A (2:21)

Fire. Okay, so then I began watching FX's new show Love Story about JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette around the same time that we were wrapping up that episode, which meant I perceived it through a very eerie, unintentional lens. So you watched this show. What did you think about it?

B (2:43)

What did I think about it?

A (2:45)

How much did you watch?

B (2:47)

I watched just under four episodes. Okay, so I watched three to four episodes.

A (2:52)

Perfect.

B (2:52)

What did I think? I think a lot of money went into this show. Very obviously, it's very slick. I, like, was filling my notes app with all these little notes about the show itself and the narrative form. And I think we'll probably get into it at some point. But I think the banner thing is that it was really impossible for me to take it seriously because of just the bare minimum that I know about the Kennedys. It was just kind of absurd to me. And Carolyn Bessette is a very interesting character that they really warped in this show. First and foremost, I think that she has always been a style icon and always had this, like, very iconic legacy as, like, a New York it girl. But all of that was defined by her relative silence. Like, it was by her looks and by her fashion. And so creating a Persona for her was really like. To me, I was like, this kind of ruins it. So it wasn't for me.

A (3:45)

Okay, I love that you brought that up. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about who was Carolyn Bessette.

B (3:53)

Thank God.

A (3:53)

Why do we care about her today? I did not know much about the Kennedys before beginning this research. And something that I noticed right away was going to be a challenge for me was that because of their role in American culture, the sheer amount of hagiography and myth making that surrounds them actually makes it very difficult to pull together what feels like a reasonably accurate picture.

B (4:17)

I thought this was gonna be, like, a light episode. And Katie was like, buckle up. We're gonna be recording for seven hours.

A (4:23)

I was like, I have 36 pages, single spaced. The other thing that makes it tough is that they were in the tabloids all the time. So it's genuinely difficult to know where the game of telephone, for particularly sensational tidbits about them, even began. And when I was looking into this, I was like, did. Was JFK like, the most profiled president? And it turns out that Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt have more books written about them as presidents. But the Kennedy family is unique in that the fascination extends far beyond the president himself. Nearly every member of the Kennedy family has had multiple books written about them. And so there's this real narrative fascination with this family that is pretty singular in American culture. This is really famously like the Camelot presidency, literally named after the myth of King Arthur and his court.

B (5:19)

One of the many hot takes that I will throw out errantly without thinking during this conversation today.

A (5:23)

Love perfect is that I feel like

B (5:25)

America is so used to having geriatric men at the wheel that we forget that it's nice to have someone to look at. And I'm like, guys, you could have a lot of JFK's, let alone women. I mean, don't even, don't even worry about electing a woman. Like you could have a young man. You could have a man who's under 50. Like, like they do in other countries.

A (5:42)

America deserves a 40 year old hottie for sure.

B (5:46)

I agree.

A (5:48)

So something about the show's storyline and the cultural response to it that I was observing online and in popular media more broadly, despite not really knowing that much about the Kennedys, still struck me as a little bit odd. There's a 2023 episode of Know youw Enemy that I listened to shortly after watching it called the Kennedy Imprisonment. That summarized it really nicely. One of the hosts said, basically, what we permit in the Kennedys and what we admire about them can tell us a lot about our uniquely American mythologies. So that is what I am interested in discussing today. I am not interested in talking about the Kennedy's legislative history while they were in office, the foreign policy implications of JFK's presidency, the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Bay of Pigs or any of that. You can find much better history podcasts for that. And more importantly, I am also not interested in analyzing whether the Kennedys quote good people or bad people, because I think per the theme that has sort of been unintentionally woven throughout our recent episodes, reducing a conversation to whether this person was good or bad I think obscures a much richer interpretation of the cultural meaning of this family and what it means that today, in the year of our communist chairman Mamdani 2026, that a show about Carolyn Bessette Kennedy specifically has taken so such hold of the zeitgeist. So to start, Caro, I want to ask, what do you know about the Kennedy curse?

B (7:18)

What do I know about the Kennedy curse? Generally speaking, many of them have died. JFK was killed, obviously. You have this couple dying in the plane crash. You have Bobby Kennedy getting assassinated. And I think some of their children have died as well. Right?

A (7:34)

Yeah. Yeah. So one thing you'll probably know about the Kennedys, even if you don't pay attention to them, is that their family is supposedly cursed. That in. In amount of tragedy has befallen them. So even if you don't know the ins and outs of those tragedies, you're probably at least conceptually aware of the narrative of their unique and enduring suffering at the hands of fate. It's part of the Kennedy mythos, this like, erotic combination of glamour and tragedy. So, yes, you have JFK being assassinated. His brother Robert Kennedy was later assassinated. JFK's sister died in a plane crash in France. Ted Kennedy was in a plane crash, but he survived. JFK Jr obviously died in a plane crash. So this is the primary thematic undertone, even if it is not explicit, of this popular show, love Story. The glamour and the tragedy of the Kennedy curse. So we should probably start by quantifying what I mean when I say the show is popular. After only the first five episodes were released, reports were coming out that it had already been streamed more than 25 million hours. And that was still with four episodes episodes to go. So for comparison's sake, the last television show we covered, Heated Rivalry, was reportedly streamed about 10 million hours in the United States.

