Bulwark Takes - Why Jerry Springer & Pro Wrestling Explain Modern Politics

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

1999 wasn’t just the best movie year ever—it was the year low culture took over. From pro wrestling and Pokémon to Jerry Springer and reality TV, Ross Benes joins Sonny Bunch to break down how this bizarre era shaped today’s politics and pop culture. Don’t miss this deep dive into the moment that changed everything!

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Welcome back to The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. My name is Sonny Bunch. I'm culture editor at The Bulwark, and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Ross Benesch, who is the author of a forthcoming book, 1999, The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. Ross is a journalist, market research analyst, and an author.

Your stuff's been in Esquire, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian magazines. I don't think I've had any Smithsonian magazine authors on the show, so this is a big win for me. I regret that the article I wrote for them wasn't about the insane clown posse. I feel like that is a key moment in American history that needs to be somewhere in the Museum of American History. I feel like there has to be a bottle of Faygo at some point. The Woodstock 99 bottle of Faygo. Put that in the museum. Exactly.

We'll get to the ICP in a minute. We'll get to the ICP in a minute. We'll get to the ICP in a minute. I want to start at a place I always start when I try to explain Trump and the effect of Trump, Donald Trump, two people, which is the world of professional wrestling, professional wrestling and Donald Trump kind of go hand in hand for a variety of reasons, not just because Donald Trump, of course, is a member of the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame. a reality that everybody understands is not actual reality, but still enjoys living within it, which is a weird place to be for the world of politics, but really maybe not that weird. Ross, talk to me. Tell us about kayfabe and what that is. Explain kayfabe to the people. Well, kayfabe is a carnival term that has been adopted by pro wrestling basically to present something as genuine when it isn't so just like a common

example when they say the ultimate warrior some parts unknown you go along with it because that's fun and and pretending to believe it makes it more fun to watch wrestlemania but like you know he's just a roided up guy from venice beach like you know he's not actually from parts unknown so that's kayfabe it's um you know fakery as truth you're along with the con and it's something that is rooted in pro wrestling but as you said it's kind of everywhere right now like when when trump says he's going to annex canada um i don't think even like his most loyal supporters really expect Canada to become the 51st state in the next few years. But you just roll along with it. It's more fun to do that than it is to say, no, like, that's BS. I'm going to

get an argument with you about it. So, you know, kayfabe, the pro wrestling concept is kind of a guiding principle of our national politics at this point. And I think kayfabe was a part of it even before Trump came into power, even before Trump was elected, even before the first term he was elected, because there was always this kind of push and pull of a politician will say one that we're definitely going to ban abortion. That's the thing we're definitely going to do. And then it never happened. And then or, you know, I don't know what the what what the reverse of that would be for Democrats. But the the there has always been kind of a we're definitely going to do this thing if we're elected. We've got 17 points on

our platform and that's what's going to happen. And then it never did. And I do think part of Trump's appeal is to both revel in and expose that, right? I do think that there is, there's an acknowledgement of the kayfabe, which was the thing that helped the world wrestling entertainment explode from like kind of a niche thing to a much larger part of the uh part of the entertainment firmament yeah trump's definitely playing on i mean there's a cynicism among um voters when you've been told enough times that something is going to happen but it is you know we're going to protect working class people we're going to give everyone free health care of course you don't so um when he comes along um to some people maybe he's not doing something a whole lot different than what they've been told before but yeah he also runs

with it like there was um it was one of his meetings with zelensky recently where like a reporter said do you still believe this about him and he's like i didn't say that i said that i guess i said that like he just uh he doesn't even take himself too seriously, even though he's the president of the United States and his words have a lot of meaning. You know, he just kind of rolls with whatever seems like the thing people will buy at that moment, which is a lot like how attitude was, the attitude era was programmed. Yeah. I want to read this passage from your book because I think it is important here and helps kind of understand, right?

Here's, again, from your book. The phrase used to explain Trump's appeal is that, quote, the press takes him literally but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously but not literally, end quote. It's a distillation of kayfabe where staged events produce different meanings for fans who buy in and haters who don't. And I do think that I again, I think this is an important way to understand Trump because you mentioned the Canada thing, right? The Canada thing is a perfect example of this, because if you a rational person hear Donald Trump talking about annexing Canada, you say, well, he can't do that. And also, it's dumb and bad to say that.

