The Press Box - The February Issue: Why the Kennedy Dynasty Will Never End

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Welcome to the February Issue. Bryan is joined by Amanda Dobbins to answer the question: Why is everyone still so interested in the Kennedys? They begin by talking about ‘Love Story,’ the newest series by Ryan Murphy about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette (8:00). They talk about the Kennedy nostalgia and how they thought the cast performed as the Kennedys. Then they talk about people or events that kept the Kennedy fame going (20:45). They discuss the family's public social life, movies and TV shows about them, George magazine, and more. Later they get into how the Kennedy family story was carried on after JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette died (55:24). They talk about all the secondary accounts that were written about the family, as well as other family members' failed political careers, then wrap up with discussion of current Kennedys in the political sphere, Jack Schlossberg, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Amanda Dobbins Producers: Bruce Baldwin, Isaiah Blakely, and Jacob Cornett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello Media Consumers. It's Brian Curtis, along with producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Amanda Dobbins will join us in just one second. But first, I want to welcome you to the February issue of the press box. If you're new here, every month we interrupt our media navel gazing to produce a podcast, an issue, as we used to call it in the media before times, about a single topic. This month, Amanda and I are going to answer a question that touches journalism and politics. that touches pop culture and even public health. The question is, why are we still talking about the Kennedys? It makes sense that my parents' generation, the baby boomers, would be smitten with the Kennedy political dynasty.

My mom remembers John F. Kennedy being elected president in 1960. She remembers where she was when she learned that Kennedy had been assassinated three years later. It also makes sense that my generation would inherit the mania for the Kennedies, Kennedy's, which was stoked by repeat viewings of Oliver Stone's JFK. But what's interesting to me is the flame being kept alive even today. Ryan Murphy has a new series about the 90s romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessett. There's an upcoming Netflix series that gives the Kennedys the full-on crown treatment with Michael Fosbender playing the family patriarch, Joe.

25 years after her death, Carolyn Bessette remains a style icon on Instagram and elsewhere. And there are still Kennedys in politics like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and JFK's grandson, Jack Schlossberg, who's running for Congress. Today, Amanda and I are going to talk about the Ryan Murphy series love story. We're going to figure out the reasons for this modern incarnation of Kennedy mania. And then we're going to go back in time and see how the Kennedy flame was kept alive over the last few decades. Welcome to the February issue, why the Kennedy dynasty will never end. There's probably more interest in this gentleman than any other person in this country and probably with good thinking.

John F. Kennedy, Jr., he is the mastermind. He and his co-founder and executive publisher, Michael J. Berman, of this extraordinary magazine, George, which is a hoot of a magazine. I thought you were a lawyer. I was. All right, that's Larry King interviewing John F. Kennedy Jr. back in 1995 for CNN. Yes. Amanda, here is our thesis for today. It makes sense that the Kennedys were. an object of fascination for boomers? Yes, they were there. Even Gen Xers. They were also there. Why is everyone still talking about the Kennedys today?

It is a great question. I think the answer, because I did my homework and we did our homework, is that we just live in repeat of nostalgia now. And we live that pop culturally, fashion-wise. I mean, and it seems politically as well, and I'm sorry to say. But so all of the young kids and the internet is unearthing the 90s as well as the 60s and the internet culture and our jobs thrive on nostalgia. And it's just somehow still fertile ground. Yes. I mean, it's such a weird repeat because when you and I grew up, the 60s were the official nostalgia zone.

Yes. There was oldies radio. Every TV, you know, show and movie was going back to the 60s. The forest gum soundtrack, the big chill soundtrack. Oh, my God. It was all over. So now we're just repeating this, but we're in the 90s. Yeah.

So we're in those, you know, John F. Kennedy Jr. Armani suits. Armani is really back. And a lot of this is fueled by fashion, I think. And, you know, the kids on TikTok have been like honoring or, you know, like dredging up our 90s and our 2000s clothes. And it's really horrifying. And it's like we don't need low-rise jeans back. But this does have the cycles and this happens in fashion. And then because the internet and especially Instagram and TikTok are so image-based, they start

looking at the images. And then you get weird alternate histories dragged back up, which we'll talk more about. It's, you know, it's not exact. But yeah, the 90s and the 2000s are really back. Is part of this that we Americans are just still seeking a royal family? Yes, a thousand percent. And I do think, you know, in the 90s, which I'm not quite Gen X, but I, grew up consuming a lot of the 90s era nostalgia of the 60s and also the 90s in the moment.

And I was raised on People Magazine back when People Magazine really did journalism. And the covers went between Princess Diana and Jackie Kennedy or Princess Diana and JFK. And they toggle between British royal family and the closest thing that we had to American royal family. So I do think that the Kennedy's, I guess just like because of the nine. numbers, like, and the, and the, and the place and time. And, you know, they, they do have some associations with the royal family over time. So they just borrowed that playbook somewhat. And certainly the American media did. And the American media covers the Kennedys, the way the Brits

cover the, the royal family. Caravot wrote a really good piece in the Washington Post. And she noted this since 1947, there have only been two calendar years in which a Kennedy did not hold some kind of federal public office elected or appointed. That Ironman streak is still going because RFK is in the cabinet. And now we have Jack Schlossberg running for Congress in New York. So that's there. Also, the Kennedy Restoration to me is an interesting subject because it was never really completed. Teddy Kennedy runs for president doesn't get there. JFK Jr. during his life, has asked repeatedly, when are you going to run for office? When are you going to run for office? He never runs for office. So there's something about it. Like the Bush restoration,

was completed and we know how that turned out. Caroline, like, you know, kind of got there. Ambassador style, maybe going to run for a Senate. She had a moment and was profoundly rejected by New Yorkers anyway. But there's a sense that it was left uncompleted. And I think that's intriguing to people. Right. And this, I mean, there is also just a continuation of tragedy.

Like, it is a little weird and tragedy in the public eye that adds to that kind of you want a sense of you want to complete it, right? Or you want it like remediated or you want them to you want everything to be better for them. And instead, or you want a happy ending, I guess, to bring it back to the like royal family. Totally.

I'll set that too. If you're a showrunner, movie director, just like with the royals, you can go upstairs or you can go downstairs. You can swoon or you can do smut. Right. Or even better you can do a combination of the two things,

which is what love story gets into. We're going to swoon a little bit, But we're also going to get the dirty stuff and all the womanizing and the and the paramours and everything else. Yeah, totally. And that's before you get to there is also the downstairs of the political intrigue and all of the people who have worked for the Kennedys. And there is like a downstairs DC like power broker element to it along and a lot of hangers on along with all of the society fashion New York people. So just amazing how many people you can mention when talking about the Kennedys. You mentioned the Royals.

You can get there. You can get to Marilyn Monroe. You can get to Daryl Hannah. You could just get so many people that have been sucked into the vortex somehow. Have you been following Gen Z's education about Daryl Hannah in real time this weekend? Because it's really, really funny. A lot of children watching, I'm sorry, a lot of young people watching Love Story, learning about Daryl Hannah for the first time and then being like, Daryl Hannah, call your lawyers. What a portrayal.

We're in this show. Oh, my God. Let's talk about the show. It's called Love Story, John F. Kennedy, Jr. And Carolyn Beset. Of course. Beset is played by Sarah Pigeon. JFK Jr. played by Paul Anthony Kennedy.

Jackie Kennedy, very memorably played by Naomi Watts. Yes. We see some big data points from the 90s like JFK Jr. flunking the bar exam, which he did twice. Bissette pulling Kate Moss's picture out of the slush pile and convincing her boss Calvin Klein to take a chance. on her. What do you think of this fresh serving of Kennedy nostalgia? Well, I watched all three episodes that were available to me immediately. And I didn't think I had to. I thought, you know,

I'll taste. I'll watch the first or second. And I kept watching. And I had a lot of opinions about it. Some of it I really liked. And I found myself responding not just to the performances and the, and the, oh, they got this right or they, oh, they didn't get this right. And I, which I, why can't we get the hair color right? Like, I genuinely don't understand. So this came out of the beginning. Yes. Ryan Murphy put out a picture on Instagram. Right. And everybody freaked out, including Carolyn Beset's own stylist. Yes. He was like, that's not blonde from the 90s. That's blonde from now. So and, and the clothes were not good because Carolyn Beset Kennedy has become like a fashion icon, as we'll discuss. And much referenced. But the hair,

they fix the clothes, I think, in the show. The clothes are better. If she's, Her clothes look amazing. Yeah. If they're not accurate, if they're not like 100% accurate, they are, they still have that pull of, oh, I look at that and like maybe I would want to try to wear it, which is, was part of the Carolyn appeal. But the hair color is just different. And I, I don't, maybe it's because we're earlier in her life.

