The Mexican devaluation and subsequent crisis of December-January, 1994-1995 put all Latin American governments on alert. The “tequila effect,” as the Mexican debacle was known, was the result of problems facing the whole region, despite avowals by government ministers in …
In the spring of 1995, I taught an undergraduate class in women’s studies at Rutgers University, a large public university. All of the students, even the “nontraditional” ones, were younger than I. I felt a fine affection for my students: …
The aim of my essay was not to measure reputations, as Martin Kilson claims The aim was to assess how reputations get measured these days. The essay grew from my dismay at how the conceits of celebrity journalism have increasingly …
Let me say straight off that I do not think the Sean Wilentz article “Race, Celebrity, and the Intellectuals” (Summer 1995) warranted publication in Dissent. Why? Because of protocol. As a long-time reader of Dissent from its start-up days under …
This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there …
Two and a half years as book editor at the Muppets opened my eyes: we live in the age of the licensed image. Before my sensitization, I admit I’d never reflected on the “source” of, say, the Mickey Mouse watch …
Seventy years ago, American elites knew how to enforce the two-party system. “In 1924,” Robert and Helen Lynd reported in their classic study, Middletown, “It was considered such ‘bad business’ to vote for the third party [the Progressives, who ran …
In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald introduces us to the nativism that was so much a part of 1920s culture. “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged,” Tom Buchanan tells …
I am not going to join the argument between Sean Wilentz and Martin Kilson, both of whom are fellow editors and friends of mine. But I do want to say in response to Kilson that I am glad that the …
“In just six months we’ve changed the labor movement,” newly elected AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney told the labor federation’s convention delegates last October. “Now we’re going to change America.” It was the bravado of victory speeches, to be sure, …
Last spring, Cruising, a 1980 film about a serial killer who stalks the gay sex clubs of New York City, played before packed houses at San Francisco’s Roxie Cinema. Little controversy attended the week-long run at the city’s premier revival …
Two years ago I came to know a forty-year old woman living in a housing project in a decayed industrial city north of Boston. When I met Lois, she had just lost her job at Head Start after her car …
The End of Racism is an ambitious book. It seeks to demonstrate that liberal policies and the culture and behavior of African Americans, rather than racism, lie at the root of black Americans’ problems. It attempts to dismantle pragmatism and …
Democratic politics in the world’s oldest democracy is losing popular appeal. Public cynicism about what government, or politics, can accomplish is rampant. American voting turnout has been declining for decades, though with occasional upticks. At the same time, Americans are …
If the 1995 off-year election provides any portents for 1996, they are that the best the Democrats can hope for is a defensive victory. In the November elections in Virginia, Kentucky, New Jersey, and elsewhere, the Democrats did not run …