B (8:49)

Oh, wow. Heterosexuality strikes again. That's the tragedy. The tragedy of heterosexuality is liking that show more than heated rivalry. Fucking educate yourselves. My God, don't complain about AI coming to steal art if you are watching that show. More than Heated Rivalry. Okay, I'm finished. Carry on.

A (9:10)

Dude, we just got back from a ski trip and my, my brother in law David got all the wives sweatshirts that say I'm coming to the cottage and then got a bunch of hockey jerseys that are Hollander and Rozanov and all of our like, oh my God, all of our nieces and nephews ages like 3 to 7, we're putting on the hockey jerseys, being like, what am I?

B (9:31)

What is this one?

A (9:33)

We're like, don't worry, we'll tell you when you're older.

B (9:35)

They're like, am I a top or a bottom?

A (9:39)

So the finale of Love Story comes out this Thursday. There's one episode left. So we don't yet know how they are going to end the show. And it's actually not the only Kennedy centric show on streaming. There appears to be another Kennedy family drama in the works. Netflix is making a show called Kennedy, an eight episode historical drama focused on the quote, political dynasty's origins and based on Frederick Lovegol's JFK Coming of age in the American Century with Michael Fassbender cast as Joe Kennedy Senior. So that's going to be really interesting. But here is one headline from Curbed that I am going to have you

B (10:18)

read from it really does kind of make you feel a little conspiratorial. That like right as the Kennedy name is swerving conservative, that all of a sudden there's this focus on it. Kennedy Cosplay is eating the City By Cleo Chang for a curbed there were 10 people here already this morning, says Dean, a doorman who works across from 20 North Moore Street. It's around 11am on one of the first warm days in months on one of the loveliest blocks in Tribeca, as we stand there together staring uneventfully at the co op where John F. Kennedy Jr. Bought a loft in 1994. They come with their cameras and they're all dressed like that woman. Lol. What do you mean? Like a white tee and jeans? Okay, the whole point of Carolyn Bessette is that she wore incredibly simple outfits. She was Calvin Klein, but she was so skinny and blonde and hot that she looked good in outfits. Okay, whatever. Carry on, carry on, carry on.

A (11:10)

You're getting ahead of the. You're getting ahead of the outline.

B (11:12)

Sorry, stick to the quote Dean means. Of course, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, who lived there with Kennedy until their deaths in 1999. There had always been a few Kennedy acolytes hanging around the block, Dean says, but that number has ballooned since Ryan Murphy's Love Story premiered in February. Most of the people making the pilgrimage are women in their 30s and 40s, he adds, and the attention on the address now rivals the street's other attraction, the Ghostbusters Firehouse. I would be on Cornelia street as a faithful swiftie. I spot and subsequently profile a pair of women holding iced coffees as headband seeking types. Indeed they are. I'm obsessed with history in general and the Kennedys and all of that, says Jennifer Spillane. Dark haired and wearing a green quilted coat, Carolyn is iconic. Spillane and her friend, both born in the 90s, both living in New York, stopped in to look at headbands during a shopping. Oh my God, this is too much for me. Stop. This is like harder for me than a manosphere episode. Stopped in to look at headbands during a shopping excursion. I'm learning so much more, especially about her as a person, spillane says of the show's influence. What? I loved how private she was. That's sort of her brand. I'm doing okay. Open the schools. I'm doing a deep dive on Pinterest and TikTok and all that. Oh my God.

A (12:29)

Thoughts?

B (12:31)

What are we doing?

A (12:33)

So this blurb nods to the trickle down consumer fashion effect of all of this. So the real Carolyn Bessette owned a camel colored Prada coat. It was recently sold at auction for $192,000.

B (12:50)

Wow.

A (12:50)

Co Bigalow, the store that repeatedly sells Carolyn Bessette's tortoise shell headband sold the most accessories in its 188 year history since the show came out. For the record, when that was reported, I don't even think the actress who plays Carolyn had even worn the headband in the show yet. But the revival of interest in her sparked the resharing of paparazzi images online that show her wearing this headband. I actually found out about the show because I kept getting served influencer videos of, quote, CBK inspired looks or like, ooh, the Carolyn Bassett effect. And I was like, who is this woman that everyone is suddenly obsessed with? Have you seen any of those videos have shown up for you?

B (13:33)

I have. And I do think, like, I think she had very classic style. Like, she was a beautiful, stylish woman. The idea of like teaching someone how to. I'm like, dude, white T shirt, jeans, trench headband. The whole point of women like that and their allure is that they wear something that would never actually look good on you. And it looks put together on them. And that's. It's the Kendall Jenner. Kendall Jenner is like the Carolyn Bassette of our time, where she will wear things that are like, unbelievably simple and yet somehow, hint, because they're 511 in a size 0, it looks unbelievably fashionable on them. But I just find it really funny that there's like a cottage industry sprouting up on what is inarguably an incredibly simple look to achieve.