I don't know. So I do spend a lot of time being like this, that. And it's interesting because all of my, that's not how it happened. References are paparazzi photos for the most part. So not a lot of instances of these people talking. So that's kind of weird. Yes. I appreciate the 90s lore.

All the Calvin Klein stuff. Very funny to me. Very funny. And, you know, they also bring up like Mark Wahlberg's campaign for them and then all of his racist comments. And it's like a little knowing and funny. And it does feel like, you know, schoolhouse rocks for the next generation of the 90s. But in that case, I don't mind. Mm-hmm.

I did find myself weirded. out by all of the Jackie Kennedy stuff and this and and and honestly once they use real photo, real footage of the actual Kennedy's real childhood footage, I started questioning this project and what we were doing here and how I felt about it. Ooh, is it the mix of the real and the recreation? Yeah, there was something about, I don't know. And it felt invasive even though everything else is literally fan fiction about. real people recreating things that we read in tabloids based on photographs that were taken

against their will, which is also dramatized in the series. So I'm not sure why that's when my red flag went up. But there is something about most of the series is just like, oh, isn't this funny? You know, like we're doing a not, it's not that this is funny. And I think for some people it's supposed to be romantic. But it's fun. It's a 90s romance story in New York. Exactly.

Like we're doing this and we're going to try to get it right. But it's a throwback. With our moniesuits and underwear ads in the background. Exactly. It's full nostalgia. Look at how much money we spent decorating Jackie Kennedy's apartment, which is great. Unbelievable. And there's something about once you bring in the real footage, I was like, oh, no, these are still real people.

Or even a recreation of John John saluting at his dad's funeral. And I think that's part of the enduring appeal of the Kennedys is because there's an element of it that's, you know, pure politics and fantasy and love. And then there's this part where you feel almost a little bit protective. Yeah. And I had the same feeling you did where I was like, ooh, this feels like a little too much or we're going somewhere. We shouldn't be going even though this is the most public of tragedies, right? The Kennedy assassination, as soon as you see that image, you go, yes. I don't like this anymore.

This feels like we're doing something wrong. Yeah. It's something about how everything felt like fictionalized or like we're in costumes. There was some sort of line between we're imagining this and even though these are real people and this happened in the past. And then when it catches up to real life or when they're actually using the real materials, that like made up boundary, that is totally made up. And I'm sure that like if you asked a Kennedy family member, they don't feel any better about the fictionalization of anything in the first three episodes

to the use of their actual like family footage. But for me, it just made me aware of the distinction. You know, it made me aware that like, oh, that's right. I remember that these are real people and we're not just, you know, doing 90s, you know, karaoke. Can we ask the real life Ed Schlossberg? What did you make of the decision to just get a boring guy to play you? Because you seem so boring in real life? Yeah.

That was an amazing detail. This is what I wanted to ask you to. Did you accept these actors as JFK Jr. Colin Beset and Jackie Kennedy? I did not accept him, respectfully. We're talking about John John here. We're talking about John John. I think that that is the real flaw in the show.

I do understand that his jaw line is... He's hunky. Sure. And there is a physical resemblance, right? We were talking about the difference in the hair color and why can't you get the hair color right? With John, they found an actor who has the exact jaw line. He looks uncannily just in a headshot like John John. He doesn't have the swag.

He doesn't have the presence. He doesn't have, he can't deliver the like weirdly, like, emotionally expository dialogue that they've written for them to try to like locate where this person, you know, is, is in time or in relationship to Daryl Hannah or to his mother. And he, I just, he doesn't have the presence that JFK Jr. has. And there, there really is whether, you know, we talk about it up with Big Pick with movie stars a lot. Like there is some people have it. And that is the other thing about the Kennedys.

At least some of the Kennedys have just like always had it in front of a camera. And he did. And respectfully, this actor does not. I completely agree. And I've been watching a lot of John F. Kennedy Jr. interviews for this pod with Larry King, with Barbara Walters. He would go on with Imus, especially when he was advertising George magazine. And he's very well spoken.

He has that charisma you're talking about. he also has this comfort in his own skin that does not come through in the series. Yeah. And I don't know if that was acquired later because his mom was dead by that point and he was becoming his own man and he was doing his own magazines. Maybe that happens later. But this guy doesn't seem comfortable being John F. Kennedy Jr. And the way you can really tell is they are dutifully recreating both wardrobes,

which means also recreating all of the absolutely nutty stuff that JFK Jr. wore or didn't wear as the case may be lots of shirtless photos of JFK Jr. just in Central Park. Playing with the boys. Exactly. So they have recreated a lot of the absurd outfits. We did not dress like this in the 90s. We were there and I want the young people to know.

Like we weren't all wilding this much. But he was and because he was so confident he could wear really stupid hats and look cool or he could wear, you know, hiking boots and socks and all sorts of nonsense. sense and still look like himself. The clothes are wearing Paul Anthony Kelly, who is the actor playing JFK Jr. He looks, he just looks silly. I'm sorry, he does. A very good way to put it.

Yeah. I thought this show is much more successful at evoking New York, what it's like to be there, working out at Equinox, eating Indian food on First Avenue. Yeah. Even when they pitch George Magazine to investors, they did it at Real Life Michaels, which is absolutely where that encounter would have happened. And the great table. And then he's sitting at.

I don't know whether he would be sitting towards the window at that particular. Though I guess he also wouldn't want to be facing the restaurant. So what would be the power seat for JFK Jr. Ed Michaels in that. Have you ever eaten in Michaels? Yeah. I have too. And I was definitely not in the power seat.

No, nor was I. But I remember just looking around. I was like, where do the important people go? Where did they go in the 90s? Because they were gone by the time you and I got there. Another thing I liked was just the way the series handled dating in New York. You and I spent formative years in New York City. And everything is outside, right?

You're walking into a restaurant. You're walking out of a restaurant. If you're JFK Jr., you're biking through New York City. It's almost like you're covering a golf tournament. There's lots of walking and being outside that is not part of my life anymore. It's true. An honest recreation of her apartment, which is small and messy. And I also-

Still pretty nice. I mean, it's definitely nicer than anything we were living in. But it wasn't, you know, it's smaller than the Friends apartment, which was kind of contemporaneous, right? And all the Calvin Klein stuff is really, really fun. Oh, my gosh. And I was talking to Friends last night and they were like, it reminds me of being at, you know, Vogue or magazines in the 90s. They get the feel, the little details about the black paper clips and the only white orchids in the office. Like very, very funny stuff that feels.

spot on. JFK Jr. tries to send her flowers and sends the wrong kind of flowers. I also thought about this while watching it. If this were part of a crown-like series, which allegedly this Netflix series is going to be. Right. So this is coming in what, season five, season six, somewhere way down the line. Yes. Right. And we've already met Jackie in a very different part of her life. Yes. And we've already been through the Kennedy assassination. And we've already been through her marriage to Ari Onassis. It would have a lot more. weight and I think it would make a lot more sense. I do think that's true, though the Crown did have this problem.

And I would say seasons five and really season six of the Crown is unspeakably bad. I just, I don't revisit it. And I say that as a Crown stand and I thought the first four seasons were amazing. And even the fifth season, which was like the Diana season. And Elizabeth Debicki played Diana. And they got some of it right. But it did walk into the same issue of as viewers being like, I was there. I remember what this is like.

And so now I'm just watching someone play acting real stuff instead of recreating and interpreting history. So I think once you catch up to real life and people who are still around, it's tough. It gets tricky. Yeah, yeah. You just, you need some time distance for the audience to buy in. It's like that OJ series. Remember that? Yeah, I do.

