Culture

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      God Only Knows why: when a Reagan aide took aim at the Beach Boys

      by

      Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan’s interior secretary, James Watt, decided to take a stand for “wholesomeness”, against undesirable elements. The Beach Boys, he announced, would be banned from the 1983 Independence Day celebrations on the National Mall.Watt, who died in May at 85, was a lightning rod of a cabinet secretary who compared environmentalists to Nazis and divided fellow citizens into ‘‘liberals and Americans”. According to him, “hard rock” bands like the Beach Boys attracted the “wrong element” – drug-using, boozing youngsters.The decision was so out-of-step with American society – the Beach Boys were not the Dead Kennedys, after all – that he ran afoul of Beach Boys fans in the corridors of power, among them Reagan, his wife Nancy Reagan and the vice-president, George HW Bush.It would be hard to think of a more quintessential American pop band than the Beach Boys, whose hits include Good Vibrations, Surfin’ USA, Fun, Fun, Fun and Wouldn’t It Be Nice.“They are what America is,” Elton John has said. “A very wonderful place.”The backdrop to this contrived culture war episode was the appearance, over the previous three years, of the Beach Boys (1980 and 1981) and the Grass Roots (1982) in front of hundreds of thousands at July 4 celebrations in Washington DC.Watt was head of the interior department, with jurisdiction over the National Park Service, which organized such events. As a Pentecostal fundamentalist who didn’t smoke or drink, he announced that he was banning rock music from Independence Day festivities. Citing “repulsive” reports in the first two years of the Reagan administration of “high drug use, high alcoholism, broken bottles, some injured people, some fights”, Watt lined up instead “patriotic, family-based entertainment” from figures including Wayne Newton, a friend and supporter of Reagan.“We’re trying to have an impact for wholesomeness,” Watt said, adding: “July 4 will be a traditional ceremony for the family and for solid, clean American lives. We’re not going to encourage drug abuse and alcoholism as was done in the past years.“… The reason for the arrests and other trouble, we concluded, was that we had the rock bands attracting the wrong element, and you couldn’t bring your family, your children, down to the Mall for a Fourth of July picnic in the great traditional sense because you’d be mugged by … the wrong element, whatever is the nice way to say it.”But as the Washington Post reported, “a ban on apple pie couldn’t have brought a stronger reaction”.A Washington talk show host linked the controversy to a major issue of the day: “I haven’t seen the phones ring over here as steadily or heard more strong comments since the Iranian hostage takeover. Our audience regards the Beach Boys as much a part of Americana as Wayne Newton.”The New York Times also referred to Iran, likening Watt to the Ayatollah Khomenei, who among his “first acts on seizing power after the Iranian revolution … ban[ned] western music because it made listeners’ brains ‘inactive and frivolous’”.In their own statement, the band said it was “unbelievable that James Watt feels that the Beach Boys attract ‘the wrong element’ … over their 20-year career, the group has participated in many events geared specifically to the very families Watt claims they turn away”.Slightly bizarrely, they added: “The Soviet Union had enough confidence in the Beach Boys to invite them to perform in Leningrad [on] July 4 1978. Obviously the Soviet Union, a much more controlled society than our own, did not feel the group attracted the wrong element.”On Capitol Hill, scorn was bipartisan.“‘Help me, Ronald, don’t let him run wild,” said George Miller, a Democratic congressman from California, spoofing the Beach Boys song Help Me, Rhonda.“The Beach Boys are not hazardous to your health,” said Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican senator.Nor was Watt backed by his bosses.“They’re my friends and I like their music,” Bush, the vice-president, said of the Beach Boys, who played a concert for him during his 1980 presidential run.Michael Deaver, the White House deputy chief of staff, said:“I think for a lot of people the Beach Boys are an American institution. Anyone who thinks they are hard rock would think Mantovani plays jazz.”A White House spokesman told reporters the Beach Boys would “be welcome on the Mall”.Reagan had a little fun at Watt’s expense. Saying he had ordered his special ambassador to the Middle East “to settle the Jim Watt-Beach Boy controversy”, the president also presented Watt with a plaster foot with a bullet hole.Watt retreated. Standing on the White House lawn, holding his plaster foot, Watt said: “Obviously, I didn’t know anything to start with. The president is a friend of the Beach Boys. He likes them, and I’m sure when I get to meet them, I’ll like them.”Watt also said Nancy Reagan had told him “the Beach Boys are fans of hers, and her children have grown up with them and they’re fine, outstanding people and that there should be no intention to indicate that they cause problems, which I would agree with”.Watt said the Beach Boys would appear. But it was too late: they played Atlantic City instead.That fall, Watt resigned. The Beach Boys returned to the Mall the next July 4, attracting more than half-a-million, then played again in 1985. That year, the lead singer, Mike Love, defended Watt: “He said rock music attracts the wrong element, and that’s true. Rock groups do sing pornographic lyrics, satanic lyrics, but we’re certainly not one of those groups. We’re no more satanic than Pat Boone.”In his autobiography, Watt tried to shrug off the blame. The controversy was the work of the “liberal press”, he said.
      Frederic J Frommer is the author of several books, including You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      The Big Break: Ben Terris on his portrait of Washington after Trump

