Don't tell RFK Junior.
historian, politics & media, book coming soon: Archie Bunker for President with @uncpress.bsky.social
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Don't tell RFK Junior.
I'm not saying that was the Golden Era of TV news, I'm saying we are now in the Golden Shower Era of TV news. It's humiliating, it stinks, and it's icky-sticky.
for what it's worth, when CBS News was accused of "deceptively editing" interviews in the 1970s Frank Stanton stood up for news department and even risked facing a jail cell for refusing a congressional subpoena.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" used to be a laugh line.
To be clear, Agnew would say that to Trump and his cronies not to @jayrosen.bsky.social.
Even Spiro Agnew would be like "whoa, that's going a little far, my dude..." and Agnew was such a dick that his name was literally an anagram for grow a penis.
Looking forward to this one!
Looks like an amazing class! Thank you for sharing the syllabus 🙏
My book isn’t in this thread but it’s also on sale!! Makes my amazing masterpiece only $11! We both know you’ve spent $11 on something that wasn’t worth it—I promise this is. uncpress.org/978146968611...
Thank you, I am so happy with the cover design!
Finally, you can also use the 01NEWSITE50 code to get 50% off pre-orders for my own book: Archie Bunker for President! uncpress.org/978146969090...
Sometimes a cover catches your attention & the description wins you over. For me, @amyefarrell.bsky.social upcoming Intrepid Girls on the history of the girl scouts is that book: uncpress.org/978146968683...
The Justice, Power, and Politics serie's awesome & recent additions look great: Midwest Unrest by Ashley Howard, Mississippi Law by @randolphjustin.bsky.social, & Carceral Apartheid by @curlyprofessor.bsky.social: uncpress.org/978146968486... uncpress.org/978146968948... uncpress.org/978146968340...
And Eric L. Muller's Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe (yes, the title slaps) on the white lawyers in the American concentration camps for Japanese Americans (yes, it also seems relevant today!): uncpress.org/978146967397...
On my to read list is also @aimloiselle.bsky.social Beyond Norma Rae on race, gender, and labor: uncpress.org/978146967613...
There's also a bunch of titles I'm looking forward to reading! In a couple of weeks, @marionorrauthor.bsky.social new House of Diggs will be out. A biography of the congressman behind the home rule for Washington DC could not be more relevant today: uncpress.org/978146968932...
Don't forget Gun Country, @drewmckevitt.bsky.social eye-opening book on the consumer capitalism, in a Cold War and Civil Rights context, behind the strange relationship the US has to firearms: uncpress.org/978146967724...
Make sure to also check out @katejewell.bsky.social great Live From the Underground on college radio as a contested and influential site of culture and politics (and be surprised at how many famous artists had a background in college radio): uncpress.org/978146967725...
Another favorite is DARE to Say No, by @mfkantor.bsky.social, an insightful critical study of something often remembered as a joke that bridges the fields of education history, carceral history, and political history: uncpress.org/978146967904...
Next, you'll want to check out @renfro.bsky.social fantastic The Life and Death of Ryan White. Beautifully written, it challenges our understandings of the AIDS epidemic, innocence, whiteness, and stigma: uncpress.org/978146968085...
Start of with @llassabe.bsky.social excellent Resistance from the Right to learn how the founders of the modern conservative movement (think Karl Rove, Jeff Sessions, Patrick Buchanan) made their names fighting the New Left and Black Power on college campuses: uncpress.org/978146967449...
Readers, @uncpress.bsky.social has a new website and is celebrating with a 48-hour 50% flash sale (US only, use code 01NEWSITE50) so I thought I'd do a 🧵of some of my favorite American modern history titles available at uncpress.org
"first they came for John Bolton and since everybody already hated him it wasn't a big deal and that was the end of it all" is not a poem people will remember.
In late March I was invited to speak at the Administrative Court Days in Helsinki and decided to use Calvinball as the frame for my remarks. Yesterday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed it is indeed an apt reference.
Imagine explaining to Bill Watterson while he was drawing this that "Calvinball" would one day appear in a United States Supreme Court dissent
does anybody else think about historians' is it fascism (?) discussion whenever hearing that i have a daughter song?
On this note: my book is out this fall and if anybody wants to assign it and/or want me to zoom in I'd be more than happy to do so. could work in popular culture and politics, post-1960s history, television and activism, or anything else that rhymes with Archie Bunker.
😵💫😵💫😵💫
I return to this one quite often: "don't say that he's hypocritical, say rather that he's apolitical."
