Focus groups have long-been derided by the left, right, and center for watering down culture and reducing creative and political endeavors to dull, show-of-hand reductionism. But what if focus groups – which first arose from socialist experiments in 1920s Vienna – are not inherently bad? What if they've simply been exploited by the capitalist class and could, potentially, have much to offer a left-wing, democratic vision of the world? We are joined by author and professor Liza Featherstone to di...
Nov 21, 2018•40 min
In the wake of the 2016 election, many conservatives, liberals, and - unfortunately - even some on the left pointed to Democrats' reliance on so-called "identity politics" to explain Donald Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton. One of the most popular manifestations of this sentiment was the controversy surrounding bathrooms and transgender rights. The general theory was that some unspecified cohort of voters, outraged by the oppressive nature of trans politics, responded by voting for a r...
Nov 14, 2018•55 min
“Bush didn’t send enough Troops.” “Trump needs authorization from Congress before launching a war.” “Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories are not helpful.” We hear these liberal objections to war and occupation all the time. On the surface, they sound opposed to injustice—and maybe sometimes are—but what if, more often than not, they nitpick process, protocol, and procedure without ever offering substantive, existential critiques of American war-making and militar...
Nov 07, 2018•1 hr 13 min
Jake Tapper’s career trajectory is an object lesson in how to succeed in corporate media. The formula generally goes like this: go after the fringes of the left and the right––but mostly the left. Never offend any traditional centers of power. Mug. Constantly mug for the camera. Hitch your brand to “The Troops” And-always, always––attack from the neoconservative right. As previously discussed in our John McCain News Brief, the issue with John McCain was less so about the man himself but what he ...
Oct 31, 2018•1 hr 3 min
"The suspect fled on foot, police said. Call this number if you have any information." "The incident took place at the 1200 block of Grove." "Police say." "Police sources are telling us." "Suspect is thought to be armed and dangerous." We’ve all heard this type of Official Copspeak before. The local press dutifully informs us about "suspects" and "gang members" and "burglars." They're infiltrating our neighborhoods, rampaging through our streets, climbing in our windows. The police, of course, a...
Oct 17, 2018•1 hr 3 min
Trump says he opposed the war in Iraq, but in fact said he supported it in an obscure interview in 2004. McCain was for the tax cuts before he was against them. Republicans say they’re Christians, yet support a philandering liar. Hypocrisy takedowns – which reached peak popularity during the heyday of The Daily Show – have been the bread and butter of liberal discourse for years. Gawker founder Nick Denton famously said that “Hypocrisy was the only modern sin”––doctrine-driven ideologies had bee...
Oct 10, 2018•50 min
"Diversity" is a simultaneously important and buzzword-y term beloved by the media, corporations, real estate agents and elite universities. It’s something to strive for and take pride in, a symbol of inclusion and tolerance. While diversity is a noble feature – and something all large systems should strive for – it originally was not supposed to be an ends in-and-of-itself. Diversity, in this vein, has morphed under capitalism into a PR industry, supplanting notions of equity, decolonization an...
Oct 03, 2018•1 hr 9 min
Post-Cold War liberal chauvinism knew no better ideological conduit than the hit NBC series The West Wing . Foreign policy was imperial, staffers were self-satisfied, and Serious Democrats fended off radical leftists and made the Tough Choices needed to run a benevolent superpower. The West Wing , created and primarily written by Aaron Sorkin, heavily influenced the politics of dozens of high-status Obama-era liberals. By their own admission, we know it had among its superfans Obama staffers Sam...
Sep 26, 2018•57 min
With recent primary election wins by candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, James Thompson, Julia Salazar and others, the terms “socialist” and “democratic socialist” are everywhere. Media outlets across the political spectrum - from The Washington Post andBusiness Insider to NPR and MSNBC to Jacobin - have rushed to publish explainer articles, demystifying the tenets of socialism and its variations for a mass American audience. But one thing missing from the bulk of these expl...
Sep 19, 2018•1 hr 12 min
In the mid-1990s there was a rhetorical and cultural shift on the issue of abortion, namely the result of anti-abortion activists successfully introducing the term "partial birth abortion" into both the media and cultural lexicon. Major Democrats conceded the language, along with the moral high ground, to the extremist right-wing. They hammered home the message that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" - signaling that abortion was something to be ashamed of, a barely tolerable abomination...