Like, the president can't be going around talking about how the United States is going to annex other countries. It would hurt Republicans if it actually ever did happen. First of all, just on a pure partisan politics level, it makes no sense.

But also, just like, it's bad for national relations. It's bad for trading partners. Like, it's one thing to, like, kind of politely tease the Canadians, but then to, you know, to say we're going to take you over and whatever is a whole different thing. If you say this, if you say this to Trump supporters, if you make this case, they start rolling their eyes and like, oh, look at look at the scold over here. Look at no fun Johnny he's you know he doesn't get it he doesn't get the bit and I I'm

sorry that drives that drives me insane because I actually understand where they're coming from being a pro wrestling person but also like I I you you you also can't have that you can't you you you it's it's this perfect defense where you neutralize the criticism by making the criticizer uh look like uh no fun scold i don't know how to fight against that it's it's tough to fight against that i mean it's like people who are outraged in the 90s about some of the skits that they ran in raw and yeah i would have been on the other side saying they're not actually going to castrate val venus okay It's just all fun and games here. But, uh, when it's like, uh, foreign relations, um, we should presumably take that more seriously

than we take pro wrestling, but I'm not convinced that we do, but this goes beyond, well, beyond Trump. I mean, like Alex Jones and Hulk Hogan have made differences between their character in their shows and their real life person when they're in court like when they're in court they're like what i said is not like what i believe i'm just a radio entertainer i'm just a pro wrestler talking about my penis on howard stern but when they're out there doing it they're um presenting it as like the real thing so um that's a concept that i think is difficult to get people to buy into if pro wrestling wasn't so popular yeah and the difference between what's the phrase the difference between a

mark and a smart mark right which is there are people who listen to alex jones and like really believe all of the things he's saying right there are there are people then there are people who watch and listen to alex jones as kind of a form of entertainment and trying to separate those two things is very difficult, it's hard to figure out what the actual end result of something like that is on a society where you have half of the audience is, like, really into it and really buys it. And half of it is like, oh, look at this silliness, but it's fun. I don't know how we're supposed to handle that, how we're supposed to navigate that as a society. And it's tough when, when like people like that actually hold positions of authority i guess one thing if it's a podcaster but um you know when the if the health secretary is saying crazy stuff uh you don't know where to sit on it like that could

that could be not to use the term problematic because i think that's a bullshit term but that could present some problems it's it's it's a it's a real problem it's a it's a real issue uh and you know part of this all goes back to there's there's a earlier in the book you talk about the rise of reality tv and the uh desire to be famous for fame's sake you know once upon a time fame was a byproduct of another uh another successful you didn't want to have you famous like you just want to make your movies you don't want people to follow you around. Now you turn the camera outward and you're like, look at this crazy thing I'm doing. Please give me all the attention and clout for my sex tape. Right, exactly. And that is

and that does mark a real shift in, again, I'm trying to tie this back to politics a little bit because this is you know a politics website but it it does i think go a long way toward explaining the thesis the central idea of your book you know we have this weird moment in 1999 uh it really like the whole like late 90s early oh yeah you can write a bullet book on 97 or whatever you pick you pick any any any any year in this time period but it's it's this general shift from uh this this moment where like fame is a bad thing that you kind of struggle against to fame is is a good thing in and of itself because it brings attention to me to fame

brings attention to me and now i am in charge of the faa like Like, that's a real kind of straight line that we see sketched out here, right? Well, look at the most, like, cartoony reality type show person I think of is actually George Santos, who no longer is in office. Like, in the 90s, that would be like, look at this guy.