      by

      If you were a pollster, would you ever bet on elections? How about your clients’ elections? How about betting your clients would lose? For Sean McElwee, the wunderkind behind the liberal polling group Data for Progress, the answer was all the above.McElwee had clients including the 2022 Senate campaign of John Fetterman, in Pennsylvania. McElwee placed multiple bets on the midterms, including that Fetterman would lose. Fetterman’s organization became displeased. Following its victory, it severed ties with McElwee. It was just the beginning of a dramatic downfall heightened by the pollster’s connections to the pandemic-prevention advocate Gabe Bankman-Fried, whose billionaire brother Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire collapsed in scandal around election day.The rise and fall of Sean McElwee is one of many storylines in a new book The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses its Mind. For the author, the Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, the individuals he profiles tell a collective story about DC processing the fallout from the Trump years.“Nobody knew what the world was going to be like post-Trump,” Terris says, adding: “If there is a post-Trump.”To explore that world, he turned to Democratic and Republican circles: Leah Hunt-Hendrix, an oil heiress turned funder of progressive causes, whose conservative grandfather HL Hunt was reportedly the world’s wealthiest man; Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, a Republican power couple whose fortunes crested after Matt decided to stick with Trump in 2016; Ian Walters, Matt’s protege until political and personal differences ruptured the friendship; Robert Stryk, a cowboy-hatted lobbyist who parlayed Trump connections into a lucrative career representing sometimes questionable clients; and Jamarcus Purley, a Black staffer for the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein who lamented the impact of George Floyd’s murder and the pandemic on Black Americans including his own father, who died. Disenchanted with his boss, Purley lost his job in disputed circumstances and launched an unconventional protest in Feinstein’s Capitol office, after hours.Terris is a reporter for the Post’s Style section, which he characterizes as strong on features and profiles. He can turn a phrase, likening Fetterman to “a Tolkien character in Carhartt”, and has an ear for the telling quote. Once, while Terris was covering the Democratic senator Jon Tester, from Montana, in, of all places, an organic pea field, nature called. A staffer asked: “Can the senator’s penis please be off the record?” Terris quips that he’s saving this for a title if he ever writes a memoir.His current book is “sort of a travelog, not a memoir”, Terris says. “I tried to keep myself out of the book as much as I could. I wanted the reader to feel like they knew Washington, knew the weirdos, the odd scenes … the backrooms, poker games, parties.”Hunt-Hendrix’s Christmas party is among the opening scenes. Attendees include her aunt Swanee Hunt, a former ambassador to Austria. Hunt-Hendrix aimed to make her own mark, through her organization Way to Win.“She’s very progressive,” Terris says, “trying to unwind a lot of projects, in a way, that her grandfather was all about. To me, it was fascinating, the family dynamics at play.”Just as fascinating was her “figuring out how to push the [Democratic] party in the direction she believed it should go in – a more progressive direction than some Democrats pushed for. It told the story of Democratic party tensions – money and politics, the idea of being idealistic and also super-wealthy … All of these things made for a very heady brew.”On the Republican side, Stryk went from running a vineyard to savoring fine wine in a foreign embassy, thanks to his connection to Trump. Stryk joined the campaign in 2016. When Trump won, Stryk celebrated on a patio of the Four Seasons hotel in DC. A dog sniffed his crotch. When its owner apologized, Stryk found she worked for the New Zealand embassy, which was having difficulty reaching Trump. It was Stryk’s lucky break.“He was in a position to connect New Zealand to Trump,” Terris says. “He got a phone number and was off to the races, a sideshow guy making major deals … $5m with the Saudis, that kind of thing.”When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, Stryk was in Belarus, exploring a potential relationship with that country’s government. He had to make his way home via the Baltics.“One of the themes of the book is that the Donald Trump era allowed a bunch of sideshow characters to get out on the main stage,” Terris says. “Stryk is a great example of that.”Others distanced themselves – eventually. Terris sees the rupture between Matt Schlapp and Ian Walters as illustrative. As head of the American Conservative Union, Schlapp presided over CPAC, the annual conservative conference, with Walters his communications director. As Schlapp welcomed fringe elements to CPAC – from Trump to Matt Gaetz to Marjorie Taylor Greene – Walters felt increasingly repelled.“It’s an interesting tale of a broken friendship,” Terris says. “It also helps the reader understand how did the Republican party get to where it is now – where are the fault lines, why one way over another.”The 2020 election was the point of no return. Schlapp stayed all-in on Trump, supporting his claim of a stolen election even in a graveside speech at the funeral of Walters’s father, the legendary conservative journalist Ralph Hallow.“We have to take confidence that he would want us, more than anything else, to get beyond this period of mourning and to fight,” Schlapp is quoted as saying. Walters and his wife, Carin, resigned from the ACU. Ian remained a Republican but marveled at the bravery of the whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson in the January 6 hearings.As for Schlapp, he faced scandal late last year. Assisting with the Senate campaign of the ex-football star Herschel Walker, when Schlapp arrived in Georgia, he allegedly groped a male campaign staffer.“I had to go back into my reporting and ask, were there signs of this?” recalls Terris. “Could I run through all of this [with] the alleged victim over the phone? I did. I ran a bunch of questions by Matt – he never answered.”There was another last-minute controversy. McElwee’s polls proved inaccurate. Another red flag was his ties to Gabe Bankman-Fried, whose brother was arrested in December. Reports of McElwee’s gambling made clients wonder where their money was going. Senior staff threatened to resign. McElwee stepped down.“All of a sudden, it was national news in a way I was not prepared for,” Terris says.Can anyone be prepared for what comes next in Washington?“Donald Trump proved you can win by acting like Donald Trump,” Terris says. “There are a lot of people that learned from him – mostly in the Republican party, but [also] the Democratic party – how to comport yourself in Washington, what you can get away with. People’s confidence is broken, politics is broken, relationships.”Can it all be restored?“Nobody knows yet how to do it. It’s not the same thing as normal. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe normal led to Donald Trump.”
      The Big Break is published in the US by Twelve More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      New electric cars won’t have AM radio. Rightwingers claim political sabotage