So the OJ1, I was thinking about it because we at least watched that trial, right? So there is something so jarring about watching Love Story and seeing all these people talking. And we just never heard any of these people talk that. I mean, I think JFK Jr. was probably the most pressed forward of any of the major characters. I don't know what Carolyn Beset Kennedy's voice sounded like. And I think that's why she's more successful. Yes. Because we've just never heard her talk.

We don't know how she carried herself outside of paparazzi photos. and videos of them fighting in the park and stuff like that's true. And the Jackie Kennedy thing, it's Naomi Watts doing, you know, Jackie drag and the accent, which we know we know the accent, but when you think about it, it's only because of those few televised, you know, White House like tours or she wasn't like on Larry King every night. No, she was absolutely not. She did not want to be speaking in person. So there was something about this where there's so much, you know, fictionalization and creative imagination required around animating these people that I just know as like still photographs.

It was very jarring to me. And with the OJ trial, I'm like, well, I watched all of this, you know. I just, I'm used to you guys talking. All right. That walks us up to our next part here. You and I made a list of people or events or odd things that have kept. the Kennedy flame alive over the last several decades. Yes.

I want to go through them one by one. Okay, great. And we're going to start with Jackie Kennedy Onassis's years in New York. Yes. This is the Jackie O you and I grew up with. 20 years removed from the White House, a decade after her second marriage to Ari O'Nassas, who died in 1975. She was living on Fifth Avenue in that apartment we see depicted in the show, working as a book editor at Doubleday. Did you have a Jackie O period in your life?

I did and I was far too young for it and had no historical or social context to it whatsoever. I do, as I said, I was reading people magazine. So I think I was into Princess Diana, then flipped right over to the Jaccio biographies. I couldn't find the weird biographies that are in like that I have a mental image of in my head because I think I bought them at like urban outfitters, you know. But I do also think I read two biographies. by Sarah Bradford and Sally Bettle Smith, who are also, they've written a lot of royal biographies. I was going to say, especially the latter.

I went from one to the other, right? Like that was kind of, that was just like the section of the Barnes and Noble that I was in. And then I also the paparazzi photos and the Ron Galella of it all, who was kind of the first, like, big name paparazzi photographer, at least in the United States. And immortalized her and those images of the big sunglasses and the reference of like Jackie O as we know her. And I mean, maybe not for the better like introduced a generation or a school of paparazzi photography to the U.S. But kind of like all of a lot of the media I consume now is filtered down through like the rongolalla of it all. 100%.

And that's partly because she's living in New York City. Yeah. If she's living me in a wall behind a wall in Los Angeles. are in Massachusetts. Right. This does not happen in the same way. But as we see in the show, every time she leaves her apartment through the front door, she's being photographed.

She's coming home from the hospital in a wheelchair. She's being photographed. You know, and I watching that scene was like, I know that this apartment has a back entrance. But it's, you know, and she's still going in the front. Yeah. There's a certain, you know, they didn't hate it totally. That apartment, by the way, 1045th Avenue between 85th and 86. Who bought it after Jackie Kennedy?

Oh, that's a good question. Park Avenue, who lives there now? During these years, she was working as a book editor. Yes. For Viking and then Doubleday, she published Michael Jackson's autobiography, which is called Moonwalk. Okay. And wrote a forward to it. She also published a 500-page biography of Tsar Nicholas.

Okay. So Jackie Kennedy had range as a book editor. Lots of books about Egypt, too. She was very, very interested in Egypt. Probably got books about Egypt Commission that might not otherwise. have been commissioned. You mentioned she did almost no interviews. Yeah.

Known like her son through paparazzi photos. I found out she did give a long interview to historian William Manchester for a book about the Kennedy assassination right after the assassination. That interview is sealed until 2067. Okay. 100 years after that book was published. I'm literally doing math. Am I going to live to 67?

I hope. I don't know. We hope. We may not be here. Should we talk a little bit more about NAM? me Watts's portrayal. Yeah. Because that to me was just...

First of all, there's the voice. Do I blame her or do I blame the Ryan Murphy universe? Okay. So there's a couple things to blame. One is they give her all the big lines about what it means to be a Kennedy. Yeah. So she's kind of carrying the narrative load of this series. Exactly.

She doesn't get to do the fun, walk through the park and talk to my son and talk to my daughter's stuff. Right. She has to bear the burden of explaining what it's all about, which the series does not do a particularly good job. While wearing a lot of old age makeup and dying of cancer, I will say every single thing she wears is wonderful. And I really wanted to buy it. Yeah. Naomi Watts is 57.

Yeah. Jackie died when she was 64. It's not that far apart in age. I thought she looked really young when the show started. I'm like, wow, she looks like a young, young Jackie Kennedy. Right. But they really aren't that far apart. No.

And they also added a lot of the smoking lines on a lot of stuff that Naomi Watts is not rocking in real life. It's not what 57-year-olds look like these days. So we see her in the show at the end of her life. And she's staring at that Aaron Schickler portrait of JFK that was painted after his death. When the Camelot hit, I was absolutely dying. She literally puts on the Camelot soundtrack and then does a slow dance with like the famous painting that I assumed was in the White House. Oh, my God. Yeah.

And also utters the words, that will never be another Camelot. which made me laugh uproariously when I was watching the show. I was like, this is, you know, remedial Kennedy's. This is Kennedy's for a new group of people. It's not for the diehards. And I'm okay with that, sort of. She did not say there will never be another Camelots, young people. Jackie Kennedy would not have said that.

Maybe she was playing the Camelot soundtrack. I don't know. I doubt it. I also doubt, is that a copy of the painting? Where is the original? Yeah, that has to be a copy of the painting. But yes, it was in her apartment on Fifth Avenue. Another data point for you.

1986, Maria Shriver marries Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah. Speaking of People Magazine. What a moment. Maria, daughter of Eunice Kennedy, who was the sister of JFK and RFK and Sergeant Shriver, was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1972. How would you describe the place of that marriage in pop culture terms for the youngs? So we inherited this one, or I did, because I,

I have only ever known Maria Shriver as a Kennedy, a Kennedy cousin, and then as a news correspondent of sorts. And she was actually, I did not know this. She was hosting the CBS Morning Show in 1986 when they got married. And this should show you how many iterations, how many Harry Smith and Tony DeCopold's, the CBS Morning Show has gone through over the last 40 years. But she was hosting it in 1986. I did not remember that. So I think, and then she pretty quickly with the Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in 1986 was Arnold. Like this was.

He was Arnold, but I would say he was Arnold doing B movies. He was a huge star, but the twins Terminator 2 Arnold is doing A movies. Yeah, Terminator 84. Terminator 2 is 91. I love that Twins is the reference that you threw in before. I know, twins was a big deal, but just to us, everyone under the age of 35 is like, Okay, grandpa, go to bed. Yeah, what I'm trying to do is delineate the difference between like Commando and Running Man Arnold. Yes.

Those are big movies, but those feel like Cheapo movies in a way. Right, right, right. Then these kind of glossy mainstream Arnold, which is pretty much the Arnold. What's the one where he's in kindergarten with all the people? Kindergarten cop. Yeah, okay, so that's 90. So it's slightly before that. So he is, I mean, he's going mainstream.

He and Maria Shriver together are greater than the sum of their parts. Oh, my God. But it becomes a real thing. thing. And so then she has always been more Hollywood associated in my mind than, than, um, than, that any of the other Kennedys and kind of like a bridge between them, even though it's really just because she was married to Arnold Schwarzenegger before she was no longer married to Arnold Schwarzenegger. That was a whole debacle. Yeah. Separated in 2011. So 25 years of marriage. Some facts I enter, they were introduced by Tom Brokaw.

Okay. Wow. This is speaking of the 80s. married in April 86 at the Kennedy family compound at Hyannisport, Massachusetts. Yeah. Arnold flew in from Puerto Vallarta where he was filming the original Predator movie. Okay. Her maid of honor was Caroline Kennedy. Oh, okay. His best man was bodybuilder Franco Colombo.