A (14:17)

So we're gonna watch a couple videos that are representative of different strains of this type of video, and then I'm just gonna have you describe them. So this is video number one.

B (14:28)

Why am I so heated? This is ridiculous. This is like a light conversation. Chill out and drink my kombucha.

A (14:34)

I feel like this is always what happens. I bring you a topic on a silver platter and I'm like, for your digestion, ma'. Am.

B (14:41)

For your fury.

A (14:42)

And you're like, I'm furious. Okay, this is the first video, and I want you to just kind of watch it and then give us some thoughts.

B (14:55)

The Taylor Swift overture.

A (15:00)

Okay. Thoughts on video number one. Genre number one.

B (15:04)

Okay, so it was basically like a montage of, I guess a clip of them from 1994, very cutely, like, playing with Each other and rough housing. Like bear cubs in the park with their German shepherd. Okay, I've now changed my tune. I'm like, is everyone really lonely?

A (15:21)

Watches one romantic edit? I've changed my mind.

B (15:24)

No, I'm just like. I'm watching it and I'm just like, is everyone obsessed with this? Because people are just lonely again. They were a cute couple. Totally.

A (15:33)

And they weren't beating the shit out of each other in public. Very cute.

B (15:37)

Yeah. It's not like that remarkable to me, that video. It's just like a couple flirting and playing with each other.

A (15:43)

Yeah. Okay, so that's like genre number one that I noticed is people basically making, like, romantic fan edits of the couple with paparazzi footage. Okay, we're gonna now watch video number two. This is a different genre of Kennedy Bessette video. Dolly, I could not agree with you more. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy would have bullied any clean girl or trad wife. Look up her quotes to Kate Spade. She was relentless. She would absolutely hate everything that the clean girls and the trad wives stand for. And you know who else would have hated that entire image? John F. Kennedy Jr. He hated them bitches. He wanted somebody that was feisty and would challenge him.

B (16:30)

Duh.

A (16:31)

These girls just don't get it.

B (16:33)

I can't stop thinking about the Disney adult thing now and then. Just so we know, like, that was a TikTok video responding to a comment where someone said she assuming Caroline would never have been like a pilates and matcha girl, essentially.

A (16:46)

Yeah.

B (16:46)

Which.

A (16:46)

So, okay, this is. This is the second genre which is basically retcon, like, all, like, revisionist history of, like, JFK Jr. Wanted a feisty bestie queen. Carolyn wasn't this. Carolyn would have loved this. Carolyn would have hated that. Basically, like, speculation about who these people were, what they wanted. The fact that JFK Jr. There was something about Carolyn that was very alluring to him.

B (17:10)

It's something that I found again, off putting in the show. And I should also say, if people like the show, that's fine. I'm not trying to yuck your yum. I watched like 40 hours of reality TV in the last week. But something that I noticed immediately in the show was how this was narrativized, where it was like, he doesn't like clingy girls. He wants an independent woman, and they treat his ex girlfriend like trash. And I think she has since given a public statement putting aside, like, the gross sexism of it all. It's very tired. It's very cliche. To make it like one thin, beautiful blonde is clingy and doesn't understand his complexity and doesn't have any interests of her own. And the other blonde is a cool girl who, again, it's the gone girl of it all. It's like she'll give blowjobs and she's a size zero. She never complains. And she'll drink a beer and watch a football with. Watch football with you?

A (17:58)

Like, watch a football, watch a football.

B (18:00)

It was immediately pitting these two things. And so I find it interesting that people on TikTok are again, clearly taking from the show this narrative because once again, Carolyn Bessette was famously a cipher. She was incredibly private. And so they're taking this very cliche narrative, very sexist narrative, and applying it to her legacy, which I find to be pretty off putting.

A (18:23)

Perfect segue. This is the third and final video that we are gonna watch. Genre number three.

B (18:31)

Oh, my God.

A (18:32)

It was very exciting. Wonderful evening.

B (18:34)

Yeah.

A (18:35)

What was your highlight?

B (18:35)

What was the highlight?

A (18:36)

The entire evening was spectacular. There's no highlight

B (18:41)

on their cars. That's cool, honey.

A (18:43)

Don't worry about it.

B (18:44)

I think it's sort of fabulous.

A (18:45)

I hope they're all sitting with me.

B (18:46)

Trying to pinch your butt right here.

A (18:49)

Look at the burning. How do you define being generous? Well, you're all here tonight in the rain. How do you define it? Tell us to.

B (18:59)

My wife loved it.

A (19:01)

Thank you for photographers. Please don't get so close to me.

B (19:12)

Okay, that was a Tik Tok video where the caption just said every known video of CBK talking.

A (19:18)

And it was all of 40 seconds long. Okay, so there was an article in the Wall Street Journal called Jenzy is crazy. For the Kennedies that I am going to have you an excerpt from.

