How 'Love Story'—and the Kennedys—Fooled America

Today's episode was brought to you by Ryan Murphy, Camelot, the glitching Nintendo 64 controller

used by the worm that puppeteers RF-cagioners brain and makes them send noobs to Olivia

Nuzzi, hashtag Quiet Luxury, Lee Harvey Oswald, the so-called Kennedy Curse, Taylor Swift

narrowly avoiding CBK's fate despite her damnedest attempts at dating a Kennedy, and our

country's weird fucking relationship with the closest thing we have to a dynastic royal

family.

Oh, yeah.

I'm so excited.

Carol, you're a coastal elite from Massachusetts, so this is a question that I've been dying

to ask you.

What did you know about the Kennedys growing up?

I know that they've killed many people, most of which were women, but I feel like in Massachusetts

you're either like an Affleck fan or a Kennedy fan, and I am very much unfortunately

forever more an Affleck fan.

So yeah, I feel like people either worship the Kennedys in Massachusetts or find them unbearable

and I am definitely in the latter category.

I have been workshopping this theory that adults who are Kennedy's stands are kind of

like the his-

Like Disney adults?

Yes!

Oh my god, you're right, mate.

Caroline, how was the exact reference I was going to make?

How did you do that?

Because I live in Massachusetts, it's equally shameful, and it's just as corporatized,

100 percent.

So there's this almost like fairy tale make-believe quality to people who stand the Kennedys.

So today I'm going to do a diabolical lies first, and Carol, I'm actually going to set

the tone for this conversation by playing a clip from one of our own episodes.

Oh my god, I love it.

Wow, we've been around for one year, and we're already circling back on our own thoughts.

Incredible.

So this is something that you said at the end of our Epstein mega-sode, going to play

it for you.

We have this almost necrophilic obsession with reviving the reputations of disgraced

predatory men and elevating them into this like deity status, and we do it because to admit

the real truth here would require us to see that at the base of our society, if you are

a woman who is hurt by a man, no one will do anything about it.

I love how self-referential this is.

I'm I the expert recording!

I'm smart.

Fire.

Okay, so then I began watching FX's new show Love Story about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessett

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?

What did I think about it?

How much did you watch?

I watched just under four episodes.

Okay.

There's three to four episodes.

Perfect.

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 like the show itself

and the narrative form.

And I think we'll probably get into it at some point.

But I think like 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 Kennedy's like it was

just kind of absurd to me.

Carolyn Bessett 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.

Okay.

I love that you brought that up.

We're going to spend a lot of time talking about who was Carolyn Bessett.

Thank God.

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 and was that

because of their role in American culture, the sheer amount of hegeography and myth-making

that surrounds them actually makes it very difficult to pull together what feels

like a reasonably accurate picture.

I thought this is going to be like a light episode and Kenny was like, buckle up.

We're going to be recording for seven hours.

I was like, I have 36 pages, single space.

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.

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.

One of the many hot takes that I will throw out, apparently without thinking during this

conversation today.

Love.

Perfect.

Is that I feel like 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 JFKs.

Let alone women.

I mean, don't even worry about electing a woman.

You could have a young man.

You could have a man who's under 50 like they do in other countries.

America deserves a 40 year old hottie for sure.

I agree.

So something about the show's storyline and the culture response to it that I was observing

online and in popular media more broadly despite not really knowing that much about the

Kennedy's still struck me as a little bit odd.

There's a 2023 episode of Know Your 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 Kennedys 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 are, 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, mom, Donnie, 2026,

that a show about Carolyn beset Kennedy specifically has taken such hold of the zeitgeist.

So to start, Carol, I want to ask what do you know about the Kennedy curse?

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?

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 an inordinate 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.

In 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.

Ten Kennedy was in a plane crash, but he survived.

JFK junior 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 to go.

So for comparison, say the last television show we covered, heated rivalry, was reportedly

streamed about 10 million hours in the United States.

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 steel art if you are watching that show more

than heated rivalry.

Okay.

I finished carry on.

Dude, we just got back from a ski trip and 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 Rosenov and all of our like all of our nieces and nephews ages like

three to seven were putting on the hockey jerseys being like, what am I?

What is this one?

We're like, don't worry.

We'll tell you when you're older.

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

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 in eight episode historical drama, focused on the, quote, political dynasties origins

and based on Frederick Lovegall's JFK coming of age in the American century with Michael

fastbender cast as Joe Kennedy senior.

So that's going to be really interesting.

But here is one headline from curved that I'm going to have you read from a really does

kind of make you feel a little conspiratorial that like right as the Kennedy name is

worving conservative that all of a sudden there's this focus on it.

Kennedy cosplay is eating the city by Cleo Chang for a curved.

There were 10 people here already this morning says Dean, a door man who works across from

20 North more street.

It's around 11 a.m. on one of the first warm days and months on one of the loveliest

blocks in Trebekah as we stand there together staring uneventfully at the co-op were 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 T and jeans the whole point of Carolyn Bassette is that she wore incredibly

simple outfits.

