October 2019 Acquisitions

Books:
Ed Brubaker et al, Batman: Bruce Wayne--Fugitive, Vol. 3, 2003.
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, The Boys, Vol. 1: The Name of the Game, 2007. 
Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Vol. 2, Sixth Edition, 2020.
Eric Foner, Voices of Freedom: A Documentary Reader, Sixth Edition, 2020.
Julia Pierpont and Manjit Thapp, The Little Book of Feminist Saints, 2018.
Eldo Yoshima, Ryuko, Vol. 1, 2019.

Movies:
Mr. Mom, 1983.
Pocahontas and Pocahontas II, 2012.

Music:
Beatles, Let It Be... Naked, 2003.
Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell!, 2019.
John Fogerty, Blue Moon Swamp, 1997.
Liam Gallagher, Why Me? Why Not., 2019.
Robyn Hitchcock and Andy Partridge, Planet England, 2019.
Post Malone, Hollywood's Bleeding, 2019.
Midnight Oil, Red Sails in the Sunset, 1985, 1990.
Bob Mould, Sunshine Rock, 2019.
Muffs, No Holiday, 2019.
Serge Pizzorno, The S.L.P., 2019.
Ramones, Acid Eaters, 1994.
Ranking Roger, Public Confidential, 2019.
Spoon, Everything Hits at Once: The Best of, 2019.
Various, Beg, Scream & Shout! The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul, 1997.
Various, Clueless: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1995. 
Various, Walt Disney Records The Legacy Collection: Disneyland, 2015.

"Driving the Demagogues Out of the Barnes & Noble"

"Lepore's pairing of Carmichael and Reagan is telling. Other historians charting the rise of the right have invoked such structural and economic factors as white flight to the suburbs and the rise of corporate-funded think tanks. Her narrative stresses what she views as the ill-advised intransigence of the left. 'With each new form of public protest, Reagan's political capital grew,' she explains. As campus activists 'descended into disenchantment and a profound alienation from the idea of America itself,' Republicans fed off that disenchantment. Conservatism surged, she writes, when liberalism faltered because 'the idea of identity replaced the idea of equality.'"

Daniel Immerwahr at The Nation reviews Jill Lepore's These Truths and This America.

"We've Grown Old Before Actually Getting Old"

"The thing is, we're in sort of a weird spot. We were raised in the pre-digital era, and our values were very much shaped by the analog world. Now we're having to contend with the post-digital era—not just contend with it but figure out how to sustain long lives and careers within it. Because we're not that old yet! But we are the last cohort to have known the world in its pre-digital form as adults. I mean, I worked jobs, as an adult, where there was no email and we were still using Rolodexes and Selectric typewriters alongside our giant computers. This was in the early 1990s, which wasn't that long ago. The pace at which things have changed is breathtaking, really. The result is that Gen Xers can sometimes sound like grouchy old people while we're still in our 40s."

Otis Houston at Los Angeles Review of Books interviews Meghan Daum.

"This Desperate Blame Game"

"By continuing to blame everyone else for their loss, the Clinton camp is suppressing serious reflection on the problems with their own campaign. These ranged from the 'Pied Piper' strategy of urging media allies to elevate Donald Trump to front-runner status, to the sabotage of Bernie Sanders by Clinton surrogates in the DNC.
"The deflection strategy also seeks to cover over a key factor in Clinton's loss: her record of serving Wall Street, promoting corporate trade deals that hurt working people, and supporting endless war and regime change disasters."

Jill Stein defends herself from Hillary Clinton at The Guardian.

"Care Less About What Happens in the Bedroom Than in the Workplace"

"'What the Democrats in California and in New York need to realize is that it doesn't matter how many votes we get in California or New York,' Betras said before 'going out on a limb' and predicting that those strongholds would stay blue. 'But that doesn't get us to the promise land. What gets us there is fly-over country.'"

Philip Wegmann at Real Clear Politics warns Democratic candidates away from emphasizing "gender-identity pronouns."

And Froma Harrop argues that "Identity Politics Are a Dead End."

"The Proper Way to Use Identity"

"Ilhan Omar, who's also endorsing Sanders, has done much the same. For her, 'the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work,' and Trump's racist populism is an effort to 'prevent the solidarity of working people'. These are not radical sentiments–they're things that any socialist or social democrat would have said throughout the last century and a half. But they absolutely befuddle a media class who can only see politics through the lens of identity."

Bhaskar Sunkara at The Guardian praises the Squad's endorsements of Bernie Sanders.

As does Arwa Mahdawi.

"Music Buff Pissed 'Come Josephine In My Flying Machine' Left Off Pitchfork's 'Best Of The 1910s' List"

"'This is such typical Pitchfork horseshit—you're seriously telling me the greatest song by Blanche Ring doesn't even land a mention on their rankings?' said Sherman, shaking his head in disbelief as he noted that you couldn't take a step in the early 20th century without hearing Victrolas playing Ring's distinctive soprano as she sang about an aviator taking his dearest gal to the moon in a flying contraption. 'Oh, I'm sorry that Blanche goddamn Ring, the queen of the vaudeville circuit, doesn't meet your oh-so-precious standards for great music."

