Iron Waspy Ladies: What Annette Funicello, Lilly Pulitzer, and Margaret Thatcher Tell Us about the Cold War

For me, what makes the Cold War an interesting time is not necessarily the existential conflict itself, though we all seem to agree by now that it really was not so existential as we were led to believe. Proxy wars and diplomatic brinkmanship are important to understand and exciting to contemplate, but the role that mass culture plays in shaping the world is what most interests me. It is through culture that our worlds are ordered and made meaningful. In an illustrative example of the old “celebrities die in threes” mythology, three women who show us the changing nature of the Cold War died within days of each other earlier this month. The deaths of Annette Funicello, Lilly Pulitzer, and …

We’re All the Same Except that We’re Not: A Primer on Multiculturalism

“We are extremely skeptical about ‘multicultural’ education in settings with few or no blacks,” Charles Moskos and John Butler wrote in 1996. “Indeed, without a substantial black presence, such education can detract from blacks’ opportunity by becoming a vehicle for other ‘oppressed’ groups – women, Hispanics, Asian Americans, gays and lesbians, and so on.”[1]  For the two sociologists, blacks endured the longest and most pernicious forms of discrimination, both de jure and de facto, which immigrant groups largely avoided. Moskos and Butler even blamed the rise of multiculturalism for undermining affirmative action programs for African Americans, arguing that once …

The Fallacy of March Madness or Why I Learned to Love the NBA and Stop Worrying about the NCAAS

I am a sinner, the lowest of the low, a man from the heartland who has abandoned the clarion call of March Madness.  This morning, I awoke to no busted brackets or regretful tears over Wichita State’s massacring of tournament expectations.  When the sound of Florida Gulf Coast alley oops fell silent in the face of a Florida team led by a guy who can’t act his way out of a UPS commercial (say it with me as woodenly as possible, “I-t-’-s a-b-o-u-t l-o-g-i-s-t-i-c-s”), I shed not a single tear.  No, for the first time in my life, I refused to fill out NCAA brackets and to be honest, I feel free, like a bunch of Disney starlets on Spring Break: “Come on y’all why you actin’ …

American Basketball, American Democracy: The Meaning of March Madness

The Elite Eight is upon us, and the Final Four will be decided in a few short days. After several rounds of competition, March Madness has produced all of the excitement, enthusiasm, and sheer naked adrenaline that it is known for. Last second shots have powered schools to thrilling victories, more than once for Ohio State University. Schools like Florida Gulf Coast and Wichita State, which few had heard of prior to the last few weeks, are now the talk of the country as they continue their Cinderella runs deep into the NCAA tournament. The nation’s love affair with March Madness is a bit of an oddity given the public’s general lack of interest in college basketball. Eleven months out of …

Frankie Fitzgibbons, the Coen Brothers, and the Free Market

Some of them want to use you Some them want to get used by you Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused The Eurythmics’ synth-pop anthem seemed to speak for something about the 1980s—a cold, cool attitude that if you wanted it, you could find it on the free market (no matter how self-destructive it was).  Yet Annie Lennox’s lyrics also evoked a classical kind of of sexual supply and demand.  The whole system would approach equilibrium between those who wanted to abuse and those who wanted to be abused, and ultimately the market would align everyone’s interests, resulting in a kind of kinky harmony—the greatest good for the greatest number. Other …

Visions of FDR

On visiting my old hometown last week, I had the good fortune to meet an old teacher of mine.  She was at the hospital for the birth of her granddaughter, accompanied by her own mother, a spirited nonagenarian.  A discussion of our delight at the serendipitous meeting -- I had probably not seen this retired teacher and librarian in 15 years -- suddenly and unexpectedly turned to the sorry state of the world, the incipient rise of socialism, and the unfortunate career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  As a youth, my teacher had plumped for Goldwater in the 1960s, and her venerable mother recalled her own father railing against the "dictator" Roosevelt back in the 1930s.  The world was going …

“A Citizen, Not an American”: Obama, Santa Claus, and the Language of Identity

I like to tune in to talk radio from time to time to see what Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Neal Boortz have to say about the issues of the day.  This was of particular interest in the aftermath of the election, as liberals were jubilant and the mainstream media was consumed with chatter about demographics and a new Democratic coalition: the left won with minorities, women, and white professionals (aka yuppies, because obviously these are three discrete groups), and the coalition on the right (which still made up nearly half the vote) was “too old, too white, too male.”  Limbaugh was bound to have a field day with this. When I checked in with Boortz, though, he seemed to be …

Why Big Bird Matters

Though placing a distant third behind Mom and apple pie, there’s still not much that’s more American than Big Bird.  Sesame Street represented a do-gooder legacy of the 1960s, proposing that mass media could do more than titillate, distract, and sell soap—it could educate our children and inculcate values of decency, respect, and mutual tolerance that commercial media neglected in the pursuit of profit.  Indeed, the widespread popularity of characters like Big Bird and Elmo represented a triumph of government—something publicly funded could be just as popular as anything privately produced, if not more so.[1]  It could even be the toy of the year, sought after by harried moms and …

Richmond City Nights: Part I of the 2012 Policy History Conference

What is a conference without a solid discussion of the future prospects of the robot rights movement?  Every two years, scholars gather in burgeoning metropolises like Richmond, VA and Columbus, OH to debate the sources, implications, and meanings of public policies and the movements and people who craft them at the Policy History Conference. At June’s 2012 four day event, attendees traversed a variety of topics and issues.  In Part I, ToM looks at the impact of the New Right on gun ownership, taxes and Richard Nixon and the results and conflicts of 1970s regional developmental efforts in Denver, Detroit, and the Bay area. Guns, Taxes and the Rise of the Right Jeffrey Marlin, …

Wild Rice Casseroles of the Truman Administration

While browsing a junk shop in Elizabethton, TN (emphasis on the “beth”), I noticed an unusual book.  The store was crowded with knick-knacks that run the gamut from corny to creepy, but this slim volume stood out.  Its now-dingy yellow cover promised the secrets of “Martin Van Buren’s Cheese Cake” and “William Howard Taft’s Lobster Newburg.”  Published in 1968 by the Culinary Institute of Chicago, The Presidents’ Own White House Cookbook is one of those odd pieces of American memorabilia that, like president-themed LPs, seem like they could only ever have existed as a joke.  (Not unlike the book of 101 president-themed jokes that I got at a book fair in fourth grade.) …