There’s a lot to be said about FX’s striking new tv series, Love Story. Maybe the fact that the soundtrack is wildly tapped in. Perhaps that social media is making Carolyn Bessette’s style another spectacle. Paul Anthony Kelly might be the white boy of the month. Or it could be that politics has the potential to undergo a revival in a new, optimistic way.
The show centers around the relationship between Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and JFK Jr. from 1992 to their deaths in 1999. And unless you have been living under a rock, the couple were “it”, pioneering a breakthrough in the press with their classic and influential presence. Individually, they achieved remarkable success; together, their collaboration made waves for generations to come. They were ahead of their time, and so was George, JFK Jr.’s political magazine (1995-2001), which altered many Americans’ approaches to and handling of politics.
The young Kennedys’ influence on American 20-somethings had a similar effect to that of Beatlemania. Being the son of President JFK held high prestige and expectation from the public. JFK Jr. was the “poster child of the intersection between politics and popular culture.” Although many awaited his presidential candidacy to continue his father’s legacy, JFK Jr. beat his own drum. It only made sense that he founded George to invite people into that world. It didn’t lean left or right, but remained non-partisan to report politics in a way the youth could digest. George became the first magazine to combine politics with pop culture, often featuring celebrities on its cover, such as Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington and interviewing people from Bill Gates to George Wallace. George set the precedent that politics doesn’t have to be boring. JFK Jr. said it himself, creating George was “a way to engage the political process.”
Moreover, a specific publication by George attempted to predict the 2020s. George’s February 1997 “Survival Guide to the Future” issue captured fears and possibilities that feel awfully familiar. A certain section titled “A Nation’s Future Foretold” pokes out to tell the 90s what was coming. It included topics on crime, education, food, sex, drugs, transportation, disease, and warfare. The similarities to the present day are jarring. Experts in the 90s believed what all of the past did: Americans would drive self-driving cars with sensors and computers/robots would perform assembly work for us. George went on to name specific occurrences, such as a nuclear Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, the main pathway by which 20% of oil consumption travels. As of February 17th, 2026, Iran has closed the Strait while negotiating with the United States on uranium enrichment. This is the first closure since the 1980s, before George’s birth. Further, environmental advocates in the feature thought “with fewer forests to absorb the carbon dioxide exhaled by humans, the weather will get weirder, as high temps melt glaciers and more violent storms.” Evidence from NASA found ice sheets are shrinking in colder climates, high-temperature events have increased, and for a whole millennium, carbon dioxide levels have not been higher than 300 ppm (parts per million). We are at 430 ppm in 2026. Nonetheless, the list continues. Conversations on contactless payment undermining the economy, computers replacing textbooks, and an inevitable epidemic echo our realities.
Although George’s scope of predictions were narrow, its predictions and optimism were there. The risk of a magazine treating politics like pop culture wasn’t random; it was radical. The mere fact that a publication cared enough to cover a subject so arbitrary shows how essential it is to us now. With social media and the Internet advancing rapidly, it would be nice to rely on a piece of unbiased physical media. Americans are starving for the truth, waiting to see what happens in the next episode of Love Story and where Carolyn Bessette got her headbands. Yet, we are losing sight of the realities we live in. But the two don’t have to compete; they can coexist and have. Maybe it’s time for a revival of George or something like it. If culture can shape politics, why can’t politics shape culture?