B (19:32)

Perhaps the more compelling story is Gen Z's sudden obsession with the couple love story has concocted its own kind of cultural fervor. Social media feeds are flooding with grainy paparazzi shots of the real life couple walking the streets of New York City. Fans are now flocking to the downtown eatery where their first date takes place. In the show, some are trying to emulate Bessette's minimalist style and shiny golden hair, dubbing the shade beset blonde. Okay, how many times can we rename the same color of blonde? Over the decades, any story about the Kennedy dynasty could generate this kind of frenzy. Yet this one seems particularly attractive to a generation that never experienced the Camelot era or the 1990s. The series showcases a downtown New York scene Filled with yellow taxi cabs, not Ubers. Young people smoke cigarettes indoors, and newsstands sell actual newspapers. These years were also the last gasp before the Internet, Bassette had no social media presence or brand partnerships, as many celebrity girlfriends do today. Even as she swatted wild paparazzi on every street corner, she possessed an air of mystique compared with today's celebrities. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me. I think I feel nostalgic to that time period, and I was technically alive for some of it, so I understand that.

A (20:46)

I agree. I think that there was an alternate universe in which this episode kind of took a more, like, Internet personal branding. We should all know less about each other turn. That's not the direction we're going in today. But I do think that this explanation makes sense. There was a JFK Junior lookalike competition in New York City, and I'm actually kind of obsessed with the pictures from it. Someone organized this lookalike competition, but it overlapped with a March for Liberation rally that was, quote, celebrating the US And Israel's recent attack on Iran.

B (21:21)

Oh.

A (21:22)

So all the pictures from the event are, like, these absolute jokers dressed up in that dumb little, like, backwards hat, like Ewing. Against a background, people like, waving Iranian flags and, like, holding up pictures of Donald Trump. And I'm like, I don't know what this means, but it is perfect. So I want you to read this representative sampling of recent beset related headlines for me.

B (21:52)

Carolyn Kennedy's rumored parenthetical preferred lipstick. My $17 perfume was supposedly a favorite of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. The first images from Ryan Murphy's newest series caused a stir among the CBK style worshipers. A definitive guide to what Carolyn Bessette Kennedy wore. These Carolyn Bessette Kennedy costumes don't fit the bill. You could own a piece from Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's wardrobe. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy walked so the row could run. Yep. How right was I with Kendall Jenner? God.

A (22:25)

All right. And we've even got an Evie magazine piece.

B (22:30)

Of course we do. Please read every piece you need to dress like Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in 2026. Love story on FX. Currently has the Internet in a chokehold. And honestly, same.

A (22:43)

It's actually funny, though, because when you read the article, the girl's like, so I actually, like, haven't watched it, but I do like her outfit.

B (22:51)

Incredible. No notes.

A (22:52)

There's even been a little bit of an afterglow for Sarah Pigeon, the actress who plays Carolyn in the series where, like, she's benefiting now, from the association with this cultural object of fascination, she is getting her very own road campaign.

B (23:07)

Living my dream. Fuck. She's getting peptide lip balms for life. Fuck me.

A (23:15)

If you ever want your own, all you need to do is become affiliated with a dead Kennedy brother. But after you watched the show, you sent me a text and you were like, this show is the entertainment equivalent of this meeting. Should have been an email. I think what we've been circling is it's not very good, which makes its cultural chokehold even more complicated. And I think what I eventually came around to is it is exceedingly popular, not in spite of the fact that it's soulless, but because it's soulless. It doesn't have anything new to say about these people or how their myths of their relationship connects to our concept of celebrity or what it means when a political family becomes a pop culture phenomenon. So I'm going to have you read an excerpt from a Vulture review of the show by Nicholas Qua.

B (24:01)

This is a vision of a relationship as a hermetically sealed unit, a dollhouse of beautiful people. Wow. This version of John and Carolyn are nothing much beyond their relationship to each other, which could itself be the point if the show knew what to do with it. How does a relationship like this actually work? Why are they in love? How does their story connect to modern celebrity and the machinery of public attention? We live, after all, in the era of Meghan Markle. Yeah, good point. Different but contiguous with the story of Carolyn Bessette. What makes this relationship special? In its inability to explore any of these questions with verve, Love Story arrives at an indirect answer. Perhaps it isn't. By the final stretch, we've spent so much time watching them fight, reconcile, fall back in love, miss each other, marry, and fight again, that the whole exercise begins to feel like being cornered at a dinner party with someone recounting the minutiae of their relationship. The repetition dulls whatever voltage the pairing once carried and flattening the rhythms of Kennedy and Bessette's life together into a cycle of domestic discord. Love Story takes a relationship long, freighted with myth, glamour, and cultural obsession and renders it strangely ordinary. Yeah. On that note, really quickly, something I noticed about this show is that it falls into a trap that I think a lot of elementary writing and elementary fiction does, which it basically imagines famous people to behave in private as we expect them to behave in person. So, like, all of their conversations with one another are like, you were born for this responsibility, John. You will rise to the Occasion. And it's like this isn't how people actually speak in private. And I think it's a great example of why Succession is such a brilliant show if you pay attention to the dialogue. They have these people who are larger than life and richer than life but speaking in private the way that people do. And I just noticed that it itched at me all throughout this thing that they're imagining the Kennedys interior lives, but their interior lives are basically like a press kit for how they would speak publicly. It was just like very grating for me.