Sure. Guess at the wedding, Andy Warhol, Abigail Van Buren. Okay. And of course, Barbara Walters. I mean, this is the good stuff. This is also the thing about the Kennedys is that they do somehow maintain this feeling of like there was once a time, whether it was Camelot or this wedding, where all of the most famous people in the room did know each other and we're in one room. I mean, that's like the most famous people of 1986 that we just listed there. And it's not true, but they do manage to like create this clubbiness and this like American elitism wherever they go.

And you're like, oh, I see Kennedy, you know. Absolutely. 86 is the same year that Caroline married Edwin Schlossberg, the aforementioned, and that Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson if we're continuing the royal theme. Yeah, Andrew Mount Bad Windsor, I think is what you mean. Yeah, all those titles and real estate's gone. Yikes. The former Prince Andrew.

Another thing that kept the Kennedy flame alive, movies or TV shows that were about the Kennedys. Yeah. And here my mind immediately goes to Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK. Yes. Did you, or more likely, Zach, have a JFK period in your life? I think, you know, I work at the ringer. So I am, it is, it's one big JFK period. Sean did. Chris did. Bill did.

And I do, if anyone listening has never listened to the JFK rewatchables. Oh, God. It's a comfort listen for me. Like every Christmas, I'm just like, I need, I need Bill and Chris to solve the JFK shooting once and for all once again, which they do. Yes. Everyone I know had a JFK, the movie phase, and also, which then extended into a JFK, we're really going to get to the bottom of this space. Yeah, which, you know, we're still living in.

But so it comes out in 1991 and is pretty formative in how our generation thinks about conspiracy theories. And not just the Kennedy assassination, but certainly that. And like a lot of people still waiting for answers. Oh my God. And it was just a giant Reddit page of a movie. It was not real, but it seemed really, really real. Yeah. And I was, you know, growing up in Fort Worth.

So like we're 30 miles from Dallas where all these events happen. Oh, my God. And it was. Did you go to the museum? I went to the museum. I mean, we walked around. It was not crazy in high school to walk around the grassy knoll. Right.

For the same reasons you just mentioned, we're going to solve everything today. Yeah, sure. Let's get down to the bottom of it. I had the poster on the wall of my college apartment. for JFK. And then years later, Christine, my wife, whom you know, we went on a baby moon to New Orleans. Oh.

Oh, did you, you did local JFK the movie tourism? What was it? Well, first of all, we walked around some of the French Quarter stuff. Okay. And then do you remember Joe Pesci in the movie plays David Ferry? Yeah, of course, the worst wig ever filmed. Yes, on purpose, right? Yeah, I think so.

It's supposed to be a bad wig. I found out that David Ferry was buried nearby. David Farris? So I thought maybe we should visit David Ferry's grave. I was just excited about this. And Christine, as you know, is a wonderful and tolerant person. Yes. So she says, okay.

Okay. She's also pregnant at this point. She's pregnant. So we get in a car and we drive to this small cemetery where David Ferry's buried. And, of course, I don't know where the grave is. I don't know. Find a grave had really become a thing at this point in history. So I'm like, can you walk into the funeral home and ask?

Oh, my God. Now, Christine, extremely pregnant, wearing that day all black for some reason. Oh, no. So she walks into this funeral home. I know why. There you go. She walks in this funeral home, pregnant and wearing all black. And everybody is rushing up to her saying, oh, my God, please sit down.

Let us help you in this terrible moment of grief. And she's asking for the grave site of this man who died in 1967. They're like, oh. Do you think that there are a lot of people coming into that funeral home asking for David Ferry's grave? Like is it known like, oh, we've got another, you know, nutter here to send him this way? Is there like a printout that you just, here, go this way? I don't know the last time Sean and Chris and Bill were in New Orleans, but I'm not sure. Other Kennedy movies.

Tom Hanks shaking JFK's hand in Forrest Gump. Sure, yes. It was a really cool special effect in 1994. I got some others for you 13 days with Kevin Costner about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah, I've seen it. Costner's accent in that one is because he's he's doing Boston. Oh, he's doing Boston? Yeah.

It's not what you want, but it's memorable. There been a lot of unfortunate Boston accents. I didn't remember this one, 2011 miniseries called the Kennedys and which Greg Kinnear plays JFK. Yeah, and it's Katie Holmes as Jackie. And Barry Pepper is RFK. Which is awesome. Bring that Barry Pepper.

I need you to help me with this. Jackie starring Natalie Portman from 2016. Yeah. This is the Pablo Lorraine by a pick. Natalie Portman was nominated for Best Actress. And this is probably my favorite of the Jackie Kennedy movies. And also like the Pablo Lorraine explores the inner workings of like a famous woman who you only know in photographs series, which he then he also did Spencer, which was about Princess Diana. and I think Maria was the Maria Callas.

Yes. Where Jackie is never seen but is in a hallway at some point because, you know, Maria Callis and Arionassus had a long thing. Jackie, the movie is not dissimilar to love story in that it really imparts a lot of intention and machinations to Jackie. and it's framed as like a journalist interviewing her. When you were saying that they're the sealed testimony or the sealed interview, it's not going to come out till 67.

I was like, oh, but I thought Jackie was based on that because it is a few years afterwards and she's talking about how she created Camelot and all this sort of stuff. She's also just like the performance choice is very, very, let's say, hazy. This is from Natalie Portman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, I mean, I don't know what kind of support Jackie Kennedy had in the days afterwards, but it's giving drugs to me. So I remember there's a great quote from Peter Sarsgaard who plays Bobby in the movie that's like he shows up to set the first day and sees Natalie Porman's performance as Jackie and goes, oh, so this is what we're doing. That's amazing. Yeah. But it's pretty good. I mean, it's weird. but it's the most inventive of these portrayals and that it's kind of trying to like take an angle on the camelot of it all. And also is because it's the first in his series, kind of like a newish idea.

It's an incredibly tough role. Yeah. To play even now. Parkland about the hospital in Dallas where JFK was treated. Okay. 13. Yeah. Chappaquitic about Ted Kennedy.

Right. 17, this is how deep and how far filmmakers are reaching to make a movie about the Kennes. There's an entire Grey Garden's Cinematic Universe. Oh, yeah. The Maisel's Brothers documentary is 1975. And then there's a 2006 Christine Ebersol musical that was on Broadway. Right. I went to see.

One of the songs is weirdly in my head. And then a 2009 movie with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lang. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing that we have three things from Great Gardens. Well, and then the Great Gardens, the Maysles' Deges. documentary is like a landmark entrance of documentary and also an incredibly an amazing film and also a very alarming watch. It really is pushing those boundaries of like, should I be here? Should I be watching this? Should this be a wellness check? Yeah, exactly. Like should we be

filming this? Should we be helping with this? Like what is the intention and the like moral of this art? And I don't really know if there are answers to that. And as long as it's art, then I, I'm you know, who am I to judge? But it has lived on. They have become characters and reference points all their own, you know? And like Great Gardens is just a word that can mean things completely falling apart. 100%. But once had grander.

Another category for you, movies or TV shows that were about the Kennedy sort of. Here I give you Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons. Okay. Yeah. Oh, you object. Yeah. This is Shoemaker and I talk about this a lot that there were times in our lives

where people could do any impression like your kind of mildly funny neighborhood dad could do John Wayne and Howard CoSell and could do a Kennedy Yeah That's not what you could do for a country Like nobody that doesn't work anymore Nobody knows what that is

JFK Jr is an off-screen character In the famous Seinfeld episode The Contest Oh sure Makes Elaine cash in her chips Here is John John telling the Tonight shows J Leno what it was like to be in the content.

I hadn't seen the episode, and I come out of my house in the morning, and everyone is, like, yelling across the street, and I'm walking to work. You know, I was a district attorney then, and people are driving by in their cars and honking, and I'm going, what the hell is going on here? So I walk in, and, you know, as people start to say, oh, you know, I saw you last night. Were you on sign? I said, no, no, what was everyone talking about? So they explained it.

