A Day Spent Listening to Talk Radio

On a drive around the great state of Georgia, I got to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: taking the temperature of conservative talk radio.  Tuning into the AM dial is like checking into an alternate reality version of America: the commercials endlessly promote end-of-the-world survivalism; the hosts fixate on political issues and grievances that most of the rest of the country has given little, if any, thought to; and the world as these stations portray it is stuffed to the gills with robbers, rapists, child molesters, terrorists, con artists, malevolent conspiracies, and venal politicians of the most incomprehensible kind.  Talk radio is like an overweight white man stuffed into …

Nothing Is Impossible, Except for Dinosaurs (and Smart Television)

30 Rock is kind of like a microbrew. Ten or fifteen years ago, most Americans didn’t know there was an option beyond Budweiser or, if you were feeling really adventurous, Heineken.  Due to restrictive local regulations and the apathy of the American beer industry, we didn’t know that you could pack a lot more flavor (and alcohol) into a 12 oz bottle. But once you had a Ranger IPA or a Bell’s Two Hearted, why would you want to go back to Yuengling? The same goes for TV. The sitcom has rarely been celebrated as an artistic medium, with the exception of the occasional M*A*S*H* or Seinfeld, but a number of new, smarter shows hit the airwaves in the last decade. Series like Community …

A Mediating Mess: How American Post-WWII Media Undermined Democracy

Editors notes: This review originally appeared in The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture (5.2, pages 254 - 257).  Unfortunately, in its original publication, the review  misidentified Professor Morgan as Edmund rather than Edward. These errors  have been corrected here. Apologies to Prof. Edward P. Morgan for the mishap. When the Swift Boat controversy engulfed the 2004 election campaign, America’s obsession with the Vietnam War once again reared its ugly head.  Democratic candidate and decorated Vietnam Veteran John Kerry’s staunch opposition to the war upon his return from deployment drew harsh critiques from conservatives in the early 1970s and in 2004.  The …

The History Channel: Selling the Past in the Age of Reality TV

For a website dedicated to the concept of “historiography for the masses,” perhaps it was only a matter of time before the contemporary History Channel would be addressed. Once maligned for its excessive focus on World War II and military history, the History Channel of the past nonetheless remained fairly dedicated to its core concept. Historical documentaries, such as the Engineering an Empire series, The Crusades: Crescent and the Cross, The American Revolution, and Ancient Rome: Story of an Empire, tackled serious historical topics with sophistication and insight. However, following the tried and true model of channels like MTV and VH1, with their respective series the Jersey Shore …

“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 …

The Sexuality of “Whimsy”: Gender and Sex in the Films of Wes Anderson

Writing about Wes Andersen’s latest production, Moonrise Kingdom, New York Times critic A.O. Scott summarized the symbolic consummation between the film’s adolescent protagonists Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward): "There, with a tent, a French pop song and unembarrassed honesty (Sam warns Suzy that he may wet the bed), they consummate, metaphorically, an enchanted, chaste affair capped with a hilariously symbolic deflowering."  While academics, critics, and others have long discussed dominant Anderson motifs such as loving but dysfunctional families, unreliable patriarchs, and the aesthetic particulars associated with the now-veteran director, far fewer have examined the …

Emily White Killed Vic Chesnutt

As anyone in politics knows, admitting the obvious can get you into a whole lot of trouble. NPR intern Emily White recently discovered this unfortunate fact the hard way, when she admitted in a blog post that she had 11,000 music files in her library.  The problem?  She had only bought 15 CDs in her lifetime.  I for one was surprised that a 20 year old American college student would own that many CDs, period, but much of the Internet went abuzz over White’s post—some applauded her for pointing out what they see as realities of a changing digital environment, but many others reacted with indignation. Who was this insouciant young blogger who didn’t feel guilty about taking food out …

Love and Death in the Early 1990s

What do Meat Loaf, Robin Hood and Dracula have to do with the Persian Gulf War?  Filmmaker Bradlee Crawford Hicks draws out the connections in this piece, discussing his mashup, "The Highway of Love and Death." Some degree of credit--or should I say responsibility--for this video should be given to my friends Aaron Hodges and John McCann. I used to live with these gentlemen and we would often make up songs while we were cooking. John had once attended a jingle writing conference, which left him with unfathomable song powers, while Aaron had a rather deft method of jumbling up Pearl Jam lyrics; I will confess to having brought nothing to the table, other than a constant desire to be …

Joy and Pain: What Jeremy Lin Tells Us about 21st Century American Race Relations

Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don't get the same praise. -- Floyd Mayweather, Jr. It is precisely the unfixed liminality of the Asian immigrant – geographically, linguistically, and racially at odds with the context of the “national” – that has given rise to the necessity of endlessly fixing and repeating such stereotypes. -- Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 19 Floyd Mayweather is not a brain surgeon. The man punches for a living and he punches very well. However, all that head trauma must have knocked more than few synapses loose, why would Mayweather begrudge the new Asian American …

Tropics of Meta’s Best of 2011

Our friend Kevin Baker recently wondered aloud whether 2012 would be the Year that Tropics Broke, after seeing our rundown of the best papers at this year's American Historical Association meeting posted by a colleague on Facebook.  2012 might very well be the year that we auto-tune or meme our way to national notoriety, but in the meantime we would like to offer a different kind of recap: a list of our favorite pieces from 2011.  From the Mountain Goats to Melancholia, and from the inspiring scenes of the Arab Spring to the ongoing antics of the Tea Party, we have tried to offer a semi-informed perspective on the unfolding of history over the last year.  Here are some of our …