A (25:59)

Totally. So another thing that we've been circling here that I want to zoom in on now is that we watched a video of somebody saying what Carolyn was really like. This is very common. Some people will insist that she was actually a man hating, chain smoking, cocaine enthusiast or that she would have loved this or hated that. It's also common in these videos to emphasize her individuality, that it was her unique personal style that set her apart. And individuality is not replicable. So you've kind of already hinted at this. How would you describe her style?

B (26:35)

I'm not even saying this to be mean. It's like as basic as it comes. Again, she worked at Calvin Klein. Her personal style was simple. There were no branded looks on it. It was, it was boilerplate Calvin Klein. It was like khakis and whites, blue jeans, simple long blonde hair. Not a ton of makeup, but makeup like she wasn't shirking or avoiding femininity. It was just straight down the middle, New England blonde. It was actually very similar to something I've talked to you about in the past of the kind of lanky. Oh yeah, Puritan vibe. Which is not surprising to me that the Kennedys went for it because that was their style, right? They have their compound in Hyannis. That's their fucking vibe.

A (27:15)

Lanky Puritan core.

B (27:17)

Right? Right. Like plays tennis and then gets the Nicoise after.

A (27:20)

So like what do we make of that?

B (27:22)

Right?

A (27:22)

We're being told that like this woman, she's so alluring and there's so much mystery and she's so unique and she's such an individual. And then you like really look at her and you' well, what is unique about this? There's a lot of conjecture about Carolyn Kennedy because she never gave interviews.

B (27:38)

Right.

A (27:39)

She is described as being brilliant and beautiful and charismatic. She's indifferent to her own celebrity. She's a party girl. Elsewhere she's described as being domineering and abusive and volatile. You almost always are going to see words like mystique and mystery, you hear the same facts about her every single time in every single write up. That she was raised in Greenwich, that she went to bu, that she became a sales associate at Calvin Klein and then ascended in the ranks quickly. You will often read as this little part of her lore that she was voted most beautiful person in high school. And the subtext of all of this commentary and all of this conjecture that appears to be asking the question, what made her so unique is what made her so unique that America's most eligible bachelor selected her of all women to be his wife.

B (28:30)

Right?

A (28:31)

That is the question that is really being asked and answered here. So I want you to read a cover story for me from New York Magazine from October 1996.

B (28:42)

Oh lit. None of the snippets meted out about Bassette Kennedy as she will now be known. Her degree from Boston University, her childhood in Greenwich with mother and orthopedist stepfather appeared to provide the key to understanding exactly why she, of all women, should have been the one to relieve John Kennedy of his bachelor status. Indeed, not even the bikini thonged bottom seems an adequate explanation for that. It is necessary to turn to less official sources in whose descriptions Bassett begins to sound oddly familiar. She is one of those mysterious creatures that understands, on some deep level, mystical femininity, says New Media proselytizer John Perry Barlow, a longtime friend of Kennedy's who went to the wedding. She knows how to handle men like practically nobody I've ever met. She knows where all the levers are and she is very deft in her operation of them. She's a lot like the woman who would have been. Her mother in law, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, a woman who never saw the need to hyphenate, once told Gore Vidal, as he relates in his memoir Palimpsest, that her aim in life was to be attractive to men. It would be inappropriate these days to admit to such an ambition even to Gore Vidal and Bessette Kennedy's stellar career at Calvin Klein, her rapid ascent from salesgirl to muse is probably testament to her desire to impress Calvin the design rather than Calvin the man. Even so, it seems likely that Carolyn would agree with Jackie that attracting men and staying attractive for them is a worthwhile skill. If this were not an age in which an unmarried woman must have a serious job in order to have an identity, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy might well have had a career as a beauty, the kind of woman whose energies, wit and charm are dedicated to creating an aura of alluring femininity she is certainly a challenge, says someone who has worked with her. It would be hard for any woman to stay mysterious for this guy who basically can order it up. If there is anything she's up to, it is that task never seeming easy. Bessette, described by an acquaintance as hypnotically attractive, appears to be almost a case study from the currently popular how to the Rules, a post feminist unabashedly retrograde series of guidelines for husband catching, whose chapter headings include such injunctions as Be honest but mysterious, don't talk to a man first, and don't ask him to dance and be a creature unlike any other. They're like, do not be human. The authors Ellen Fine and Sherry Snyder declare that quote, if you follow the rules, you can rest assured that your husband will treat you like a queen, even when he's angry with you. Why? Because he spent so much time trying to get you. You have become so precious to him that he doesn't take you for granted, says an observer. I think Bessette made Kennedy think she really wasn't interested, which was very smart. She can also flirt as much as he can. She's not shy. She's not afraid of attracting men. You notice that every time they got in a fight she was very smart and would toodle off with somebody else or insinuate that she was cunning in that way.

