Following today's mob violence at the U.S. capitol building, we break down how, once again, American media would rather ignore homegrown currents of white supremacist vigilantism and their buddy buddy relationship with law enforcement and focus instead on how an anomalous President Trump makes us like those horrible poor people of the Global South.
"Sen. Mark Warner said progressives' calls to 'defund the police' were in part to blame for Democratic losses in the House in a cycle when the party was expected to gain seats," The Hill tells us. "How ’defund the police' sabotaged Democrats on Election Day," Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune writes."'Defund the police’ is killing our party, and we’ve got to stop it," said South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn. In the wake of the Democrats’ disappointing Congressional showing in last mont...
This is the second installment of our scoldy, buzzkill, two-part episode on Obama-era media failures we should be on the look out for as the Biden administration takes office. On this episode, we examine five more tropes that, sadly, are already being resurrected. Our guest is Roberto Lovato, author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas.
In light of John Kerry's new "national security" climate role, we follow up on Episode 122 by reading policy papers published by John Kerry's think tank. Hint: they want more money for the Pentagon, ICE, and Border Patrol.
President-elect Joe Biden has promised what he calls a return to "decency" and "unity," and American media has broadly characterized his victory over Donald Trump as, in the words of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, "The Third Term of the Obama Presidency." Many of the same holdovers — Samantha Power, Antony Blinken, Michèle Flournoy, Bob McDonald, Jake Sullivan, Susan Rice, Sally Yates, John Kerry and many in the revolving think tank, consulting outfits, marketing firms, undersecretary ad...
A CNN headline from this past summer read: “Mental health during coronavirus: Tips for processing your feelings.” Psychology Today gave us an article on “Coping With Loneliness During a Pandemic,” while the Washington Post presents, “A guide to taking care of yourself during the pandemic.” Everywhere we’ve turned over the past 9 months, American media has been covering the mental health downside of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown and economic crash on one of these two settings:...
In this News Brief, we talk with journalist Ashoka Jegroo about Giuliani's long history of racism, white liberal New Yorkers providing cover for his carceral sociopathy because they liked the results, and the pathetic, inevitable final chapter of the former New York mayor.
"Joe Biden Calls For ‘Immediate, Full And Transparent Investigation’ Into Jacob Blake Shooting," Forbes reports. "Obama Fraud Task Force Takes on the Big Banks," Bloomberg News proclaims. "Democratic lawmakers call for vote on bill to study reparations," announces CNN. It seems that every time there’s a movement toward righting a historical or current wrong, whether police violence, corporate abuses, or climate. change, policymakers muster the same tepid “solution”: initiate a committee, investi...
In this Sight Unseen film review, we recap the ideological currents and industry backers of J.D. Vance's white trash whisperer shtick and how it blames everyone for Appalachian poverty but corporations and Republicans.
In this post-election News Brief we discuss the various modes of cope and responsibility skirting.
Pete Buttigieg wants to create “a Senior Climate Security role in the Secretary of Defense’s office responsible for managing climate security risks.” Elizabeth Warren insists “our military can help lead the fight in combating climate change.” And the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis tells us our primary goal should be to “Confront Climate Risks to America’s National Security and Restore America’s Leadership on the International Stage.” Everywhere we turn in liberal discou...
“Climate change is real.” “Three words — science, science, and science.” “From coastal towns to rural farms to urban centers, climate change poses an existential threat.” “Now it is time to put our coalition to work and pass bold climate solutions.” These are just some of the many statements — all of them true — that the U.S. public routinely hears from its Democratic Party leaders, expressing their unbridled commitment to acting on the ever-urgent issue of climate change. But there is a tremend...
In this News Brief follow up to Episode 115 on Hollywood's symbiotic relationship with the Pentagon and CIA, we spoke with director and screenwriter Oliver Stone about his experience making mainstream motion pictures about often taboo subjects like the American imperialism and war crimes.
Every year, a series of highly anticipated listicles of "successful" and "influential" people hailed for their accomplishments surface in corporate media. Forbes reveals the most successful 30 people under the age of 30, and Fortune hails the most successful 40 Under 40. Meanwhile, other business outlets like TechCrunch, Fast Company and CNBC seek a taste of the hype with their own spinoffs. Each time one of these lists is published, a flurry of meta-press ensues. CNN, BBC, and The Los Angeles T...
By now, it's largely taken for granted that country music is a racialized signifier, interchangeable with right-wing politics. And it’s not such an unreasonable generalization: the political currents of twanged and drawled patriotic paeans like Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," and Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" leave little to the imagination. But how, exactly, did this come to be? After all, country music, a descen...