And then I had a trial, and I walked. into the court, and the defendant is sitting there over there, and he goes, you were on Seinfeld. And I was like, no, no, I wasn't on Seinfeld. He leans over to his lawyer, and he goes, guy's an actor, too. No wonder he failed a bar exam. That is way too tidy a story, but I really love it. Was Seinfeld just sitting right next to him looking so uncomfortable? It's incredible NBC synergy. Congratulations to them. I was alerted to the fact that Kim Kardashian dressed as Jackie O. for the cover of Interview Magazine in 2017. Oh, she did.

Okay. I think she also... I'm counting on you to know this stuff back me up here. Listen, she's worn a lot of things or not worn a lot of things on various magazine covers over the years. I do think that she wore the actual Maryland dress that Marilyn wore while singing Happy Birthday Mr. President. Okay.

So that's mixed up in this universe. If not, then it's another actual Maryland dress from the same era. But, and then there was a. a whole outcry of like, are we preserving the Maryland happy birthday dress appropriately in the fashion archives, which I just, you know, life's too short. Here's one that blew my mind. In the movie Gone Girl, David Fincher told Rosamund Pike to base her character, whose name is Amy, on Carolyn Beset.

I like it. I didn't know that. Fincher, I mean, Fincher's a real one. But I can see that, especially not to spoil Gone Girl, but the first half of the film it really clicks. Totally. And she was quoted in the LA Times saying it was interesting for him to give me that reference

because it's just image. There's nothing written about her by anyone who really knew her. There's nothing in her own voice. So I began imagining what it felt like to be posing as that fantasy. Yeah. Which again, not to spell Gone Girl,

good reference. Really? Yeah. Also, that's a great movie. People should watch it. It is a pretty fun watch. Another one for you. The early romances of JFK

Jr. Yeah. So JFK Jr. born November 25th, 1960, 17 days after his father was elected president. By the 80s, the country sees him as this very well-spoken, very handsome American prince. He was people's sexiest man alive in 1988. I brought you a copy of this magazine cover here, which I just love. One for Catherine Hepburn, adorning the top.

Yeah. And two for 1988 being in parenthesis. Does you forget what year it is? while you're reading this magazine? Memories of a maverick girlhood. Well, good for Catherine Hepburn. Was she alive or not alive at this point? Catherine Hepburn.

It feels like from a memoir, right? Like an extract? It does. Wow. She lived until 2003. That is why she's the great. She didn't eat breathes around the date. I wrote this down for you too.

Sexiest Men Alive, 1987. So the year before it was Harry Hamlin. Sure. 1989, it was Silver Fox, Sean Connery. Oh, okay. Daryl Hannah was probably JFK Jr's most notable romance. Yes. They dated for five years or thereabouts.

On and off. Yeah. She's played by Dree Hemingway. Yes, daughter of Maril Henry. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So they make the classic mistake here, where they're talking about it, what's a toxic relationship, if that's the right word.

Right. But it's so toxic, you can't understand why. John Kennedy Jr. would have dated this person in the first place. They give her absolutely no charm. No. She just shows up to invite her friends over to do cocaine in the living room. And then crashes Jackie's wake. Something else that happened. And then, well, they try to humanize her with the dog subplot, which is very upsetting. And I think true, right? That that leaves a dog with him because she's flying back to L.A. They're sort of semi-breaking up. They were forever semi-breaking up. And then he's walking the dog. The dog gets loose. It gets run over by a

taxi cat. Yeah. Not it's and then he flies, uh, to LA with the ashes, I believe. He does. Yeah. Clutching them in first class. Sure. Yeah. But with that an empty seat next to him. I didn't know whether the empty seat was because no one sits next to JFK Jr. on a plane and or whether it was for the ashes. Wasn't clear to me. There was a Madonna fling. Yeah. That's the one I always remember, which is, that's legendary stuff. He went on one day with Brooke Shields. Well, yeah. Okay. His style has become a thing. How would you describe John F. Kennedy Jr. style? Ill-fitting clothing that he could pull off. It was ill-fitting for the time, or that was the style of the time? Obviously, obviously things were a bit

more oversized then, but the shorts in particular, why were all of those shorts so big and so baggy? Why were we wearing them with the footwear that he chose? Who gave him all of this headwear? You know, the hats, the visors, the bandanas, the ski masks, well, the ski helmets or whatever. I just, it's always something new. Just a really, a guy who loved a hat. Just let's try it on. I was reading this article about him in the Financial Times. That's one of the ringer style.

I got to myself. I get my style news from the FT. And Carol Radswell was quoted here and says, John was tall and handsome and looked good in anything. That's what people are seeing. Let's stop this nonsense. about his style. He had none. He wore clothes for comfort.

If tall and handsome were a style, that was John's style. I mean, that's well said. I read her book, by the way. Do you know about, so Carol Radiswell? Here's more Kennedy, Laura. Yeah. Just by saying the name Radzwell. Go ahead.

Yes. So she married another news anchor who married Anthony Radzwell, the son of Lee Radzwell, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy. And by the way, if you did the crown. series. Like, I would love to watch the Jackie and Lee, you know, season in the set because they had like a huge rivalry. And Lee was also like very celebrated and beautiful and a socialite in her own right. And so Carol marries the cousin and the cousin and JFK Jr. are very close. So Carol Radzwell and Carolyn Beset Kennedy become close friends, at least according to Carol

Radzwell and this book that I read. And then her husband, Anthony Radzwell, is diagnosed with cancer. And so as battling cancer for several years, basically their whole marriage and is really dying the summer of 1999 and the same summer that JFK Jr. and Carol Embesette Kennedy die in a plane crash, I think within a month of each other. And so in 2003, Carol Radzwell writes a book. about all of this, which is mostly about her husband's like cancer battle. And it's, you know, it's appointment by appointment.

But then also a lot about Carolyn and John and what Carolyn talked like, you know, how she spoke and and her opinions on clothes. It was very strange to read. It's so soon after all of their deaths as well. Four years after. Yeah. Which, you know, I guess you need money. I don't really know. But, yeah, she has made her own cottage industry of formerly being a Kennedy.

The connections here are just mind blowing. And I had this one for you too. Lee Radzwell was married to the director Herbert Ross. Yes. Who made Steel Magnolias, which starred Daryl Hammond. So we can get around to a lot of things here. A couple things about JFK Jr. in the 80s and 90s. He was covered like a fail son during a lot of this period.

Flunked the bar exam twice. We see the immortal New York tabloid headline, The Hunk Flunks. I want you to listen to this question that JFK Jr. fielded from Barbara Walters about what it was like to be him during this period. Take out of it. Do you mind all the stuff about you? What stuff? The stuff about being sexy and attractive. And every time you see another woman, there's all of this.

Is she the one? Is this the one? Listen, people can say a lot worse things about you, right? Then you were attractive and you look good in a bathing suit. I want to. It's tough to take all the questions. Are you super attractive? Then you look good at a bathing suit.

I like that he had that detail at the ready. That was the question. He got all the time. He got that. Are you going to run for anything? And then he got one that was, do you remember what it was like to crawl under your father's desk in the White House? Yeah.

I got by everybody. And he'd have these kind of interesting answers about it. But, you know, he was basically a photograph to a lot of people. Not just a paparazzi photograph, but a photograph from the 60s. Yeah. And people were like, can you portal us back to that time? How strange. For him.

Yeah. I mean, what a weird existence. And that's sort of, this show really falls short at exploring what is interesting or strange about these people. You know, the show is at least projecting in those Jackie speeches and on him, you know, looking, like, concerned that people are doing cocaine on his dad's memorabilia. Like, the show is also projecting this American. history memory back on him instead of, I mean, how weird to be, to be born to not know anything other than being the president, this son of a president who died who you don't remember. Totally.

And also just like, what do you remember about that? What do you remember about 1963? Like, see, it was his third birthday. Yeah. What do you have memories of being in the White House? Do you remember your dad being president? Do you remember the funeral? Can you remember any of it?

