93 posts tagged with culture and america.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 93. Subscribe:
Running with Nihilism
Appearances, however, can be deceptive. And what is now true about the culture wars I have spent much of my career describing (and rebuking) is that beneath the apparent polarization, beneath our seemingly incommensurable differences, we increasingly inhabit a common culture. Yet this common culture is not constructive. It is not a culture rooted in a shared positive vision of what America is, should be, can be. Exactly the opposite. Our emerging common culture is chillingly nihilistic. from Culture Wars: The Endgame [The Hedgehog Review]
Don't Tell America the Babysitter's Dead
For decades, babysitting was both a job and a rite of passage. Now it feels more like a symbol of a bygone American era. (SL Atlantic / Archive)
I tend to just see it, and I give it
those who bring “heat” and those who bring “light"
Cancel culture has its merits, but the left is ready for a better approach [LA Times]. It used to be almost exclusively the political right that complained about the amorphous bogeyman known as “cancel culture.” Recently, at our research center dedicated to diversity and inclusion, we’ve noticed an intriguing shift in the zeitgeist: Complaints have started surfacing on the left. [more inside]
Unvanquished
On Iraq’s art under two decades of occupation. An often overlooked aspect of this story is how these artists had worked to develop a sense of appreciation among local audiences, who were being introduced to a new definition of art spread by a heterogeneous global modernism, the paradigms of which were distinct from those of preexisting traditions. They also inaugurated educational programs, galleries and art museums, publications, and other modalities of displaying, disseminating, and convening around artistic production. These efforts had a tremendous impact not only in Iraq but throughout the region. One of the catastrophic repercussions of the invasion was that it undermined decades of that labor.
When Did Hospitality Get So Hostile?
In a new era of rage, dining out has become downright volatile — with both customers and servers aggrieved. [slNYT] [more inside]
Is New York Turning Into Los Angeles?
Quintessentially Californian institutions are popping up all over Manhattan as New Yorkers embrace sound baths, mocktails and legal marijuana. [more inside]
Advertising (reruns) in the public interest
"What if America wasn't America?" That was the question posed by a series of ads broadcast in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ads which depicted a dystopian America bereft of liberty: Library - Diner - Church - Arrest. Together with more positive ads like It All Starts with Freedom, Remember Freedom, and I Am an American, they encouraged frightened viewers to cherish their liberties and defend against division and prejudice in the face of terrorism [20 years previously]. The campaign was the work of the Ad Council, a non-profit agency that employs the creative muscle of volunteer advertisers to raise awareness for social issues of national importance. Founded during WWII as the War Advertising Council, the organization has been behind some of the most memorable public service campaigns in American history, including Rosie the Riveter, Smokey Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, and the Crash Test Dummies. And the Council is still at it today, producing striking, funny, and above all effective PSAs on everything from student invention to global warming to arts education to John Cena reminding us that loving America means loving all Americans, dammit [previously]. [more inside]
The Music Plays Again in Mosul
False Idol
Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump. Ex-evangelical journalist Alex Morris writes for Rolling Stone about the merging of American Christian conservatism with the militant white nationalism that animates Trump's base. It's also a deeply personal essay in which she describes her own journey away from that militancy while her family embraces it. (CW: Lots of quotes from anti-LGBT and anti-abortion people about how much they hate those things)
The Tibetan Gaze
Can you made a whole society wealthier?