A (31:39)

So we have a few threads here. She is alternately charming and manipulative. She really played her cards right. Like there's just something about Carolyn. And again, why? How do we know this? Well, because America's most hard to pin down man chose her in that way. You're right. She becomes a cipher. She becomes a blueprint for how a woman should look and behave if she wants the ultimate prize to be chosen by a powerful, rich and hard doing man. But the video that was every known clip of CBK talking was 40 seconds long. So like, was she mysterious and restrained or do we just literally know nothing about her?

B (32:21)

Right.

A (32:22)

So can you imagine if someone tried to make the same video for us and be like, oh man, we only have 5,000 hours of Katie and Caro talking. If only we knew more of their opinions.

B (32:34)

Oh my God. It's funny because again, like when I read that article, my instinct is to wonder whether that is any more accurate than this one or if it's just an ongoing reflection of our cultural outlook because that one is also giving like, yeah, she entrapped him or like she knows how you know, which is very of the moment. It's very interesting and it really does make me think about this ongoing obsession with Gen Z starting to swing conservative and their obsession with like heterosexuality and marriage and traditional gender norms. Because again, like, yeah, there is nothing unique about it.

A (33:08)

There is a. A core truth here, which is that the fact that you're seeing kind of glowing coverage of her and how to emulate Carolyn Bessette in everything from your typical the Cut Style piece to EV Magazine means that when you are somebody that the public knows nothing about, we can really project whatever we want onto you. And that there are these kind of custodians of the Carolyn Bessette Kennedy myth who feel that they can like divine these little clues about who she really was or how she interacted with JFK Jr and the thing that's so noteworthy about it to me is that it's really based on nothing. She never gave long form interviews. She did not speak to the press at all, with the exception of saying, don't get so close to me. We have hearsay about what she was like from her friends. But the cultural obsession that we are seeing flare right now with this woman and her style and her personality and how she scored JFK Jr. Is essentially fiction that is just inferred from like three data points.

B (34:12)

And even the hearsay, I would say even those articles, totally arbitrary. Like you don't know who they spoke to. You don't know if that's an accurate representation of her. You don't know if those people loved her or were jealous or knew who very knew her very well or knew her when she was a kid. All of that stuff is picked and chosen in order to fit the narrative of the story. And so it's important to not entirely trust it.

A (34:33)

And so the question that I'm interested in is why is that what we want her to be? Why is that the role that we want her to fill today? And there's a real parallel here, I think, with JFK himself that I started to see as I got deeper into this research, which was that JFK didn't even serve a full term before he was assassinated. He was only president for two years and 10 months. So when you're a famous person who dies young, you are culturally frozen in time, at your peak in a way that can really turn you into a legend. And what the Kennedys are very good at, as we will see today, is narrative management is shaping that legend very actively. So we've talked a little bit about the cultural fascination with Carolyn. Now let's talk about how the courtship is portrayed in the show, because I think that is really driving the fascination with Carolyn. I am going to have you read a very short Excerpt from a 1999 Vanity Fair article about Carolyn called the Private Princess.

B (35:35)

More likely, they met through their mutual friend Kelly Klein, and there was little fairy tale about it. A proponent of post feminist courtship, Carolyn was a rules girl who would never have been caught reading the actual book. When John held back, Carolyn would remind him about underwear model and future Baywatch star Michael Bergen, who is still on her back burner. Carolyn could also give John hell. Jesus.

A (35:58)

Okay, are you familiar with the rules?

B (36:00)

Yeah, because of if books could kill.

A (36:02)

We kind of got a little preview of it in the New York Magazine profile. How to be aloof. How to be mysterious enough to get a man to become obsessed with you. Right? And this idea is like, the way that you win, really, is to end up in this relationship with this person who you've basically tricked into liking you, if all goes according to plan. And I think what I noticed about the show is that the narrative is very intentional in laying out something like a step by step guide to maintaining the interest of America's most eligible bachelor. We're supposed to interpret their story as romantic, as a love story. And part of what's just true about fictionalized stories like this is that because we don't really know anything about these people, what the story chooses to emphasize or focus on is very intentional. This is not a documentary. It is telling a particular version of this story that the producers believe will be most palatable to its audience. And obviously they were correct. So, like, in the first several episodes, we spend a lot of time watching how Carolyn got JFK Jr. There are countless shots of her, like, playing coy or hard to get or, like, not giving him her phone number and being like, well, you know, where I work. And then she turns around and we can see her face and she's, like, freaking out, right? Like, she walks away and she's mouthing like, oh, my God. The story that we're being told is consistent with the idea that she was very intentionally scheming to trick this man into loving her. So I want to take a second to kind of pull apart what the show is telling us. These characters of JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette, how would you describe them as people in this show?

