Politics & Power Quote by Tommy Rettig

Fear does a lot of work in Tommy Rettig's line, and that’s the joke: a kid’s anxiety becomes a pinball bouncing between two Americas that both claim to own the afterlife. Rettig, a former child star, frames politics as inherited identity and household weather. His mom is a Democrat; that alone feels like a high-stakes liability, not because he’s outlining a platform but because, in midcentury America, party affiliation could read like morality, patriotism, even salvation.

The comedy lands in the whiplash. “Going to hell with Monroe” evokes the hot-blooded panic of 1950s sexual scandal: Marilyn as a shorthand for temptation, tabloid shame, the kind of culture-war sermonizing that turned celebrity into a moral referendum. Then the punchline pivots: “now to Republican hell with Nixon.” Nixon symbolizes a different kind of dread - not sensuality but suspicion, hard-edged authority, the looming machinery of Cold War politics. Rettig’s “Republican hell” suggests that switching sides doesn’t end the threat; it just changes the flavor of condemnation.

Subtext: he’s mocking a world where every adult system - religion, party politics, celebrity culture - recruits children into its hysteria. The line also hints at Rettig’s own proximity to manufactured wholesomeness. A child actor sold as “good” recognizes how quickly goodness gets policed, repackaged, and weaponized. The laugh is nervous because the target isn’t Monroe or Nixon; it’s the American habit of treating politics like eternal judgment.