Shocking! Lurid! Tawdry! A History of American Scandals

There's just something about seeing hypocrites fully exposed that is so satisfying, particularly when the takedown is as juicy and salacious and, yes, tawdry as that of Jerry Falwell Jr. You no doubt remember the Pool Boy Scandal of 2020, which began as a rumor that evangelical Christian and President of Liberty University Falwell was having an affair with a younger man named Giancarlo Granda... before Falwell released a statement saying that his wife, Becki, had the affair. And then Granda gave an explosive tell-all interview in which he recounted Falwell's participation in that affair.

Now, Hulu documentary God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty is telling the full story and it's somehow even more scandalous than we thought. (Having sex in your kid's room will do that to a story.) Kasey and Mark dive into the story, the odd, loaded references to the dark time created by playing a lot of video games, lip-syncing to sexts, and why the hell Tom Arnold makes a cameo appearance in the story.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

It's an unintentional double-header of acid heads, as Kasey follows up Mark's episode about Unmask Alice with a deep dive into an aside from the book about the CIA's Operation Midnight Climax. Yes, it sounds like some horny high school boys started a band, and no, it's not actually that much different from that. Turns out, the CIA was so adamant that no Americans could possibly have committed war crimes or found Communism interesting that the only solution to veterans saying these things is... brainwashing. If the Russians could, so could we! Except... well, things get very weird very fast. Would you believe that one man was responsible for the creation of the Haight-Asbury scene in San Francisco? Let's just say you're not gonna want to have a drink at one of George White's parties. Buckle in—this is one wild trip.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Mark went to Vegas and came back brimming over with awe at Rick Emerson's book "Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries." Do you know the book "Go Ask Alice"? Probably. You're likely less familiar with "Jay's Journal." Both books—billed as actual diaries from actual teenagers—came from the same woman, and Emerson presents a pretty damning case for the havoc her ambitions wreaked on the survivors of familial tragedy and, yes, America as a whole.

What happens to Beatrice Sparks' dream of authorial stardom deferred? Nothing less than a decades-long actual witchhunt across the country in the form of Satanic Panic. Strap in for the wild ride but be sure to purchase a copy of the riveting, infuriating "Unmask Alice."

https://www.amazon.com/Unmask-Alice-Satanic-Imposter-Notorious/dp/1637740425

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

In 2006, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nominee was... John Edwards? He'd unsuccessfully campaigned as VP for John Kerry in 2003, so he was a known quantity (unlike that Barack Obama guy). But in an arena that is rife with unforced errors, Edwards made perhaps the biggest, most outrageous string of them — all while his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of terminal cancer. Not a great look, even as Edwards vied for relevancy by getting in on that new website YouTube, with the help of one Rielle Hunter (née Lisa Jo Druck). A few National Enquirer headlines, one incredibly loyal, lying aide and many memoirs later, we finally have the full story of John, Rielle, and the ways in which affairs can go so sloppy so fast. Kasey escorts Mark through the years-long drip-drip-drip of revelations, all of them way more tawdry than you probably remember.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Some things never change. Well, not Barbara Hershey's name. Born Barbara Lynn Herzstein, Hershey changed her professional name to Barbara Seagull for a period of time in the early 1970s. Much against the advice of literally everyone. She appeared on The Dick Cavett Show to discuss the reasons behind the change (buckle up) and ended up breastfeeding her son during the broadcast. Since this was 1975, you can imagine the hysteria. This week, Mark walks Kasey through the madness of early '70s Hollywood, the perils of being "kooky," and a whole lot of spoilers for decades-old films. Plus, casual Ryan Murphy dragging and Mark and Kasey invent their Bar Fly names. Grab a drink and settle in for a wild ride.

TW: Sexual assault does come up when discussing Barbara Hershey's films. 

