tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10913406955258481902024-03-13T11:51:53.788-04:00Wide Asleep in America<b>"Living is easy with eyes closed /<br>Misunderstanding all you see."</b><br>
- John Lennon<br><br><br>
<b>"This is no dream. This is really happening!"</b><br>
- Rosemary Woodhouse, <i>Rosemary's Baby</i><br><br><br>
<b>"Humankind can not bear very much reality."</b><br>
- T.S. Eliot<br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger499125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-4146237267937517312018-05-23T11:29:00.000-04:002018-05-30T09:41:40.496-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 38: The Media' Bogus Generation Obsession
LIFE magazine, January 1, 1970
“Baby Boomers are bloating the social safety net!” “GenXers are changing the nature of work!” “Millennials are killing the housing market!”
The media endlessly feeds us stories about how one generation or another is engaging in some collective act of moral failing that, either explicitly or by implication, harms another generation. It’s a widely-mocked Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-27386449711746759792018-05-20T23:18:00.000-04:002018-05-26T12:23:28.733-04:00Talkin' Cable News Pundits on AJE's The Listening Post
Former U.S. government officials are consistent features of cable news punditry. I joined Al Jazeera English's The Listening Post to discuss.
*****Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-33846593354708773842018-05-16T12:15:00.000-04:002018-05-26T12:23:28.820-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 37: Black Lives Matter, Dreamers, and the Problem of ‘The Perfect Victim’
A pillar of the community. A straight-A student who dreamed of becoming a doctor. A loving father. Here through no fault of their own. She was hysterical and out of control. He was no angel.
The press, both local and national, humanizes some victims of state or corporate violence, while demonizing others. Despite good intentions and seemingly without noticing, the media all too often create Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-32045320119845106542018-05-10T11:45:00.000-04:002018-05-26T12:23:28.776-04:00Wide Asleep on Radio Dispatch, Talkin' Iran Deal Destruction
I had the honor of returning to the Radio Dispatch airwaves to discuss the history and potential future of the Iran Deal with the great John Knefel.
Listen to it below or download it here.
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And be sure to check out John and Molly Knefel's amazing archive of past shows here. And listen to the show from now on. C'mon people.
*****Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-56011563944582232092018-05-09T11:52:00.000-04:002018-05-26T12:23:28.906-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 36: Maplewashing - Looking Behind Canada's Progressive Veneer
For decades, Canada has been a go-to point of reference for American progressives as a country the United States can and should strive to be. And while there are many parts about Canadian society that are measurably preferable, leftists in Canada find their country's glossy, socialist paradise image to be overblown and often a barrier to meaningful change.
This episode examines this tension,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-17598217629786473092018-04-25T11:58:00.000-04:002018-04-27T12:07:26.616-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 35: The Total Blackout of the Korean Left
Police officers surround anti-THAAD protesters in Seongju, South Korea, April 23, 2018. (Credit: Yonhap)
When Americans read about the Korean "conflict" in the Western press, the articles are populated almost entirely with Serious Western Talking Heads, weapons contractor-funded think tank "fellows," and former and current U.S. military brass. Who's never consulted, much less heeded, are Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-83469067915961924892018-04-18T11:45:00.000-04:002018-04-27T12:07:01.844-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 34: What the Hell is Wrong with MSNBC?
MSNBC is by far the most influential mainstream media outlet on the American left. It sets the tone and defines the boundary for what is acceptable discourse among American liberals. But major issues the left is generally thought to care about - imperial war, worker strikes, Palestine, climate change - are almost entirely absent from coverage, as the network increasingly looks like a 24-hour Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-49160071372728865082018-04-11T15:26:00.000-04:002018-04-17T15:49:33.952-04:00 Citations Needed, Episode 33: Liberals' Obsession with the Phantom Reasonable Republican
Jeffrey Goldberg, Leon Wieseltier, and James Bennet
The unlikely rise of Trump in the past three years has created a chasm in the Republican party: those who embrace the President’s wild, unorthodox, nativist style and those who––with much posturing and self congratulation––reject his brand of conservatism. The latter group, generally called “NeverTrump” Republicans occupies a special, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-75201876319616109242018-03-28T11:00:00.000-04:002018-04-06T11:25:00.032-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 32: Attack of the PC College Kids!
