Gay Baiting Gore Vidal: 1960 Politics – HuffPost 10/8

Gore Vidal was not just a novelist and essayist; he also ran for Congress in 1960 in upstate New York. In a 1988 interview I asked him whether there was any gay-baiting in that campaign.

“Even then it was considered bad karma to fuck around with old Gore,” he told me. . .

. . . continued at the Huffington Post HERE

Tribute to Hobsbawm: LA Review of Books, 10/4

ERIC HOBSBAWM, who died October 1 at age 95, was one of the world’s greatest historians, and also a Marxist. He was not just an academic — he was also a lifelong Communist with a capital “C,” a full-fledged member of the Party since his teenage years.. . .
. . . continued at the LA Review of Books HERE.

Bob Dylan’s ‘Tempest’: Q&A with Greil Marcus: The Nation 10/2

Jon Wiener: How does Dylan sound to you on Tempest?

Greil Marcus: He sounds like himself. He sounds sly, as he’s always sounded. He sounds as if there’s a twinkle in his eye; as if there’s a joke he’s letting you in on, maybe halfway, and you’ll have to find your way to the end of the joke yourself.  That’s pretty much been his mode all along.
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

Rick Perlstein’s Presidential Debate Prep: KPFK 10/3

Romney debates Obama tonight at 6: we’ll get ready for the debate at 4:00 with RICK PERLSTEIN: will the candidates say anything they haven’t said a thousand times already?  Will the pundits declare Romney the winner because he didn’t make another terrible “gaffe”?  Rick is the author of the classic Nixonland; he wrote about the Republican National Convention for The Nation.
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Also: with BOB DYLAN’s new album “Tempest,” we’re back in the old, weird America: SEAN WILENTZ will comment; he’s the official historian-in-residence at the official BobDylan.com website, and author of Bob Dylan in America, our featured thank-you gift in the KPFK fun drive today (along with the beautiful vinyl version of “Tempest.”)   Please call and pledge during the show: 818-985-5735, or online at kpfk.org.

The FBI and the “Subversives”: KPFK 9/26

The product of a decades-long battle with the FBI, SETH ROSENFELD’s book SUBVERSIVES  exposes the FBI’s illegal surveillance of students at Berkeley in the 1960s.
READ about how Reagan used the FBI to spy on his children HERE.
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Plus: Our political update from HAROLD MEYERSON, he’s editor-at-large of The American Prospect and he writes a column for the Washington Post, where  his latest piece is “Redistributing Wealth Upward.”

Also: The news from China: anti-Japanese demonstrations—JEFF WASSERSTROM will comment—he’s chair of the history department at UCI and writes for the L.A. Times,  the New York Times, the New Left Review, the TLS, and The Nation.  But China’s diversity is often overlooked; a fascinating antidote can be found in Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land, edited by Angilee Shah and Jeff Wasserstrom.  “Chinese Characters” event at USC: 4pm Thurs 9/27: Info HERE.

Greil Marcus on Bob Dylan’s “Tempest”: KPFK 9/19

BOB DYLAN’s new album “TEMPEST”: GREIL MARCUS comments on Dylan’s  return to “the old weird America” of murder songs, ballads and tall tales.   Greil’s  decades of writing about Dylan are collected in the volume Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010.
Playlist: “Scarlet Town”;  “Long and wasted”;  “Tempest”: “The watchman he lay dreaming/ Of all the things that can be/ He dreamed the Titanic was sinking/ Into the deep blue sea.”
Listen HERE

Rick Perlstein: Romney Sinking: KPFK 9/19

LISTEN online HERE — SUBSCRIBE to iTunes podcast HERE
What happens when Americans find out what Romney tells his big contributors about the 47% who support Obama?  We’ll have analysis from JOHN NICHOLS, Washington correspondent for The Nation, and from RICK PERLSTEIN, author of Nixonland, who talks about Romney since Tampa.  WATCH Rick Perlstein video on the Republicans HERE;  READ Rick Perlstein on the  Chicago Teachers’ Strike HERE.
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Also: BOB DYLAN’s new album “TEMPEST”: GREIL MARCUS comments: his  decades of writing about Dylan are collected in the volume Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010.
Playlist: “Long and wasted”; “Scarlet Town”; “Tempest”: “The watchman he lay dreaming/ Of all the things that can be/ He dreamed the Titanic was sinking/ Into the deep blue sea.”

Top Secret America: KPFK 9/12

LISTEN online HERE — SUBSCRIBE to iTunes podcast HERE
The rise of a new American security state: Pulitzer-Prize winner DANA PRIEST of the Washington Post reports on a world so vast no one knows how many people it employs, how much money taxpayers spend on it, or whether “counterterrorism” and “homeland security” accomplish anything worthwhile.  Dana is co-author of  Top Secret America–it’s out now in paperback.  (originally broadcast 8/11)

Also: RUSSELL BANKS is one of our best writers – in his novel, Lost Memory of Skin, his protagonist, “The Kid,” is a registered sex offender forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of a school or park – and thus forced to join a homeless camp under a Florida freeway bridge.  The book is out now in paperback.  (originally broadcast 8/11)

plus: The US effort to “Rebuild Iraq”: how about this: a plant producing frozen chicken — in a country with no electricity for refrigeration? PETER VAN BUREN worked for the State Department during the “surge,” and recounts the way billions of dollars were lost to waste and fraud.  His book is “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People”–it’s out now in paperback.  (Watch chicken plant  PR video HERE.)  (originally broadcast 8/11)