Living in the USA

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Last night in his State of the Union address, President Bush called for continuing war in Iraq – while his approval rating is at an all-time low, 28 per cent. (The lowest in history was Nixon’s, 25 per cent – right now Bush is ahead by 3.)
JOHN NICHOLS will comment – he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation, he writes “The Online Beat” blog at TheNation.com, and his new book is The Genius of Impeachment.

Plus: Jews and American Popular Culture: PAUL BUHLE talks about the deep influence of Jews in American art, literature, politics, humor and sports. He edited the new 3-volume anthology on the subject. “Relief for the Jews! How about relief from the Jews?” – Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures, quoted in Jews and American Popular Culture.

Also: Democracy and slavery: for a brief moment, the country tried genuine interracial democracy. In the era of emancipation of Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s, the federal government passed laws promising former slaves equality and political rights, including the vote. Historian ERIC FONER will explain – his book Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction is out now in paperback. (originally broadcast 1-25-06)

More stuff to read: my piece “Iraq: Counting the Dead,” at TheNation.com – the UN count of 34,000 civilian deaths last year is almost certainly far loo low.

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A community of artists, Communists and homosexuals co-existed from the 1920s through the 1960s in the “Red Hills” above Silver Lake. Here, communists cultivated their individuality, gay men developed identity politics, and both provoked a right-wing backlash. Hurewitz’s new book is Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics – he teaches history at Hunter College in New York.
READ Martin Duberman in The Nation on Bohemian Los Angeles.

Plus: HAROLD MEYERSON talks about the Democrats and the war. Harold of course is Acting Editor of The American Prospect and op-ed contributor to the Washington Post.

Also: The Rapture as a video game: JOSHUA BEARMAN of the LA Weekly talks about Left Behind: Eternal Forces, based on the best selling series of 12 books by evangelical minister Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. It’s “an evangelical tool for teens” with a narrator who says God will take his people to heaven, but “for those Left Behind, the Apocalypse has just begun.” Josh was featured on “The Super” episode of This American Life with Ira Glass last week.

More stuff to read: my piece on the season premiere of “24,” the Fox TV show starring Kiefer Sutherland that makes the case for torture more successfully than the Bush White House.

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BARBARA EHRENREICH says “fight for your right to party!” In her new book Dancing in the Streets she talks about the human inclination for collective joy, expressed through the ages in ecstatic celebrations of feasting, costuming, and dancing—and how that desire has been suppressed in modern society.
Barbara will be speaking at the downtown LA Public Library next Tues, Jan. 16, at 7pm in the “ALOUD” series.

Plus: President Bush tonight calls for more US troops to be sent to Iraq: JOHN NICHOLS will comment – he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Online Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Also: Dick Cluster and Rafael Hernandez talk about their new book The History of Havana: “a historical crossroad of the New World, a stage of scenic architecture, rhythmic sound-scapes, remarkable artistic genius, foreign invasions, struggles for personal and national freedom and independence – today a vibrant, complex world-renowned city, in a new global moment, creating its future in the throes of the fall of the Soviet Union, the lure and hooks of tourism, natural disasters, and the challenges of Empire” — Harry Belafonte.

More Stuff to read: my new pieces “Imagine No More Secrets: Problems with 25-year Declassification Rule” (LA Times);
Are Evangelicals “American Fascists”? (LA Times Book Review)

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Iraq Apocalypse: JUAN COLE reports on the rising tide of political violence following the grisly execution of Saddam Hussein — with Shiite observers chanting “Moktada, Moktada!” the name of the cleric whose death squads have “made an indescriminate industry of killing Sunnis” (New York Times). Juan Cole writes a column for Salon.com and the indespensible Iraq blog “Informed Comment.”

READ “Top ten ways the US enabled Saddam Hussein” by Juan Cole

Also: GAY L.A.: LILLIAN FADERMAN and STUART TIMMONS talk about the history and politics of sexual outlaws from the 1920s to the present: the LAPD’s 80-year reputation as the nation’s most homophobic police force, the remarkably free lives of Hollywood lesbians in the 1930s, and the rise of gay politics in the 1960s. Lillian Faderman is the award-winning author of numerous books including Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers; Stuart Timmons’s biography of gay movement founder Harry Hay became a Book of the Month Club selection. Their book is Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians.

Plus: JIMMY CARTER and the Jews: leading Jewish organizations and spokespeople have attacked Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. CAMERA, for example, says “Jimmy Carter Distorts Facts, Demonizes Israel,” and Alan Dershwitz calls the book “indecent.” AMY WILENTZ will comment – she was Jerusalem correspondent for the New Yorker, and wrote an award-winning novel, Martyr’s Crossing, about Palestinians and Israelis.

More stuff to read: my new piece “America’s Complicity in Saddam’s Crimes” at TheNation.com.

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Gerald Ford died yesterday, but he lives on in two of his key appointees: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Their impact on America today is greater than Ford’s. JOHN NICHOLS comments: he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation, and writes The Online Beat at TheNation.com.
READ my piece “Gerald Ford’s Legacy: Cheney and Rumsfeld” at TheNation.com

Report from Ramallah: Palestinian politics have been on the verge of chaos as Fatah and Hamas battle for power –MARK LeVINE has just returned from Ramallah with a report: is a Palestinian unity government possible? Do the Israelis want negotations? Mark teaches Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine and writes for the L.A. Times, Tikkun, Le Monde, and The Nation.

