Hamilton and Obamacore cringe

0:00Hamilton is turning Hamiltent. If you're the one person who doesn't yet know what this show's about, here's a synopsis. So Hamilton is the story of an orphan in the Caribbean, born in the 1750s, who comes to the United States to make his name and fortune. And I'm not throwing away my shot. Helps to lead his country through the Revolutionary War and get appointed Secretary of Treasury in the new country. Treasury. Let's go. And then in Act Two, it all falls apart, tries to set up an economic plan. I can't stop till I get this plan through Congress. He gets mired in a financial scandal that becomes a sex scandal.

0:38At his own house. Damn. And he's so embroiled in partisan rancor that he ends up getting shot in a duel by his enemy. To celebrate a decade, Hamilton is in movie theaters across the United States for the very first time. And to celebrate on Today Explained from Vox, we're going to ask if this play is now cringe.

1:24I'm Daniel Pollack-Pelsner. I teach English and theater at Portland State University, and I'm the author of Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Education of an Artist. How much time have you spent in the last several years thinking about Hamilton? I got it. It feels like that meme about how often do you think about the Roman Empire. Daily. Kind of hard to avoid this phenomenon for the past 10 years, but the musical is 10, of course, and the streaming version of Hamilton is 5. but now that's coming to theaters for the first time, and that's why we have an excuse to talk about how this musical feels different in 2025 than it did in 2015.

2:08Your thoughts. So Hamilton has these two acts, and I felt like we got to live in Act One Hamilton for a while, where we had this hope of a country that was welcoming immigrants into a coalition that was going to dream of a better future. And for the last few years, I feel like we've been living in act two Hamilton, which is, is it all going to fall apart? Are we going to become so polarized that we end up in a state of political violence? And is everything that got built before going to collapse? Where did this even come from before we talk about the politics? So Lin-Manuel Miranda, 28 years old, won a Tony Award for his first musical, In the Heights, and takes a vacation in 2008.

2:49and he's a fast reader, so he brings along one really big book to sustain him on vacation, which is Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. And as he is lying on a hammock in the beach of Playa del Carmen, he tells me that he has these, like, three insights. Number one. One is he didn't know that there was a founding father who was born outside the continental U.S. in the Caribbean. He was sort of our proto-immigrant story. I mean, really came here on a scholarship to get his education and ended up shaping the world. And Hamilton's own journey from impoverished orphanhood on this little island to becoming an architect of the American government reminded Lin-Manuel of his own father, who was born in Puerto Rico, got a scholarship to come to NYU and became an important political figure in New York and national politics.

3:41So he starts to envision the parallels between Hamilton's story and the world he lives in. And his second insight is that Hamilton's story is a hip hop story. It's got everything. It's got sex. It's got politics. It's got genius. The rise of a wordsmith from humble beginnings to making a name for himself and turning his own impoverishment into success is a story that mirrors the 90s hip hop artists that Lin-Manuel grew up loving, Biggie and Tupac especially. and that Hamilton shared their ultimate faith of pissing people off and getting shot. And then the third insight was that this show, Lin-Manuel, originally conceived of as a concept album, like musicals like that would be sung through on a record.

4:32And he got started and he premiered what became the first number of the show at the invitation of the White House in the East Room, 2009. I'm actually working on a hip-hop album. It's a concept album about the life of someone I think embodies hip-hop, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. You laugh, but it's true! And over the next six years, built up the whole arc of Hamilton's life with his collaborators, and it opened in 2015. How big did this show get? When was peak Hamilton? I think it's coming past, yeah? Well, it just keeps getting bigger. I mean, it started as a kind of, I would say, elite cachet phenomenon, where celebrities and political leaders were bragging that they could get what were scalped with very expensive tickets.

5:20The best seat in the house at current right now will take you back almost$900 a pop. I paid$725 for my ticket. But the musical is also doubling the number of$10 tickets it's making available via same-day lotteries. But by the time the cast recording came out in the fall of 2016, it became a mass phenomenon. And the album was on top of the Billboard charts. And this week, Hamilton became the first cast recording to spend 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 record charts. Taking Broadway by storm, captivating the entire country, winning tons of awards, turned musical haters into diehard fans. It was even on top of the rap charts.

6:02The show won all the awards, the Tonys, Grammy, Pulitzer Prize, and it became a conversation beyond even Broadway geeks like me so that people who just cared about American culture more broadly and how we tell American stories had an opinion about the show. Okay, now let's talk about how, for a while, it felt like we were living in the Act One of Hamilton. How directly was this show entwined with the Obama administration and the promise of hope for America? It was pretty intimately connected, Sean. So not only was the White House the venue for the initial performance of the first number. This is definitely the room where it happened, right here.

