Politics Board Book, TV or Movie Recommendation Thread

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by Mel Brennan, Nov 9, 2004.

  1. Rostam

    Rostam Member

    Dec 11, 2005
  2. Rostam

    Rostam Member

    Dec 11, 2005
  3. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    They found the thirteenth tribe midway through the '90s. there were wearing bad sweaters at the Bulls game.
     
  4. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
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  5. zaylin

    zaylin Member

    Dec 22, 2014
    London
    This is old book but relevant about mass media
     
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  6. Rostam

    Rostam Member

    Dec 11, 2005
    #356 Rostam, Feb 21, 2015
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2015
  7. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
  8. Rostam

    Rostam Member

    Dec 11, 2005
    Would you say the book is revolting, false and evil work, gangsta history?
     
  9. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    Got hold of the movie "Truth"

    We'll watch it tomorrow. Supposed to be pretty good. Dan Rather says that the "Truth" is True!... but some disagree..!

    [​IMG]
     
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  10. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    Newsroom drama detailing the 2004 CBS 60 Minutes report investigating then-President George W. Bush's military service, and the subsequent firestorm of criticism that cost anchor Dan Rather and producer Mary Mapes their careers.

    Mary Mapes sussed out the story of Bush and his privileged appointment to the Nat. Guard and his "lack of commitment" to it. During the Viet Nam era. Then Dan Rather presented it on 60 minutes.

    During the shitstorm that followed and the changing testimonies from witnesses, missing papers. CBS capitulated to right wing pressure and fired both Rather and Mapes were fired.

    IM not so HO. (Well perhaps not just mine.) This was another smear job that came down from the White House Junta.
     
  11. Rostam

    Rostam Member

    Dec 11, 2005
  12. The Potter

    The Potter Member+

    Aug 26, 2004
    England
    Club:
    Stoke City FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
  13. DoyleG

    DoyleG Member+

    CanPL
    Canada
    Jan 11, 2002
    YEG-->YYJ-->YWG-->YYB
    Club:
    FC Edmonton
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    This documentary series aired in the late 80s in Canada and discusses the history of democracy and its pillars using examples around the world. They have two separate episodes, produced later, dealing with the French Revolution and the fall of the iron curtain.

     
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  14. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Not quite as essential to an understanding of contemporary US politics as @superdave 's much-championed Nixonland, but this book is pretty good, as would be Kirk's The Conservative Mind, which also hearkens to something lost in recent decades....


    [​IMG]

    Russell Kirk: American Conservative a 2015 biography written by Bradley Birzer.

    Without Kirk to shape a conservative movement as a mood, a predilection, and a predisposition, conservatism narrowed and divided, permitting one part of it -- the political -- to represent the whole. As of the writing of this book, loud, obnoxious, and plastic radio and television personalities dominate the voice of conservatism as it is understood by the American public. What a far cry a rant against a liberal arts major on a popular radio show is from Kirk's employment of a specific editor for the poetry to be published in {his quarterly journal} Modern Age. Kirk's conservatism in 1959 has almost nothing in common with the populist and popular conservatism of today's modern media. We might as well be comparing the Platonism of Petrarch with the brutality of Machiavelli
     
  15. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    Good find.....Kirk always reached for the stars. One of my favorite quotes of his....

    Genius doesn’t work on an assembly line basis. . . . You can’t simply say, ‘Today I will be brilliant.'” :notworthy:
     
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  16. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    My new favorite, which I've never come across before because it's in an unpublished letter, was Kirk's response to the concerns of a wealthy, but barely literate, backer of Modern Age who objected to the content of an early issue by threatening his publisher with a withdrawal of support:

    "All the truth, they think, is contained in a few slogans, and all we have to do is repeat those slogans in a loud voice."
     
  17. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    Does that mean that Hillary is really guilty of all that stuff that some here have been shouting about? :confused:
     
  18. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    Exactly!

    Just the same as Trump said: "Today I will be brilliant."
     
