John F. Kennedy Jr. speaks to reporters outside his mother's Fifth Avenue apartment in New York City

July 19, 1999
Web posted at: 12:38 p.m. EDT (1638 GMT)

(CNN) -- Celebrity was his birthright. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was in the public eye from the day he was born, just 17 days after his father was elected president in 1960.

The public adored the Kennedy son, monitoring his every move in boyhood, then as an adult -- from his several attempts to pass the New York bar exams to his dating habits. The avid attention was typical of the country's celebrity obsession.

People on the street know as well as sociologists what has attracted them to JFK Jr. and his family.

"We've seen him from his youth up to now," says one observer at the University of California at Los Angeles, "and we're basically a part of his life."

"Seeing him on TV and (in) magazines," says another, "makes him like real to us. Even though we really don't know him, we think we do."

DISCUSSION:

Share your thoughts about this airplane crash and the presumed deaths of JFK Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette.

SPECIAL:

Remembering John F. Kennedy Jr.   • Profile   • Pictorial Biography   • In his own words   • Flight Path and Search Area   • The Kennedy Tragedies   • Reactions

"I think the Kennedys are sort of like our royalty," another person volunteers, "and they're beautiful looking, and we've always just sort of admired them."

The search for the missing plane that carried JFK Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette this weekend was felt by many as a story of personal anguish. On the Internet, a Web site is baraged with messages of sympathy and prayers, as people search for an outlet for their feelings. Some psychologists say they believe an extreme attachment to celebrities is a sign of the times.

"We've moved out of an age where we have a really strong community around us," says Ron Doctor, a psychology professor. "And for some people that (celebrity) is our community. We live vicariously through a lot of these people. We see them dating. We see pictures of them all the time."

"You do feel like they're part of your family. I really do think that way about John-John because, I mean, the Kennedys are part of the American culture," says one person.

"They define something special in human nature," says publicist David Brokaw. "They give us a measure of what's possible and what's truly sensational or phenomenal."

The many emotional trials faced by the Kennedy clan have made for high-profile drama for decades, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 to the shooting of his brother Robert five years later during his own run for the Democratic nomination for the White House.

In 1973, Robert Kennedy's son Joseph was in an auto accident that paralyzed a passenger in the car. Robert's son David died of a drug overdose in 1984. Robert's son Michael died in 1997 in an Aspen, Colorado, skiing accident.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 after a party. The accident killed aide Mary Jo Kopechne and all but ensured that the Ted Kennedy would never become president.

"It's almost as if there's some ineffable force that demands that they (the Kennedys) suffer -- and suffer nationally," says Neal Gabler, a sometime contributor to John F. Kennedy Jr.'s magazine, George, and author of "Life, the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality," which explores the American celebrity and entertainment culture.

"They (the Kennedys) occupy a very special place in the celebrity hierarchy," says Irving J. Rein, a Northwestern University professor who studies how American celebrity is marketed and perceived.

"The Kennedy name is almost like a brand," he says. "It evokes a series of feelings in us -- about families, about relationships, about luck and fate and tragedy. Everybody's drawn to tragedy when people have everything."

CNN News Correspondents Siobhan Darrow and John King contributed to this report.