6:46But Obama's own speeches helped to create a kind of template for some of the show's musical numbers. So Lin-Manuel loved the way that Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas set Obama's Yes We Can speech to music and turned it into a music video. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Miranda thought that would be a cool way to musicalize George Washington's farewell address. And that after 45 years of my life, dedicated to its service with an upright zeal. And he even got Obama to record a cover of George Washington's number one last time after he left the White House. The faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as I myself must soon be, to the mansions of rest.

7:34So it was pretty intimately connected to the world of the Obamas, even as it had a lot of shoutouts and parallels to earlier historical and musical eras. We should point out, though, that it wasn't just the left who enjoyed the show. Obama famously said, In fact, Hamilton, I'm pretty sure, is the only thing that Dick Cheney and I agree on. That's true. Dick and Lynn Cheney both praised the show. George W. Bush likened himself to Hamilton in a wonderful documentary about the musical. And the Clintons and the Bidens were coming too. So it became the show to see and a show into which a lot of people could read their vision of America, whether that was a kind of more traditional narrative of a country where you could pull yourself up by your bootstraps and a sort of, you know, vision of a meritocracy, or whether that was even a slightly more radical vision where Black hip hop artists are quoting from the Black Lives Matter movement, trying to make this Black Lives Matter a movement, not a moment.

8:36This is not a moment, it's the movement. Calling for people to rise up and, you know, using the kind of counter-establishment language of hip hop to envision a new America. How does it turn and when does it turn? Lin-Manuel Miranda had done fundraisers for the Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2016 election. But the real tipping point came, I think, after the election when vice president-elect Mike Pence came to see the show on Broadway. Miranda, along with his producers and director, decided to write a speech for the actor playing Aaron Burr at the time, Brandon Victor Dixon, to give after this show, in which Dixon said to Mike Pence, who was sort of leaving the lobby at the time, that...

9:22We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. Even that feels kind of dated. like that anyone thought that that would work. Right. Perhaps that is the fantasy of musical theater that we can all come together for a curtain call. Pence was fine with it, but the next morning Trump started tweeting that the cast had been very rude to Pence, that Hamilton was overrated, that Hamilton needed to apologize. And in the wake of that, the show started to get security threats from MAGA supporters.

10:07One even interrupted a show in Chicago. And from then on, it really became the kind of counter-Trump show. So then the latest chapter in the saga is that Hamilton was supposed to have an upcoming performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., but after Trump got rid of all of the Democratic members of the Kennedy Center's board, Miranda and his producers pulled their show, saying that they didn't want Hamilton to appear at a Trump puppet venue. Has Trump seen Hamilton? Do we know? Not that I know of. I think his favorite show is Evita. Evita! A show that has nothing to do with the rise of populist fascism and stardom in service of authoritarian government.

10:49That was a joke. I like jokes. Has the effectiveness of the message of Hamilton dwindled over time? Back when I was just a little baby boy from Queens, I was just a founding father from 1893. Whether it's people of color playing these white colonists or not, it's still a story about white colonists and trying to sympathize with them. I'm not doing that. Some guy with an undercut just called me soy boy. Oh, don't worry, Greg. It's a nice safe space where you don't have to pretend to like Hamilton. I like Hamilton. Sure you do. We all do. I just wonder, like, over time, has Hamilton come to feel kind of cringed people?

11:32Too hopeful? Too in love with the United States and the American project? I mean, man, the things that feels most dated about it to me, Sean, is the notion that having a sex scandal would ruin your political prospects. But when I return to this show, what really strikes me is that it's a tragedy. It's set up from the start of how did this horrible thing happen, which is that one friend and political rival murdered another one. And that tragedy hangs over the whole show. And so when I see it, I guess I see less this kind of celebration of America and more a sense of how quickly the American dream can fracture.

12:15One thing I keep remembering, Sean, is that the show starts with a question. How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman Dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean By providence and poverty and squalor Grow up to be a hero and a scholar And it ends with a question Mind eyes, who tells your story? And I don't think this show provides a single answer to those questions. I think it leaves those as open questions, and they're questions that are open for us in America today.

13:06Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Education of an Artist. That's the name of Daniel Pollack Pelsner's new book. It's out next week. Hamilton is in theaters right now if you're looking to kill three hours with some open questions about America this weekend. And maybe Hamilton isn't cringe, but some Obamacore culture certainly is. We'll discuss next on Today Explained. Wait for it.

13:39life. Your feed, your group chat, even your barista. But here's the thing. Advice isn't therapy. Therapy is therapy. And if you're looking to start therapy with licensed professionals, Grow Therapy is there to help. Grow can connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the country, offering both virtual and in-person sessions. You can search therapists by what matters most to you, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Grow says there are no subscriptions and no long-term commitments.