He told Larry King, he remembered his family getting a dog. from one of the Soviet politicians and teaching the dog to go down the slide at the White House. I mean, little things like that, but that's the kind of stuff people were combing for. Another thing for you, JFK Jr. founds George Magazine in 1995. Essential for magazine nerds in the early 90s. What a strange time this was, because this is, magazines are flying high. Yeah. Graydon and Tina and Anna are all in the pilot seat at Condé.

he wanted to have a glossy political magazine, which basically didn't exist at the time. Right. It was described as postpartisan, so he wasn't going either way. Yeah. Kind of MTV newsish. Listen, people were trying things.

He was trying things. He was. This was his big thing. Speaking of trying, I have the first cover of George for you from 1995. Cindy Crawford. I mean, this image is burned in my brain. I don't know what I'm so.

supposed to, I mean, I haven't read any of these headlines since 1995. So here we go. John Kennedy talks to George Wallace. That's a big get. Okay. President Madonna. I'd like to know more now. Right. Clearly, we're playing with JFK Jr. Yeah, exactly. And dodging bullets with the FBI's Louis Free. I don't have to. And then. And then, Louis Free. Plus, Julia Roberts, Mark Lainer and the new divas of politics. Is that meant to imply that Julia Roberts? is a new diva of politics or it's Julie Roberts and the new diva of politics. It was this really weird combination. They were trying to pull off of politics and celebrity.

Yeah. I mean, this is not that different. This is vanity fair, but the emphasis is on the politics as opposed to, I should say, it's Tina Brown's vanity fair, but trying to do it for politics instead of knowing to lead with the Hollywood and then do the politics reporting inside. But it's all about the mix, the mix. Yeah. He didn't get the mix right.

He does not have the mix. No one can do the mix besides Tina, but that's a. This photograph very memorable by her Brits. They tried to put all kinds of celebrities in founding father's gear on the covers of George. George magazines are kind of expensive on eBay. By the way, if you want to go buy like Robert De Niro's in it, Arnold's in it. Yeah. Demi Moore's in it.

Well, he had a Rolodex. He did, but did he have to dress them all as people who created this country? No. And George, I mean, George is not a bad name. for a magazine. It's kind of funny. Like, it's funny and good, but it being a George Washington reference, like, no one cares. No one cares about that.

Barbara Streisand was Betsy Ross on the cover. Sure. Also had this fact to wait for you. The first issue of George had 175 pages of ads. Wow. 175 pages of ads. What a time. People, the children, they don't understand what it was like.

We're moving forward in time here. A 1996 JFK Jr. Marries Carolyn Bessette. Secret wedding. Cumberland Island. It was actually secret. Yes. One of the sea islands down there in the great state of Georgia.

The ring bear was? I don't remember. Jack Schlossbner. What? He was. That's very sweet. Jackie never met her. You have to help me with Carolyn Beset style.

So I was just Googling to make sure that the dress is Narcisco Rodriguez, which is the most iconic. Like, you know, that one photo of them coming out of the tiny little church, Cumberland Island, and he's kissing her hand and her dress. It's classic 90s minimalism. I mean, just this is, this dress and all of her style has become so referenced, not just on Instagram and Tumblr and all of the image-based places where you look at street style. And you think about like street style is its whole, or street style photography is this whole genre in the fashion. world now and it's really just paparazzi photos. With her, it was paparazzi. And now it's like people posing for paparazzi photos.

But so just the images of her kept being circulated, especially, you know, once we got social media. And there is now a whole, have you heard the term quiet luxury? I have not. You haven't. Okay. So do you know, have you heard of a brand called The Row? I can't believe from the style icon of The Ringer has not heard of Quiet Luxury. The Rowe.

The Rowe is actually a fashion brand founded by Mary Kate and Ashley Olson. Do you know about them? I do. And it's one of like it's one of the great new American luxury brands. And they charge an insane amount of money for a very, very simple sweater that you wouldn't be able to that it's minimal, clean, well made, astonishingly expensive. and so ushered in this fad of quiet luxury where things don't look very fancy, but or they don't, they aren't loud,

no labels, but chic and really, really expensive. And that is Carolyn Besat Kennedy to a T. And that's, I mean, that's what she was doing. She was wearing a lot of like product,

Calvin Klein. She was friends with all the designers. She came up in the fashion world. We should mention this. She worked for Calvin Klein. She was, we see her assent. You know,

she was kind of a shot. Girl originally. I think so. Yes. Then gets the corporate headquarters in New York. And then we see this dramatic scene where Annette Benning comes in to get fitted out. She's like for the booksy premiere. It's so great.

And she's like, you shouldn't wear one of Calvin's dresses. You should wear one of his sports coats. Yeah. Big double breasted number, if I'm remembering correctly, which she does. And it becomes this big thing. Yeah. That becomes a net Benning style. Yes, totally.

In the 90s. So she, I think it was a big deal at the time. But I really do only know it from, you know, there are like very specific outfits that I've seen photos of on Instagram so many times. And then, you know, styles get, gets reblogged and ever, whatever. And so it's just kind of like a avalanche. It just keeps going and going and more people want to dress like her. So I do think that this show was made in large part because her name is like such a big thing on the internet. And it was the same process that filmmakers and she was.

I don't understand. We're rediscovering the 90s, but for fashion and on Instagram and elsewhere. Exactly. Yeah. JFK Jr. and Bissette died in a plane crash in 1999, July 16th, 1999, to be exact. They were with Bessette's sister Lauren when the plane Kennedy was flying crashed off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. They were en route to Rory Kennedy's wedding.

So many explainers on television news during this period about. I watched it for two days straight. I remember I was on vacation with my whole dad's side of my family and just watched cable news as you know and they were doing the the search and rescue and we didn't know can i tell you in what remains the carol radswell book she puts forth that she was the person who discovered that they were missing and or that that someone from the airport called her and was like they haven't arrived do you know where they are and she goes she does a tic-tok of the night of calling everyone at the kennedy compound calling everyone at the various airports looking for

tail numbers looking for all this, which is really very, it's very intimate and very stressful. I mean, very, very upsetting. But she does that all night long and then national news media gets involved. And we just watched for hours and hours and hours. And the quality of that news coverage, because we didn't know exactly what happened. They were presumed lost. Yeah. But it would be a couple of days before that was discovered. So the news coverage had this real quality of a vigil. Here's a little bit of Peter Jennings on ABC News. I should tell you first that ABC News has learned and been told by someone who has talked to people in the Kennedy compound up at Hyannis where a great many members of the family and friends are gathered for the marriage of Rory, John F. Kennedy's cousin, the youngest child of Robert Kennedy, that he was scheduled to ride in Hyannis last night. A chicken dinner was waiting for him. He had called the family at 8 p.m. and said he was going to drop someone off. Martha's Vineyard and be up there later.

His Jeep had been pre-positioned and was waiting for him at the Hyannis Airport. The atmosphere in the family compound, as you can imagine, is distressed at the least. It is described to us as being hopeful, but no one there is under any illusions. The details in that report. The chicken dinner being left out

and the Jeep being gassed up and everything else. That's really what that was like. Yeah, I remember even at the time in being young and not having a full understanding of all of the context that the, I can't believe this has happened again moment. And you can even hear in that Peter Jennings where he's like, he's doing his Kronkite. Like he's doing the network news, like the reference to the 60s and to the assassination is so direct. But it really did feel that way. You were just like, I can't, this same family, it's too much. It's horrible.

Absolutely. She was 33. He was 38. Also, this could almost be its own distinct section of the podcast, but this whole strange afterlife of JFK Jr. in the Q&N on conspiracy. I don't even know about this. Okay.

So 2021, a part of Q&N, I don't know if I don't know what distinction. You're not speaking for all of that right now. I would not speak for everyone in Q&ONN believed that JFKK Jr. was alive that he would return in Dallas, Texas, at Dealey Plaza, and become Donald Trump's vice president. This is, remember, after Donald Trump's been defeated by Joe Biden. Okay. So this was part of this whole thing. And, you know, lots and lots of people turned out to see that event happen. And it didn't happen. It did not happen in 2021. We can confirm. Didn't miss that news report. But that is a whole part of his strange afterlife.

Goodness gracious. around in some form or another. It's like Elvis. It's like Elvis. And I think there was some JFK also. Well, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Theories along those lines.