Students at Middlebury College disrupt speaker Charles Murray.
The horror stories are ubiquitous: a theater group at Wesleyan won’t perform The Vagina Monologues because it’s offensive to trans women! Oberlin is banning classes featuring white authors! Rich, sheltered college students, increasingly indoctrinated by radical Marxist professors, are asking for safe spaces!
But how much merit Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-23289301331305152852018-03-21T22:40:00.000-04:002018-04-06T11:05:21.790-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 31: Fake ISIS Plots and the Selling of Forever War
We’ve seen the headlines hundreds of times: "ISIS plot foiled," "ISIS in Brooklyn," "Woman Stopped At Airport on Way to Join ISIS." These stories strike fear into the hearts of Americans everywhere, especially in the build-up to the war effort against ISIS in Summer 2014.
The terror group was everywhere, recruiting our teenagers and attempting to strike in every major city––seemingly all at Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-47342641878412027302018-03-14T11:49:00.000-04:002018-03-14T12:26:28.731-04:00Citations Needed, Episode 30: Liberal Media’s Myopic Military Worship
Fighting against the far right forces of the Republican Party and their auxiliary white supremacist media makes attempts to appropriate notions of nationalism into a liberal mold a compelling short cut for Democrats looking for easy clapbacks and viral RTs. The temptation to promote a kinder, gentler, "woke" patriotism is understandable.
But what is the collateral damage of this approach? Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-7334456309846172402018-03-07T12:57:00.000-05:002018-03-08T00:58:23.919-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 29: The Asymptotic 'Two-State Solution' (Part II)
NOTE: If you haven't yet listened to last week's Part I of this episode, please do that first.
We continue our discussion of the always just-out-of-reach "two state solution" and the perpetual-by-design "peace process." Covering topics like BDS, the tedious toxicity of liberal Zionism, and pro-Israel media bias with Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace.
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The Show
Episode Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-1432362925771552802018-02-28T11:34:00.000-05:002018-02-28T11:54:22.593-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 28: The Asymptotic 'Two-State Solution' (Part I)
The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a “two-state solution” in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media. This "two-state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-60523531649503384572018-02-21T20:33:00.001-05:002018-02-21T20:34:20.658-05:00Citations Needed News Brief: How to Respond to Knee-Jerk Bigotry on Live TV
Badass fashion blogger and activist Hoda Katebi joined Citations Needed for an all-access News Brief to discuss her now-infamous WGN television segment. With Hoda, we explore what it means to "sound American," the politics of women's clothing, and why everyone with even a single drop of Iranian blood is expected to be an expert on nuclear energy and international affairs.
And, if you Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-90359990793788843242018-02-14T20:10:00.000-05:002018-02-21T20:34:20.667-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 27: How the Media Mainstreamed Racist Pseudoscience
If one were to approach New York Times-reading liberals circa 1990 and tell them about a crime-fighting policy that arbitrarily harassed black and Latino youths who had committed no crime and threw the book at low-level nonviolent offenses, they would be rightfully outraged at the idea. But, if one were to couch this exact policy in pseudoscience promoted by mercenary sociologists and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-71991441994466924532018-02-07T14:54:00.001-05:002018-02-07T15:00:07.952-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 26: The 'Welfare' Dog-Whistle
In Donald Trump's 2011 book, Time To Get Tough, his ghostwriters Wynton Hall and Peter Schweizer - both Breitbart editors - wrote:
Kids who grow up in homes where a magic check appears each month from the government believe there's nothing wrong with sitting at home doing nothing while taxpayers bust their humps working to fund them. For an entire generation, government welfare Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-12936064366346287532018-01-31T14:37:00.000-05:002018-02-07T15:00:40.804-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 25: The Banality of CIA-Curated Definitions of ‘Democracy’
Few words elicit such warm feelings as the term "Democracy." Wars are supposedly fought for it, foreign policies are built around it, protecting and advancing it is considered the United States' highest moral order.