Apology: Mark somehow added 8 minutes of silence to the top of the initially uploaded episode. It's been corrected, and he regrets making you wait so long to hear these dulcet tones.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Before the musical, before the Got Milk? commercial brought him back into relevancy, Alexander Hamilton was one of the more combative founding fathers. The most scandal-plagued founding father? That is TBD. But today, Kasey explains how Hamilton ended up in an extramarital affair, then blackmailed, then welcomed into cuckolding and then published an entire pamphlet years after the fact about what went down. Did that kill his chances at higher office? And why exactly was Aaron Burr in everyone's lives? Grab your powdered wig and travel back in time to the invention of the political sex scandal.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Before Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, there was Janet Cooke. A reporter at The Washington Post, her byline appeared on a story headlined "Jimmy's World" about an 8-year-old heroin addict... who didn't exist. But before anyone found that out, "Jimmy's World" became a national sensation and made Cooke the first Black female Pulitzer Prize winner—an award she returned almost immediately upon winning. But there's a lot more to Janet Cooke's story than just blind ambition. Mark unpacks the OG newspaper scandal for Kasey, along with a quick rave about Margaret Sullivan's incredible memoir Newsroom Confidential, coming out October 18.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Sumner Welles was a career politician whose career was always being interrupted by personal biases. First Calvin Coolidge kicked me out because he married a friend of the Coolidges. Then FDR had to speak with him because his direct manager was shit-talking Welles and a boozy night on a train that involved propositioning a Pullman porter. 

Kasey walks Mark through the tangled web of political rivalries that led to Welles resigning in the middle of World War II and reminds us all that no one is as bitchy as a mediocre white man.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

The whole thing began for Bill Shaffer with a fountain.

Granted, the fountain is one of the few remaining examples of its kind in Manhattan and was designed by the team behind Grand Central Station. But who knew that reading a plaque one night would lead to the discovery of a half-forgotten scandal involving Alexander Hamilton's great-grandson, a sex worker, a murder, and two years of lurid headlines?

That's the story that Shaffer told in his recent book The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father's Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism. He joins Mark to discuss the writing process, the "Wait, how has no one told this story yet?" reaction throughout his research, and why his bombshell discovery remains shrouded in mystery.

Get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Scandalous-Hamiltons-Disgraced-Descendant-Journalism-ebook/dp/B09KP29JG9/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=scandalous+hamiltons&qid=1661538789&sr=8-1

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

The American veterans of the Great War just wanted that bonus the United States had promised them a little bit early. Guaranteed to pay out in 1945, a little thing called the Great Depression had them all impatient to cash it in 12 years early—so the Bonus Army traveled to Washington, D.C., to make their case. Herbert Hoover had quite enough of Hoovervilles, however, and somewhere along the way, Douglas MacArthur swooped in with the U.S. Cavalry and a tank or four to clear out the marchers' campsite. The U.S. was unprepared to care for its veterans? How shocking!

Kasey walks Mark through this underreported slice of American history that may have inadvertently helped lead to Roosevelt's victory (although he also vetoed the bill lol). 

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

It was the slap heard around the world. No, not the Oscars 2022. We're talking Los Angeles 1989 when Zsa Zsa Gabor was pulled over for expired plates and ended up embroiled in a three-week trial that made Depp v Heard look boring.

How did the Hungarian personality wind up in an El Segundo jail doing clerical work? Why was the nation so transfixed by the story of a woman slapping a police officer? And why didn't we ever get the Zsa Zsa memoir written from her dog's point of view? Mark asks all of these questions and only answers a few of them in this week's episode.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Designing Women was hardly the first show to feature clashes between performers and producers (go read about All in the Family some time). But the very public war between creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and breakout star Delta Burke included Emmy nominations, fat shaming, and a secret Barbara Walters special that no one involved with Designing Women knew Delta had filmed until it aired. Dixie Carter got dragged into the fray along the way, while Annie Potts and Jean Smart wisely stayed out of it.

Join us as Mark walks Kasey through the history of Designing Women, why Nacogdoches is a key part of his favorite joke, and what Dixie Carter had to say in a TV Guide cover story meant to do damage control. And yes, Mark bought a copy on eBay just for this episode. 

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We're living in a golden age of Martha Mitchell content, and we couldn't be more delighted.

Fresh off the success of Starz's limited series Gaslit, Kasey walks Mark through the life and scandals of our favorite Watergate whistleblower, who was discredited as a drunken grotesque by the Nixon administration as she tried to tell everyone who would listen that Nixon and CREEP were involved in the Watergate break-in. 