From The Onion.

"A Menu of High Crimes and Misdemeanors"

"House Democrats have calculated that an impeachment focused narrowly on the Ukraine scandal will make the strongest legal case against President Trump. But that's not Trump's only impeachable offense. A full accounting would include a wide array of dangerous and authoritarian acts—82, to be precise. His violations fall into seven broad categories of potentially impeachable misconduct that should be weighed, if not by the House, then at least by history."

At New York, Jonathan Chait presents "The (Full) Case for Impeachment."

"Morphed into the Main Event"

"Normally this is the kind of rift national leaders can help bridge, invoking the usual formulas about our shared values and history of inclusion. For the past two years, however, we've had a president with a gift for intuiting fault lines and prying them open with a crowbar. Who would have imagined, before Donald Trump, that Republicans would be boycotting the NFL? That buying sneakers would seem like a political decision? That 'free speech' would become a kind of code for owning the libs?"

Stephen Heuser at Politico introduces a "Culture War Issue."

"A Villain Unlike Any"

"Has the Joker become such a massive pop-culture presence that moviegoers will find themselves compelled by a Clown Prince without the crimes? He started out as a colorfully deranged, stone-cold killer. Now he gets the spotlight to himself. We can't wait to hear the punchline."

Sean T. Collins at Rolling Stone presents "the madcap history of the Caped Crusader's deadliest enemy."

"The Only Candidate of the Left"

"Despite these criticisms, it's evident that Sanders is the only candidate who stands aligned with the admirable, if recently mostly moribund, traditions of democratic socialist internationalism. He is the only candidate who appreciates the rapacious history of US foreign policy; he is the only candidate to envision a post-national future; and he is the only candidate to take all of humanity, and not just American citizens, as his subject. If elected, he has the potential to revolutionize how Americans understand both their own country and its relationship to the rest of the world."

Daniel Bessner at Jacobin praises Bernie Sanders's foreign policy.

"Uneasy About 'Socialism'"

"The meaning of democratic socialism―a mixture of political and economic democracy―should be no mystery to Americans.  After all, socialist programs have been adopted in most other democratic nations.  And, in fact, Americans appear happy enough with a wide range of democratic socialist institutions in the United States, including public schools, public parks, minimum wage laws, Social Security, public radio, unemployment insurance, public universities, Medicare, public libraries, the U.S. postal service, public roads, and high taxes on the wealthy."

Lawrence Wittner at HNN wonders why "large numbers of Americans seem remarkably confused about democratic socialism."

"The True Limit on Spending Isn't the Numbers on Federal Balance Sheets but Inflation"

"In a policy landscape where debt is already an afterthought, MMT's significance seems to be in its role as a new kind of public economics for progressives. This new way of thinking about the political economy is winning converts less on the strength of any particular argument about money creation or inflation than on the implications of its reframing of our political and economic constraints, and its suggestion that solving much of what ails our increasingly unequal society is a matter of willpower rather than finances."

Osita Nwanevu at The New Republic discusses the growing interest Modern Monetary Theory.

"Not Just a Blip"

"Goldberg says he noticed an abrupt change around the time mainstream news outlets started picking up on social media accounts of fatal police shootings of black men."

Asma Khalid at NPR writes about "How White Liberals Became Woke."

"Your Divisive Dividing Divisionating"

"What's scary is that you don't understand how your words affect other people. When you say true stuff, then other people might get the disturbing idea to research what you said, learn something, and then continue to learn things. Do you not get where that leads us? To a bunch of people researching difficult topics and admitting that, while they don't know everything, they do know certain things, and those certain things are true. Soon enough people will be saying, 'Hey, maybe true things should inform how we govern,' and that's when you know it’s too late. We as a country are done."

At McSweeney's, Chas Gillespie denounces "your commitment to truth."

"FBI Warns 'Downton Abbey' Screenings Could Be Target For Shootings By Disgruntled Royalist"

"'The individuals in question are in a state of constant anger and dissatisfaction, frustrated to be living in a world that does not honor the crown.'"

From The Onion. 

"This Was Not How It Was All Supposed to Turn Out"

"For many years, Silicon Valley and the machines that came out of it were presented as personally, economically, and socially transformative, agents of revolution at both the level of the individual and the whole social order. They were democratizing, uncontrolled, anarchic, and new. Most of all, they were supposed to be fun—to open up a space of play and freedom. How is it, then, that just a few decades in, we find ourselves trapped in a dreary spectacle that seems to replicate the old patterns of exploitation and dominion in almost every sphere, but with a creepy new intimacy?"

Kim Phillips-Fein at The New Republic reviews Margaret O'Mara's The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.