B (37:40)

It's just so funny because as you're describing this, it kind of has me rolling that you're describing this completely accurately and that the title of this show is Love Story. Like, it's so toxic, right? It's so fucking toxic. All right, what are their descriptions? He is a nothing burger pancake. He has no opinions about anything. His only real conflict is, like, representing the family, but he doesn't have. He is a complete projection of hot guy. It's like he's playing basketball. He's working out. He flunked the bar. But, like, we're almost supposed to take that as, like, oh, what a hottie adversity. He actually, as far as I watch, has no discernible personality. He's, like, framed as kind of the rational victim with his crazy ex, which, again, you know how I feel about that. And then she is actually pretty snarky and bitchy more than I thought they would make her. Like, she really can't stand her job at Calvin Klein until she starts, like, basically calling the shots. They have this frame where, like, she finds Kate Moss, which I thought was pretty funny. I was like, okay. She kind of has the attitude of, like, the early 2000s rom coms of, like, plucky journalist in early New York City, and is, like, kind of sarcastic, even though, I mean, no one can beat Kate Hudson at that. But she seems very disaffected, and they go out of their way in the first few episodes. For her to basically be like, I came from nothing. I didn't have a trust. Like, I'm working out here on my own. She definitely is supposed to be very edgy and, like, scrapping her way up. Calvin Klein, very savvy. And he's like, the perfect hunk who says nothing, but somehow we feel everything.

A (39:19)

Yeah. Jfk, junior Himbo.

B (39:22)

Yeah, he's such a himbo.

A (39:23)

He's charismatic, he's hot, but he's a little bumbling. He fails the bar exam twice. He doesn't really seem all that invested in his magazine. I forgot the magazine.

B (39:33)

Sophie's like, I just want it to be about the news. I care about the news. I'm like, I don't think you've ever read the news.

A (39:43)

He's forgetful. He's well meaning, but he's ultimately, like, not all that competent or talented.

B (39:49)

He's harmless. And she's wily.

A (39:51)

Yeah, yeah. You get the sense that, like, were this not JFK's son, he would just be some guy. Right?

B (39:56)

Right.

A (39:57)

Let's talk about that magazine for a second. He had a magazine called George, in which he wanted to, much like you and I, Caroline, quote, combine wonky analysis with pop cultural savvy, which has a bigger cir. George or diabolical lies.

B (40:16)

Honestly, I bet Diabolical lies.

A (40:19)

But there is kind of a sort of irony to this, I think that this was a magazine that was trying to combine politics with pop culture, when the Kennedy family itself is largely what transformed politics into pop culture. The so called Camelot period and the melding of the pageantry and the artifice of Hollywood with governance, that was a really big shift in American political culture that the Kennedys really ushered into our country. Like the jump from John F. Kennedy and the Camelot period to Donald Trump. That is a straight line.

B (40:51)

Yeah.

A (40:51)

With like Reagan bisecting it.

B (40:53)

Well, that's the great irony too, is that this whole narrative is like the royal family. Right. The Kennedys are like the royal family again and again in the show. It's like you just have to accept your fate. Like you have a responsibility to the people. Like literally describing him like he's a prince, like it's a monarchy. And they, they orchestrated every last fucking step of that. Them being private bullshit. They were like the most publicly photographed and like presenting family in American history.

A (41:20)

So contrast that with Carolyn. She is to an extent in this show, narrativized as the woman behind some of Calvin Klein's most famous choices. Discovering Kate Moss starting the trend of women wearing men's dress shirts. She like shows up in a button down and is like, what is that?

B (41:38)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A (41:39)

Oh my God, I need to take your photo. She's scrappy. She's talented. Right? And so far today we've asked the question, who is Carolyn and why do we, the public, want her to be this particular image of a woman? Why are we kind of coding this as aspirational? But I'm going to have you read from a book called Ask not by Maureen Callahan. That kind of flips that on its head a little bit.

B (42:03)

But who was he really? Oh, hell yeah. Maureen. John Kennedy was a middle aged man with no real accomplishments. Carolyn had worked her way up from a sales associate in a Boston mall to Calvin Klein's most trusted advisor and something of an informal brand ambassador within the span of a few years.

A (42:22)

She is by all accounts the more impressive and promising person in this relationship. And yet her primary value in the storyline is her proximity to JFK Jr. That, like, she could, you know, capture his fancy. So we know that they get married. We see this in episode six. You didn't see it in episode six because you didn't watch episode six.

B (42:42)

I only watch episode six, where there are cottages in Michigan. Sorry, I refuse. I refuse.

A (42:48)

This does have a cottage. And what's really funny Actually, I read so many write ups on the wedding that were, like, contemporaneous to when it actually happened. And depending on who you asked, it was either like a complete fucking train wreck or the most romantic evening that anyone had ever attended. And I think that even that kind of shows you just how unreliable the narration is of this couple, that depending on the one of the 40 people that were there, it was either like a complete mess or this otherworldly, magical event.