Democracy's alleged opposite - broadly called "authoritarianism," "autocracy" or "tyranny” - is cast as the ultimate evil. The stifling, oppressive boot of the state that curtailsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-10914469468300312162018-01-24T14:14:00.000-05:002018-02-07T15:00:58.332-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 24: Highlighting Alternative Media - The Moral Limits of Dunking on Thomas Friedman
At Citations Needed we enjoy nothing more than ragging on corporate media - indeed, it’s our primary job. But can constant snark and negativity breed cynicism? Recent feedback from some of our listeners has us wondering if the act of media criticism need also make room for some media complimenting, lest we succumb to the forces of defeatism.
In this episode, rather than critiquing the myriad Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-75909251336385624882018-01-23T22:15:00.000-05:002018-02-07T14:57:54.081-05:00Citations Needed News Brief: Why the Media Should Stop Calling it a "Government Shutdown"
On this all-access News Brief, Adam and Nima discuss why it's not a "government shutdown" but a liberal government shutdown – or, more precisely, a backdoor right-wing coup.
Head over the our Patreon page and sign up to support the show. You'll get all the exclusive content!
***
Citations Needed is a media criticism podcast, hosted by Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi, political commentatorsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-68079587639256586242018-01-17T13:00:00.000-05:002018-02-07T15:01:17.702-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 23: The Media's Grim Addiction to Perseverance Porn
We’ve all seen these feel good segments on the local news. The adorable and resourceful seven-year-old in California who's been recycling cans since he was three and now has $10,000 saved up for college. The Oklahoma community that chipped in to buy a car for a beloved Walmart greeter so she wouldn't have to walk to work in the bitter cold anymore. The “inspiring teen” who returned to his fastUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-8343886580485087492018-01-10T22:37:00.000-05:002018-02-07T15:01:30.321-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 22: Trumpwashing -- How the Media Uses Trump to Launder Our Criminal Past
The unique threat and vileness of Donald Trump’s presidency can’t be overstated. Since he took office a year ago, he’s increased civilian deaths in Afghanistan by 50%, increased civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq (surpassing Obama’s death toll in just under 7 months), issued dozens of nuclear threats against North Korea, unraveled the Iran deal, bombed Hezbollah, Iranian and SAA positions in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-30589313436593353632018-01-09T22:37:00.000-05:002018-02-28T01:15:24.582-05:00The Myriad Deaths of Liberal Zionism
Every so often, just like its necessary counterpart "the two-state solution," a new obituary is written for Liberal Zionism.
The latest, penned by recently hired New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, laments the Trump administration's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and promise to soon move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Goldberg writes that, among Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-17145732626657737492018-01-06T23:23:00.000-05:002018-02-28T12:21:36.597-05:00Recycled Obituaries for the Always-Elusive "Two-State Solution"
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat address reporters on the Middle East Peace Process Talks at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2013.
[State Department]
Oh look! The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, David M. Halbfinger, wrote today that the hope for a "two-state Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-20414966817027766122018-01-03T20:49:00.000-05:002018-02-07T15:01:51.914-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 21: Quantifying Negative Media Portrayals of People of Color
According to one 2014 study, 75% of white Americans don’t have any non-white friends. Put another way, white people’s perception of African Americans and other people of color comes primarily from media representations rather than actual interactions. As such, how communities of color are portrayed in the media – from news and opinion pages to movie and TV screens – is tremendously important.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091340695525848190.post-6373172587647513042017-12-20T14:34:00.000-05:002018-02-07T14:59:13.464-05:00Citations Needed, Episode 20: Lotteryism, Part II A Most Dangerous Game -- How Sports Are Used to Fleece Public Trusts
Previously on Citations Needed, we discussed the notion of "Lotteryism," that is, the use of the media by large corporations to obscure solidarity in favor of morality tales of "making it."
It's a scam to extract resources from local governments in hopes they can "win" corporate cash, headquarters, facilities, and, of course, the promise of "jobs". Cities around the US and the world debase Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0