Like, he's fun and zany, and, like, he likes to give the sass back. He'd be a great real-world cast member, but now he's in Congress using funds for Botox and God knows what else on his Hamptons vacations, and he doesn't care. He gets caught. He just makes cameos about it,

making crazy birthday wishes for people in exchange for cash um like i see him as like a descendant of the reality people that blew up in the 90s but instead of just staying on reality tv um these creatures are in congress and you see it you definitely see it i mean i look again i uh maybe it's just because this is the world in which I live. I feel like you see this on the right more than on the left. At the moment. At the moment. Certainly. Certainly at the moment. You know, somebody like Nancy Mace, who exists to kind of create waves on social media, could not point you to a piece of legislation that Nancy Mace has achieved, but that's really pretty passe thinking about the world of a politician in those terms. kind of filled with antipathy for celebrity and you know uh the hollywood blah blah has has kind

of devolved into this real reality show centric style of politics you could say they're just better at doing this like it is uh the democrats don't have any um you know one of these cartoony characters like dr oz or Trump or George Santos that they've been able to put forward. I mean, they're probably searching for one. The public doesn't give a shit about sanctimony. You know, like that's one of my main takeaways from the 90s is all the moral lecturing about pro wrestling and Jerry Springer just actually elevated their ratings.

It made people want to tune in and see the shock and outrageous. They don't want trigger warnings on their shows. They want to watch the stuff that's considered offensive. I think the right has leaned into that and put some of these people forward. And like, Democrats have been a little more pearl clutchy about it. You could say like, they're the ones who are standing up for values, but are they? Yeah, yeah, no, no, I think that's, I think this is basically right. And what's, what's interesting is kind of the role reversal here, because in this, in this period of time, in the late 80s,

through, through the 90s, you know, the right was pretty regularly, particularly the religious right. But, you know, they were the ones saying, like, we need morals and office this is bill clinton character he's no good he's bad for the kids um and that has flipped almost 180 well in the 90s too like the right like i mean the left had like jerry springer wanted to run for governor uh jeffrey feiger who um was like jack kravorkian's lawyer and he was a lawyer in all these other high profile cases won the democratic nomination for governor in michigan they had some of those types of figures but they the old school party like pushed them away you know they didn't want their baggage but like they republicans tried to push trump away and then he he conquered them anyways and then more people like that have followed him well because and this gets to a key thing, I think, which is that there is a difference in the voter sets, I think.

I think Democrats are less interested in that type of candidate than Republicans have shown themselves to be for the more celebrity-driven candidacies, I think. Yeah, a little bit and you know when most pro most of the pro wrestler politicians have been republicans too like there's been a lot of most of them have run unsuccessfully but there's been a lot of wrestlers who have like ran for office the most notable one is jesse ventura um becoming governor of minnesota or you could say linda mcmahon now you know former ceo of wwf um being department of education secretary but like it's very rare that a pro wrestler runs for office will be anything other than a republican and that's just kind of i feel like that is just part of that's a broader trend where if an entertainer runs for office they run republic

even arnold schwarzenegger who probably wouldn't fit into today's republican party was a republican governor of cal. Um, there haven't been like clay Aiken ran for office and didn't do anything, you know, like the Democrats just haven't had that figure. Um, I don't, I don't know.

Maybe Democrats tend to be like, it's gonna sound smug, but there tend to be more college, like they're the college educated party, uh, at the moment that's been written about a lot. I don't know if those types of people don't go for that candidate but it's proven to be a successful formula for the republicans of the last like

six years yeah of course we you forgot to mention uh kane the the mayor of glenn glenn jacobs is that his name yeah is the mayor a mayor in uh tennessee uh, which is, you know, good for him. Let's talk about... Again, I find this all fascinating. As somebody who grew up watching wrestling in the 90s, who lived through this same attitude era,

the Monday Night Wars, etc., etc., watching all of this spill over into the world of politics has been interesting. And another area where there's been some spill over into the world of politics has been has been interesting uh and another area where there's been some spillover is uh the insane clown posse um and i why i first off you are part of the icp faithful is that is am i wrong call me a juggalo if you want no i mean i can call you a juggalo i don't want to like be a poser you know i don't have like a hatchet man tattoo on my neck or like a icp hockey jersey in my closet but i do genuinely enjoy the the 90s icp joker card albums like i love great malenko amazing juggle brothers riddle box i've gone to

a few other shows so i'm definitely a fan and I will accept the designation of Juggalo but I don't want to you know for the hardcore Juggalos I'm not as hard as you guys I don't want to pretend to be something I'm not yeah and that's fair I think we want to be we want to I don't want to offend any of the Juggalos either that is the last thing

in the world that I want to do. But could you just explain to audiences who might not be familiar with the Insane Clown Posse? So the bulwark doesn't cover the Insane Clown Posse too often. We've not sent anybody to the gathering yet. I could, maybe we can make that happen next year.