Yeah. I read Libra, you know. Something, something else. Very good. Something else that kept the Kennedys alive in pop culture, a group of people we could call the Keepers of the Kennedy Flame. 80s, 90s, these were people writing opeds that were writing books that were called for quotations whenever there was an anniversary or an event. I'll give it short list.

Ben Bradley. Absolutely. JFK Powell who edited the Washington Post and bought. Gray Gardens, yes, where Tina Brown was married. Pierre Salinger was JFK's press secretary and became the ABC News Paris Bureau Chief. Ted Sorenson, speechwriter for Kennedy and grand man of Washington in the establishment. Arthur Schlesinger, Robert McNamara, another documentary subject. Larry O'Brien worked in JFK's White House and became commissioner of the NBA.

It is hard to describe how big all these people were and present all these people. were in the 80s and 90s. Well, that's true, because you always needed a secondary quote in one of the millions of biographies or magazine profiles trying to, you know, keep it going. And they were available. They were a dialogue quote. I pretty much only know Schlesinger and Sorensen through secondaries in vanity fair pieces. Yes.

That's okay. They were the dial of quotes of our time. Let's fast forward here a little bit. January 2008. Teddy Kennedy endorses Barack Obama. Mm-hmm. And not Hillary Clinton. I do remember this.

Here is the late Senator Kennedy speaking at American University. He is tough-minded, but he also has an uncommon capacity to appeal to the better angels of our nature. I'm proud to stand with them here today and offer my help, offer my voice, offer my energy, my commitment to make Barack Obama the next president of the United States. with Caroline sitting right next to you, Barack Obama. And she had written an op-ed and endorsed Obama as well. Yes. Yeah.

This is a really big deal. I don't know what the Kennedy Clinton relationship was like, but I just, you know, the two camps. But it doesn't seem particularly warm. So Ted Kennedy, according to the York Times, was pretty pissed off at the way Bill Clinton had been talking about Obama on the trail. Remember, Bill was just kind of running free. Yeah. and just randomly talking to journalists. And he was going to stay neutral.

And then he was like, I've had enough. Plus he had a great relationship with Obama from the Senate and was like, I'm going to endorse him now. And Hillary Clinton and those people had been trying to get him to stay neutral because they knew that would be a political earthquake. If the Kennedys lay hands on Obama and say, actually, this is the guy. And there are lots of references in that speech, which is a great speech. I mean, he's doing the cadence. He's doing the cadence. And it's like 1960.

Exactly. This is what this is the guy. right this is this is the closest thing we have to my late brother yeah and it was amazing and it was kind of what his last great political act he died the following august at age 77 a couple other things he used the phrase make america good again in that speech oh okay which kind of hurt me up a little bit what i was watching it uh he would also give the obamas a portuguese water dog bow Yeah. He had his own Portuguese water dogs.

I have a category here, Kennedys that failed to launch politically speaking. You mentioned Caroline. So Obama wins the election in 2008. He makes Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. And Caroline is going to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate. Yeah. She starts making public appearances.

She gets the right endorsements. But her public appearances are so halting. I believe that's the right word. Yeah. That immediately support. away and she has to withdraw. It's just, it's not happening. The Wall Street Journal said in the space of a 30-minute New York One interview, Caroline,

used the words, you know, a total of 168 times. Well, that's mean, but. That's mean. Also, but the mean as part of that is the New York One interview. All respect to New York One, but I know what the New York Times meant by that. It would be a little gender, but, you know, what's the Wall Street Journal? Oh, the Wall Street Journal. Oh, sure.

Then it is mean, yeah. 2020, Joke Kennedy, the third, who is RFK's, son, ran against Ed Markey in a primary for Senate and lost. I remember that not happening. Lots of end of the Kennedy dynasty pieces were written. Yeah. Good luck with that one. Another category for you.

Famous magazine editors that love the Kennedys. Yes. So you mentioned Tina, Brown, and Harry Evans married at Great Gardens in 1981. Graydon Carter, when he was Vanity Fair editor, loved him a Kennedy Cup. He did. So he inherited Vanity Fair from Tina Brown. I think had a frosty relationship. Not a frosty, but two powerful women appraising each other across a dinner table.

If you have not read Tina Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries, there is a great Jackie O's story in it. But Graydon Carter inherits Vanity Fair from Tina Brown. She's been doing a lot of royals coverage, obviously. Kind of, you know, makes the name of the magazine with the Princess Diana stuff. He can't do that. So he just slides in with American Royals. And there you go. And then the Kennedys just for years and years for no reason at all.

There they are. Once on the cover. I mean, there are, it's good photography, right? A lot of, you know, archival stuff. And once again, these are people who thrived in our imagination on images. But yeah, I think they made a lot of money off the Kennedys. I had a chance to ask, Graydon, why so many Kennedy covers at Vanity Fair? Your Vanity Fair had a lot of Kennedy covers, not the current cabinet secretary, but the other

Kennedys. Where did that come from? That came from just because readers lapped it up. It's like if you're producing a magazine in Britain and you run, I don't know, Harry and Megan on the cover, it'll sell. It was Kennedys and Princess Diana and Madonna were big sellers during that period. I don't think they would be now. That was the big three, the Holy Trinity of magazine covers. For us, yes.

And for me. That's how you know I'm a student. Oh, my God. And I was looking up to Vanity Fair from 2000. So we're getting toward, you know, the middle period of Graydon. And it's like Kate Blanchett, Penelope Cruz, Jazeel, Barack Obama, Robert Pattinson, Jackie Kennedy, 15 years after her death. What was the newspeg for Jackie Kennedy 15 years after her death? I'm not totally sure, to be honest.

We did have in memoriam Michael Jackson there, too, just to say his name one more time. So that's Tina and that's Graydon. And then Anna's Vogue employs Jack Schlossberg as. It's political correspondent. Yes. So there you go. Speaking of him, Jack, a.k. John Bouvier-K.

Kennedy Schlossberg. Yeah. The grandson of JFK, the son of Caroline, announces he is running for Congress. In New York's 12th congressional district, where does Jack Schlossberg fit into the Kennedy firmament? We'll find out, right? I mean, the political commentator, in quotes, career and the online presence, it's It's been an up and down journey, I would say. I would say that he has, he's been online and then he's taken himself offline. You know, there's a, he's walking a tightrope. I think he has a presence.

I think he has something that when I look at him, there is, you can't look away, which is part of the Kennedy appeal, as we know over time. But I mean, is he going to win? I don't know. I don't know. He's 33 years old. Jerry Nadler, who was in that seat before is leaving that seat, will have been in that seat for 34 years when he leaves. So he'll be in Congress for longer than Schlaasberg is alive. He's a kind of a conventional Kennedy in some sense, Yale undergrad, then law degree and MBA from Harvard. Yeah. But he's also this, as you say, this weird ambassador to social media and the internet.

I don't you call him an influencer exactly, but. Well, he's running that playbook. And then his, what he's peddling is that he's a Kennedy. So, but he, I mean, he's definitely a child of the internet. He has a poster as, as we would say. And, but you kind of need to be at this point of that generation. He has internet fluency for sure. Last year, he tweeted, true or false, Usha Vance is way hotter than Jackie O. Okay. I do remember that. And this is another tweet from 2024. Jesus Christ body type. My thoughts. Jesus was thin, most popular guy of all time, not jacked, toned, but not big. So my question is, did Jesus want to put on muscle but couldn't or was he lean on purpose?

Talk soon, Jack. I think that's genuinely really funny. I don't know if that's what I want for my elected representative, but that is a gift for posting. Got endorsed by Nancy Pelosi. Okay. Recently. And this is how. She's still allowed to give out endorsements?

She's still allowed. Okay. She's still a big name. Don't know what the rules are. And this is how, again, once again, how enmesh the Kennedys are in public life. Nancy Pelosi's dad was mayor of Baltimore. She met John F. Kennedy, then Senator Kennedy, when she was 17 years old and he was still in the Senate. I mean.

There's a picture she posted. Yeah, I bet there is. Nancy's hanging on. We can also mention Tadiana Schlossberg once again here, his sister who wrote this amazing story for the New Yorker a month before her death on December 30th of last year. She was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia after giving birth to her daughter. And this is just a great passage from that New Yorker piece, which everybody should read. For my whole life, I've tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry.