B (43:22)

What was the mess? I'm curious.

A (43:24)

It honestly kind of goes with, like, the themes that we've been discussing. They wanted to get married somewhere super private, so they got married on this island. And the little church that they got married in was, like, this chapel that I believe was built by slave labor that nice JFK Jr. Didn't have. Like, basically, like, opened up first. Like, the windows were sealed shut, and so they didn't, like, air it out or anything ahead of time. And it was extremely hot because it was like Georgia in the summer, so it was very humid in there. Her dress didn't fit properly. She was, like, two hours late to the wedding. So everyone that was there was just, like, sitting in this sweltering little chapel with ev. All the doors sealed shut for hours, just waiting for her to get there.

B (44:10)

When your family is already a little bit cursed as it was by then, you don't get married in a slave chapel. Be a little bit more smart about this.

A (44:19)

Okay, so they're married now. I'm gonna have you read an excerpt from re. Situating Ourselves in the plot. Now they're married. I'm gonna have you read an exc. Excerpt from a 2014 piece called Secrets and Lies by Edward Klein.

B (44:34)

The marriage made front page news everywhere, and a new Kennedy myth was born. The man who could have had any woman in the world had chosen as his bride one who was not rich or famous or ennobled by family background or distinguished by any professional accomplishment. What Carolyn had were certain charismatic qualities. Exceptional beauty, a unique sense of style, and a shrewd, sharp, hard intelligence. The media played the marriage as a Cinderella story, casting Carolyn as the commoner who had found true love with Prince Charming. But it turned out to be a doomed fairy tale, a nightmare of escalating domestic violence. Oh. Suspicions of infidelity and drugs. A union that seemed destined to end in one kind of disaster or another. This also is very Meghan Markle coded with how the press covered Prince Harry choosing her, and also really how the press covered Prince William choosing Kate Middleton, who was wealthy but not royal this reminds me of the Epstein thing where, like, dude, the circle gets the square. We can figure this out. These men date hot women until they find one they get along with. That's what's happening here. It's not rocket science. They date tons of gorgeous women.

A (45:43)

And spoiler, many of them continue dating after they get married to these women.

B (45:49)

Right, right, right. The prerequisite is being a 10. You have to be a 10. And then, of course, some of these women are smart, some of them are funny. You all have, you know, your various attributes, and whoever clicks, clicks. I feel like we're always like, why her? I'm like, well, she was gorgeous. That is the prerequisite. Beauty is always the common denominator. And yet we never lead with that because we think it's sexist to call these women beautiful and not acknowledge their other attributes. But it's like, no, we're not talking about them. We're talking about why these men choose to date them. And you have to acknowledge that these men are immediately isolating out based off of beauty and then selecting from there.

A (46:26)

Your beauty is definitely the reason that I selected you as my co host.

B (46:30)

I mean, you do want to fuck me.

A (46:33)

Number one, ten. Beauty. Number two, shrewd hard intelligence.

B (46:39)

Number three, style.

A (46:41)

Number three, unique style.

B (46:43)

I was just about to say that's my woman. I'm wearing my skiing socks, my pattern skiing socks, and my fat jeans today.

A (46:50)

So I did have a dream last night that Caro and I signed a lead lease together. And, like, only after we signed the lease are we like, wait, what are we gonna do with our husband? So we're like, it's fine. We'll figure it. I'll figure something out. Okay, so a 1999 CBS News story called JFK Junior's Marriage on the rocks, question mark was published shortly after they died and cited, quote, members of Kennedy's close knit circle of friends and associates of Carolyn, including two who have signed sworn affidavits saying that Carolyn suspected JFK Jr. Was having affairs, that they had not slept together in the 18 months prior to their deaths, and that they were actually living separately at this time.

B (47:36)

And again, we don't know if any of this is true, but if the narrative goes. If the narrative goes that her whole strategy was playing hard to get and being ungettable. That's the bag here that I think women often don't learn is like. Like, you know why that's not a good strategy? Is when you finally do get got, he gets bored. Because all these books hinge on that. And then they end at marriage. And it's like if your whole relationship with your partner is based off of being unattainable to them, then when they catch you, they will not know what to do with you. It's not about building a relationship.

A (48:09)

I don't think we have any way of knowing what of this is true and what of it is false.

B (48:14)

Yeah.

A (48:15)

But it does not. I will just say, having read at this point a thousand pages of Kennedy Mann history, it does not strain credulity to me that this relationship was not going well.

B (48:26)

Yeah, seriously.

A (48:27)

Or that he was cheating on her. Or even that she was cheating on him. We're recording this the day before episode eight airs, so it's possible there will be hints of infidelity in episode eight. But, like, up through seven, we don't have anything of that nature.

B (48:40)

Okay.

A (48:40)

Even though we don't know how the show ends, we do know how their story ends. With a plane crash. And we are going to circle back to that plane crash in more depth. But in the meantime, who are the Kennedys?

B (48:53)

Who indeed.