But we're going to work on that. Okay. So Ross, what is the Insane Clown Posse? happen next year uh but we'll we're we're gonna work on that okay uh so uh so ross uh what what is the insane clown posse explain explain them to uh the listener well they're a rap duo that emerged in the 90s and they use like horror movie theatrics to um promote their gimmicks so like they paint their faces like clowns they um their songs have murder and voodoo and magic and witches and all sorts of crazy stuff in it. They very much believe in an afterlife. They talk about Shangri-La in a lot of their music.

But it's very kitschy. And in the 90s, it was viewed as more menacing. And they were certainly outcasts of the music industry so they blew up because this you know group that's like their their albums are like you know one song's about like keeping your teacher's head in your book bag after you cut it off and the next song's about like necrophilia you know it's like stuff that makes like a 10 year old laugh which is what i was doing at the time they were on disney's album label and disney kicked them off before the album came out and that like just gave them so much support because it's like

you want to fight the man you know and um that helped transform them into this like national curiosity where they've remained they've never gotten huge like they've never like been a band that's gonna like sell out football arenas or even basketball arenas they do small shows for like a few hundred people maybe a thousand people and that's sustained them for for 30 years they have a really intense group of fans called juggalos so uh you know icp fans aren't just like well first off icp isn't on the radio i was gonna say they're not just like oh i like icp when it comes on the radio. No, they're like into it.

You know, like they have hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands of dollars worth of merch. Like their friends come from other concerts on the show. They have like a sense of life and community built around the band. And that's allowed them to have like a religious following that sustains their career even though they never got super huge they've they've they've used like niche spiritual devotion

to sustain themselves far longer than bands that were much bigger at their peaks yeah no and and the the way specifically that they have uh they have kind of done this is by leaning into that outsider status. I want to, I want to pull up just one thing that you, you wrote about here in the book. Hold on, let me get to my dog ear. And, and, and kind of tie it to, again, tie it to the rise of Trump, because I do think it is, I think it is interesting the way in which uh the icp said these people look down on us and so we will be outcasts together we will be we will be loners together yeah which is uh we're gonna wear a shirt that says world's most hated band um the fbi said we're a gang we're gonna like be proud to be gang related we you make fun of Well, we actually like ICP more because you make

fun of the way we look and dress. We don't give a damn about broader culture for sure. And I think that is I mean, again, I think this is perfect, right? So again, I just want to read from the book here. Quote, it's common for evangelical Trump voters to proudly wear merchandise with deplorables printed on it. The implied message is that if you are getting mocked or mistreated for your faith or political stance, that you're on the righteous path, end quote. And I do think that that is, I, I, again, I, I cannot help but feel that this is the, uh, this is the, one of the real, uh, linchpins to understanding this whole, the whole Trump phenomenon is that there is a, there is an outsider insider status here, which is to say, you have said that we are no good.

We're, we're, we're deplorable. We're, you know, we're a gang, whatever, and fine, we will be. And here he's our guy and he speaks to us and we will back him no matter what. Yeah, well, to put it in other terms, like Rob Harvilla, he hosts a podcast about 90s music. He says you can learn as much from a band about who runs away from them as you do as who runs towards them. Whether it's, you know, ICP fans or Trump supporters, I think you could say like a similar thing.

The people who are mocking you or, or you know giving you disdain define your movement as much as those who support it you almost want to embrace it more because like well the people who you perceive as being on the wrong end of the of society are the ones mocking you like you know look at those eggheads and and all those coastal elites mocking us that actually makes us that makes us buy in harder. And ICP is not Trump supporters. They actually endorsed Harris. They don't really have any partisan politics.

That's not something that's a part of their music. So I don't want to say they're Republican by any means, but it's a similar sentiment of leaning into your notoriety. And when someone comes after you someone who's more credentialed from like the upper crust of society that's not actually attack that becomes ammo for your followers to get behind you even more it's like every attack against you is um a rallying cry in support of you uh in the perception of fans. And that was a funny thing that kind of jumped out to me, because I had always just kind of assumed that the ICP fan base, which is kind of lower middle class, Midwest based,

right? I feel like that's a fair- Yeah, you're describing me right there. I mean, I'm not demographic. And that feels, I'm just describing that not saying judgmentally it it that is a segment of the vote that Donald Trump has carried in both. I think in probably all three of his his victories and for for ICP to come out and say, no, no, we're not Trump. We don't like him. He's bad. He's he's biased. He's bigoted. We don't like that.