This essay is my attempt to explore that question. I look at the ways people have been successful in the past, where their societies invested, who actually got to keep the wealth, and who is trying to copy each strategy today. I touch on Politics, Economics, History, Culture, and Technology — a few of my favourite things — and all play a part in building Wealth. [more inside]
Some 41
The dawn of television promised diversity. Here's why we got "Leave It to Beaver" instead. [more inside]
The Story We Don’t Talk About: On Irishness, Immigration, and Race
Maeve Higgins writes on Irishness, immigration, and race: Being white in America is so potent, so seductive, it can blind a person without them knowing it. Being white can make a whole community forget who they are and where they came from. The year Frederick Douglass visited Ireland was the year the country began its terrible spiral into a famine that ultimately killed a million people. There had been food shortages before, and the extent of the disaster was not yet clear, but he writes in a letter of the horror of leaving his house and being confronted with the sight of hungry children begging on the street. It’s painful to look through that lens at the present and see so many powerful Irish-Americans, like Paul Ryan, whose great-great-grandfather survived the famine and fled to America in 1851, doing everything they can to stop today’s refugees from entering the very country that gave their family sanctuary when they most needed it. [more inside]
The Art of Conversation
The Studs Terkel Radio Archive collects decades of work from Chicago journalist and interviewer Studs Terkel as he addressed some of 20th Century America’s most pressing issues and concerns Notable topics include - Work, labor and economy, LGBTQ Culture & Rights, The Great Depression, Race Relations, and More [more inside]
A fight for accurate representation against stereotypes
Natives Photograph opens today. The site highlights Native American visual journalists, to "bring balance to the way we tell stories about Indigenous people and spaces." It also offers a database for editors seeking to assign indigenous photographers in North America, "to tell the stories of their communities and to reflect on how we tell these stories." [more inside]
Chinese Food, Movies, and ...Museums!
Jewish Americans and Chinese food on Christmas: James Deutsch of Smithsonian Folklife discusses how it evolved. Though the classic day's entertainment for many is movies, it's also a big day for many Jewish-heritage museums, like the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, the Museum at Eldridge Street in NYC, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in SF.
he was just trying to make a living
"OR4’s ancestors didn’t ask to be relocated to the lower 48. And while gray wolves have arguably restored a lost component to western ecosystems, they returned to a place much changed—a place full of people, of fat hornless cattle, of snack-sized sheep, of rubber bullets and range riders and firecrackers and helicopters and tranquilizers and traps and collars and GPS signals and government regulations. OR4 never failed as a wolf. He broke human rules. And in the 21st century, being a competent wolf isn’t enough to stay alive. You must also — impossibly — know your place."
Culture is a very complicated and hard thing to understand and get right
A father and a daughter driving after baseball practice. A momentary glimpse of a peacock. An ignored phone call from Mom. The Queen song “Don’t Stop Me Now.” All of these are part of Toyota’s marketing campaign for its new Camry. But which commercial you get to see may depend, in part, on what ethnicity you are.Different Ads, Different Ethnicities, Same Car
The authoritarian tendencies of the suburbs
"The modern suburb in America began as a means of providing abundant and comfortable housing to white Americans and has now evolved into a carefully tuned media surround — replete with ubiquitous screens running alarmist commercial media — that seeks to sustain that apartheid at any cost. But just as the media elevated a man to the presidency only to have him turn around and name it the “enemy of the people,” the built environment of suburbs is riven with contradictions that will ultimately be its undoing." The Authoritarian Surround, the politics of the suburbs by David A. Banks.
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE
'Dear White People' Is Hilarious, Real, and Necessary [Vice] “It also understands the layers of racism and microaggressions: It isn't just about being called a "nigger" or having a cop pull a gun on you—though these events are in the series, because they're in our lives. It's also about the smaller, shitty moments that pile up: When a professor asks if anyone with a "special connection" to slavery wants to lead the discussion, as the white students all glance toward the one black student in a room, or a coach confusing a black student for the black athlete on his team. Or a white woman touching a black man's Afro, while saying he looks like Wiz Khalifa. These moments within the series are often played, simultaneously, for laughs and devastation: It's funny, because we've been there and know how utterly ridiculous these microaggressions are, and it's devastating because we've been there and know that how hurtful it was.” [more inside]
The American Thanksgiving
Fifteen families share with the New York Times their traditional Thanksgiving dishes. Recipes for all are collected here.
Why European Children Are So Much Quieter Than Yours
The Victim
A Marine's Convictions. "After a flawed sexual assault investigation, a Naval Academy instructor fights to prove he has done nothing wrong. But did he?" (content warning: rape) [more inside]
On poverty, surviving, taxes and economic justice in America
"Single Women Are Our Most Potent Political Force"
Almost a quarter of the votes in the last US presidential election were cast by women without spouses, up three points from just four years earlier. They are almost 40% of the African-American population, close to 30% of the Latino population, and about a third of all young voters. The most powerful voter this year is The Single American Woman.
“I tell my son: be safe, don’t be just sleeping around with girls.”