Sep 12, 2018•46 min
From the shame-inducing “safe, legal and rare” framing of the 1990s to normalizing efforts like the #ShoutYourAbortion campaign and an uptick in abortion plot lines in mainstream television, dialogue surrounding abortion has shifted in recent years from one of apologism and soft-pedaling to a more frank, straightforward approach. These efforts, largely animated by Republican attacks on reproductive health since the Tea Party wave of 2010, seek to take back the moral high ground on an issue Democ...
Sep 05, 2018•49 min
There must be an account for the thousands of dead Arabs and Asians McCain helped create. On this News Brief we attempt to do that.
Aug 26, 2018•19 min
Since there's been America, there have been American war crimes, and since there have been American war crimes, there's been a parallel cottage industry of hacks, shills and propagandists willing to not only apologize for, deny and downplay these crimes, but actually spin them as benevolent charity. While Karl Rove mastered the art of taking a politician's weakness and projecting it onto one’s opponent, the American political and media class has mastered the art of taking the most blatant crimes...
Aug 08, 2018•49 min
Russia, as we all know, has sinister “oligarchs” whereas in the United States, we are told, we have “philanthropists,” “job creators,” and “titans of industry” who earn their wealth through hard work, moxie, and guile. Aside from a few cartoonishly evil billionaires – like the Walton family, Peter Thiel, and the Koch brothers – the average American has a warm and fuzzy feeling about the super wealthy. The most notable of these Benevolent Billionaires is Bill Gates, whose foundation, The Bill and...
Aug 01, 2018•55 min
Russia, as we all know, has sinister “oligarchs” whereas in the United States, we are told, we have “philanthropists,” “job creators,” and “titans of industry” who earn their wealth through hard work, moxie, and guile. Aside from a few cartoonishly evil billionaires – like the Walton family, Peter Thiel, and the Koch brothers – the average American has a warm and fuzzy feeling about the super wealthy. The most notable of these Benevolent Billionaires is Bill Gates, whose foundation, The Bill and...
Jul 25, 2018•1 hr 9 min
For over two years, the U.S. government has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election - interference broadly considered to be in favor of candidate Donald Trump. As a result, a bizarre flip has occurred with the Right and Left: Polls show liberals now trust the FBI and CIA, while many right-wingers – though by no means all – suddenly act concerned about the so-called “deep state.” Liberals have been turned into even more extreme hawks, not just on the issue of Russia, but anyt...
Jul 18, 2018•52 min
For over two years, the U.S. government has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election - interference broadly considered to be in favor of candidate Donald Trump. As a result, a bizarre flip has occurred with the Right and Left: Polls show liberals now trust the FBI and CIA, while many right-wingers – though by no means all – suddenly act concerned about the so-called “deep state.” Liberals have been turned into even more extreme hawks, not just on the issue of Russia, but anyt...
Jul 11, 2018•49 min
With the rise of Trump, Sanders, Corbyn and Brexit, hundreds of pundits, reporters, and talking heads have been warning about the problems of "populism" and its alleged attack on democracy over the past three years. “ Populism and immigration pose major threat to global democracy ,” the Gates Foundation insists. “ The Dangerous Rise of Populism - Global Attacks on Human Rights Values ,“ wrote Human Rights Watch in 2017. “ Trump's Rise Proves How Dangerous Populism Is for Democracy ” NBC says. “ ...
Jun 27, 2018•1 hr
Healthcare marketplaces,” “private insurers competing for your business” “insurance subsidies,” For years, Democrats bet big on framing the healthcare debate using technocratic, capitalist terms––they weren’t going to radically change the system of healthcare, simply accent the existing private insurance-based model making things “smarter,” “easier,” more “tech-driven.” As the Affordable Care Act faces continued right-wing attacks and liberal-leaning activists increasingly look to single-payer, ...
Jun 20, 2018•58 min
They’re not lies, they’re “falsehoods”; it’s not racism, it’s “racially charged comments”; it’s not torture, it’s “enhanced interrogation.” For years, U.S. media has prioritized, above all else, norms and civility. Mean words or questioning motives are signs of declining civility and the subject of much lament from our media class. However, op-eds explicitly advocating war, invasion, sanctions, sabotage, bombing and occupation or cutting vital programs and lifelines for the poor are just the cos...