ALSO: EARL WARREN transformed America as Chief Justice, first of all with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, declaring segregated schools unconstitutional. But before Eisenhower appointed him, he had a long career in California politics that was not so liberal. JIM NEWTON of the L.A. Times will explain: his new book is Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made.

More stuff to read: My piece “James Brown, Godfather of Soul” at TheNation.com

No show today, but some news: the FBI yesterday agreed to release the last ten documents from the John Lennon FBI File, which had been withheld for the last 25 years on the grounds that they were “national security” documents and that releasing them could cause “foreign military retaliation.”
READ the L.A. Times story
READ my new piece “The Last Lennon File” at TheNation.com
SEE the new documents at LennonFBIfiles.com

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A 20-year prosecutor lays out the case against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell. The charge: conspiracy and fraud in taking the country to war. ELIZABETH de la VEGA is the author of U.S. v. George W. Bush et al.

ALSO: The great RICKY JAY talks about the world of “deceptive practices.” He’s one of the world’s most accomplished sleight-of-hand artists, and has appeared on TV and in movies, including David Mamet’s films “House of Games”, “Homicide,” “Spanish Prisoner,” and “Heist.” His award-winning show “Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants” is running at the Geffen Theater in Westwood through Jan. 27. (originally broadcast Sept. 26, 2001)

PLUS: falling wages and rising unemployment: the world economy over the last 50 years has been plagued by over-production and excessive competition; the result is a long-term crisis since the early 1970s. UCLA historian ROBERT BRENNER is the author of The Economics of Global Turbulence. “Here, at last – something good out of the left” — The Wall Street Journal.

MORE STUFF TO READ: my TruthDig piece, “Was Nixon Worse? Counting the dead in Vietnam and Iraq”
And at TheNation.com, “John Lennon’s Legacy: Did “Give Peace a Chance’ Save a Single Life?”

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90 percent of Americans say they’ve never doubted the existence of God. 80 per cent say they are certain they will be called to answer for their sins on Judgment Day. But says EYAL PRESS, the same religious zeal that pushes some whites to the right leads blacks and Latinos in the opposite direction. The secular left, he concludes, should think twice before seeing religious people as their foes.
Eyal’s story, “In God’s Country,” is in Nov. 20 issue of The Nation.

ALSO: The Underground economy of the urban poor: SUDHIR VENKATESH explains the desperate, dangerous, and remarkable ways people survive in a poor black neighborhood, where he found a wide world of work off the books: backyard mechanics, street vendors, hustlers and of course drug dealers. Sudhir teaches sociology and African-American Studies at Columbia and is the author of Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor.

PLUS: Back from Afghanistan: ALISSA RUBIN of the L.A. Times just returned from Khowst where she profiled a woman who serves in the Afghan parliment: Zahera Sharif.
Her father opposed her getting an education, but under Soviet rule she was able to get an M.A. When the Taliban conquered, she was forced to flee to Pakistan. Now she is back, fighting warlord rule.

Finally, JOHN NICHOLS, Washington Correspondent for The Nation, will have comment on the Iraq Study Group Report.

Web Extra: YOUR MINNESOTA MOMENT: Keith Ellison, the newly elected congressman from Minneapolis who is first Muslim elected to Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but rather on the Koran. LA Radio host Dennis Prager says “He should not be allowed to do so — because the act undermines American civilization.”

no show today — instead tune in to hear the Pacifica Archives special “Say It Loud,” featuring the voices of Muhammad Ali, Michael Moore, Gore Vidal, Tariq Ali, Angela Davis, Fannie Lou Hamer, Lily Tomlin, and Malcom X.
please contribute online to the Pacifica Archives — and pick a premium. My favorite: The Ballad of Pete Seeger, an original radio documentary celebrating Pete’s life and times, and featuring a candid conversation with Tim Robbins, and historic audio from the Pacifica Radio Archives.

ALSO: more stuff to read: Michael Moore says “Monday marked the day that we had been in Iraq longer than we were in all of World War II.”

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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 in his new book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone – it was nominated for National Book Award.

Also: All governments lie: the story of I. F. Stone, iconoclast, rebel, and the most important independent journalist of the 20^th century.
Izzy exposed government lying about the Vietnam war simply by reading the government’s own documents. Myra MacPherson tells his story – her new book is All Governments Lie!: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone.

Plus: The secret history of disco: disco brought a polysexual, polyracial, polymorphous celebration to a space beyond the reach of church, state and family. We’ll talk about they way it became a worldwide phenomenon, and the way it ended in a homophobic, racist backlash. Our disco man is Peter Shapiro — is book Turn the Beat Around is out now in paperback. PLAYLIST: Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive”; Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive”; Sister Sledge, “We Are Family”; Chic, “Good Times.” (originally broadcast July 27, 2005.)

And: Your Minnesota Moment: yesterday in Minneapolis, USAir removed 6 Muslim imams from a flight, handcuffed and detained them for several hours — after passengers complained of “suspicious behavior”: praying to Allah.