      by

      Charlie Kirk, radio host and founder of the rightwing youth group Turning Point USA, believes that a conspiracy may be afoot. “Whether they’re doing this intentionally or not, the consequence will be … an all-out attack on AM radio,” he told the listeners of his popular syndicated show.In an appearance on Fox, the television and radio host Sean Hannity gave his viewers a similar warning: “This would be a direct hit politically on conservative talk radio in particular, which is what most people go to AM radio to listen to.” Mark Levin, another longtime radio host, agreed: “They finally figured out how to attack conservative talk radio,” he told his listeners in April.What are they all so worried about? It turns out, a minor manufacturing change announced by car companies including Volkswagen and Mazda: they will be removing AM radios from their forthcoming fleets of electric vehicles, citing technical issues. Tesla, BMW, Audi and Volvo have already dispensed with AM in their electric cars, because AM’s already unpolished reception is subject to even more buzz, crackling and interference when installed near an electric motor. While some manufacturers have found workarounds for the interference, others appear to have decided that it’s not worth the engineering expense.Many on the right have been quick to declare the move political sabotage. The Texas senator Ted Cruz, while promoting a federal bill that would require automakers to install AM radios in new cars, claimed he smelled something fishy: “There’s a reason big car companies were open to taking down AM radio … let’s be clear: big business doesn’t like things that are overwhelmingly conservative.”AM is the oldest commercial radio technology in the US. In the 1920s, when AM was all there was, listeners would gather around neighborhood and living room radio sets to hear everything from music to boxing matches, soap operas and presidential speeches. They would listen through AM’s constant (if now somewhat nostalgic) hum. By mid-century, music was king on the radio as many dramatic programs shifted over to the new medium of television. And in the 1960s, the comparatively crystal clear FM band overtook AM as the band of choice. Many music stations deserted AM, leaving it floundering in lo-fi isolation and struggling to secure advertising dollars, until it found its salvation in talk radio. Initially there was a wide variety of political perspectives on AM but the deregulation of content and consolidation of ownership of radio during the 1980s edged many minority voices and local owners off the air. Following the model of the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show, conservative talk became the cost-effective default for the risk-averse corporations that now dominated the radio dial. The humble AM band played a starring role in the rise of social conservatism in the US and was a precursor to outlets like Fox News.These days, AM radio is somewhat synonymous in the public imagination with conservative blowhards, a place where false claims about the 2020 election, racist notions of a “great replacement” and other conspiracy theories fester and escape into the atmosphere without accountability. Far-right programming is not only ubiquitous, it’s monotonous – with a few national radio chains syndicating the same handful of shows to “local” stations, many of which have almost no local content. In cities and towns across the country, listeners hear much of the same one-sided, syndicated programming.But the idea that AM radio is made up of nothing more than conservative talk is a myth that has dangerous implications for the medium.It is true that conservatives and far-right pundits have claimed near dominion on talk radio – a medium that still ranks nearly neck-and-neck with social media for how Americans get their news. Seventeen of the top 20 most-listened-to US talk radio hosts are conservative, while only one is liberal. But that’s not the whole story: while syndicated rightwing voices are the best platformed on AM radio, what is less known is that the band is home to many of the country’s increasingly rare local stations and non-English-language radio shows. And ownership of AM radio stations is more diverse than that of FM stations: according to a 2021 FCC report, 13% of commercial AM stations were majority-owned by a Black, Hispanic or Asian American broadcaster; on the FM band, that figure was only 7%. Often lacking the financial and political resources available to chain-owned conservative talk stations, it is these local and diverse voices – not nationally syndicated conservative talkers like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin – that are likely to be the hardest hit by any changes to the band.