From her appearance on Laugh-In (where Lily Tomlin shunned her) to her imprisonment in a California hotel room by bodyguards to the chrysanthemum arrangement anonymously sent to her funeral that proclaimed "Martha Was Right," here is the wild, unlikely story of an Arkansas woman who spoke up, spoke out, and then slipped into semi-obscurity for decades.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Not to fear—neither Kasey nor Mark have encountered a career-ruining scandal or a stint in the pokey. (Yet. Everything is always a yet.) What they are doing is taking sümmer off from researching and recording! So, as Judy Garland told her audience at Carnegie Hall, "You can have an intermission. And you can smoke or drink or whatever you do at intermission, and I can't wait to see you again because you're divine."

We can't wait to be back in your ears this August!

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Political sex scandals are a dime a dozen—although certainly, uber-conservative John G. Schmitz's sex scandal (involving a secret second family) is one of the more tawdry ones.

So conservative that even the John Birch Society told him, "Nah, dude, you're too intense," Schmitz's wife was known as the "West Coast Phyllis Schlafly." Their political careers were effectively ended when his secret family was revealed—but that's not the end of the story! Tune in as Kasey walks Mark through what happened and the shocking twist that sees one of the most scandalous tabloid stories of the '90s make a surprise appearance.

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

Over the last decade, Helen Keller went from a saint to a hoax—which means the real woman has long been lost under the hagiography and now the TikTok deniers.

Among other things: Helen Keller was a devoted socialist who starred in a silent movie about her life and had her eyes replaced with glass ones. But the most telling scandal involving Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, is one that happened when she was 12 years old and newly famous. The story spiraled quickly out of control, becoming national news and resulting in Helen facing a hostile tribunal and eventually succumbing to a nervous breakdown and vowing never again to write fiction.

What happened? Why was a 12-year-old subjected to this kind of treatment? And what did Mark Twain have to say about all this? Mark walks us through "The Frost King" debacle.

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

Odds are you learned about The XYZ Affair during high school history class (even mark did, and most of his high school education came courtesy of movies screened during class). But in retrospect, the whole scandal of John Adams' presidency feels underwhelming compared to our everyday political scandals now. That is, until 2017, when the fallout of The XYZ Affair finally exploded in a national controversy. 

Let Kasey walk you through what happened, why it wouldn't have seemed like that big of a deal, and why now John Adams' administration led to the first major scandal of Trump's presidency. 

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

"Bring me a unicorn!" was the rallying cry for VC funders in Silicon Valley during its glory days, and apparently the demand from network execs looking for new content. Because over the course of a single month, we were treated to Hulu's The Dropout, Apple TV+'s WeCrashed, and Showtime's Super Pumped. 

All three are based on real-life disruptors that promised to revolutionize medicine, real estate, and taxis. All three failed to varying degrees. But we already know those scandals: Kasey and Mark want to talk about the accent and voice work that these series boast at their cores. From Amanda Seyfried's riff on Mira Sorvino in Romy and Michelle to Anne Hathaway delivering the best performance of her career as Rebecca Neumann to Uma Thurman as Ariana Huffington, these are the performances we need to discuss.

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

At last! After premiering three episodes of investigative documentary series The Way Down on HBO Max last year, the exposé of the Remnant Fellowship and its founder, Gwen Shamblin, returns for a two-part update. Has it gained anything in the aftermath of the series' revelations? Did we need another two episodes about the church and the ways in which it preyed on the vulnerable? Probably not! But then, we also didn't really need Netflix's 4-episode Bad Vegan or Hulu's 3-episode Captive Audience (to varying degrees). But Kasey and Mark watched all three series, and they have some Thoughts about this trio of shows retelling real-life bad behavior.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

Sean Young looked poised to be a star in the 1980s. She appeared in Stripes, she was the love interest in Blade Runner—instantly achieving icon status—and she was great in thriller No Way Out. Then she got cast as Vicki Vale in Batman. That should have brought her career to the next level. Instead, it was the beginning of the end.  

Years of addressing bad behavior and refusing to flatter male egos had set the stage for Sean Young to be made a Hollywood pariah. And the match that set off that fuse? He refusal to accept that Batman Returns director Tim Burton wouldn't even see her for the role of Catwoman after she was forced to drop out of Batman due to a fractured arm. 

