There are many ways to celebrate Mother’s Day. A quiet brunch, perhaps, or a stroll through the park. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, the US Health Secretary and part-time sewer swimmer, opted for something a bit more… pathogenic!
On Sunday, he marked the occasion by wading into Washington D.C.’s very own open-air petri dish, Rock Creek—dragging his grandchildren in with him for good measure.
Yes, you read that correctly. The man charged with safeguarding America’s public health celebrated the holiday by plunging headfirst into a body of water so notoriously contaminated that swimming has been banned there for over half a century.
It’s a creek the National Park Service warns contains “high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens” and is “a hazard to human (and pet) health.” A hazard, that is, unless you’re a Kennedy.
In what might be generously described as a bold family outing—or more accurately, an act of borderline negligence—Mr. Kennedy shared photographs of himself and his grandchildren gleefully splashing about in Rock Creek (known locally as Shit Creek, for obvious reasons).
One image shows the Health Secretary entirely submerged, presumably in blissful ignorance or heroic defiance of basic hygiene. The setting? Dumbarton Oaks Park, charmingly located downstream from Piney Branch, a tributary that helpfully receives about 40 million gallons of untreated sewage and storm runoff each year.
According to the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, the city is trying to fix the situation, with a multi-million-dollar tunnel project underway to reduce the noxious flow. But alas, even untreated human waste couldn’t stop a Kennedy adventure.
Of course, Mr. Kennedy reportedly did not respond to requests for comment. One assumes he’s either basking in the glow of his microbial baptism or possibly being monitored for E. coli.
It’s not the first time RFK Jr. has raised eyebrows with his curious interpretation of risk management. The man is a walking contradiction: a vaccine sceptic turned health official, a chronic outdoorsman with a penchant for flirting with environmental biohazards, and now, apparently, a grandfather with a laissez-faire attitude toward dysentery, or the health of his kin.
Let us not forget that Kennedy has previously regaled the public with tales of youthful misadventure—merrily ingesting bushmeat and contracting tropical illnesses on jaunts through South America and Africa. He’s also famously handled the decomposing remains of a dead whale and a baby bear, for reasons that were never entirely clear. Perhaps he thought the carcasses needed a good home.
And then, there’s the small matter of the parasitic worm that once, according to Kennedy himself, “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” A charming anecdote, though one might now wonder if the creature took something vital with it on the way out.
It all begs the question: what sort of man, entrusted with public health, decides to immerse himself—and more damningly, his grandchildren—in a creek that serves as the city’s emergency sewage overflow? Even Washington’s rats know better.
There is a kind of twisted symmetry in a Health Secretary diving into a stream known for fecal contamination. But let’s not pretend this was some brave environmental statement. This was, at best, performative lunacy. At worst, it was a baffling lapse in judgement that put children in harm’s way for the sake of a few social media likes.
And while Kennedy may see himself as a modern-day Thoreau, communing with nature regardless of the cholera risk, the public could be forgiven for expecting a bit more… restraint. Or at the very least, some respect for the posted signs that read “No Swimming.”
Still, perhaps this all makes perfect sense in Kennedy-land—a place where worms eat brains, vaccine science is “up for debate,” and sewage is just another part of the great outdoors.
One can only hope that next Mother’s Day, Mr. Kennedy opts for something slightly less medieval. A walk through a rose garden, maybe. Something with fewer biohazards and less chance of spreading giardia to the family tree.
But until then, let the record show: the Health Secretary went swimming in a toilet. And he brought the grandkids.
Main Image: GROK.