“AM is, generally, the least expensive route to a broadcast station ownership,” says Jim Winston, president and CEO of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (Nabob), a trade organization serving Black- and minority-owned radio stations. And though the 1980s and 1990s saw a decrease in local and minority ownership, Winston says a disproportionate number of the stations he works with today are on the AM dial. “There are many communities where the only Black-owned station is an AM station,” he says. “And Black owners, for the most part, are local owners.”In cities across the country, AM stations remain a crucial resource for those who are rarely served by other media. Detroit’s WNZK, known as the “station of nations”, runs a variety of non-English and English language programming for the area’s immigrant communities. In Chicago, WNVR broadcasts in Polish, and many AM stations in California and New York run talk and music programs in Vietnamese and Chinese.The time-tested technology of AM radio has also given the medium a particularly important role in small towns and rural areas. “Out here, it does serve a very distinct purpose, because AM frequency travels very differently from FM,” says Austin Roof, general manager at KSDP in Sand Point, Alaska, on the Aleutian Islands. AM is better than FM at getting through mountains and other barriers. Plus, Roof says, “once AM hits water, it just carries really well”. For a radio station serving island residents and those who work on the area’s fishing boats, that value can’t be overstated. “One kilowatt of AM can outperform thousands of kilowatts of FM in our environment.”Satellite internet has only recently become available in much of KSDP’s coverage area, and the region’s geography means that even the few local newspapers have limited distribution. So radio stations like KSDP – which serves an area nearly twice the size of Massachusetts – can be a lifeline. In recent years, as the islands have experienced some of their largest earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis, the radio has played a crucial role in spreading emergency alerts and instructions. (Between emergency updates after a 2021 earthquake, station staff played songs like AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long and the Surfaris’ Wipe Out.) “Your cellphone can lose its charge,” says Winston of Nabob, “You could be … out someplace where your cellphone signal is not being picked up.” But radio, he says, is ubiquitous, and it’s very important “that people be able to receive radio when they can’t receive anything else”.AM stations are not just of value during emergencies: in small towns and rural areas across the country, AM stations are a rare tool for civic engagement, especially with the decline in local newspapers. Roof says KSDP’s most popular broadcasts are those that listeners can’t find anywhere else: “Local, state news, local meetings, sports,” he says, “it’s the hyper-local content that matters.” The story is similar on the Yakama Reservation in Washington state, where the program director Reggie George says the hyperlocal AM station KYNR broadcasts public service announcements and coverage of local events such as government meetings and powwows, in addition to a steady playlist of both oldies and Native American music. When a technical snag or bad weather temporarily silences the station, residents react. “We get calls right away when we go off the air,” says George, one of two paid staff at KYNR.Many AM stations have tried to prepare for an uncertain future by meeting their listeners on other platforms, such as FM simulcasts, podcasts and web streams. Alaska’s KSDP has managed to get its content simulcast on one full-power and three low-power FM signals that serve nearby towns, and on a well-utilized online audio stream. But finding the money to stay afloat while supporting those other platforms hasn’t been easy. “We’ve begged, borrowed and stolen for hardware,” Roof says. Roof personally climbs the radio tower to replace equipment and touch up paint, has taken pay cuts, and has opted out of company healthcare to keep more money in the station. But other hyperlocal AM stations haven’t had the budget to make the expansion.To some in the radio industry, the removal of AM radios from electric vehicles feels like a death sentence for their already struggling medium. Others are less worried. “I think a lot of these places that are really benefiting from AM … are not where electric cars are really going to serve up the most benefits,” says Roof. In his part of the country, there’s no infrastructure to support EVs yet, and not many people can afford a Tesla or a BMW. “If you think someone in Sand Point, Alaska, is getting an electric car any time in the near future, you’re crazy,” he says. “Is getting rid of [AM radio] in electric vehicles going to do away with it? Absolutely not.”There remains a lurking sense, however, that the removal of AM from EVs is a symptom of a larger shift away from the AM band. And if other changes come to pass, it will probably be the local, diverse stations – the unlauded heroes of AM – that are at greatest risk, not the well-resourced nationally syndicated conservative talk hosts who dominate talk radio. “Those voices are not going to be shut down, no matter what happens with AM radio,” says Winston. If AM radio does become harder to access, he says, “there are serious casualties.”
      Katie Thornton is a freelance print and audio journalist. Her Peabody-winning podcast series The Divided Dial, made with WNYC’s On the Media, reveals how the American right came to dominate talk radio More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Decades of Decadence review: Marco Rubio joins publishing’s motley Republican crew