We love all people, et cetera, et cetera, is very is fascinating to me, is fascinating to me. And it does kind of there there are these two competing, I don't know, culture clashes or even cult of personality clashes that seem intention there. But I guess it works out for everyone. Yeah, I don't think they got a whole lot of pushback for doing that. And I don't know if it ultimately mattered a whole lot. You know, they certainly didn't swing the election.

That didn't end up being the endorsement. The ICP vote got Harris over the top or anything. No, no, it didn't it didn't uh do much um the uh the uh yeah no i i again i just find this all i find this all fascinating because like you say it's not this is not a political thing it's not like the uh the icp vote is is crucial but it is it is culturally very similar it is it is this idea of if you're not if you're not with us you're against us and if you're against us then we are with this other person even more which is which is just fascinating and i don't think like whether it's a trump or a

religious movement i don't think any of these like that do their marketing like ICP does, I don't think they sat there and studied the Joker card albums and said, we're going to appeal to our constituents the way ICP appears to Juggalos. I just noticed similarities is all. They're almost coincidental, probably. Yeah. Well, let's talk about putting this book together, because it is interesting, some of the strands you draw between, say, Beanie Babies and Pokemon, which are both kind of came to prominence in the late 90s.

Beanie Babies, of course, have, you know, exploded and disappeared. And, you know, they're essentially gone now, except as kind of items of historical curiosity in the occasional Zach Galifianakis movie. But then you have Pokemon, which not only has continued to exist, but thrives as an enormous business. You know, I have two young kids. One of them occasionally says, can we play Pokemon? And I'm like, no, because we don't have any Pokemon cards. I don't know how to play Pokemon.

But what was it that allowed the one to exceed while the other kind of disappeared and failed and what does that what does the success of the one over the other say about our moment yeah so um i say that beanie babies are like the excesses of capitalism and pokemon is more like a status quo and that sounds like a really stupid thing to say, so I'll try to explain what I mean by that. So Beanie Babies were just like one product. They were just the little plushie. They didn't do a multimedia barrage. Ty Warner, the founder of the company that made Beanie Babies,

actually turned down all licensing opportunities. He could have made TV shows and video games and all sorts of stuff in the late 90s if he wanted. He just wanted to be that stuffed toy. When that market crashed, it was basically over. I mean, Beanie Babies exists now, but they're just licensed products. You'll find Marvel, Beanie Babies, and Walgreens. They're doing very little sales volume compared to what they did in the 90s. It was a fad. That's really what it was. It was a fad where people lost their minds and used children's toys as financial speculation instruments. It was a fad like some of those dot-com bubbles, like some of those dot-com companies that appeared in the late 90s during

the dot-com bubble where they blew up real quick and then they collapsed even harder than they blew up and never to be heard from again. Pokemon is like a more successful operation of a capitalistic enterprise because they are constantly innovating. Like Pokemon came into US in 99 with a barrage of products and they all interrelated to each other and they like fed onto each other.

So you could learn more about that universe and expand deeper if you play the video game than if you just watch the anime. But then the anime and video game also related to the playing cards and the movie and the soundtrack to the movie. And so all these products, of course, they're just trying to get more money. Got to catch them all. I mean, that's like the best slogan for capitalism you could ever come up with it's gotta gotta catch them all um but they made a really deep enriching universe for their fans that they didn't stop like disrupting like look at pokemon go i know it's a little old now but that was a huge um innovation of using ar there's pokemon smile now like to brush your teeth pokemon sleep they

um they aren't done at all like they're going to keep adapting to the times and pushing more stuff which is like what successful companies do beanie babies at the peak was probably as hot as pokemon but like they just did the one thing in the flash in the pants like beanie babies is like like cosmo.com you don't need probably never even heard of it um but it was huge in 1999. It ran a Super Bowl ad before it blew up. Pokemons like Amazon, they emerged from the dot-com bubble and just made more stuff that people wanted and got really creative about it. And now they're raking in billions. They're one of the biggest IPs in the world still, 25 years later, which is remarkable.

