Into Darkness Iron Man!: Drone Strikes and Terrorism in the Post-9/11 Era

[Editor's note: For those of you who have seen neither Iron Man 3 or Star Trek: Into Darkness, there are spoilers below.] Few action films of recent years have built their origin story so thoroughly on the psychological wreckage of 9/11 America than the Iron Man series.  True, its source material remains the popular Marvel comic, but its reboot in 2008 waded deeply into the morass of terrorism, the military industrial complex, and corporate malfeasance without really addressing any them in any meaningful way.  The franchise’s third installment, the cleverly titled Iron Man 3, shrouds Tony Stark and his mechanized self in post traumatic stress disorder while invoking a nebulous debate …

London Calling: Paul Gilroy, Dick Hebdige, and British Multiculturalism

Black man gotta lot a problems But they don't mind throwing a brick White people go to school Where they teach you how to be thick White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own - “White Riot” by the Clash The winds of imperialism blow two ways. While we often focus on the impact of the colonizer on the colonized, in recent years, more and more writers have begun to also consider what colonialism has meant for imperialists on the domestic front.   Few places provide a window into this reciprocity than 1970s London.  Postwar immigration from former colonies to Britain resulted in an increasingly diverse …

An Information Security Analyst’s Take on CISPA

I often get asked what I do for a living, which has proven next to impossible to explain.  Most of the time it goes something like "I protect my company from people like Wikileaks" -- which is both correct, and wholly inaccurate.  I work in information security for a major financial services company, which means that my primary job is to protect our clients' data, money, and privacy.  As a financial institution, our business is based around a pretty simple concept: trust.  If we can't protect their money, ensure the safety of their information, or keep our systems online and available for them to use, they will move to someone who will. This all presents some interesting situations, …

The Nationalisms of the World Series

Things are set to come to a head all over again. A recent article in NYMag noted that the recent pessimism by fans of a newly fiscally restrained New York Yankees, if misplaced, hasn’t been this dour since 1992. The cover of that week’s New Yorker features the Yanks’ cast of expensive stars with crutches, canes, and wheelchairs. For a different set of fans 1992 also marks a milestone, though one considerably less somber. That was the first year that the “World Series” became even remotely international, as the Commissioner’s Trophy made its way north into Canada. So was 1993, and so—nearly—was 1994, until the baseball strike blew into the MLB fandom everywhere and …

Syriana: Responsibility to Protect or Someone Else’s Problem?

If you’ve ever taken an International Relations Theory course then it’s likely that you’ve encountered the ubiquitous naysayer or two of IR Theory. “Why does this even matter in the study of foreign policy?” “Who cares what the Athenians told the Melians (FYI: 'The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must')?” “Leaders don’t think about this stuff when formulating foreign policy!” Now, the last accusation may in fact be true. Sure, foreign policy elites are not necessarily thumbing through volumes of Morgenthau, Grotius, Kant, Wendt, and/or Waltz when deciding what to do about North Korea. But, these authors and the IR theories they construct provide useful …

Double Victory: From WWII to the AVF, African Americans and the U.S. Military

In a recent exchange between right wing town crier Bill O’Reilly and former Secretary of State and Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, Powell appeared irritated at O’Reilly’s insinuation that the former Secretary voted for Obama for racial reasons. “So you basically said to yourself I’m still going to support the guy even though his economic policies haven’t worked for African Americans and pretty much anyone else,” the host argued.   Though some have described Powell’s response as hostile or angry, to this viewer he seemed the same eternally calm presence he’s appeared to be since embedding himself in the national conscience in the early 1990s. “Why do you …

Freddy from Mad Men, and Mass Murder in Obama’s America

I think I first became aware of Bobcat Goldthwait when he appeared on the seminal sitcom Married… with Children as one of Peg Bundy’s many degenerate relatives from the Wanker family.  His uniquely grizzled and whinnying voice sticks in the memory, like Gilbert Gottfried’s or Sam Kinison’s (both Married alums, incidentally), and it seems to have been genetically transferred to Charlie of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, breaking through in the illiterate janitor’s most strained, frantic moments.  It bespeaks sincerity, frazzle, anger, and hard luck all at once.  The comics who appeared on Married—a show that prefigured the amorality of Seinfeld and It’s Always Sunny as …

Inauthentic Authenticity: Ian Svenonius and the Challenge of Indie Rock Satire in an MP3 World

Saturday night, Washington D.C., a stone’s throw from one of D.C. hardcore’s central nodes and the playground of Nation of Ulysses (NOU) front man Ian Svenonius: the Embassy in Mt. Pleasant.  In the late 1980s and 1990s, Svenonius, NOU, and other D.C. punks used to gather at the Embassy to discuss music, politics, and agit prop, even serving as an ally to the Riot Grrrl movement when Kathleen Hanna and others left Washington for a sojourn to the capital in what for many, became a transformative experience.   Tonight, though, sitting in independent book store Politics and Prose and waiting for Svenonius to appear from on high to assault us with his latest philosophical tract, the shop …

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 …

Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California

In the weeks following the 2012 presidential election, the media greeted Barack Obama’s victory with a slew of articles focusing on the apparent coalition that formed around the President’s reelection campaign.  While Mitt Romney garnered a majority of white males, Obama secured clear victories among women and Asian, African, and Latino Americans.  Notably, Latino and Asian Americans threw their collective support behind the president at rates above 70% and were the only two groups whose margins for Obama increased.   Admittedly, Latino immigration has declined significantly.  As a recent Economist leader pointed out, “Fewer Mexicans now move to the United States than come back …