      by

      Marco Rubio should have picked a better title. With his new book, the three-term senator echoes a 1991 double-platinum album by none other than Mötley Crüe: Decade of Decadence. The vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee gives no credit to the bad boys of rock.Rubio is no Tommy Lee. As a presidential candidate, in 2016, the Florida senator preened … with an invisible kick-me sign pinned to his back.Donald Trump gleefully mocked the senator, his finances and personal tics. Rubio’s relationship with credit cards, Trump called a “disaster”. He also laced into his rival for sweating and gulping down water when rebutting Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in 2013.“I need water. Help me. I need water,” Trump sneered.It didn’t matter if Lil’ Marco had larger hands than him.In New Hampshire, Chris Christie fatally blistered Rubio for a robotic debate performance. “Memorized 25-second speech” – the words will forever haunt him. In that moment, Rubio’s grand ambitions went up in smoke.Also in 2015, McKay Coppins of the Atlantic caught Rubio pinching himself over his own good fortune, exclaiming to a friend: “It’s amazing … I can call up a lobbyist at four in the morning and he’ll meet me anywhere with a bag of $40,000 in cash.”So much for the yucks to be derived from Rubio’s title. As a text, Decades of Decadence delivers little. It lacks even the (skewed) intellectual curiosity of recent books by Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, hard-right senators of a generation just after Rubio. Instead, Rubio’s broadside reads like a laundry list of Republican orthodoxies delivered by a legislator scared Trump will upend his career still further. Less than two years ago, remember, the prospect of a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump had Rubio terrified.“I like Ivanka, and we worked very well together on issues, and she’s a US …” Rubio babbled. In the end, she punted. He was spared.But Rubio won’t (or can’t) leave well enough alone. In his new book, he compares himself to Donald Trump.“Watching the Trump campaign in action, I was reminded of my own first campaign for the US Senate in 2010,” he reminisces. “I did have an outsider spirit that allowed me to connect with voters who felt that the government wasn’t working for them.”Not in 2016, he didn’t. In his own state, Rubio lost the presidential primary to Trump by nearly 20 points.Elsewhere, Rubio compares himself to Roger Goodell.“I think of my role as a policymaker as very similar to the role of the commissioner of the National Football League,” he writes.OK. For what it’s worth, Rubio’s wife was once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. His time as a college football player is a source of personal nostalgia.Dutifully, Rubio bashes the Bushes. He attacks the late George HW Bush and James Baker, his secretary of state, for being soft on China. He castigates Bush, who was ambassador to the United Nations and liaison to China, for referring to a Chinese leader as an “old friend”. He zings Baker as a “career public servant”.Bush served in the second world war. Baker was Bush’s “Velvet Hammer”. On their watch, the Berlin Wall fell and Kuwait was liberated. Rubio never wore a uniform and has spent most of his adult existence on the taxpayers’ dime. He is a career politician.Predictably, Rubio omits any mention of Trump prostrating himself before Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The normally loquacious senator also stayed mum over Trump congratulating Kim on his country’s election to the board of the World Health Organization.On the page, Rubio also takes aim at the over-extension of the US military, financialism and woke corporations. He evidently suffers from amnesia. In a March 2015 interview with Fox News, Rubio rejected the contention the Iraq war was a mistake.“I don’t believe it was,” he said, adding: “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq.”Weeks later, he reversed his position.In the same spirit of expediency, Rubio now voices disgust for Wall Street and financialism, upbraids Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase for supporting Black Lives Matter, and zings Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Capital for boosting investment in China.In 2016, such forces drove Rubio’s presidential campaign. Politico blared: “Koch donors give Rubio early nod.” Other major donors included Paul Singer of Elliott Management and Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund mogul and Harvard donor.“I’m really excited to be supporting Marco Rubio,” Griffin said. “He will be the next president.”Not quite. Seven years on, Griffin’s Citadel Securities is increasing its exposure in China. To Rubio, apparently, the role of business is to cough up campaign dollars – then shut up.“The best way to ensure our political system is less reliant on money is not to pass laws which infringe on fundamental rights, but rather to elect leaders who value policy and principles over politics and special interests,” the senator intones.In the race for the Republican nomination, he has not yet endorsed. That has not stopped him bemoaning Trump’s fate at the hands of the law. Last week, moments after news of the former president’s latest indictment, over his retention of classified records, Rubio delivered the following tweet:“There is no limit to what these people will do to protect their power and destroy those who threaten it, even if it means ripping our country apart and shredding public faith in the institutions that hold our republic together.”His disdain for Joe Biden is unvarnished. Trump? Less so – in public, at least.
      Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America’s Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity is published in the US by HarperCollins More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Dictatorship? How Hitler, Stalin and Trump show it’s easier than you think