Waiting tables. Bartending. Hospitality, food delivery, beauty salons, rideshare driving. The service industry, as anyone who has worked in it knows all too well, is notorious for relying on tipping to undercut employee wages and deputize individual customers to determine how much money a worker should be able to take home. Amid increasing recognition of these injustices, a number of campaigns and new laws surfaced, pre-pandemic, to abolish or meaningfully reduce the practice of tipping. But des...
"U.S. military tactics falling behind those of adversaries, Pentagon official warns," The Guardian proclaims. "Russian Propaganda Is Pervasive, and America Is Behind the Power Curve in Countering It," reads a report from the RAND Corporation. "U.S. falling behind in new space race, says CIA's former head of science and tech," cautions CBS News. U.S. media consistently characterize the United States – a country with nearly 800 military bases worldwide and an ever-climbing annual defense budget th...
One point brought up in Episode 116, highlighting the connection between real estate interests and over-policing, solicited a lot of feedback from listeners. In this News Brief, we wanted to expand upon this topic by interviewing an academic source we cited in the episode: assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Denver Brenden Beck, whose work focuses on the intersection between "urban development" projects and the targeted, sustain harassment of communities of color....
The popularity of HGTV house-flipping TV shows can’t be overstated: In the second week of July, HGTV was the fourth highest rated cable network, behind only Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, making it the highest rated entertainment network in the United States. Its most prominent programming: the reliable, risk free formula of home flipping shows. All of these shows—Flip or Flop and its many regional spinoffs, Good Bones, Flipping 101, to name just a few—share a basic formula: house-flippers, usually a ...
For over a hundred years, the American film industry has been promoting and glorifying U.S. foreign policy, initially working with the military and Department of Defense, and eventually, the CIA as well. From its origins as a producer of wartime propaganda like 1911’s The Military Air-Scout to its contemporary role as purveyor of high-tech action epics like Iron Man, Hollywood and the American war machine reinforce each other — myth and politics intertwine. In the process, the entertainment indu...
Our cultural context for understanding what we see on the news and hear in our politics, is often informed by the films and TV shows we’ve grown up watching. Pop culture is powerful and persuasive, and — for a century now — racist, Orientalist and cartoonish portrayals of Arabs and Muslims have littered our screens, big and small. This is the second episode in our three-part Citations Needed series on anti-Muslim racism in Hollywood. On Part I, we discussed big budget action and adventure films ...
A bizarrely vague, cliquish letter demanding everyone be open-minded has no interest in explaining what, precisely, it wants.
The United States and its close allies Saudi Arabia and Israel have been bombing and occupying large sections of the so-called “Muslim world” for decades – drastically ramping up after the 9/11 attacks and seemingly with no end in sight. The U.S., like all empires, cannot operate a large, complex system premised on violence, meddling and subjugation without a moral pretext. This moral pretext, even before 9/11, was primarily about fighting a war on so-called “Terrorism” or “Islamic extremism” wh...
"Polarization Is Dividing American Society, Not Just Politics,” laments The New York Times . “The Constitution Is Threatened by Tribalism,” frets The Atlantic . “American politics has reached peak polarization,” declares Vox. After the past few election cycles, and as uprisings occur throughout the country, we’ve seen endless concern about our alleged zenith of “polarization” and “tribalism.” The Right and the Left, we are told, have grown too radical and today lack the ability to “get things do...
“Obama lauds small business owners in his State of the Union,” announced The Washington Post. “I have always said that there is nothing more optimistic – perhaps maybe getting married – than starting a small business,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells us. “John Kerry would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses,” insisted a reelection ad for George W. Bush. Everywhere we turn we are centering the needs of and reminded of the glowing status of the “small business.” They are the bipartisan holiest of h...
In this News Brief we recap the recent mainstream pushback against pro-police pop culture, and discuss how this pushback is raising fundamental questions about the supposed firewall between creators and the political content they produce.
In this News Brief we examine the old––and new––ways police and government officials seek to undermine and divide the George Floyd protests.
In this News Brief we catch up on the patronizing, racist media coverage of protests in Minneapolis....
Trump is likely pinning his reelection hopes on "reopening" the NFL––a grand media spectacle that will signal victory over the virus and usher in a new low in Triggering The Libs politics. A cynical corporate media and pro-Trump billionaire NFL owners are happy to go along with it. But will NFL players? Will Democratic Party leaders? What will a "safe reopening" look like and how, more broadly, should the Left and liberals counter the Right's nihilistic "reopen" narrative? On this News Brief, we...
“Free markets drive innovation!” It’s a narrative imparted to us ad nauseam. The ultimate catalyst of creation and progress — we’re told by policymakers, business executives, think tanks, and the media outlets that bolster them — in which great strides in healthcare, electronics, media, and other areas are the domain of private enterprise motivated by competition and profit, and unencumbered by state intervention. As the prospect of socialism — or at least the word “socialism” — regains currency...