14:19You just pay per session. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Sessions average about$21 with insurance and some pay as little as$0, depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com slash explained to get started. That's growtherapy.com slash explained. growtherapy.com slash explained. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

14:51Support for the show comes from BoxyCat. There's a lot to love about having a cat in your home. But there's one thing that even the most ardent cat lover could do without. Stinky litter boxes. Boxy says that they can help. Boxy wants to be the last kitty litter you ever try. They say the difference is in their formula, which includes probiotics that can stop bacteria that cause odors. Plus, Boxy says their clumping power is superior, making it easier to scoop so your litter box can be less stinky without any of the fake fragrances. Here's our colleague, Andrew Melnizik, to tell us more. So my sister is that cat mom.

15:28She calls them her children. So when it comes to trying anything new for them, She's incredibly skeptic and always a little hesitant. That's why I was so excited to hear that she was really enjoying Boxy's cat litter. The first thing she noticed, there was just zero issues transitioning to cats. There was no drama from them, which, you know, cats can kind of push back and be a little bit drama. It was really a miracle. If you're tired of switching litters looking for the one, get Boxy at B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T dot com. It's the last letter you'll switch to. Enjoy 30 % off with code EXPLAINED at boxycat.com slash explained.

16:08That's B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T dot com forward slash explained.

16:18Support for today's show comes from Rubrik. Many companies are deploying AI agents at this time. They automate tasks. They handle workflows. They make decisions. And here is the thing. Sometimes, according to Rubric, they mess up. They might delete the wrong file. They might make changes you didn't authorize. They might go off script. When that happens, you can get stuck trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. Enter Rubric Agent Cloud. Rubric Agent Cloud is a platform that they say lets you monitor, govern, and rewind AI agent actions. It's one platform. They say it helps you use more agents faster and without the risk.

17:00They say it runs in the background. They say it watches what's happening. They say it makes sure things stay on track. They say you can get full visibility. They say you can set guardrails so the agents don't go rogue. If your business relies on AI agents, you need the ability to monitor, govern, and rewind their actions, says Rubrik. Right now, our listeners get exclusive early access to Rubrik Agent Cloud. You can go to rubrik.com. That's R-U-B-R-I-K.com, rubrik.com.

17:41Today Explained. Today Explained. Today Explained. Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here with Nate Jones, who's a feature writer at New York Magazine and Vulture, and not so long ago, one who wrote about something called Obamacore. Is that right, Nate, for Vulture? Yes, yes, indeed. It was last August 2024, which, you know, only a year ago, but perhaps longer than that emotionally. Right. And what exactly is Obamacore for those who have never heard the term? I mean, Obamacore is the pop culture and the general culture that was sort of spurred by Obama's election. It was an outpouring of positivity and a belief that the future would always be as good as the present and a belief in institutions and just kind of a general idealism and a sincerity and an earnestness that was kind of born out of the sense that, yeah, the arc of history was always bending towards justice.

18:52And we'd kind of arrived at this sort of key marking point and things are just going to keep getting better from there. And obviously, you know, that didn't happen. And so now when we look back on it with the distance of 10 to 15 years, I think it causes a lot of hurt feelings and mixed emotions and embarrassment. And is Hamilton like the apotheosis of Obamacore? Yeah, I mean, I think Hamilton in many ways has become the single cultural object that most stands in for the Obama era as a whole. A few weeks ago, people started sending around an old 2016 Onion headline that said, DNC aiming to reconnect with working class Americans with new Hamilton-inspired Lena Dunham web series, which, you know, it became a standard for this, you know, proudly cosmopolitan, optimistic, triumphant era in American life.

19:46What else do we think of when we think of Obamacore? What else fits into the genre? Last summer when we wrote the list, we had 100 things on the list. 100? The original was 200 or 300. Give us the top 10 in your heart. Okay, the top 10. Millennial Pink, Girl Bosses, Stomp and Holler Bands, Glee, Louis C.K., Female Ghostbusters, Taylor Swift's 1989 era, The Word Mansplaining, the TV show Transparent. And then the 10th one is an Instagram filter of a woman with bangs drawing a mustache on her finger and putting it in front of her face. Is that like definitely like a Nate Jones, like number one right there?

20:38That was a late cut. That was the 101st one. How many of these things are you comfortable calling cringe now? Not of those 10, but like the whole 100? I mean, a lot of it is. I mean, it's hard, right? Because a lot of this stuff, you don't want to write the whole thing off, right? Like Moonlight is Obamacore in a way, right? And Moonlight's an amazing film. Moonlight holds up. Yeah, you know, and a lot of the music, I'd say a lot of the music really holds up. You know, some of those Miley Cyrus songs from the Bangers era, they hold up. I came in like a wrecking ball. Taylor Swift songs, you know, 1989, good album.