      by

      Three zombies lurching your way is scary enough. Now imagine they’re Lenin, Stalin and Putin. This scene isn’t from a Kremlin-themed horror film, but rather a new graphic novel, Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think! by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa.Through their day job, as co-hosts of the Gaslit Nation podcast, the authors have long warned about the dangers of authoritarianism, whether discussing January 6 or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now they are releasing a book, illustrated by the Polish artist Kasia Babic.It’s a tongue-in-cheek look at dictatorship, a how-to manual with lessons from Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Putin, Kim Jong-un and many others whose stories offer time-tested tips on how to seize and consolidate power.“We wanted to do a book on the dictator playbook to show people how unoriginal dictators are,” Chalupa says, “so they can better predict the next moves of an aspiring authoritarian.”Some such moves, such as stigmatizing minority groups or employing propaganda, are well-known from history class. Others may seem counterintuitive. According to Chalupa and Kendzior, dictators are fond of both elections and constitutions. It helps, of course, if they win the popular vote by an overwhelming margin and if constitutional rights are guaranteed on paper but not in real life.On the page, these tips and more are shared by an omniscient narrator who Chalupa says has Cary Grant’s looks and verve, Stephen Colbert’s snark and the devil’s ability to tempt.One relatively new development for dictators is the increasing usefulness of technology when it comes to keeping civilians under surveillance. Chalupa notes that when her Ukrainian grandfather was in one of Stalin’s prison camps, inmates were allowed to speak to each other relatively freely. Today, China uses technology to keep a constant eye on Uyghurs in its own camps. Chalupa and Kendzior fault companies like Apple, Facebook and Google for doing business with China.“When you have innovations in AI driven by companies in the west, it’s going to be used for authoritarian control,” Chalupa says.“It’s only a matter of time before it starts spreading everywhere. You think you live in a democracy? Every single democracy is vulnerable. Nobody is immune to the authoritarian virus. If all the surveillance technology tools go unregulated, if there’s no vocal outcry against them from the public or elected officials in the EU, North America and elsewhere, if there’s no pushback against them, it’s going to be game over.”When Chalupa and Kendzior conceived their book, they outlined it as if it were an infomercial, wondering what a Trump University course on dictatorship would look like, and proceeded accordingly. They also thought about Oscars-style awards for despots.In one sequence, the narrator becomes an Academy Awards host. He dons a tuxedo, strolls the red carpet and presents the Oscar for Best Purge to Kim Il-sung, founder of the dynasty that rules North Korea. According to the book, nowadays Kim Jong-un not only continues the tradition of purges, he has extended it to canine pets of the ruling class.As Chalupa points out, dictators can’t achieve power on their own. They require the help of “useful idiots”.“In terms of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, all the sort of people we highlight throughout the project, the larger theme of the book is useful idiots. People helped Hitler have power. Why? What did they get out of it, or think they were getting out of it?”The book looks at a Weimar Republic media baron, Alfred Hugenberg, who thought he could control Hitler and limit his danger to Germany: a fateful miscalculation. Meanwhile, Stalin’s brutality was whitewashed in the west thanks to figures including the celebrated playwright George Bernard Shaw and the New York Times journalist Walter Duranty, whose fawning coverage won a Pulitzer prize. One of Duranty’s contemporaries, the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who sought to expose Stalin’s atrocities, was the subject of Chalupa’s 2019 feature film, Mr Jones. Another voice of conscience spotlighted in Chalupa and Kendzior’s book is George Orwell, for his courageous opposition to Stalin and to authoritarianism in general.“I think Orwell wasn’t alone,” Chalupa says. “He had a community working with him side-by-side” including “his wife Eileen, a remarkable poet in her own right”.The rogues’ gallery wouldn’t be complete without Donald Trump. Recently indicted a second time, the 45th president plays a prominent role in the book. One aspect the authors emphasize is Trump’s dictatorial skill when it comes to inflaming supporters.They highlight his tweets on the campaign trail in 2016: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ’em would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell – I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”Another sequence depicts Trump supporters drinking conspiracist Kool-Aid on January 6. A man wearing a red Maga cap downs a shot which makes his muscles expand and brain shrink. “Stop the steal!” he exclaims. Others, similarly addled, start threatening Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. Egged on by Trump, the mob attacks the Capitol. With the seat of government burning, Trump feigns innocence.The book also examines US support for dictatorships abroad. In the 1970s, such support often came about through the then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Whether it was the coup against Salvador Allende that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile or coziness toward dirty war dictators in Argentina, Kissinger was key to the embrace of despots worldwide.“He was like a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ during our research,” Chalupa recalls, noting “all the times he kept popping up – ‘there’s Kissinger again.’”With so much material to work with, the authors had to make decisions about what to include. Their treatment of Hitler spotlights Mein Kampf and his brief alliance with Stalin, but there is not much mention of his antisemitism and the Holocaust.“We sort of focused on the dictators themselves versus their atrocities,” says Chalupa, whose next project is a Holocaust-themed work about the American second world war reporter Dorothy Thompson. “It’s sort of like the Hitchcock method.”She adds that “the focus is so much on useful idiots. It’s really the theme of the book. We’re not trying to minimize any atrocities” or “eclipse the victims”.Chalupa noted that the book is geared toward younger readers, aiming to encourage them to learn more. Sadly, with things the way they are, it seems there will be no shortage of material should a sequel ever be planned. But Chalupa maintains a sense of hope.“We’ve got to keep fighting,” she says. “We have no choice. Every single one of us, wherever [we are], should not check out, should not say, ‘OK, it’s out of my hands.’ It’s not up to you alone to fix it, but what we have the power to do, the bandwidth to do, is incredibly powerful.”
      Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think! is published in the US by First Second More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican hopeful Mike Pence to release book on ‘how faith makes family’