Mark Peikert walks us through the no-nonsense behavior that primed Hollywood to gleefully take down a woman who refused to play the game, leaving us to wonder what could have been for Sean Young.  

Sean Young on The Joan Rivers Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfPTlZeVxW4 

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

Why oh why oh why oh... does Ohio have so many political scandals?  

From bad behavior to a mistress opening up about an affair with her politico boss after not being invited to his wedding, the Buckeye state has played host to a surprising number of political bad behavior. Kasey Howe walks us through some of the highlights among the lowlights.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

In early 2013, Reese Witherspoon seemed destined for Meg Ryan’s later career. Both hit it big as smart, sometimes daffy romcom blondes with more going on than initially appeared. But after winning an Oscar for Walk the Line, Reese’s movies… hadn’t exactly popped.   

Then something happened. On April 19, 2013, Reese was in the car with her husband, talent agent James Toth, when he was pulled over under suspicion of driving while intoxicated after swerving into the wrong lane. But it was Reese who got arrested for disorderly conduct.  

They were in Atlanta while Reese filmed The Good Lie (another film that would go on to make no impact at the box office), and James was pulled over just after midnight. They parked in a  Walgreens parking lot (because where else is there to park in Atlanta?) when, according to the police report, “Mrs. Witherspoon began to hang out the window and say that she did not believe that I was a real police officer. I told Mrs. Witherspoon to sit on her butt and be quiet.”  

She didn’t sit on her butt and stay quiet. Reese Witherspoon had had enough. And she made national news for it. But what did it mean for her career? Obviously it didn't impede her; she's earned her best reviews in the years since. But how did this moment in an unwanted spotlight shift her priorities? Mark walks the line from Walgreens parking lot to the current empire she's built.  

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Los Angeles is an oasis in the desert—but it's also a mirage. Because life shouldn't be sustainable to the extent that it is, and it wouldn't be if a few enterprising old dudes hadn't decided to divert water from the Valley to help L.A. prosper. What's the harm? Those farmers don't need that water, right?  

If you've ever seen Chinatown, then you know there's a lot of harm going on. Kasey walks us through the chicanery and trickery used to drain a few lakes over the years, all to keep the L.A. millionaires and movie stars in warm showers and cold drinks.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Julia Roberts was a freshly minted, Oscar-nominated movie star when she and Kiefer Sutherland (semi Hollywood royalty) announced their wedding, to be held on the Fox studio lot. That should have been an early sign of things to come. As should Kiefer's desire to have a full Thanksgiving dinner served at their June wedding (he really likes Thanksgiving, OK?). Then, days before the wedding, Julia called the whole thing off and flew to Ireland on what would have been her wedding day with Jason Patric—a close friend of Kiefer's who, perhaps not coincidentally, was disinvited from the wedding shortly before the breakup. And thus began what Julia Roberts would call her "Fellini summer." 

Host Mark Peikert walks us through the scandal that has become part of Hollywood lore for some, and has been completely forgotten by most. This marks the first installment of his three-part series Duck, Duck, You're F*cked, examining the scandals that some stars managed to slough off and one scandal that ended a promising career.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/shockingluridtawdry

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Everything has to start somewhere, right? And it was Dan Sickles who first claimed temporary insanity as a defense for murder.  

Of course, he was Congressman at the time he shot and killed his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key II, in broad daylight in Manhattan's Lafayette Square. And of course he was celebrated as a hero for "saving" women from such a rogue. 

But that's hardly the only scandal that attached itself to Sickles' name. Tune in as Kasey walks us through his messy career, from public murder (and acquittal!) to the Battle of Gettysburg to burial in Arlington cemetery.  

Watch every episode on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/shockingluridtawdry

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

A cult versus FBI armored vehicles—what could go wrong? 

Was David Koresh crazy? Not our topic today! Was the government overarmed and underprepared? Now, that we can dig into. In this week's episode, Kasey Howe looks at bad people on both sides, and the decisions that led to the live televised disaster that was Waco.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Turns out, women involved in political scandals is a pretty tough Google—mostly because very few of them were scandalous on their own. Nevertheless, in honor of Women's History Month Kasey Howe offers a pu pu platter of women behaving badly, whether they intended to or not. From Iran-Contra to extramarital affairs, here are the women breaking bad in government. And no, this isn't the Nancy Reagan episode. Mark is as disappointed as you are.

