Every July 4th, Barstool digs into the vault for the same bit: Pardon My Take's Mount Rushmore of America game, where the hosts and a guest build out three separate mountains of the most quintessentially American stuff imaginable. This year it made the rounds again, and it's easy to see why it never gets old. It's not really about picking winners. It's about watching grown men argue over whether a hot dog eating contest belongs on the same tier as the 2nd Amendment.
The bracket fills in live: chili dogs and cold beer on one mountain, football and Hooters on another, John Cena's Bin Laden announcement and the metric system refusal rounding out a third.
That's the actual content of the bit, and it's a perfect snapshot of what makes it work. Nobody's trying to make a serious argument. It's a vibes-based ranking system for Americana, and the entries range from genuinely iconic (football, the 2nd Amendment) to deep-cut absurd (John Cena announcing Bin Laden's death belongs on a Rushmore of something, just maybe not this one). That's the charm. It's the same energy as every barstool debate show, just pointed at the country itself instead of a sport.
What made this year's recirculation a little funnier is that not every clip floating around was actually from the same taping. Some of what got reposted around the holiday was an older Pardon My Take segment with guest Kate, dated back to 2022, just repackaged with fresh holiday captions like flag emojis and "Happy 250th birthday America." It's old footage doing new duty, which is a very Barstool move -- why shoot something new when the old bit still slaps.
A resurfaced clip from an old 'Mount Rushmore w/ Kate' taping got dressed up with a 250th-birthday caption for the holiday push.
None of that really matters to the people scrolling through it on a holiday weekend, though. Whether it's this year's taping or a callback from a few summers ago, the format holds up because it's basically a Rorschach test for what people think America actually is. Chili dogs and light beer next to the 2nd Amendment and John Cena -- that's not a hierarchy anyone's meant to take seriously, and that's exactly the point.