I’ve always hated the term African-American, because I found it downright patronizing and vituperatively ‘Politically Correct.’ I am old enough to remember when that whole PC thing happened: during the odious Reagan era of the early 1980s. The ‘Reagan Revolution’ was a complete fraud; a Ponzi scheme of monumental proportions foisted upon an ignorant, gullible […]
The US Festival was a milestone in the history of rock music. It lasted for only two years – 1982 and 1983 – but the shows laid the groundwork for today’s enormous, week-long festivals: Lollapalooza, Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, Coachella among them. The US Festival was three days – not of peace and music, but […]
Americans have never been known for their sense of humor. They are way too prudish; unhip, too “PC”- and most are simply too dumb to “get it.” Concepts like satire and parody are difficult for the average American to grasp, put it that way. A lot of people consider anything which is personally offensive to […]
The Comstock Law, passed in the United States in 1873, was part of an ongoing – to this day! – campaign to legislate public morality in the United States. The Comstock Law was initially meant to stop the trade in “obscene literature” and “immoral articles,” particularly through the mail. It was named after Anthony Comstock, […]
King Henry VIII was the first Monarch to take legal action to control the press in pre-Enlightenment England. His methods were simple enough: he required all printers to pay licensing fees in order to be allowed to print anything. This concept became known as ‘prior restraint’: preventing the distribution of controversial materials before they are even […]
Mad Men is a perfect example of a serialized historical melodrama that permits viewers to re-evaluate the past. The show was created by Matthew Weiner, a co-writer and producer of The Sopranos, in 1999. Mad Men arguably tells us less about the 1960s than it does about the current desire for collective nostalgia for the […]
Effective celebrity activists use their fame and fortune to bring attention to important issues and to give credibility to legitimate representatives of social movements. Internationally-known celebrities can help expose and highlight problems which would normally get little or no news coverage without their involvement. But does celebrity involvement really make any difference in what people […]
(Caution: italics ahead!): From the school playground to the presidential election, the art of a truly fine insult is a universally accepted cultural tradition with a long, inglorious history. The most effective insults use irony, metaphor and personification tropes – along with humor – as a way to attack their opponents’ character, and to frame […]
Recent studies confirm that a growing number of college students are losing empathy for their fellow human beings. In a world that clearly needs more compassion, this is a shocking trend. Studies conducted between 1979 and 2009 found that college students have less empathy toward their peers than previous generations. The findings come from the study, Changes […]
My first encounter with social media was probably listening to the car radio as a child while my parents drove around Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. These are some of my earliest memories. A few of the songs I can recall hearing during this time include A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles, Stop In the […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 