She was Calvin Klein, but she was so skinny and blonde and hot that she looks good in

whatever carry on carry on carry on you're getting ahead of the net you're getting ahead

of the outline.

Sorry stick to the quote.

Dean means of course Carolyn Bassette Kennedy who lived there with Kennedy until their

deaths in 1999.

There had always been a few Kennedy accolades 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 streets other attraction.

The Ghostbusters Firehouse I would be on Cornelia Street as a faithful swifty I spot and

subsequently profile a pair of women holding ice 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 hair 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 do okay open the schools I'm doing a deep dive on Pinterest and tiktok and all

that.

Oh my god.

Thoughts what are we doing so this blurb nods to the trickle down consumer fashion

effect of all of this so the real Carolyn Bessette owned a camel colored product coat.

It was recently sold at auction for $192,000 see how big a low the store that repeatedly

sells Carolyn Bessette's tortoise shell headband sold the most accessories and it's 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 the Carolyn Bessette effect and I was like who is this

woman that everyone is suddenly obsessed with?

Have you seen any of those videos have they like shown up for you?

I have and I do think I 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 Bessette of our time where she will wear things that

are like unbelievably simple and yet somehow Clint because they're 511 and 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 and incredibly simple look

to achieve.

So we're going to watch a couple videos that are representative of different strains of

this type of video and then I'm just going to have you describe them.

So this is video number one.

Why am I so heated?

This is ridiculous.

This is like a light conversation.

I need to chill out and drink my kombucha.

I feel like this is always what happens.

I bring you a topic on a silver platter and I'm like for your digestion man.

For your fury.

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.

The Taylor Swift Overture.

Okay.

Thoughts on video number one, genre number one.

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?

Watches one romantic edit.

I've changed my mind.

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 when they weren't being the shit out of each other in

public.

Very cute.

Yeah.

It's not like that remarkable to me that video.

It's just like a couple flirting and playing with each other.

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 going to now watch video number two.

This is a different genre of Kennedy beset video.

Dolly, I could not agree with you more.

Carolyn beset Kennedy would have bullied any clean girl or tradwife.

Look up her quotes to Kate Spade.

She was relentless.

She would absolutely hate everything that the clean girls and the tradwives 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.

The, these girls just don't get it.

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.

Yeah.

Essentially.

Yeah.

This is, this is the second genre, which is basically retconned like all, like revisionist

history of like JFK Jr.

Wanted a feisty 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.

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 yet.

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 narrativeized 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 interest 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 blow jobs and she's a size zero.

She never complains and she'll drink a beer and watch a football with it.

Watch football with you.

Watch a football.

Watch a football.

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.

Perfect segue.

This is the third and final video that we are going to watch.

Genre number three.

Oh my god.

He's back.

Exciting.

Wonderful evening.

What was your highlight?

The entire evening was spectacular.

I don't know.

Thank you.

I found an answer.

I don't know.

I'm scared.

You're just like this.

I'm scared.

I'm scared.

I'm scared.

I think it's sort of fabulous.

Hope they're all sitting with me.

Try to touch your both.

I think I might get it.

Where could the birdie?

How do you define being generous?

You're all here, and I can write a question.

How do you define it?

How do you define it?

How do you define it?

I've seen it before.

You guys get some help.

I've done it.

Thank you.

I'm so sorry.

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

And it was all of 40 seconds long, okay?

So there was an article in the Wall Street Journal called Gen Z is crazy for the Kennedys that

I am going to have you read an excerpt from.

What's 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 Basette's minimalist style and shiny golden hair, dubbing the

shade Basette 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 news stands sell actual newspapers.

These years were also the last gasp before the internet.

Basette 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, 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.

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.

So all the pictures from this event are like these absolute jokers dressed up in

that dumb little backwards hat, like viewing 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.

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 new 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.

All right.

And we've even got an EV magazine.

Peace.

Mm-hmm.

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 and a chokehold.

And honestly, same.

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 outfits.

Incredible.

No notes.

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.

Living my dream.

Bok.

She's getting peptide lip bombs for life.

Bok me.

If you ever want your own, all you need to do is become a Philly and 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 myth 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.

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, fallback

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 minutia 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.

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.

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 Kennedy's 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.

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, shame 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?

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.

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 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 hyenas.

That's their fucking vibe.

Lanky Puritan core, right, like plays tennis and then gets the knee swath after.

So like what do we make of that, right?

We're being told that like this woman, she's so alluring and there are so much mystery

and she's so unique and she's such an individual and then you like really look at her and

you're like, well, what is unique about this?

There's a lot of conjecture about Carolyn Kennedy because she never gave interviews.

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 and every single right 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.

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.

Oh, lit.

None of the snippets meet it out about Bessette 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 Bessette

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 long time 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 is a lot like the woman who would have been her mother-in-law.