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“The Strumpet with the Trumpet.” “Nympho Dyke.” “Cocaine Slut.” “Black-Magic Voodoo Queen.”  

Somehow, a former cheerleader from upstate New York got branded all of those things by the national media when her wealthy older husband decided to divorce her after six years of marriage. They were not famous (well, sorta). But their marriage coincided with the last gasp of the freewheeling decadence of the ‘70s, so there were plenty of lurid details to air in public. And neither Roxanne Pulitzer nor estranged husband Herbert Peter Pulitzer held back in their Palm Beach divorce trial.  

After their marriage on January 12, 1976, Roxanne was officially part of the Palm Beach society crowd, and they ushered her into the fold. Unfortunately, it was a fast crowd and both she and Herbert started participating in some things—like cocaine binges and threesomes—that would come back to bite not both of them, but the wife and mother of twins.  

Eventually, Roxanne ended up humiliated on the national stage, without custody of her sons and with just $2,000 a month in alimony for two years. How did it happen? Mark delivers the dish in this torrid episode.

Lita Grey Chaplin’s greatest contribution to pop culture is not her two published memoirs or even her divorce complaint so scandalous that it was published and sold in 1927. Instead, it’s her name: Lita served as the root for Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, the most famous underage sex symbol this side of Brooke Shields in her Calvin Klein jeans.  

Though she was divorced from Charlie Chaplin by 19 and lived until the age of 87, Lita’s life was inexorably bound to her first husband and the father of her two sons—even as Charlie himself pointedly never mentioned her once in his own autobiography. Maybe he was still fuming over that divorce settlement, which came out to $8.9 million in 2020 dollars. Or maybe it was the rumor that Lita was ready to name several movie stars with whom Charlie had affairs during their marriage if he didn’t pony up the money. Either way, Lita was the one who returned to their short-lived marriage over and over again, even as she publicly, ruefully wondered how she managed to spend most of her settlement within a few years.  

Just how scandalous was their divorce? Well let’s just say that at a time when “copulation in someone’s mouth” was illegal in the state of California, Lita’s claims against Charlie could have landed him in prison for quite a while. And the public couldn’t get enough of Lita and the Little Tramp’s sex life, something Lita would later capitalize on in a highly sensationalized first memoir, My Life With Chaplin.” 

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Has anyone been so aptly named as Anthony Weiner? Of course, we only know just how apropos his name is because he kept his dick in his pants (or gray briefs) but couldn't keep his dick pics on his phone. Instead, he flung them far and wide, from his Twitter account (he was a U.S. Congressman at the time!) to ladies he met online as Carlos Danger to, ultimately, underage girls across the country.

How did a Democratic political star flame out so thoroughly and so often? What does any of this have to do with Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign? And why is Kasey so surprised that Mark is attracted to Anthony Weiner? Welcome back to Shocking! Lurid! Tawdry!, where things are getting a little more cringe in Season 2.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Sure, we all know Lucky Lindy's record-breaking flight across the Atlantic. And we all know the tragic story of his oldest son's kidnapping. But did you know that Lindbergh was both a eugenicist and a Nazi sympathizer, who accepted a medal from Hermann Göring shortly after Kristallnacht? And did you know that he had not on, not two, but three secret families in Europe, two of them with sisters? Probably not, because even the biographer who earned a Pulitzer Prize for his book on Charles Lindbergh didn't know about them.  

So how did Lindbergh go from American pariah to beloved cultural icon again? Well, you can thank Jimmy Stewart for that.   Join hosts Kasey Howe and Mark Peikert for the Season 1 finale as they take you on a tour of a life so over-the-top and riddled with bad behavior it takes both of them to tackle it all. And, not for the last time, find yourself muttering, "Poor Anne."  

