Living in the USA

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
Evangelical politics is taking a sharp, surprising turn – away from a war on liberalism and toward doing something about poverty and the environment. BOB MOSER explains – his story “Who Would Jesus Vote For?” is on the cover of the new issue of The Nation. Bob has been covering Democrats in the South for book to be published this summer.

Plus: novelist PETER CAREY has won two Booker prizes: the first for Oscar and Lucinda, which was made into a movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett; the second for The True History of the Kelly Gang, which sold two million copies worldwide. Now he has published his tenth novel, His Illegal Self, which tells the story of Che, a seven-year-old whose parents are part of the Weather Underground.
More Stuff to read: my Q&A with Peter Carey

Also: The Comintern had front organizations – and so did the CIA. The story of the CIA’s funding of supposedly independent cultural groups and magazines—and how Ramparts magazine exposed the secret funding in 1967– is told by HUGH WILFORD; his new book is The Mighty Wurlizer: How the CIA Played America. “By turns hilarious and horrifying” — Kirkus reviews. Hugh Wilford teaches at Cal State U. Long Beach.

More stuff to read: my new piece at the Huffington Post, “How the Spitzer Sex Scandal Could Help Hillary”

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
Hillary won the popular vote in Texas and Ohio — but she can’t win a majority of elected delegates, no matter what happens in the remaining primaries (as Jonathan Alter has pointed out).
Can we understand what happens next? Yes we can! — with help from HAROLD MEYERSON and JOHN NICHOLS: Harold writes for the Washington Post op-ed page and is executive editor of The American Prospect; John is Washington editor of The Nation and writes “The Online Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

And to get away from Clinton, Obama, and McCain for a moment:
THE WORLD WITHOUT US: ALAN WEISMAN asks what would happen to the earth if humans vanished: how would nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures of human activity? Weissman’s book is a major international bestseller, translated into 27 languages, with 2 million copies sold worldwide; It’s the #1 Nonfiction book of the year for many critics.
Watch the great YouTube video: “Your House Without You”

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
Samantha Power is a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama and Pulitzer-Prize winning author of A Problem from Hell, the ground-breaking work on genocide and humanitarian intervention. She was also an early opponent of Bush’s plans to invade Iraq. We’ll talk with her about Obama, Iraq, and her new book Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World – Vieira de Mello was killed in Baghdad, by a suicide bomber in 2003.
READ my new piece at the Huffington Post, “Samantha Power: Obama and Me”

We’ll also be featuring THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES , the BBC documentary that has never been released in the US. It argues that much of the threat of terror is a fantasy. J. Hoberman in the Village Voice called it “the most widely discussed docu agitprop since Fahrenheit 9/11,” and said “The Power of Nightmares takes a similarly confrontational stance toward Bush-world disorder. But . . . it’s more complex and seductive.”

More stuff to read: my new piece at the Huffington Post, “Republicans for Obama: How Significant?”

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES is the BBC documentary that has never been released in the US. It argues that much of the threat of terror is a fantasy. J. Hoberman in the Village Voice called it “the most widely discussed docu agitprop since Fahrenheit 9/11,” and said “The Power of Nightmares takes a similarly confrontational stance toward Bush-world disorder. But the counter-narrative offered by this three-part, three-hour BBC account of the so-called war on terror is more complex and seductive.”
We will be featuring the DVD of “The Power of Nightmares” as a premium in the KPFK fund drive.

Also: AN EATER’S MANIFESTO: MICHAEL POLLAN’s is deceptively simple: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables.” His new number one-bestseller is IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. His previous books include The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times. Pollan teaches journalism at UC Berkeley. We will be featuring In Defense of Food as a premium in the KPFK fund drive.
MICHAEL POLLAN’S RECOMMENDED WEBSITES:
Center for Informed Food Choices – Eat Local Challenge – Food Routes

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
Our day-after analysis of Clinton v. Obama on Super Tuesday: Clinton 52% Obama 42% in California; total delegates: Clinton 803, Obama 742.

HAROLD MEYERSON on the Republicans: he says in today’s Washington Post, “McCain’s victories have chiefly been a triumph of biography over ideology.” Last night demonstrated “the bankruptcy of the conservative agenday and political strategy that have steered the Republicans for many years.”

JOHN NICHOLS on the Democrats: he says at TheNation.com that white men split their votes evenly between the woman and the black man; women were for Hillary, blacks for Obama; that means the deciding votes were Latino – they went for Clinton 2-1 nationally and 73% in California.

And we’ll put it in historical context with MICHAEL KAZIN of Georgetown U. -his most recent book is A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan.

More stuff to read: my new piece “Feminist Leaders Oppose Hillary” at the Huffington Post — 39,679 hits!

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
Our super-Tuesday preview: polls show Hillary well ahead of Barack Obama, and McCain rising to the top among Republicans. Polls also show that voters nationally prefer McCain over Hillary right now, 46-44. We’re supposed to focus on the issues, not on the horse race; but I’m worried about the horse race: Could McCain win in November? HAROLD MEYERSON will comment — he says growing economic problems will hurt McCain’s chances. Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect and an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post.

