Years ago, after a long-running cartoon strip, Terry and the Pirates, was abandoned by its creator Milton Caniff, it was put on the drawing board of George Wunder. Wunder’s draftsmanship and modeling were admirable, but all his character’s faces: adults, children, European and Asian, uniformly had the same square, mass-produced look-alike quality.
That’s the same similarity I see whenever anyone in what the news media considers the Kennedy “Clan” is associated with the latest instance of the Kennedy “Curse” (that is: whenever one of them dies like the rest of us do; not necessarily natural deaths).
When the photos are run with these articles, I always look for the familiar resemblance. “Oh yea, that’s a Kennedy face.” But what does that mean? The best I can categorize is some combination of Rose’s heart-shaped face (not always in evidence: Ted had it; Caroline not at all), and Joe Sr.'s sharp eyes and lean grin.
But about that grin: it’s not only a genetic trait: it seems, from the photos, as if everyone who inherited it also underwent training in how to properly wield it, like the children born into Mexican circus acrobat families are trained to grasp bars. A strangely formed set of muscles on the bottom half of their faces.