      by

      The former vice-president and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination Mike Pence will release a new book in November: a compilation of “advice on how faith makes family and family makes a life”, entitled Go Home for Dinner.Simon & Schuster announced the new project, from a devoutly Christian politician famous for refusing to dine alone with any woman who is not his wife.Pence’s daughter, Charlotte Pence Bond, was announced as co-author. Pence Bond is also the author of a series of children’s books about the family’s pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo, which the HBO talkshow host John Oliver memorably satirised with a book in which Marlon turned out to be gay.Pence published a campaign-oriented memoir, So Help Me God, last year. In that project, in preparation for his presidential run and now on the campaign trail, he has sought to gradually distance himself from his former boss – not least because Donald Trump sent to the Capitol the mob which threatened Pence’s life on January 6.On Thursday, Simon & Schuster said: “When Mike Pence was a young politician, reporters used to ask him: ‘Where do you see yourself in five, 10 years?’ Without fail, the former vice-president would reply: ‘Home for dinner.’”Before becoming vice-president, Pence was a congressman and governor of Indiana.Pence looks set to lose the Republican primary, lagging about 50 points behind Trump in polling, despite the former president’s various forms of serious legal jeopardy.While facing likely indictments over his election subversion and incitement of the Capitol riot, Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal criminal charges over his retention of classified records and 34 state criminal charges over his hush money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who claimed a sexual affair.Simon & Schuster said Pence would offer readers a “straightforward and personal” guide to a lifestyle rather more cloistered than Trump’s.Promising “short chapters”, the publisher said Pence would walk readers “through the principles he and his wife, Karen, developed to raise their family”, while giving “credit to his parents for setting the precedent of gathering around the dinner table and for being attentive listeners”.Pence, Simon & Schuster said, will “discuss how he and Karen prioritised their relationship, even when they struggled professionally through two failed congressional races and personally with infertility.“He reveals how he learned to trust God, make difficult choices, and take leaps of faith, all with an eye to what his family needed.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Top Broadway star likens Ron DeSantis to Klan grand wizard

      by

      Prominent Broadway actor Denée Benton likened Florida’s rightwing governor Ron DeSantis to a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard at Sunday night’s Tony awards ceremony, drawing applause and roars of approval from the audience.Benton, known for her stage roles in Hamilton as well as Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, took aim at the Republican presidential hopeful and his policies attacking minority groups as she announced an award for theatrical excellence for a Florida high school teacher from the town of Plantation.She said: “While I am certain that the current grand wizard, I’m sorry, excuse me, governor of my home state will be changing the name of this following town immediately, we were honored to present this award to the truly incredible and life-changing Jason Zembuch-Young, enhancing the lives of students at South Plantation high school in Plantation, Florida.”There were gasps from some in the crowd, followed by laughter and lengthy applause.DeSantis has curtailed Black voters’ rights, restricted conversations of race and sexuality in Florida’s classrooms and workplaces, and rolled back protections for the LBGTQ+ community and other minority groups as he attempts to prove his extremist credentials to Republican voters in pursuit of his party’s presidential nomination.Benton’s comments also came the day after a group of DeSantis supporters was spotted waving Nazi flags and banners supporting the governor at the entrance to Disney World in Orlando.DeSantis is feuding with the theme park giant over his ’don’t say gay’ law banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, and he has not responded to calls from Democrats or civil rights groups to condemn either Saturday’s demonstration or previous gatherings of Nazi sympathizers in central Florida.He is also being sued for his “unauthorized alien transportation program” in which groups of South American asylum seekers have been moved around the country in planes chartered by the state of Florida and dumped in states and cities run by Democrats without prior notice.Critics have highlighted the parallels between the DeSantis program, which he sees as a protest to President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, and the reverse freedom rides from the civil rights era of six decades ago.Similar to the false promises of accommodation, jobs, clothing and food allegedly made to lure the DeSantis groups of migrants, white supremacist groups in the 1960s – including the Klan – bussed Black families out of southern states to the north with assurances that a better life awaited them.Benton’s comments on Sunday were broadcast live to the nation on a CBS telecast of the Tony awards from Manhattan. The 31-year-old actor was educated at Carnegie Mellon University, which partnered with the Tonys to honor Zembuch-Young for his work creating a diverse and inclusive theater at his school and in summer camps, including shows staged entirely in American sign language (ASL).“I didn’t start out with a mission of: let’s be as inclusive as we possibly can. I’ve always championed the underdog because I kind of relate to that,” Zembuch-Young told the Associated Press last month.“If there’s somebody that’s standing in front of you and they want to work, well, let’s put them to work and let’s figure out a way to have them be as successful as they possibly can.”DeSantis’s media office did not respond to Benton’s comments. But Never Back Down, a political action committee supporting the governor’s run for the White House, criticized her in a tweet.“Liberal ‘elites’ can’t stand how effective Ron DeSantis is at defeating their attempts to sexualize and indoctrinate your children,” it wrote, repeating previous messaging from DeSantis acolytes that opposition to his anti-trans policies equates to “grooming”. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      The Shadow Docket review: how the US supreme court keeps sunlight out