Sometimes I wonder if past scandals (thinking about Abu Ghraib in particular) would matter in the media/political environment of 2025?
Congrats, Paul, that's fantastic news!! Already looking forward to reading!
That's right and is what the Smothers Brothers argued in a lawsuit, CBS argued they were in breach of contract for failing to deliver a show.
The book is Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. It's out in November but already available for pre-order at this link: uncpress.org/book/9781469... (psst: use 01SOCIAL30 for 30% off at checkout)
Canceling Colbert, like canceling the Smothers Brothers five decades earlier, is unlikely to be the last step in the campaign to control the president's image and punish his "enemies."
It's an odd story of Nixon's best friend in Hollywood, his obsession over his own image, and his deep sense of elite victimization (cf @larryglickman.bsky.social ). What followed were increased efforts to control television, intimidation of executives and producers, and abuse of power.
Shameful. But this is not the first time a US president has pressured CBS to cancel a television comedy. In fact, in my book there's a story of how Nixon successfully got them to cancel the most popular show in 1969: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
just gonna leave this here...
I'll take looks like fascism for 600$, Alex.
the parasocial aspect in correspondence to stars of popular tv shows addressed to the character rather than the actress/actor is fascinating. My favorite example: mail addressed to "Edith Bunker's murderer" (i.e. Norman Lear) after Jean Stapleton left Archie Bunker's Place in 1980s.
congratulations!! Do you already have a title?
If it walks like fascism, if it talks like fascism, if it tastes like fascism...
Every single member of congress should speak out.
I'll do the paper that connects insults, masculinity, and comedy in the late American media feuds of Agnew, Wallace, and Trump.
This.
Yeah, my argument is it looks like something new because of Trump but it's actually the result of developments set in motion by the success of All in the Family decades earlier.
Also: sitcoms. In fact, the introduction to my book is full of examples of sitcoms and sitcom producers dealing with the Trump moment.
Also sitcoms like Black-ish, Superstore, and One Day at a Time with storylines very explicitly inspired by Trump.
I mean The Good Fight was very explicitly a show about Trump's America.
As I was saying: bsky.app/profile/ronf...
Part of the reason "the average voter" understands certain things better than others is because the media focuses more on certain things than others.
"You read books, eh?" A 1949 red scare Herblock cartoon about pressures on teachers that hits hard once again.
This.
whenever I got stuck I went back to the sources, writing down anything that I found relevant (with or without comments), then I treated them as the pieces required to assemble a puzzle.
remember in It Can't Happen Here when the regime arrests members of congress to intimidate them? been thinking about that today for no particular reason.
If you see this, quote the energy you bring to Bluesky
With all the talk about Murrow and See It Now, it's important to remember that Herblock was out there taking on McCarthy long before CBS News joined the fray. Heck, he even coined the term McCarthyism.
maybe my next project should just be a political history of reality television...
the funniest thing is that plane is older than Frozen. I thought it was brand new but it's been around longer than "Let It Go."
"tRumP iS so rICh tHaT nOBodY caN BuY hIM" was and remains among the dumbest takes ever. The open defiance of the emoluments clause is in and of itself a constitutional crisis. abcnews.go.com/Politics/tru...
Congratulations, can't wait to read it!!
Masked men are disappearing elected officials in broad daylight in the United States of America.
Beware of using "polarization" to describe the radicalization of the right, exhibit 872.
Thank you! I look forward to reading your book as well and even more so now that I know there's some Archie Bunker in there 😁
Moral of the story: Telnaes is not only one of the very best editorial cartoonists but she is a champion for the free press. The Pulitzer is very, very, very well deserved.
"To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press." anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...
The key word is "was" and the reason Ann Telnaes is no longer at the Washington Post is because she resigned after the editors censored this cartoon:
Thank you, Kevin!
Here's a link: uncpress.org/book/9781469...
Archie Bunker for President is now available for pre-order on the UNC Press site!! Pre-ordering is the best way of support a book so please consider heading over to the @uncpress.bsky.social site and make sure to use the code 01SOCIAL30 at checkout to save 30%!!
Congratulations, Doctor!! Very much looking forward to reading your work!
to Trump, who is very, very, very aware of himself as a "ratings machine," any tv interview should be transactional. this isn't just about the usual problems of access journalism, it's about the authoritarian intimidation and gaslighting in "just say yes."
the emperor has no clothes.
Literal fascist propaganda. "Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes" - but no posters of them www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...