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We hear it every year around the holidays: By saying "holidays," we're declaring war on Christmas! But this isn't just a free floating conspiracy theory—there was an actual event that launched a thousand flakes of infuriated spittle. How exactly are in a war on Christmas? And why? Well, that's both more complicated than you'd think and also not at all complicated. Kasey Howe walks Mark through why people think America is starting to hate the day of Jesus's birth.

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The date was December 21, 2020. That's when a Twitter user tweeted, "You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin's commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person." And the floodgates opened.

The former Hola Magazine cover star turned out to be... well, a white girl named Hillary from Boston. How did this last for 10 years? What was the fallout? And what possible explanation could there have been? Mark breaks the "nothing from the last 10 years" rule of the podcast to lead Kasey by the hand through the ups and downs and "Dios mio!" moments of the story.

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Welcome a very special guest to the podcast this week, when Ellie MacPherson brings her zest, brio, and eye for the hilarious detail to the story of one governor of New York, his two wives, and 10 children.   

Yes, it's the Nelson Rockefeller story, including a particularly rough 48 hours in the early '60s that found him possibly torpedoing his political career for love, and one of his children disappearing in Papua New Guinea. 

If you love Ellie as much as we do, then be sure to check out her cabaret act Happy Birthday, Mr. President at Manhattan's Feinstein's/54 Below this coming President's Day. And follow her on Instagram!  

For tickets:https://54below.com/events/ellie-macpherson-happy-birthday-mr-president 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellmac5/  

Logo: Jessica Balaschak | Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

When Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the,'" Lillian Hellman laughed. Then she sued McCarthy for $2.2 million.   

But that wasn't the end of it. This tossed off zinger on The Dick Cavett Show has resulted in a Broadway play with music, another stage play, and enough articles and think pieces to constitute a content farm. What is it about this lawsuit and these two writers that fascinates people more than 40 years later? Why are we still talking about Hellman v. McCarthy?  

Well, because it's a damn good line for one. But as Mark points out this week, there's a lot that one can bring to this feud. And everyone has. 

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

As "Let's go Brandon" has shown, Americans love a good eff you slogan when it comes to our politicians. But that didn't start at NASCAR. Let's go all the way back to the 1884 presidential election, when Grover Cleveland's disgusting past (involving sexual assault, committing the woman to an insane asylum, and a son) came back to bite him in the ass on the election trail as people started chanting, "Ma Ma Where's My Pa."

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

"I got through Brenda Frazier, and I'm here." —Follies

Brenda Frazier was born in 1921 and became one of the era’s infamous Poor Little Rich Girls. But the thing that set her apart from Doris Duke, Barbara Hutton, and Gloria Vanderbilt is that she didn’t have a successful second act. Even Gloria Vanderbilt had jeans!

In fact, the only reason we still know Brenda Frazier is that she went to night clubs a lot and threw a party. Her debutante party was so extreme, so over the top, that she’s still a Name people recognize. Walter Winchell coined "celebutante" to describe her. She was on the cover of Life Magazine. And her coming out party was so extreme and over-the-top and publicized that she spent the rest of her life under its shadow. As this Diane Arbus photo can attest.

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/diane-arbus-brenda-diana-duff-frazier-1938-debutante-of-the-year-at-home-3

Today we investigate what led up to that party, the insane custody battle over Brenda, and the decades-long repercussions of being America's Queen of Cafe Society.

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We sure went on a wild ride with American Crime Story: Impeachment, but the final leg of this trip was well with it. We got nuance; we got Acting; we got vulnerability. And we got a dramatization of Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky testifying—to VERY different results—before a grand jury.

Join Kasey Howe & Mark Peikert as they wrap up the 10-episode season with their take on the final two installments, which find Monica and Linda handling their newfound fame very differently, and Paula Jones left to fend for herself by the people who used and then discarded her.

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Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

If you know Boss Tweed today, it's probably from political cartoons from the 19th century about greed and graft in NYC politics. And you're right! But what you probably didn't learn is that Boss Tweed eventually went to jail—for a while.   

Here, Kasey Howe recounts his checkered career, the high cost of chairs in in the 1800s, and why an escape by sea for a man who suffered from seasickness was never going to be an easy choice.

Check out Thomas Nast's political cartoons here: https://www.thoughtco.com/thomas-nasts-campaign-against-boss-tweed-4039578

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

... And Hillary Clinton pissed off Tammy Wynette.