26-year-old radio producer Ana Adlerstein was walking in Oakland when she was catcalled by 51-year-old Jerome. She pulled a microphone and her, Jerome, and Jerome’s son’s mother had a short conversation.
After some wrangling, Ana got Jerome into the studio and the conversation continued. Love + Radio presents: “An Old Lion, or a Lover’s Lute”
After some wrangling, Ana got Jerome into the studio and the conversation continued. Love + Radio presents: “An Old Lion, or a Lover’s Lute”
“I’d rather that everyone… could just stay obscure”
[T]here are immediate practical benefits to trolling. The way we’ve designed the Internet has made the old cliché “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” actually come true. It’s now possible to monetize any kind of attention, good or bad—and if your gift happens to be generating the bad kind of attention, then it’s well within reach to make trolling into a full-time career.
Arthur Chu writes about “The Big Business of Internet Bigotry” for The Daily Beast.
Arthur Chu writes about “The Big Business of Internet Bigotry” for The Daily Beast.
“I defer to no one in my love for America and for Christianity.”
Fear by Marilynne Robinson [New York Review of Books]
“There is something I have felt the need to say, that I have spoken about in various settings, extemporaneously, because my thoughts on the subject have not been entirely formed, and because it is painful to me to have to express them. However, my thesis is always the same, and it is very simply stated, though it has two parts: first, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind. As children we learn to say, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” We learn that, after his resurrection, Jesus told his disciples, “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Christ is a gracious, abiding presence in all reality, and in him history will finally be resolved.”
"If someone doesn’t want to have sex with you, don’t have sex with them"
In the United States, only 22 states require that sex education should be taught in their schools. Of those, only 13 insist upon medical accuracy. There is no federal standard. As a result, classroom lessons that teach purity culture – the idea that virginity is a state of moral accomplishment – are pervasive. John Oliver's Last Week Tonight covers Sex Education in America. (NSFW) The end of the segment features a modern sex education video created by LWT, narrated by several celebrities (including Laverne Cox, Nick Offerman, Jonathan Banks, Kristen Schaal and Aisha Tyler) that touches on topics outdated lessons may be ignoring. [more inside]
"A Piece of Meat and a Bun with Something On It."
First We Feast: An Illustrated History of Hamburgers in America. "The rise, fall, and resurgence of America's greatest cultural export." [more inside]
Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South
In a three-part series on BBC2 in the UK over February and March, Reginald D. Hunter travels across the (USA) south and explores the music and culture. There is a bunch of intriguing clips in advance. [more inside]
Radio Raheem Is a Broken Record
Do the Right Thing wasn’t ahead of its time. It was behind its time, and it’s ahead of ours. It came out in the summer of 1989, six months before Driving Miss Daisy, but if you can imagine it without hip-hop, it could have come out in 1939 alongside Gone with the Wind; without color, in 1929 with The Jazz Singer; without sound, 1915 and The Birth of a Nation. If you updated the soundtrack and the fashion a bit and released it next week, critics would praise its timeliness and how its depiction of police brutality and racial tension captures the angry zeitgeist surrounding the recent killings of unarmed black civilians by police officers. Some might even predict that it would ultimately end up feeling dated, as some did 25 years ago. If only. - Lessons from Do the Right Thing on Its 25th Anniversary
Reconciling the Second Amendment with Public Safety Concerns
Gun Wars: the struggle over gun rights and regulation in America, in the aftermath of the Newtown school shootings and the ongoing congressional stalemate over federal gun legislation. An investigative report from "29 students from 16 journalism schools, as well as an experienced staff of editors" for Carnegie-Knight News21. [more inside]
Foreigners Abroad.
Trusting God
Patrick Henry College has been called "God's Harvard." The tiny, elite school is considered a safe haven for fundamentalist evangelical Christians. It teaches a dominionist "Biblical Worldview" and has a uniquely religious campus culture (pdf) that emphasizes evangelical moral values. Which leaves female students in a particular bind: How do you report sexual assault at a place where authorities seem skeptical that such a thing even exists?
The thrillsville of it all...
Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has A Cold" appeared in Esquire Magazine in April 1966. Sinatra had turned down interview requests from Esquire for years and refused to be interviewed for the profile. Rather than give up, Talese spent the three months following and observing the man and interviewing any members of his entourage who were willing to speak -- and the final story was published without Sinatra's cooperation or blessing. In 2003, editors pronounced it the best article the magazine had ever published. Nieman Storyboard interviewed Talese last month about the piece and has annotated it with his comments. [more inside]
The Big Chill
United States of America
Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased, entry for the United States of America
"Elites preying on the weak, the gullible, the marginal, the poor."
"We condition the poor and the working class to go to war. We promise them honor, status, glory, and adventure. We promise boys they will become men. We hold these promises up against the dead-end jobs of small-town life, the financial dislocations, credit card debt, bad marriages, lack of health insurance, and dread of unemployment. The military is the call of the Sirens, the enticement that has for generations seduced young Americans working in fast food restaurants or behind the counters of Walmarts to fight and die for war profiteers and elites."-- War is Betrayal. Persistent Myths of Combat, an essay by Chris Hedges of Truthdig. Responses within. [more inside]
Capturing America
In 1971, the newly-created US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired a bunch of freelance photographers to collectively document environmental issues around the country. They were given free rein to shoot whatever they wanted, and the project, named Documerica, lasted through 1977. After 40 years, the EPA is now encouraging photographers to take current versions of the original Documerica photos and are showcasing them on flickr at State of the Environment. There are location challenges, and a set has been created with some of the submissions, making side-by-side comparisons. [more inside]
...never believing the people who think they have you figured out.
"It's his charm. It's his gift. It's his political liability, and it's part of an American conundrum. We beg for authenticity, and then when we get it, oh man, it's hilarious. [Vice President Joe] Biden can be fantastic when he's on his game. At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, his speech got higher Nielsen ratings than either Bill Clinton's or Obama's. He killed the debate against Ryan, pumped air back into a campaign deflated after Obama's miserable first performance against Romney. Watching those performances, it's almost impossible to see him as a person once crippled by speech."
Racial Slur or Honorific?
The Other Redskins. 62 US high schools in 22 states currently use the name "Redskins" for one of their sports teams. 28 high schools in 18 states have dropped the mascot over the last 25 years. As public pressure continues to intensify on the Washington Redskins football team to change their name -- one many consider a racial slur that disparages Native Americans -- similar debates are being waged in towns across the country about their local high school teams.
The Mothership Connection
The Japanese Version
In the late '80s, documentarians Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker spent six months in Tokyo looking at how symbols and imagery familiar to Americans had been appropriated and given new significance in Japan. Though more than 20 years old, the resulting video remains popular in undergraduate courses across the social sciences and humanities in part because it's so entertaining. [more inside]
"I thought I was the only gay person in the world for a long time."
The county where no one's gay. The 2010 Census of Franklin County Mississippi shows no same sex couples. (pdf). CNN videographer Brandon Ancil and human rights columnist John D. Sutter tried to determine if the census was wrong, and see if they could find gay men and women willing to speak about "what keeps them hidden." Video
"There was no return from apostasy."
Leaving the Witness. "In one of the most restrictive, totalitarian countries in the world, for the first time in my life, I had the freedom to think." [more inside]
On Chicago Public Schools Censoring Persepolis's Images of Torture
Suffice it to say, Persepolis is quite a work. It’s a testament to the power of the graphic novel. The art’s simple linework helps the story feel unpretentious and direct. Persepolis was adapted as a 2007 French animated film, written and directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Among other honors, it was nominated for an Academy Award. Why would someone want to ban such a book?
"If you account for my access to academic journal subscriptions, my salary is really like half a million dollars."
This past Thursday, Forbes Magazine published a pair of articles: The Most Stressful Jobs of 2013 and The Least Stressful Jobs of 2013, the latter of which began with the sentence: "University professors have a lot less stress than most of us." 300+ outraged comments (and thousands of sarcastic #RealForbesProfessor tweets,) later they've added a retraction, and linked to a blog post that takes A Real Look at Being a Professor in the US. [more inside]
It's the end of the world and they know it
The most-watched show in the history of the National Geographic Channel isn't Wild, Taboo or even the longest-running documentary series on cable tv: Explorer. It's Doomsday Preppers, a show that documents the "lives of otherwise ordinary Americans" as they prepare for the end of the world. [more inside]
Page:
1 2