The Time Kerry Kennedy Caused Chaos With A Christmas Card

Kerry Kennedy is a member of the Kennedy political dynasty — her uncles were Senator Ted Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy, her father was Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and her brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is currently running for president. She was also a member of the Cuomo political family for a bit; Kerry was married to Andrew Cuomo, former New York governor, for 15 years. Kerry has added to the Kennedy family legacy with her work as a human rights activist, lawyer, and a New York Times bestselling author.

As a member of such a prominent family, it makes sense that when the holidays roll around, Kerry has plenty of people to send holiday greetings to. From family and friends to colleagues and professional acquaintances, it's got to be a lot. And one year, Kerry managed to cause some Christmas chaos with her holiday card.

With the number of people that she had to send Christmas wishes to, and perhaps as a way of being eco-friendly, in 2014, Kerry forewent mailing out paper cards and instead sent an e-card. She sent a picture of her family, a quote from the Bible, and "Merry Christmas" wishes to a bcc'd list of recipients. But apparently, something went wrong, and when people replied all to her message, those replies accidentally got sent to everyone on the bcc list. And that made some people on the e-mail list pretty upset.

Some people seemed happy to see Kerry Kennedy's 2014 Christmas e-card, and they decided to tell her with messages like, "Beautiful photo! Beautiful family!," according to Page Six. But they didn't realize that because of some kind of tech mixup, their messages weren't just to Kennedy, they were actually sending it to all of the e-mail's recipients, even though she used bcc. As the e-mail replies started flooding people's inboxes, the tone of the replies took a turn for the worse, with people demanding to be taken off the e-mail list.

Kennedy is the president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, and one person on the apparently unending e-mail reply list went so far as to ask the organization's COO to put a stop to the e-mails. And former investment banker and billionaire Steve Rattner called for an apology for the whole e-mail mess, and said, "Please be sure I never get an e-mail from this organization again." Though it's worth noting that Rattner added to the inbox clogging by replying all with his requests.

Steve Rattner getting mad at Kerry Kennedy and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization as a whole over the Christmas card e-mail snafu wasn't good from a fundraising angle. In June 2015, Rattner and his wife were listed as "Groundbreakers" — denoting that they had donated $25,000/year for three years, per Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Leadership Council. Whoops!

Kennedy did, in fact, issue an apology over the whole mess, and she tried to keep things light as perhaps an attempt to smooth things over. "You may be happy to know that my New Year's resolution is to not bother all my friends during the holidays," she said, per Daily Mail. Though, it doesn't sound like there's anything Kennedy could have done to stop the e-mail situation from spiraling out of control since it was some kind of tech bug that had caused the problem.

And not everyone on the e-mail list got mad at the whole situation. Alan Fleischmann, who had worked for the Kennedys as a political adviser, had a front-row seat to the unfolding mayhem, and he came to Kerry's defense. He wrote, "'Kerry did nothing wrong ... she never exposed anybody's private e-mails or intended to ... this did not irritate me to get a bunch of e-mails that say happy holidays to Kerry," according to Daily Mail. If there's anything to learn from this, perhaps it's to skip using reply all.