We're not gonna lie: Episodes 7 & 8 of Impeachment: American Crime Story (titled "The Assassination of Monica Lewinsky" and "Stand By Your Man") were tough to watch. But they're also the first time the show proved its need to exist.

Giving Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, and Hillary Clinton layers and nuances and showing how wide the chasm between their realities and the public's perception of them proved to be, these are powerhouse episodes of TV that all end in the same lesson: Men get to play semantics and smirk, while women get left out to dry.

Plus Edie Falco is finally out of bed as Hillary and acting up a storm with her glass of red while Monica takes up handicrafts and Linda watches Saturday Night Live (don't do it, Linda!).

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Truman Capote promised a masterpiece as his follow-up to In Cold Blood. Instead, Esquire readers got "La Côte Basque," a scandalous short story that dished the details of his best friend's most intimate secrets. Almost 50 years later, we're still gossiping about the fallout from that story—but only how it destroyed Truman Capote's life.  

This week, Mark shares the collateral damage from that story, which was a lot bigger than Babe Paley never speaking to Capote again. Meet Ann Woodward, or, as Truman dubbed her in the story, "Annie Get Your Gun."   

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

In this week's episode we learn that no good deed goes unpunished.   

Gary Webb was just trying to do his job when the CIA started hassling him for no reason! (Well, maybe his series of articles on the CIA and crack cocaine had something to do with it?) Meanwhile the country could not be bothered because we only cared about a blowjob.   

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Monica knows her malls, but she didn't see the trap Linda Tripp set for her in Pentagon City. She does spot a nice wine decanter though!  

That's right, we're at the interrogation portion of Monica's story, with special appearances from her mom, Ann Coulter, and 6 bottles of Champagne. What do you think Linda bought at Bath and Bodyworks? What show did Monica's grandmother see that night? And what will Monica do now?  None of those questions are answered, but we're going to keep asking anyway!  

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

The book that quickly outsold Gone With the Wind has one of the most famous opening lines in literature: "Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay."  

As it turns out, Indian summer was a lot like the woman behind those words. Grace Metalious landed into the national consciousness with the subtlety of an atom bomb upon publication of her first novel, Peyton Place, in 1956. What we take for granted after multiple seasons of Desperate Housewives (that small-town life is just as sinful as big city living) was a new concept then, and Grace's neighbor were not thrilled to be thrust under the microscope. Especially when she was so cavalier as to use an actual neighbor's name and physical description for one of her characters.

But as it turns out, Grace's fame was as fleeting as Indian summer. In 1956 she was a phenomenon. Eight years later, she was dead at age 39 of cirrhosis of the liver. Join Mark Peikert as he takes you on a journey through mid-century America that encompasses everything from incest to Lana Turner to a Bloody Mary thrown in a screenwriter's face.  

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

There's a fad diet. There's Christianity used as a weapon. There's a murder conviction. And there's big hair. Really big hair.  That's just three episodes of HBO Max's new documentary series The Way Down, about Gwen Shamblin, her Christian diet The Weigh Down, and the church she founded, the Remnant Fellowship. And somehow, Kasey Howe and Mark Peikert don't think three episodes is enough! 

Join them as they discuss the brand-new show, it's shocking revelations, and just why Gwen's ethos is so singularly Southern.  

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
usic: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

We're finally taping! At least, Linda Tripp is. She thinks it's fine, though. (It's not.) Monica's just excited that Bill is paying attention to her. (Sometimes.) But first we have to sit through an entire episode of Monica talking about Bill and micro analyzing his silence. An example she unfortunately does not follow herself.  

Join Kasey Howe and Mark Peikert as they go on a magical holiday journey with these two gal pals (and Paula Jones, who is abruptly remembered just in time for Episode 5) and wonder just what the rest of Linda's Christmas village story could be.  

If you liked this episode of Shocking! Lurid! Tawdry!, hosted by Kasey Howe and Mark Peikert, listen and subscribe to the series wherever you find podcasts!  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shocking-lurid-tawdry-a-history-of-american-scandals/id1561632107 

Logo: Jessica Balaschak
Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music