Think about that sentence all the time. And I thought a lot about it while watching Love Story. And the Jackie Kennedy of it all. Yeah, that piece, which she wrote after her diagnosis, and it was about her cancer treatment, but also about her work as a scientist. She wanted to write a book about the oceans and about the appointment of her cousin Bobby Kennedy to the cabinet and what his appointment had, the effect that it had both on her research and also on cancer research and on what she's experiencing.

I have thought about that piece every day. It was so smart, beautifully written, really incisive, kind of the best journalism that's been done about Bobby Kennedy. and that story again. I mean, she died a month later at 35. There is really this, how can this be happening again to this family? It's incredibly tragic. So I, you know, and I really, the sentence about trying to protect my mother and not upset her. And you think about Caroline Kennedy's life.

It's really, really brutal. Let's end with Bobby Kennedy. Okay. Because keeping the Kennedy flame alive and the Kennedy name. in our social media feeds. Yes. Is this gentleman who is against all odds, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yeah.

And was a presidential candidate himself. Yes. Before endorsing Donald Trump. Right. So he kind of pulls a reverse Teddy. He renounces his family's political values. His family's family values, he seems to be keeping on, keeping on with that. In public, too, because now I guess we have to say the name, Olivia Nuzzi.

I'd had a little bit of a dry January. Sure. When it came to Olivia. Yeah. But I'm back off the wagon. I actually bought the book too here. Oh, okay. Here we go.

Oh, please. You know, I actually, I have not read any of it. I guess I read an excerpt, but I don't think I did. I think I just read the profile and not the excerpt. See, this was a book that was just consumed. Yeah. Right. Through social media and all kinds of things.

But you know what? I think one of the best parts of this book was the way she described him. it would sort of come glancingly, but eventually she would get around to it. And this is a pastoral, I reached here. Then one night I was back at the Bowery and he showed me a photograph of himself as a young man.

He was always showing me photographs of himself as a young man, a reminder for himself as much as for me that he had once been young, as well as an expression that he did not appreciate that I liked him just as he was right now, as I knew him, not as he registered as an idea. Here mounted on the back of a bull, his hair long, his chest bear, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

At this side of him, I was overcome with a terrible sadness. I could acknowledge that he was beautiful, but I did not want him. What I wanted was to mother him to protect him from himself from the world. So she's talking about that vulnerability, right, that is sort of baked into this family. And also their understanding of themselves as an image and an idea. And like their relationship to their own image and their own existence outside of themselves. That still really creeps me out. I was going to say, well, that's not bad writing.

It's not bad writing. Can I say, this has very little to do with the Kennedys, but this is the only place where it's ever going to be germane. So I just, I need to get it off my chest now. Please. I just, well, I'm angry about a lot of things, including, you know, the measles vaccine. But I, the subcategory for press box purposes, why was she appointed the West Coast editor of Vanity Fair? I just, that's such an L for Vanity Fair. All they have is Hollywood.

Like, that's what's left. They've got the Vanity Fair party. Why don't you appoint an actual editor who covers the industry and lean into the Hollywood of it all? I don't know what Kahn-Nast is doing. You need a fashion magazine. You need a Hollywood magazine. You need a food magazine. You need a men-style magazine.

What are we doing? And this is what Graydon created, right? We talk about what Graydon inherited, but Graydon created the Oscar Lean into it. That's how you're going to make money. What are you doing hiring fake Joan Didion? Like if you're going to hire her, assign her to D.C. Anyway, I'm done. Thank you so much. But wasn't the reason for it that she was, the resurrection, the undertaker sit up of Olivia Nutsi was going to be that she was going to profile Hollywood maybe instead of politics? Like, oh, we can't do that anymore. Yeah. But we're going to, you're going to do you, but do it for actors. That's what I just always assumed. I guess so. Then put her on a contract. Don't.

maker the West Coast editor. Let's let's be. Is that a real title? I don't know, but let's be, let's be serious. I ask, as editor at large of the ringer? I ask you, is that a real title? I just, I wish the Vanity Fair would fully embrace. It's the Hollywood bona fides.

Let's go. We need it. What did you make of this whole thing? The whole saga, as you observed it. Because you got an interesting vantage point. You and I never really got to talk about it. I was fairly disgusted by it. I mean, it's interesting.

I listen to the press box. I love the show, but I otherwise don't really have to consume political media for my job anymore. And I do see it as political media as opposed to politics or news or things that are going to affect my life. This was theater. This was a show that people who are trying to become famous in this particular ecosystem or make money or be successful in their jobs, which is the world of political media. This is what they decided to do. And so I didn't really need to pay attention to it. And it didn't very much. That's big. Because honestly, it was very hard to avoid. I'd say this is not just somebody who was, you know, doing podcast segments.

But like, if I had not been doing podcast segments, my text messages would have been filled with. No, it's true. And everyone was talking about it. and everyone did want to talk about it. But it's the other frustrating thing was that I knew that it was never going to have any effect on RFK Jr. That was. And so, and it was really just about this, this young woman who was writing stuff. And then her very, very questionable ex-partner who was also writing stuff that I was not going to pay money for.

And it was sort of like a tawdry what-up. I mean, it was fine, but I was just watching it in terms of this doesn't matter in terms of the real issues that I have with RFK Jr. And no one is going to hold anyone accountable for any of that. And I don't really have to pay that much attention. And also, I guess that's decent writing. But I didn't read the whole book. Was it a great book?

Did you enjoy reading it? Yeah. So I'm trying to read other stuff. It's interesting. You mentioned the RFK part of it. that is, and it brings us back to what we're talking about here. It's like that was part that weirdly got lost by the end of it. It's like the fact that it's like, this man's in the cabinet, this man is married to an actress. This man is, you know, is this kind of weird sort of

masculine Kennedy ideal of a sort of. And I just, you know, I had a baby at that time. And so I went to monthly checkups. And I was like, do I need the measles vaccine this month? Do I need it this month? Do I need it early because of what's going on because of this person? So that's where my attention was at that point. And he suffered not one not a thing. Not a thing. Wisker of a political consequence. Do you remember the Caroline Kennedy video to bring it, which was pretty astonishing and a direct to camera denunciation of him, which we now know while her daughter has been battling cancer, just talking about his cruelty and his, I mean, I guess the mistreatment of animals was originally

in the Claire Malone piece, the bear, whatever was going on with the bear, the bear carcass. But there was more of it in the Caroline newsletter, too, right? Yeah. But that was so, it was the most in public she's ever been about something in a long time. And it really didn't go anywhere. It didn't go anywhere. And again, maybe we should close here. But it's Donald Trump.

The reason this is happening is because Donald Trump, like everyone else, is caught up in the Kennedy Mystique. Yeah. and the idea that a Kennedy was endorsing him for president. And that he could put a Kennedy in his cabinet as opposed to just any other random person who could do that job. Yeah. Like that was clearly intoxicating to Donald Trump. Yes.

He has, it's the same spell. It's a different little, little cloud. I mean, also a product of the 80s and 90s and of Tina and Graydon's Vanity Fair and that New York and being invited to these tables or not, you know, tables or not, as the case may be and trying to buy your way in. So, yeah, he's the other side of it. But you're right. It's still, the name is still powerful. I want to conclude by saying, that will never be another Camelot.

It's good. And thank you so much for doing this. It was so much fun. Thanks for helping me. I love it. I could do it forever. What a wonderful weird tour of the 80s, 90s, and today, as I used to say on the radio. Good luck to them, I guess.

Yes. Good luck to everybody involved. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. We're next in Magic. By Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Thank you, gentlemen. Coming up on the press box, it's Washington Week.

That's right, if you're listening to this, I am in Washington, D.C., I'm at the Capitol, I'm at the bars, I'm everywhere. We're going to have an old-fashioned three-man weave between me and Joel Anderson and David Shoemaker on Tuesday, and then a very special treat from the world of Washington journalism for you later in the week. Join us where we will have more lukewarm takes about the media.