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Recent
Stories
June
20, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
June
19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
Daniel Smith
Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
Intelligence
Chris
Fagen
Ignoring the World's Bloodiest War
Rick
Fantasia and Kim Voss
Bush's Low Intensity War on Labor
Sam
Hamod
Theater of Deception: Bush, Sharon,
Abbas
M.
Shahid Alam
Illuminating Tom Friedman
Jon
Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/18
June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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June
21, 2003
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Chew Swallow
Digest
By MARIA TOMCHICK
Danny Goldberg's new Dispatches
from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit
has a great premise: that the decline in political power of the
American "left" stems from its increasing alienation
from the popular cultures that define the worlds of millions
of young Americans. It's an intriguing idea, worth exploring.
Unfortunately, it's presented like the sort of marketing decision
Goldberg, a long-time recording industry executive, might make.
Instead of tacking a hit record onto his memoirs, Miramax Books
seems to have decided it needed a catchier theme and a new opening
chapter.
Goldberg managed acts from Led Zeppelin
to Nirvana, going on to help run seemingly every big L.A. corporate
music division, about one a year, through the merger-happy '90s,
before starting his own independent label. That history serves
here as a name-dropping background to Goldberg's free speech
activism (especially with the ACLU) and fundraising for Democratic
candidates. The ultimate "Hollywood liberal" political
memoir turns out to be a semi-monotonous 30-year narrative of
electoral cycles and music censorship battles, and the meetings
that love them. Zzzz.
It's hard to judge one person's account
of such now-obscure brouhahas. (Remember 2 Live Crew?) Meanwhile,
vast chunks are missing from Goldberg's discussion of his subtitled
topic. Are Democrats out of touch? His argument rests almost
entirely on adult condemnation of youth culture--stop the presses!--and
a stunningly unhip 2000 campaign featuring Tipper Gore and Joe
"I'm more religious than you" Lieberman.
But do Democratic candidates now hate
kids, or are moralistic adults bigger donors and more frequent
voters? This isn't new--Southern Dixiecrats, a major Democratic
Party bloc, were among Elvis' biggest critics, and from Spiro
Agnew to Dan Quayle to Robert Dole to Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft,
it's easy to find more recent Republican counterparts.
Older societal leaders are forever clueless
to the ways of the young. Including, apparently, Goldberg, who
fails to tell us what "teen spirit" is, how it could
be regained, or how it might be applied in politics. Youth, here,
don't have energy or ideas--only votes and disposable income.
Goldberg never once quotes or cites an actual young person; in
his world, unit sales and hip corporate executives, rather than
politicians, speak for the young. The young themselves still
don't speak.
If they did, perhaps they'd mention other
factors--like the perceived irrelevance of politicians or futility
of trying to influence them. Or they'd discuss--unlike Goldberg--non-electoral,
youth-led phenomena like the anti-globalization and sweatshop
movements, which have been ignored by Democrats. Goldberg does
discuss Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential bid, but ignores the
reasons why so many 18-to-24-year-old voters found the equally
wooden Nader (who, Goldberg reports, had no idea in 2000 who
Austin Powers was) more compelling than Gore. (Might the young
'uns be responding to--gasp!--the Democrats' anemic policies?
Or Nader's accomplishments?) Goldberg can't even tell us whether
Republicans are drawing youth votes from the Democrats (what
about Reagan?), or whether kids simply aren't voting at all.
And in discussing the elite left's antipathy for rap and hip-hop,
the wealthy, white Goldberg somehow forgets race and class.
Far more people are drawn to a good time
than to a position paper--or to a music executive's free speech
memoir. I'll take Emma Goldman's revolution any day. "The
left"--the traditional American voice of the disenfranchised,
including youth--should absolutely sneer less at pop culture,
and celebrate it more. A book on the topic would be a great idea.
Maria Tomchick
is co-editor and contributing writer
for Eat The State!,
a biweekly anti-authoritarian newspaper of political opinion,
research and humor, based in Seattle, Washington. She can be
reached at: tomchick@drizzle.com
Today's Features
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
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