9/11 and Its Aftermath in Hip-hop Culture: The Hip-hop Critique of 9/11 and the Bush Administration

They wasn't aimin' at us not at my house They hit The World Trade, The Pentagon And almost got the White House. - Dead Prez The people that's most affected by this war are the so-called hip-hop generation. - Paris September 11, 2001 is a day that will forever live in infamy. Representing the largest attack on American soil in United States history, images of the towers falling reverberated around the world, imbedding themselves in the memories of millions. As Americans searched for answers, their government took bold and decisive action. President George W. Bush declared a war on terror, and began a worldwide manhunt for the perpetrators. The Patriot Act, sanctioned torture and two …

Conventional Wisdom: Surviving the Political Theatre of Conventions

Well, thank God football is back. Tony Romo took a dump on my beloved Giants but I’ve been so starved for entertainment I’ve been watching political conventions.  Last week, I listened to some trust fund lady talk about tuna fish sandwiches, basement apartments, and Harvard in one sentence as a plea to normality.  Tonight, once Romo decided to pistol whip the Giants' defensive unit, I turned on the DNC where the owner of Costco gave a speech that was the aural equivalent of shopping there: bulky and unexciting.  Excuse me sir, can I get the four gallon tub of mayo and your political remedy for a faltering economy?  At least it didn’t resemble the Klan rally of the GOP; all those …

Black Power Pruitt Igoe Mixtape: How Two New Documentaries Make Sense of 1970s Urban America

The end of the Reagan Era, I'm like number twelve Old enough to understand the shit'll change forever They declared the war on drugs like a war on terror But it really did was let the police terrorize whoever But mostly black boys, but they would call us "niggers" And lay us on our belly, while they fingers on they triggers They boots was on our head, they dogs was on our crotches And they would beat us up if we had diamonds on our watches And they would take our drugs and money, as they pick our pockets I guess that that's the privilege of policing for some profit But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics Cause …

Where Did Parks and Recreation Go Wrong?

I wrote a piece almost a year and a half ago about the politics of Parks and Recreation, but we never ran the post because we were not quite sure it properly captured the essence of the show’s unabashedly liberal, pro-public message.  In retrospect, I’m glad we didn’t—because subsequent seasons have cast the sitcom in a rather different light.  The idealism of civil servant Leslie Knope is as sincere and refreshing as ever in an era when “government” is still used as a bad word without need of explanation, but her ambitions to do good for the community have been subordinated to a series of personal and managerial plots that have little to do with her vision of using the public …

Teaching the New Deal in the Occupy Era

During a graduate seminar this Fall, we discussed Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore’s excellent article on the New Deal, “The Long Exception,” and our thoughts inevitably turned to comparisons of the 1930s and the present moment.  These were the early days of the Occupy movement, when the protests were first beginning to confuse those who believe every political action needs to come with a bullet-point policy platform, and critics of the Left were already sharpening their critique of the smelly, lazy folks who had nothing better to do than sit around in the park all day.  To me, the protest seemed to function so beautifully because of its aimlessness.  The inertia of its …

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 …

The Big Lie of Neoliberalism

If you have received a tuition bill lately, or looked for a job in academia, you are bound to have noticed that higher education in this country is in crisis. Much of this is supposedly the result of the economic recession that began in 2007. Some say it’s the result of the housing bust—the consequence of irresponsible actions by homeowners and banks—or the financial meltdown on Wall Street in 2008. Sometimes immigrants are blamed as a drain on public resources, in order to justify budget cuts and tuition increases and layoffs. They say there’s just not enough money in the state coffers to sustain public universities as we have known them. This is a contemporary crisis, we are …

Essence Precedes Existence? The Problem of Identity Politics in Hurewitz’s Bohemian LA

What does it mean to “be” white, or black, or gay, or working-class? How might a Jewish Ethiopian-American who grew up in poverty but now has a big bank account define himself? Which identity matters most – the current status of wealth and privilege, the experience of coming from a hardscrabble background, or Jewishness or Africanness or national identity (native or adopted)? Does one dimension of identity actually have to subordinate the others? Our current president is almost always described as being black, despite having one white parent and growing up almost entirely with a white family. His own experience is far more complex than our contemporary framework of race and identity …

Building the Perfect Echo Chamber: The 1970s and Political Discourse in the 21st Century

Just before Bob Dylan breaks into “Like a Rolling Stone” on his 1966 Wembley Hall Bootleg series album, one audience member yells “sell out” while another cries “Judas” -- both references to Dylan’s famous transformation from earnest urban folkie to ironic electric hipster. Dylan growls into the microphone, “I don’t believe you,” then as several moments pass by bellows, “You’re a liar!” As the band cranks into the song, you can clearly hear an angry Dylan scream “Play it fucking loud!” Ten years later, during his Rolling Thunder Revue (1975), a crowd member sarcastically begged Dylan “to play a protest song.” The audience laughed and Dylan and the Band …

Dog Days Classics: All About Utility, Freedom, Love, Valour, Compassion

Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics since Independence This book is one that I suspected might not hold up as well today as it did when I first read it as a History major in college. At the time, Rodgers’s study of how phrases like “natural rights,” “the people,” and “the interests” evolved in American discourse over time was truly eye-opening. The garden variety insight that “natural rights” might not mean the same thing to various people over time is not much to write home about, but Rodgers goes well beyond it to show how Americans wavered between Benthamite utilitarianism and Wilsonian idealism for much of their history, from belief in …