      by

      Only a quarter of Americans have confidence in the supreme court. As the country strives to navigate a post-Roe v Wade world, the right to abortion removed, regard for the right wing of the court is scarcer still. Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito have negative ratings with the public. Kavanaugh and Thomas are underwater by double-digits.Being perceived as a predator – Kavanaugh – engenders disdain or worse. Taking undisclosed gifts from a Republican mega-donor and being married to an election-denier who trades on her spouse’s judgeship – Thomas – triggers demands for renewed oversight.When Ginni Thomas visited the White House “you knew your day was wrecked”, said a senior Trump aide, according to the Daily Beast. This week came news that Clarence Thomas and Alito have not yet filed their financial disclosures and have received extensions. The circus rumbles on.Against such a backdrop, Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas law school and CNN commentator, delivers The Shadow Docket.Under the subtitle “How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic”, Vladeck offers a well-researched indictment of how the supreme court has grown to rely on using procedural orders rather than rulings to make new law, escaping scrutiny while delivering major victories to the political right.The term “shadow docket” was coined in 2015, by William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor. In Vladeck’s words, it was “a catch-all for a body of the supreme court’s work that was, to that point, receiving virtually no academic or public attention”.Strictly speaking, the shadow docket is a vehicle for addressing issues that demand urgent attention, usually injunctions and orders to preserve the status quo. But it has morphed into a fraught topic. The court has adjudicated cases involving abortion, voting rights and Covid policy by means of the shadow docket. The docket also became the prime location for the elevation and reordering of religious rights, under the free exercise clause of the first amendment.Almost by definition, docket rulings are sparse. They are often unaccompanied by reasoning, Vladeck writes. “Invariably”, they lack “identification of how (or how many of) the justices voted and can be handed down at all times of day or, as has increasingly become the norm, in the middle of the night.”Vladeck knows his subject. In September 2021, he testified to the Senate judiciary committee about “Texas’s Unconstitutional Abortion Ban and the Role of the Shadow Docket”.He has also said: “What’s remarkable is that the court repeatedly acquiesced and acquiesced [to the right] … and almost always without any explanation.”On the page, he observes that few such Trumpian wins have resulted in actual binding precedents. Rather, shadow docket triumphs mainly satisfy political needs. Vladeck credits Noel Francisco, the solicitor general under Trump, and his deputy, for hatching the legal strategy that for example salvaged the Muslim travel ban and efforts to “build the wall” on the southern border without express congressional appropriation.SB-8, the Texas six-week abortion ban, provides a stark illustration of how the process continues to work. In September 2021, the supreme court did not formally opine on the constitutionality of the draconian Texas law. Instead, in an unsigned shadow docket order, a bare majority allowed the statute to slide into effect. It read:
      The application for injunctive relief or, in the alternative, to vacate stays of the district court proceedings presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the court is denied.”
      The text made no mention of Roe, the 1973 ruling then in place, safeguarding federal abortion rights. But everyone could see what was coming.John Roberts, the chief justice, a George W Bush appointee, would have stopped the Texas law from going into effect, pending a decision on the merits. The statutory rubric was “unusual” and “unprecedented”, he wrote. “The legislature has imposed a prohibition on abortions after roughly six weeks, and then essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large.”Months later, Roberts voted with the three liberals to save Roe. No matter. The court struck it down.Not everyone welcomes the attention Vladeck and others have brought to the use of the shadow docket. Alito publicly twitted the media for portraying it as something “sinister”, and depicting the court as “having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways”.On the other hand, Thomas’s friendship with the mega-donor Harlan Crowe should surely give any observer clear reason to pause.Elsewhere, Coney Barrett has denied that the court engages in results-oriented decision-making, urging an audience at the Reagan Library in April 2022 to “read the opinion” instead.Vladeck is unswayed: “It’s essential context to point out that, just two days later, she joined a 5-4 shadow docket ruling with no opinion for the public to read. It’s all part of the story – or, at least, it should be.”“The rise of the shadow docket … has negative effects on public perception of the court – and of the perceived legitimacy of the justices’ work,” Vladeck writes.The legitimacy of the court erodes.The Shadow Docket is comprehensive and sensitive to nuance, written for concerned audiences. Members of Congress, the bar, the press and engaged non-lawyers come to mind. Vladeck covers more than two centuries of legal history, together with the transformation of the court into a visibly co-equal branch of government.On Thursday night, news broke of 37 federal criminal counts against Donald Trump. The next election is 17 months away. The legitimacy and resilience of all US institutions stands to be tested like never before.
      The Shadow Docket is published in the US by Hachette More