21:11This is something that we've seen recently. I don't know if you remember, but a few weeks ago, there was a whole week of discourse about the Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero song, Home.

21:30And people are saying, like, this is actually really bad. Worst song ever made. I would respect him more if he just went ahead and started the yoga sex cult he clearly wants to. Primarily, it is guilty of sounding like something that was composed to be played while someone is being euthanized. But that's true of most pop music. Yes, yes. And I think, you know, and in this discourse, a lot of people made the point that like, right, we have what's called the nostalgia cycle. And it kind of is generally like, you know, when something's a year ahead of its time, it looks really cool. When something's a year behind its time, it's kind of, you're kind of tired of it.

22:06When something is 20 years behind the times, it gets cool again. But when something is 10 to 15 years, that is kind of the nadir of the sine curve of coolness. And I think with a lot of this Obama-era culture, we are kind of just at the nadir of the coolness in the nostalgia cycle, right? Like we are already seeing people starting to bring back the early to mid-2000s, right? Like you look at Saltburn, that's very much nostalgia for the mid 2000s. So we probably are like five to 10 years before someone tries to bring the Obamacore stuff back. But until then, yeah, it's kind of just it's people in their late 30s thinking back on the culture of their early 20s.

22:48And reassessing it. And reassessing it, yes. And then I think the thing that specifically works with Obamacore is that there was this major thing that happened at the end of it. And it broke a lot of people's brains because one of the fundamental elements of Obamacore was a confidence. It was a confidence that the culture was on our side and that things would keep getting better. And then that didn't happen. That was proven decisively wrong, you know, in 2016. And then elements of Obamacore, I would say, still sort of survived the election of Trump in 2016, the first election. You know, I think a lot of the social elements really sort of found their full flower, right?

23:24The social movements that came along with Obama's election, if anything, they were heightened, right? Trump is when we saw Me Too. You know, that is when we saw a wider acceptance of the Black Lives Matter movement and everything. But then I think now in the second Trump era, even those social movements have kind of, I don't want to say died, like they've been killed, right? Like there has been a decisive conservative backlash that has attempted quite successfully to snuff that out. And so everything is kind of being reassessed.

23:57In preparation for this interview, I was thinking about how Chance the Rapper is kind of Obamacore. A hundred percent. Or like really Obamacore. He is one of the defining artists. Yeah. Because here's a rapper whose father literally worked with Barack Obama, but also just exuded positivity and kindness. He came from Chicago. and it just reminded me of this video of him performing at the White House for like their holiday, you know, maybe tree lighting ceremony. Sasha Obama's there like singing lyrics to Sunday Candy, which is a song, I should add, about going to church with your grandmother. Like not exactly left-right stuff here.

24:44Yeah. But everyone's smiling. It feels like pure and decent. and it doesn't feel like something we should be embarrassed of. If anything, it feels like a president celebrating the arts and the holidays and family and religion and, like, love. And you just wonder if we could get back there one day. I agree exactly what you were saying about Chance the Rapper. Like, you mentioned purity, and I think that was definitely part of it. Like, there was a longing to go back to this kind of purity of childhood in a lot of it. Like you look at Chance, you know, rapping over the theme song to Arthur, the children's TV show.

25:33There was a sense that like, oh, if we could all kind of just embrace our inner child, that is what we all need. And obviously that has definitely kind of gone away. But yeah, no, I mean, it's yes, I would love to be hopeful that we can have an era like that again and that that it won't just all be nihilism and cynicism.

26:01Nate Jones, you can check out the big Obamacore package he worked on at Vulture.com. Avishai Artsy made our show today. Jolie Myers edited. Laura Bullard checked the facts. And David Tattashore mixed. The rest of our team includes Patrick Boyd, Denise Guerra, Hadi Mawagdi, Miles Bryan, Peter Balanon-Rosen, Devin Schwartz, Rebecca Ibarra, Danielle Hewitt, and Kelly Wessinger, who joined us this week. Welcome, Kelly. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Amin Al-Assad is our supervising editor. Miranda Kennedy is our executive producer. Noelle King is in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean.

26:39And Today Explained is distributed by WNYC. The show is a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can check out more of our shows at podcasts.voxmedia.com. And you can listen to this show without ads by signing up to support us at vox.com slash members.

27:02When you guys were compiling your list, did you determine whether or not Vox was Obamacore? Vox is 100 % Obamacore, and the only reason we did not put it in was to be good corporate siblings. Vox is the ultimate of Obamacore. It is the element of Obamacore that is a culture by and for rule followers, right? It's kids who sat in the front of the class. it's people who thought that we could get a better future by having the right charts. And I'm not saying that insultingly. Like, I believed it too. I thought the right chart would make a difference. And, you know, it turns out it didn't. I'm sending this to Ezra.