Clinton Boxers or Briefs (1994) w/ Kelsey and Alex from Normal Gossip

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s May 7th. This day in 1994, during a town hall airing on MTV, President Bill Clinton is asked whether he wears “boxers or briefs.”

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined once again by the hosts of Normal Gossip to discuss why MTV was hosting a town hall with the president, why Clinton even bothered to answer — and what we make of the more gossipy political interview approach.

Be sure to check out Normal Gossip wherever you get your podcasts!

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:09.0	We are once again joined by our friends from Normal Gossip the second of two episodes on some gossipy moments from American history.
0:17.0	Today, the day in 1994, when President Bill Clinton is doing a town hall on MTV centered on gun violence in America and
0:25.9	then towards the end of that town hall an audience member asks him a simple three-word
0:31.0	question boxers or briefs.
0:34.3	Bill Clinton certainly could have said, I'm the president of the United States, I'm not going
0:37.1	to answer that, but he does answer it.
0:39.3	The answer becomes a bit of a sensation.
0:41.4	The next day, all the tabloids are talking about the policy
0:44.4	proposals he laid out to tackle gun violence and no of course they're not talking
0:47.6	about that. They are talking about the boxers or briefs moment and it kind of
0:51.8	echoes through the ages as a question that other
0:53.9	candidates have gotten so let's talk about that moment back with us are Kelsey
0:59.2	McKinney and Alex Sujang Laughlin of the Radiotopia Podcast Normal Gossip. Thanks again for doing this.
1:05.5	Thanks for having us. We're excited to be here. Thank you. And here as always,
1:09.3	Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hello there. Hi Jody. Hello there. Hi dirty. Hey there.
1:14.6	Nicky I know you wrote your book mostly about conservative media in this era but
1:18.8	certainly you're our watcher of this era and media and so while Rush Limbaugh is off doing whatever he does on the radio
1:26.7	M TV is trying to become some sort of big political force so you want to just paint that
1:31.0	landscape for us before we get to this this moment?
1:33.2	Sure in the 1980s there was this massive expansion of cable right so there were all of these
	...

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