Jun 13, 2018•53 min
The United States, far and away, has the largest prison population in the world. It also has one of the greatest disparities in their prison population of ethnic minorities in the world. How does a country that prides itself on being a “beacon of freedom” and whose leaders travel the world scolding other countries on “human rights” find itself to be the largest carceral state of the 21st century? What are the cultural forces that reinforce racist attitudes, deference to the police and prosecutor...
Jun 06, 2018•1 hr 19 min
“Baby Boomers are bloating the social safety net!” “GenXers are changing the nature of work!” “Millennials are killing the housing market!". The media endlessly feeds us stories about how one generation or another is engaging in some collective act of moral failing that, either explicitly or by implication, harms another generation. It’s a widely-mocked cliché at this point, namely the near-constant analyses detailing what Millennials have “killed” or “ruined” lately - everything from Applebee's...
May 23, 2018•44 min
"A pillar of the community"." A straight-A student who dreamed of becoming a doctor". "A loving father"."Here through no fault of their own". "She was hysterical and out of control." "He was no angel." The press, both local and national, humanizes some victims of state or corporate violence, while demonizing others. Despite good intentions and seemingly without noticing, the media all too often create tiered systems of moral worth by trying to find “the perfect victim.” The media’s search for th...
May 16, 2018•1 hr 9 min
For decades, Canada has been a go-to point of reference for American progressives as a country the United States can and should strive to be. And while there are many parts about Canadian society that are measurably preferable, leftists in Canada find their country's glossy, socialist paradise image to be overblown and often a barrier to meaningful change. This episode examines this tension, the reality versus perception, what we can learn from each other, and the common and existential thread w...
May 09, 2018•1 hr 11 min
When Americans read about the Korean "conflict" in the Western press, the articles are populated almost entirely with Serious Western Talking Heads, weapons contractor-funded think tank "fellows," and former and current U.S. military brass. Who's never consulted, much less heeded, are peace and left activists from the Korean peninsula. The notion that perma-hostility from the U.S. and arming the South to the teeth is in Korea's best interest -- and is assumed to be popular -- is simply taken for...
Apr 25, 2018•1 hr 3 min
MSNBC is by far the most influential mainstream media outlet on the American Left. It sets the tone and defines the boundary for what is acceptable discourse among American liberals. But major issues the Left is generally thought to care about - imperial war, worker strikes, Palestine, climate change - are almost entirely absent from coverage, as the network increasingly looks like a 24-hour Trump-Russia infomercial. What is the point of having a liberal cable news network when it ignores so man...
Apr 18, 2018•55 min
The unlikely rise of Trump in the past three years has created a chasm in the Republican party: those who embrace the President’s wild, unorthodox, nativist style and those who––with much posturing and self congratulation––reject his brand of conservatism. The latter group, generally called “NeverTrump” Republicans, occupies a special, protected status in Serious Centrist media––despite representing only 5% of the population. Major outlets like The Washington Post, The Atlantic and the New York ...
Apr 11, 2018•45 min
We’ve heard this scare story a million times: A theater group at Wesleyan won’t perform The Vagina Monologues because it’s offensive to trans women! Oberlin is banning classes featuring white authorsI Rich, sheltered college students, increasingly indoctrinated by radical Marxist professors, are asking for safe spaces! But how much merit is there to the popular trope that college kids are hypersensitive and coddled? Is there really a free speech crisis America’s campuses? What are the origins of...
Mar 28, 2018•1 hr 6 min
We’ve seen the headlines hundreds of times: “ISIS plot foiled”, “ISIS in Brooklyn", “Woman Stopped At Airport on way to join ISIS”. These stories strike fear into the hearts of Americans everywhere, especially in the build up to the war effort against ISIS in Summer 2014. The terror group was everywhere, recruiting our teenagers and attempting to strike in every major city––seemingly all at once. But what do these headlines mean exact? What is an “ISIS plot”? What is the gap between the image th...
Mar 21, 2018•1 hr 18 min
Fighting against the far right forces of the Republican Party and their auxiliary white supremacist media makes attempts to appropriate notions of nationalism into a liberal mold a compelling short cut for Democrats looking for easy clapbacks and viral RT’s. The temptation to promote a kinder, gentler, "woke" patriotism is understandable. But what is the collateral damage of this approach? From the justifiably horrified response to mass shootings to the jingoistic worship of all things military,...
Mar 14, 2018•1 hr 2 min
