Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Nov 26, 2023

Garry Wills and the Real Kennedy Curse

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, talking with Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman about the toxic legacy of a famous family.

The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.

Garry Wills and the Real Kennedy Curse
byThe Nation Company LLC

For this week's episode of The Time of Monsters, I’m doing a joint podcast with the crew from Know York Enemy (Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman) talking about the legacy of the Kennedy family.

Our talk is based on our shared love for Garry Wills’ The Kennedy Imprisonment, a revelatory book about not just the Kennedy family but the nature of 'great man politics.'

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American financier and ambassador Joseph Kennedy (right) sits on a couch with his son, future American President John F. Kennedy in 1938.

(Pictorial Parade / Getty Images)

For this week’s episode of The Time of Monsters, I’m doing a joint podcast with the crew from Know Your Enemy (Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman) talking about the legacy of the Kennedy family.

Our talk is based on our shared love for Garry Wills’s The Kennedy Imprisonment, a revelatory book about not just the Kennedy family but also the nature of “great-man politics.”

This is an in-depth discussion that touches on many topics including the mainstreaming of Catholicism in the 1950s, the appeasement policies of the British ruling class in the 1930s, Cold War liberalism’s embrace of elitism, macho culture and misogyny, and mass movements as an alternative to great-man politics. 

Know Your Enemy is one of my favorite podcasts. I very much admire its mixture of scholarly knowledge and political urgency. It was a pleasure to join Sam and Matt for this discussion.

The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.

Fighting Trump’s Corruption w/ Chris Lehmann
byThe Nation Company LLC

Donald Trump is corrupt on a scale that puts all other criminal presidents, including Richard Nixon, to shame. One recent example is the so-called Anti-Weaponization fund of $1,776,000,000, being deployed to reward convicted criminals who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump and his cronies are also profiting from billion-dollar deals with foreign governments and engaged in stock market trading while in office. 

My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann has written about this in a recent column. We talk about both the corruption, and the political tools Democrats can use to fight it.

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With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

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Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.

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