Yeah, it is wild. I mean, it was slightly after my time, so I was never really into it. But again, to hear my son and his friends talk about Pokemon still, I'm like, wow, this is really... And they're like a generation removed from its inception, right? You know, it's it's it just keeps going. It keeps going. And this is another another element that has kind of kept going and expanded, of course, is the mainstreaming of pornography into the culture, which is you. You have a chapter on that. And it is again, it's fascinating to have lived through this moment where. Everything kind of changes about the the acceptability and the accessibility of, of, of this stuff. Thanks in part to the internet. And that's,

that's, that's the, the real point here is that the internet makes everything more accessible, gives you, gives you access to more of it. It works in two ways though. Like the internet makes porn more accessible, but in the early nineties,

porn helped make the internet more accessible, like video chats and credit card purchasing and um like affiliate marketing tracking consumers online pornographers did that way before mainstream businesses did they were doing that like the early 90s and i think you see some of that in the the current rise of or i mean really dominance of onlyFans, right, which creates this one-on-one relationship sort of thing with whoever the object of your affection is. Of course, it's all fake. It's not like, it's not, you know. You mean she doesn't really love me? It's all AI chat generated, you know. There't really love me. It's all AI chat generated.

You know, there's outsourced to somebody else responding to all the emails. But I like it is it is that that's another sign of where things are. I think people want to have relationships with their content creators, regardless of whatever the medium is you know pornography whatever music arts politics magazine writing etc etc you if you subscribe to a sub stack you want to be able to email the person and say uh hey what's what's the deal with this and get a response yeah it's participatory culture and um porn is adapted to that uh very strongly in addition to only fans there's like some of these, I don't want to call them actresses.

I'll just say porn stars. You know, they'll sell the products that are used in their shoots and they'll have like meet and greets and like all sorts of things that actually make it more personal rather than just digitized because digitized, they're competing with free.

Like I'm amazed with the revenue some of these OnlyFans creators make because I'm like, you guys realize how much is available for free. Like you just, what are you doing? with free like i'm amazed with the the revenue some of these only fans creators make because i'm like you guys realize how much is available for free like you just what are you doing like why are you paying so much for only fans just like go to pornhub um but um they're looking for something else rather than just watching the video and um that that relationship's just going to continue to evolve um it'll be interesting to see how they get around age verification requirements, though, because that seems like that's coming more nationally. And that's the other interesting thing about porn is that it's always at the heart of every free speech battle over a new emergent technology.

So when the internet's created, the first attempts to regulate its content and censor it um communications decency act is around um porn access and now we have the age verification and there'll be um something else after that it's really a fascinating industry that like innovates in the shadows and um i don't think we study it as much because it's so disreputable yeah no, no, I think that's probably true. All right, that was everything I wanted to ask, closing on the porn note. That's how I like to- You wanted to close on the money shot? I wanted, oh, no. Oh, God.

All right, thank you, Ross. No, but I do always like to close by asking if there's anything I should have asked, if there's anything we should have discussed uh on this show uh that you think people should know either about your book or uh our our bizarre times uh just one small thing is that um one of my takeaways in the book is that every form of youth entertainment goes through a panic at some point in the 90s it was video games um before that you know it's rock and roll heavy metal jazz movies radio the printed novel if you want to go back like far enough um and now um it's curious to like see the way social media is talked about by people our age and older um it was primarily consumed by young people are we gonna go through a a new panic with

tick tock bands and other stuff where we're really afraid of the content our kids are consuming and 20 years down the road our fears will seem passe perhaps just like the fears over video games in the 90s kind of seem crazy right now if you look back at them you You can go all the way back to Plato. Plato was very opposed to plays. I didn't know that. Corrupting the youth. Corrupting the youth. It's that I actually had to look it up just now. I wanted to make sure I didn't confuse Plato and Aristotle.

It's very important. You don't want to get yelled at by my bosses. They would. Ross, thank you for being on the show. Again, the name of the book is 1999, The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. I think it's a fun trip down memory lane for some of us.

Maybe a terrifying glimpse into the past and the future for some others. But Ross, thanks for being on the show today. Hey, good to be here. And my name, again, is Sonny Bunch. I'm culture editor at The Bulwark. And I will be back next week with another episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood.

We'll see you guys then.