Talk Cocktail

Hollywood is a place where the assets go home each night. Not just the Stars, but the hard-working men and women who make magic happen. Who each play a singular and unique role in telling cinematic stories. Each is a piece of a large puzzle and without each individual piece, the picture never comes together.

Sure Hollywood is a business and billions are dollars are always at stake. But without the experience, the craft and the talents of those behind the camera, none of it happens.

These are the “gig workers” that writer-producer Bruce Ferber gets to open up in The Way We Work: On The Job in Hollywood.

My conversation with Bruce Ferber

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Once upon a time the South was a solid Democratic block of votes. Many of those segregationist senators that Joe Biden recently talked about were in fact Democrats. Republicans just didn't get elected from there. And then things changed. The civil rights movement, the voting rights Act, the trailing impact of demographic change from the great migration, and broader cultural changes, including the rise of feminism, all provided an opportunity for Republicans in the South to exploit racial, social and cultural divides.

Today we are living with arguably the apogee that effort.

These divisions have been part of every national election since LBJ vs. Goldwater in 1964 and with each cycle, the divide grows larger. This long effort is the subject of a new work by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields,  The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics.

My conversation with Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields

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I know someone who is absolutely fascinated by true crime stories. She says that Silence of the Lambs is her Star Wars. And why not? Crime stories, especially true crime stories about the likes of Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, or Jeffrey Dalmer, fascinate us, as it takes our thinking to the edges of human behavior. Understanding what makes these people tick stretches the human imagination.

That is exactly what investigative journalist Maureen Callahan does for us in her new book American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century In it, she introduces us to a little know serial killer who may very well be one of the most chilling.

My conversation with Maureen Callahan:

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It’s clear that like it or not, race will once again be the issue of our time. You’d think by now, we would at least the the language right. But maybe that’s the very problem. We’re still talking about it precisely because we’re having the wrong discussion.

Almost as long as anyone can remember, we’ve sincerely directed our efforts to eradicate racism by talking about a color-blind society. The goal has been to make race and difference disappear essentially to homogenize the culture. When that hasn’t worked, we perceive that we have failed.

The response to that has been a kind of bifurcated multiculturalism and identity politics, that has moved everyone into their own corner. None of that has helped our understanding

An important new work, by Professor Jennifer Harvey,  Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America, gives us a new way to view race, justice, and culture.

My conversation with Jennifer Harvey:

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From the moment that Jackie Kennedy branded the Kennedy presidency as Camelot, in an interview with author and historian Theodore White, royalty was suddenly bestowed upon the survivors.

The recoil effect from that simple phrase on Ted and Bobby and the rest of the family was impactful. But at least they were able to understand and process it. For John F. Kennedy Jr. he would immediately become a prince without any say in the matter

As he came of age emotionally, physically and politically, he was permanently marked by the mythology. It shaped every aspect of his public and private life, right up until his untimely death.

Some men and women choose to live in the public eye. Others like royalty, like William and Harry, for example, are just born there and have to come to grips with it.

JFK Jr. was as close as we have gotten to royalty. He was to become an American Prince. How well it served him and his country is still an open question. One explored by Steve Gillon, a historian and long-time friend in his new book America's Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr.

My conversation with Steven Gillon:

 

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We all remember that Al Capone was ultimately busted on tax fraud, even though he had a long, violent and ugly criminal career. We see it play out in politics where someone is charged with one crime that the government is able to prove, while it is really reflective of a career of many crimes.

So it is with the mythology of Linda Taylor. Busted in 1974 for welfare fraud, Taylor had a long history of criminal behavior and is even potentially linked to three suspicious deaths in the 70’s and 80’s

But is was ultimately her conviction on welfare fraud, which made her the infamous “welfare queen,” whose myth would shape our policies from her arrest in 1974, her trope elevated by Ronald Reagan and arguably right up to the political debate today. This is the story that Josh Levin tells in The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.

My conversation with Josh Levin:

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Many of you may have started watching the Showtime series, THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM, about Fox News founder Roger Ailes. The problem with it is, that with respect to what Ailes did, what he is credited with accomplishing at Fox, very little of it is true.

Sure Ailes understood television and politics. But at core what he did was to take the world of talk radio, combined it with a bit of “blondification” and transferred it to television. When Fox new went on the air in 1996, Limbaugh had already been on the air for almost ten years.

Ailes simply exploited the rise and power of conservative talk radio. The Economist said many months ago that, “to understand the Republican politics, get in a car, turn on the radio and drive.”

Talk radio, is far more than the viewers that watch even the top rated Fox News shows each night. It's the lens through which millions and millions of its hard core listeners view the world.

No one understands this better than the go-to-guy for talk radio, the founder, editor and publisher of Talkers and Talkers.com, Michael Harrison.

Back in July of 2017, upon the death of Ailes, Harrison and I spoke about this mythology.

My conversation with Michael Harrison:

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My 2014 conversation with Gabe Sherman on his then just-published book, THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM. It's a great preview for the Showtime series that begins on Sunday
 
The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country

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Once upon a time war had structure. There was a kind of narrative arc to war. A beginning, a middle and clear end. In the modern era, certainly since Vietnam, they have become what Clausewitz called “protracted conflict.” Even the efforts to find resolution are nothing more than wars by other means.

Most have heard the biblical quote, that “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but be not alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come.”

With respect to America's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan the end has still not come. Few understand this better than the men and women who served. And few articulate it better than Elliot Ackerman in his new work Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning.

My conversation with Elliot Ackerman:

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Today, more than one-half of the world's population lives in cities. In every corner of the world, people are moving to cities at a rapid and geometric pace. The urban migration taking place today is both historic and inevitable. Our cities represent the ultimate triumph and organizing principle of humanity. They are more than either the concrete jungle portrayed by Billy Wilder in the Lost Weekend, or the human zoo, that Desmond Morris claimed.

The great San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, one said of cities, “that they should not be judged just by their length and width, but by the broadness of their vision and the height of their dreams.” They are, in some ways, the ultimate achievements of mankind.

Few understand them better than Monica L. Smith, a professor of anthropology and professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the UCLA where she holds a chair in Indian Studies and serves as the director of the South Asian Archeology Laboratory in the Cotsen Institute of Archeology. She is the author, most recently of Cities: The First 6,000 Years

My conversation with Monica Smith:

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