-half stars on Yelp.

"How can you not give a Church 5-stars - maybe it's just the Catholic guilt in me but if you go to Church, even if only once a year, you should give it 5-stars :-)"

I never noticed Yelp had ratings on churches. Fascinating. I was Googling St. Patrick's Old Cathedral — which is in Little Italy in New York, prompting one Yelpist to say "it's funny when the patron saint of another country is in the wrong ethnic neighborhood." She gives 4-and-a-half stars, and perhaps that half-star deduction is for ethnicity mismatching.

I was Googling on the occasion of Alec Baldwin's wedding, which the Daily Mail has celebrated with an array of photographs of quite a few remarkably unattractive celebrities. Remember when "Baldwin" was slang — in that movie "Clueless" — for a really cute guy: "Okay, okay, so he is kind of a Baldwin." This is no longer apt.

A comment at the Daily Mail: "A bizarre looking lot. And why do churches allow themselves to be used as mere props for nincompoops who only regard them as a backdrop?"

I was Googling to try to get a closer look at the painting above the altar depicting Jesus floating above an open tomb. Ah, here's the lovely website for the cathedral. Here's a recent NYT article about it, noting that the area isn't so much "Little Italy" anymore:

"In recent years, the area has been transformed by the arrival of fancy boutiques, specialty shops, multi-million-dollar apartments and, from [the] perspective [of  Msgr. Donald Sakano], a new generation of souls.

“Now we are surrounded by young people,” Monsignor Sakano said. “It’s a young, vibrant, trendy area.”

Hipster souls... and flaccid celebrity souls... including Woody Allen's soul and Robert Kennedy Jr.'s soul. Souls galore. Just waiting for salvation.

Is "flaccid" the right word or does it make you think only of genitalia? The OED definition is: "Wanting in stiffness, hanging or lying loose or in wrinkles; limber, limp; flabby." That — and the following examples — makes me it is the right word:

1620   T. Venner Via Recta v. 87   The one it maketh flaccide, and the other subiect to putrefaction.
1660   R. Boyle New Exper. Physico-mechanicall iv. 46   The sides of the Bladder grew flaccid.
1705   F. Fuller Medicina Gymnastica 37   Yet are the Muscles not Flaccid, but Tense and Firm.
1751   Johnson Rambler No. 117. ⁋8   The flaccid sides of a football.
1848   Thackeray Bk. Snobs in Wks. IX. 385   His double chin over his flaccid whitey-brown shirt collar.
1848   Thackeray Vanity Fair lxi. 554   The flaccid children within.
1879   J. A. Froude Cæsar xv. 234   His hair moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid.

My favorite phrase there is "flaccid whitey-brown shirt collar." If only I could write more like Thackeray! There were some flaccid whitey-brown folks at the Baldwin wedding.

But the OED says "flaccid" is "Chiefly of flesh and similar structures: rarely of a person." Rarely. It was a rare occasion. A wedding. A wedding attended by many conspicuously divorced persons... including the groom... a bloated 54-year-old man, a Baldwin, marrying a 28-year-old woman named Hilaria.

In ancient Rome, Hilaria were "festivals celebrated on the vernal equinox to honor Cybele." It's a plural noun, really. Not that many names for individuals are plural, but a young woman may have many dimensions. In marrying a man, however, she is one of the two who become one.

Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

"The Rupert Murdoch tabloid loves to package other people’s reporting in World War III headlines."

Writes Howard Kurtz, mocking the New York Post article that has the headline "Mary Kennedy pummeled RFK Jr., ran over family dog and threatened to kill herself for years: court papers," which begins: "Robert Kennedy Jr.’s wife, Mary, beat him up, tried to blackmail him, killed the family dog and, finally, told a servant she needed rope for a new couch — then hanged herself with it, according to a bombshell report.”

The "other people’s reporting" used by the NY Post is in Newsweek/Daily Beast, which is Kurtz's employer. That article is headlined "Exclusive: The Last Days of Mary Kennedy," with a subtitle: "She was the love of Bobby Jr.’s life. Then everything unraveled. In Newsweek, bestselling Kennedy historian Laurence Leamer reveals the heartbreaking story of Mary’s long decline." Heartbreaking. Love of his life. That goes to a different extreme, trying to appeal to a different audience — presumably women who adore bestselling Kennedy historians.

It's not surprising that the Post — like a blogger — would pull out the most lurid details and state them plainly, for readers who don't want the romance and don't need their suicide porn swathed in the pretense of respectability.

From the hardcore Post:

“Mary’s violence and physical abuse toward me began before we were married,” Bobby said in confidential court papers that surfaced yesterday.

