Guests: Blogger Kevin Drum and Author David Sirota
Back To Our Future by David Sirota
It’s here! It’s finally here! It’s Friday! Sam will be back on Monday and we will be live. To hold you over until then, we have a brand new interview with Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum (@kdrum) about his article Plutocracy Now as well as author David Sirota (@davidsirota) about his new book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now–Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything. Have a great weekend!
12:30 pm
I read David’s book and really enjoyed it. As a child of the 80′s I was a huge fan of all the anti-government TV shows like The A-Team and The Dukes of Hazzard as well as the “contractors can do better” shows like Knight Rider and Magnum P.I. I never put it all together like David did. Whether writer/creators like Stephen J Cannell were doing this deliberately or just because it was the story line of the time, I’m not sure – but it certainly was the trend.
Other movies like Red Dawn I just recently rented (I never watched it in the 80′s) and was thoroughly bored to tears with the overacting, bad acting and “the Communists are here to take over the US” storyline.
And while I was never into the WWF, I knew the characters and knew that the Iron Sheik was a bad guy. And I did have the mail-away Sgt. Slaughter action figure to round out my huge G.I. Joe toy collection.
David does a great job at tying all this together with the politics of the day and doesn’t do it in a way that makes you fell that he is overreaching with his hypothesis. I never finished a chapter and thought, “Gee David, that’s a little far fetched.” It was more, “Hmm, I never looked at it that way.” To me, the 80′s was all about entertainment (I was 7 in 1980) and politics never crept in much.
So if you were a child of the 80′s like me and David, this is a great look back at all the memes we were exposed to. If you are younger or older, then the book is a perfect way to trace the world we live in now to the craziness that was The 80′s (trademark). Plus David puts a nice glossary in the back with explanations for all of the 80′s references that you may not be familiar with (sadly, I knew of almost all of it – plus I know all the theme songs to them all – damn, there is so much wasted space in my brain!).
4:09 am
No more casual saturday and sunday? Did Sam sell out to the jewish and christian lobby to no longer promote casualness in the weekend…..
10:21 am
Great interviews. But I had trouble hearing much of the interview with Kevin Drum because the song “Pilot Light” started playing in the middle of it drowning out anything Kevin Drum was saying.
9:01 pm
Yes. Fix that segment (just 1 lil’ segment) and I’ll be glad to hear what Kevin said. (nd I’ll be checkin EVERY DAY! btw)