Jacqueline Boovie Kennedy Onassis, a woman who never saw the need to hyphenate.

Once told Gore-Vidal as he relates in his memoir, Pelimpsest, 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 sales girl

to muse, is probably testament to her desire to impress Calvin the designer 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

a luring 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 is 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 tutel off

with somebody else, or insinuate that.

She was cunning in that way.

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 shows 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-doin man.

But the video that was every known clip of CBK talking was 40 seconds long.

So was she mysterious and restrained?

Or do we just literally know nothing about her?

Right.

So can you imagine if someone tried to make the same video for us, it'd be like, oh man,

we only have 5,000 hours of Katie and Carol talking, if only we knew more of their opinions.

Oh my God.

That's funny.

Because again, 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, yes, she entraped 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 heterosexuality and marriage and traditional gender norms.

Because again, like, yeah, there is nothing unique about it.

There is a core truth here, which is that the fact that you're seeing kind of glowing

coverage of her and how to emulate Carolyn Bassett 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 on to you.

And that there are these kind of custodians of the Carolyn Bassett 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 here say 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.

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 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.

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 ten 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.

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 in her backburner.

Carolyn could also give John hell.

Jesus.

Okay.

Are you familiar with the rules?

Yeah, because of a book's good kill.

We kind of got a little preview of it in the New York magazine profile.

How to be a Louvre, how to be mysterious enough to get a man to become obsessed with

you writing 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 interests 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

her 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.

She walks away and she's mouthing like, oh my god.

The story they were 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?

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 the show is love story.

Like it's so toxic, right?

It's so fucking toxic.

All right.

One of their descriptions, he has 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.

Iversity.

He actually, as far as I watched, 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 Kelvin

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, oh, okay.

She kind of has the attitude of like the early 2000s rom coms of like lucky journalist

in early New York City.

Yes.

And it's 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 Kelvin Klein

very savvy.

And he's like the perfect honk who says nothing, but somehow we feel everything.

Yeah.

JFK Jr.

Himbo.

Yeah.

Such a himbo.

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 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.

He's forgetful.

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

He's harmless and she's wily.

Yeah, you get the sense that like, were this not JFK's son?

He would just be some guy.

Right.

Right.

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,

combine wonky analysis with pop cultural savvy,

which has a bigger circulation, George or diabolical loss.

Honestly, I bet diabolicalized want one.

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 Kennedy's really ushered into our country.

The jump from John F. Kennedy and the Camelot period to Donald Trump.

That is a straight line with like Reagan bisecting it.

Well, that's the great irony, too, is that this whole narrative is 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 orchestrated every last fucking step of that then being bribed.

Bullshit.

They were like the most publicly photographed and like presenting family in American history.

So contrast that with Caroline.

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 dressers.

She like shows up and it blunt down and he's like, what is that?

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 Caroline?

And why do we the public want her to be this particular image of a woman?

And why are we kind of coding?

This is 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.

But who is he really?

Oh, hell yeah Maureen.

John Kennedy was a middle aged man with no real accomplishments.

Caroline 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.

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 junior.

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.

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

Sorry.

I refuse.

I refuse.

This does have a cottage.

It was 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.

Depending on the one of the 40 people that were there, it was either like a complete mess or this otherworldly magical event.

What was the mess?

I'm curious.

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 in 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 junior didn't have like basically 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 all the doors sealed shut for hours.

Just waiting for her to get there.

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.

Okay, so they're married now.

I'm going to have you read an excerpt from a racist wedding ourselves in the plot.

Now they're married.

I'm going to have you read an excerpt from a 2014 piece called Secrets and Lies by Edward Klein.

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 a nobled 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 coated with how the press covered Prince Harry choosing her and also really how the press covered Prince William choosing Kate Middleton.

It was wealthy, but not royal.

This reminds me of the Epstein thing where I'm 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 and spoiler.

Many of them continue dating after they get married to these women.

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 know, you're various attributes.

And whoever clicks, clicks.

I feel like we're always like, why are 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.

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

I mean, you do want to fuck me.

Number one.

Ten.

Beauty.

Number two.

Shrewd heart intelligence.

Number three.

Style.

Number three.

Unique style.

I was just about to say.

That's my moment.

I'm wearing my skiing socks.

My pattern skiing socks and my fat jeans today.

So.

I did have a dream last night that Kara and I signed a lease together.

And like only after we signed the lease, we're like, wait, what are we going to do with our husbands?

So we're like, we'll figure something out.

Okay.

So a 1999 CBS news story called JFK Jr.'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.

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 ungetable, that's the bag here that I think women often don't learn is 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.

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

Yeah.

But it does not, I will just say having read at this point a thousand pages of Kennedy man history.

It does not strain for duality to me that this relationship was not going well.

Yes, seriously.

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 infinity and episode eight.

But like up through seven, we don't have anything of that nature.

Okay.

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?

Who indeed?