  19. DoyleG

    DoyleG Member+

    CanPL
    Canada
    Jan 11, 2002
    YEG-->YYJ-->YWG-->YYB
    Club:
    FC Edmonton
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    United Red Army (Japan, 2011)

    As its title states, it is the story of Japan's best known ultra-left group from the events in the 1960s that led to its founding to its violent, if not hypocritical demise in 1972 (the movie timeline ends before the JRA's attack at Lod Airport).

    The film combines the actual movie with a documentary feel with footage from that period of time and a narrator that helps explains many of the events and individuals involved. The director had been once involved in the same protest period, and brings much of his thought process into the film.

    Be warned, this film does run 190 minutes and you may need to take notes.

     
  20. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Six books on how the Republican party got crazy....

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...plain-how-the-gop-went-crazy.html?wpsrc=nymag


    Not long ago, another magazine asked me to recommend six books that explain something important about American politics. I chose six of my favorites that help elucidate the most important development of the last half-century in American politics: the Republican Party’s embrace of movement conservative ideology. No other major party in the advanced world rejects on principle any proposed tax-revenue increase, or denies the legitimacy of climate science, or opposes universal health care.

    For reasons I’ll explain below, the magazine turned down this list after I submitted it. But first, here is what I sent them:

    To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, by Heather Cox Richardson.
    To trace the story of how the Republican Party began as a progressive and even radical force for social and economic egalitarianism, and evolved into a reactionary faction advocating ideas it once loathed, start at the beginning, like Richardson does here. She tells the story from Lincoln to the party’s rightward turn, its halting moves back to the center under such figures as Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, and then its final reactionary lurch in the present era.

    Social Darwinism in American Thought, by Richard Hofstadter.

    Still the most astute critic of modern conservatism, Hofstadter’s 1944 classic identifies and scathingly dispatches a powerful right-wing idea that was destined to endure: the notion that the free market is a perfectly just mechanism for rewarding value and punishing failure.

    Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal, by Kimberly Phillips-Fein.

    The major accounts of the New Deal describe the winners, but Phillips-Fein tells the story of the opposition, because its ideas would live on, too. How the Social Darwinists fought back against Franklin Roosevelt would set the stage for the right’s comeback decades later.

    Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism — From Goldwater to the Tea Party, by E.J. Dionne.

    The conservative movement, which rejected the New Deal and its seemingly permanent role in American life, set in motion ideological and political changes that led to the party as it exists today.

    Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party, by Geoffrey Kabaservice.

    A moderate Republican, unlike the other (more liberal) authors listed here, Kabaservice tells the same story as Dionne, from the opposite end: focusing on the long, tragic decline of the GOP’s once-powerful moderate tradition.

    Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations, by Paul Krugman.

    This book, intended as a kind of explainer, wound up producing a powerful critique of supply-side economics, the dominant theory of the GOP, which Krugman aptly dispatches as simply crankery lacking any grounding in serious economic theory.​

     
  21. roby

    roby Member+

    SIRLOIN SALOON FC, PITTSFIELD MA
    Feb 27, 2005
    So Cal
    Never lend books, for no one ever returns them. The only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. I do have some great books though. One of them is "The History Of Glue" that I couldn't put down. :p
     
  22. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I just finished Al Franken's book. It's a breezy read. It's got a bunch of laughs, not as many as Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, but a bunch.

    What's interesting is how Franken talks about the "it's a job" aspect of being a Senator. Much of it is old hat if you're into politics, but some isn't.

    His chapter on Ted Cruz is interesting, because his big conclusion is that Ted Cruz is a toxic co-worker. It makes it relatable; we all have a few of those in our work history. But it also explains why Ted will accomplish less as a senator than even Jesse Helms. He's impossible to work with. Emphasis on "work."
     
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  23. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    I'm third in line at the public library.
     
  24. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    Cheap bugger. It'd be a fine edition for your home office.

    I'm 5th.
     
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  25. NORML

    NORML Member+

    Aug 9, 2002
    Lake Wobegon, MN
    Club:
    NSC Minnesota Stars
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This probably pretty obvious for Ken Burns fans but I am nearly halfway through the Vietnam series and have been finding it rather informative and interesting. All ten episodes are now up on PBS's website.
     
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