Living in the USA

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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

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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!

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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?”

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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IRAQ: American officials in Baghdad inhabit an isolated world: the Green Zone, a walled fortress filled with villas, swimming pools, and shiny new SUVs. It’s ground zero for cultural blindness, neo-con fanaticism, and imperial fantasy – the place where the American effort to remake Iraq was always doomed to failure. RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN of the Washington Post tells that story — his book is Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. (broadcast April 4, 2007)

Also: THE POLITICS OF HEALTH CARE: I spoke with New York Times op-ed columnist PAUL KRUGMAN about that topic at ALOUD at Central Library, a free series at the Los Angeles Public Library presented by the Library Foundation of L.A., and we will feature highlights of that conversation. Krugman’s new book is The Conscience of a Liberal. (broadcast Nov. 7, 2007)

Plus: HILLARY: is she a closet leftist and radical feminist? Has she been targeted by a vast right-wing conspiracy? We talked with CARL BERNSTEIN about Hillary’s 1960s; why she left Washington for Arkansas in 1974; why her 1993 health care plan ended in disaster; and why so many people don’t like her. Carl Bernstein of course is the Watergate Pulitzer Prize-winner; his new book is A WOMAN IN CHARGE: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. (broadcast July 18, 2007)

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We thought The Bomb might disappear with the Cold War – but instead we face the rising danger of nuclear terrorism and the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea occupying center stage in the presidential election. We’ll have comment and analysis from JONATHAN SCHELL – his new book is The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger. Jonathan writes for The Nation and Harper’s, and is currently teaching at Yale.

Plus: historian DAVID NASAW talks about Andrew Carnegie: he was the richest man in the world; he crushed the Homestead Strike — and he opposed US imperialism. David’s book Andrew Carnegie is out now in paperback. (Originally broadcast Oct. 25, 2006)

ALSO: Rethinking “McGovernism”: George McGovern’s 1972 campaign is often blamed for moving the Democratic Party away from the working man towards women, blacks, gays, environmentalists, and peacniks.  BRUCE MIROFF argues that recent Democratic presidential candidates fearful of “McGovernism” have moved to the center — and lost. Bruce teaches history at SUNY Albany; his new book is The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party.

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Today the Supreme Court hears arguments in what may be the most important constitutional case of the decade: whether the men detained at Guantanamo have a right to a fair trial before a real court. ERWIN CHEMERINKSY will comment – he has been named dean of the new UC Irvine law school, and he represents one of the Gitmo detainees whose case is before the court.
Read about the case at The Center for Constitutional Rights
Watch the video that Fox News refused to run

Also: Have the Democrats already blown the biggest swing state? BOB MOSER reports on Florida politics – he’s been writing for The Nation about the Democrats’ efforts to win back the South in 2008.

Plus: When politics worked in California: JESSE UNRUH ran the state’s Democratic party at mid-century, before term limits and lavish campaign spending – he was a fighting populist who wrote civil rights and education laws that were well ahead of their time. BILL BOYARSKY will explain – his new book is Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics. Bill was an award-winning reporter and editor for the LA Times for 30 years; now he teaches at USC and is covering the primaries for TruthDig.