Also: When Hamas blew open Gaza’s border fence with Egypt last week, they struck a decisive blow against Israeli policy, and Bush White House policy, which held that forcing the Palestians to suffer food and power shortages would turn them against Hamas. AMY WILENTZ will comment; she was Jerusalem correspondent for the New Yorker, and is a contributing editor of The Nation. She also wrote an award-winning novel about Palestinians and Israelis: Martyr’s Crossing.
READ Amira Hass in Haaretz: “Finally, A Popular Uprising”

Plus: The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s followed in the wake of a broad, raucous, communist movement that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. These home-grown radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, and intellectuals employed every strategy imaginable to take Dixie down. That’s what GLENDA GILMORE says – her new book is Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950. Glenda teaches history at Yale.

More stuff to read: my new piece at the Huffington Post, “If Obama is JFK, Who Does That Make Hillary?”

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
“Desperately Seeking Stimulus”: BARBARA EHRENREICH says that the issue replacing Iraq in the election is “how to get the economy engorged and throbbing again.”

Plus: CHALMERS JOHNSON on the bankrupt empire: The military adventurers of the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination. Chalmers Johson’s Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, was published yesterday in paperback. His new piece appears at TomDispatch.com.
Read Chalmers Johnson on “Charlie Wilson’s War”
Watch the video: Chalmers Johnson on American Hegemony

Also: GANG LEADER FOR A DAY: When a grad student in sociology at the U. of Chicago walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago’s most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. As a result, SUDHIR VENKATESH befriended a gang leader named JT and spend a decade inside the projects under JT’s protection, documenting what he saw there. Sudhir will be reading from and signing his new book Gang Leader for A Day at Vroman’s Bookstore, 5695 E. Colorado Blvd in Pasadena, tonight/Wed at 700pm.

 LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW ONLINE –
JULIAN BOND on SNCC, the sixties, and civil rights.  He was one of the founders of SNCC in 1960, and led protests against segregation in Georgia.  From 1998 to 2010, he was chairman of the NAACP.  His essay, “”The Movement We Helped Make”,” appears in the book Long Time Gone: Sixties America Then and Now, edited by Alexander Bloom. (originally broadcast July 31, 2001).

also: HAROLD MEYERSON analyzes the Jan. 19 Nevada caucuses – he calls Las Vegas “workers’ paradise” where the 60,000-member hotel employees union, Local 226 of the Culinary Workers, has endorsed Obama.Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect and an op-ed page columnist for The Washington Post; he wrote about “The Caesar’s Palace Soviet ”for the Prospect website.

Plus: France and the US: today on one side of the Atlantic we’ve had “freedom fries” and beaujolais poured down the sewer; on the other, mobs attacking McDonalds.It wasn’t always that way: VANESSA SCHWARTZ shows how, in the 1950s and 1960s, Hollywood loved Paris, and, as the cover of Look magazine declared in 1958, “Brigitte Bardot conquers America.” The result was a rich and cosmopolitan film culture.Vanessa teaches history and film studies at USC; her new book is It’s So French! Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture.

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
our day-after analysis of the Democratic and Republican primaries in New Hampshire: John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, and John Powers, columnist for LA Magazine, will answer the big questions about Hillary v. Obama and McCain v. Romney. Also: how perverse is the New Hampshire primary?
John Nichols writes “The Online Beat” blog at TheNation.com;
John Powers’s piece “The Hillary Puzzle” appears in the new issue of Los Angeles Magazine.

also: People, pants, and global trade: RACHEL LOUISE SNYDER looks at the human, environmental, and political forces shaping the multi-billion dollar denim industry. She’s one of the few jouranlists ever to be granted permission to accompany factory monitors visiting a Gap factory in China, and her story about Cambodia’s garment workers was featured on “This American Life.” Rachel’s book is Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade. She will be speaking and signing Wed. nite at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd, W. Hwyd, 7pm.

LISTEN TO THIS SHOW ONLINE – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
The writers’ strike continues: HOWARD RODMAN updates the issues: the significance of Letterman & Leno, and Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert going back on the air in January, and of the union striking the Academy Awards broadcast. Mostly, we’ll talk about how the writers can win. Howard is a board member of the Writers Guild of America, West, and teaches screenwriting at USC; his screen adaptation of Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, plays at Sundance this month, and opens in May.
WATCH the hilarious “Heartbreaking Voices of Uncertainty”

Also: best books of the year: SUSAN FALUDI exposes they way the 9-11 attacks led to a call to restore “traditional” manhood, marriage, and maternity. “Once again,” she says, Americans “fled from self-knowledge and retreated into myth.” Susan wrote the unforgettable book BACKLASH; her new book is The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in post-9/11 America. (originally broadcast Oct. 31, 2007).

Plus: some of our favorite holiday music: two versions of “Please Come Home for Christmas” — Darlene Love, and Aaron Neville — and of course Poncho Sanchez “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”