The bestselling Kennedy historian Laurence Leamer obtained the papers. That's the basis for the "Exclusive" in the Newsweek headline. Continuing with the Post, because I don't want Kennedy romance speed bumps in my access to the lurid facts:

“Soon after Mary became pregnant with our first son, Mary — in a sudden rage about my continued friendship with my ex-wife — hit me in the face with her fist,’’ Bobby said in an affidavit filed as part of his then-custody battle with his estranged wife.

“She was a trained boxer, and I got a shiner,’’ Bobby said. “Her engagement ring crushed my tear duct, causing permanent damage. Mary asked me to lie to her family about the cause of my shiner.”

Domestic violence. (Of course, the suicide — done at home — was also domestic violence.)

Bobby said that at one point after they separated, Mary “said she intended to kill herself unless I called off the divorce and unless I promised to recommit to the marriage.’’

Psychological abuse. (Of course, the suicide itself was psychological abuse.)

[Bobby said] to the judge that despite years of her abusing him, “she repeatedly says she will call the police and say that I beat her if I threaten to leave her."...

In his confidential affidavit, Bobby had claimed that Mary continued to physically attack him even after he moved out, recounting a May 2011 incident in which Mary asked him to come console the kids over their dead dog.

“Mary ran over and killed the dog, Porcia, in the driveway,” he said in the affidavit. Arriving at her house, he found her drunk, with their son Aidan in the room.

“I opened the door, and she leapt out of her bed and hit me with a roundhouse punch that, had I not blocked it, would have undoubtedly broken my face,” Bobby claimed.

She was “raining blows down on me as I backed down the hall,” landing about 30 blows in all, he said.

“She screamed at Aidan as she hit me, [saying, I’m] ‘a demon. He is the most evil man in the world. Everything he does is evil and a fraud. He is a philanderer, an adulterer, a sex addict.’ ”

This, culled from an article with the subtitle "She was the love of Bobby Jr.’s life."

According to the affidavit, during their marriage, Bobby would awaken in the middle of the night to find Mary beating him, and he said that he once had to escape through a second-floor window.

One time, she threw a plate of spaghetti at him in front of the kids and another, attacked him with scissors while he was in the bathtub, according to the report....

According to Newsweek, Bobby “pleaded” with Mary’s brothers and sisters to do an intervention, and e-mailed them in June 2011 that she was “sinking into terrible darkness.”

Mary’s siblings — who, along with many of her friends have contended that the Kennedy clan is trying to save face over Bobby’s mistreatment of Mary by making her look mentally ill — allegedly told him to take a hike.

So... what do the sisters say now that she's hanged herself? Was she mentally ill or did she rationally and intentionally commit suicide (and if so, why? To torture and punish Bobby?)?

During the last episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," TLC put up this teaser for its special "Kennedys' Home Movies."

Yes, they are both TLC shows, but why did TLC think the people watching a show about Sarah Palin and her family would be susceptible to a show about the Kennedys? (Meade raised this question in the comments to the post earlier today about "Sarah Palin's Alaska.")

Your first thought might be that it doesn't make much sense because liberals love the Kennedys and conservatives love the Palins. But let's assume TLC isn't run by idiots, that they know how to appeal to viewers. If you had to argue that a good chunk of the "Sarah Palin's Alaska" audience would like to watch "Kennedys' Home Movies," what would you argue?

I'd say: Not all American TV-watchers are strongly grounded in one political party or the other. These people are not cemented to abstract ideology. They may feel their way into politics through personalities. Or they may not care that much about politics at all and simply enjoy peering into the family lives of celebrities, and politicians are a special, elite breed of celebrity, like royalty. The Kennedys have been, for many people, America's royalty, and the Palins may be the new royal family that people who like that sort of thing like.

Obviously, there are differences. The Kennedys posed as European-style aristocracy, and the Palins present themselves as working-class Americans. But both are very much big, colorful families with a strong sense of geographical place — Massachusetts/Alaska — and a mesmerizingly beautiful and feminine woman to fascinate us. Both families have a lot of children who we get to see looking robust and active in outdoor settings — especially boats.

There's a romanticism of the family about it all. I'm not saying that's good. It's a point of entry by which political opinion seeps into a certain very common type of American brain. And it happens through television. Pay attention.

***

By the way, what do you think of the crazy culture clash that is Johnny Cash singing the Beatles ("In My Life") over home movies of the Kennedys?

"Nightfall on the Kennedy era in Washington looks like this..."

"...Representative Patrick J. Kennedy’s office space surrendered to a Republican, his family memorabilia in boxes, and Mr. Kennedy yearning for a role away from the public eye."

"WaPo Style Writer Declares Kennedy Old-Money Style Only Cool on Liberals."

The Weekly Standard rags on Robin Givhan.