In this post-election News Brief, we discuss the various modes of cope and responsibility-skirting.
2020-11-07 16:55:48 +0000 UTC View PostHello!
A reminder that tonight Citations Needed will be hosting an Election Night Livestream AMA on Discord!
Tuesday, Nov 3 at 9:30 pm ET / 6:30 pm PT
Attached is a pdf on how to connect via Discord and how our Discord is organized. If you've already joined us for past AMAs you're all set, but new folks you'...
2020-11-03 17:46:32 +0000 UTC View PostHi Patreon supporters!
First off thank you as always for your support making this show possible. We are extremely grateful.
Secondly, American Presidential election night can be a stressful event for a lot of people and we are doing a live show on Discord to provide commentary, context, and answer questions from listeners. We will be joined by special guests and friends of the show Jon Schwarz and Roqayah Chamseddine.
It'll go from 9:30 to 11:30, possibly later if...
2020-10-30 16:52:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Pete Buttigieg wants to create “a Senior Climate Security role in the Secretary of Defense’s office responsible for managing climate security risks.” Elizabeth Warren insists “our military can help lead the fight in combating climate change.” And the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis tells us our primary goal should be to “Confront Climate Risks to America’s National Security and Restore America’s Leadership on the International Stage....
2020-10-28 15:11:44 +0000 UTC View PostHi all,
Here is this fortnight's news letter.
Remember, we have a live Patreon election special this Tuesday, November 3rd from 9:30-11:30EST (probably later, let's be honest).
Guests and technical details will be forthcoming. Excited for y'all to join us!
--- Nima, Florence, Julianne, Adam, Marco
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2020-10-27 19:41:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Who loves fracking more? Who will more severely punish China? In this Patreon News Brief, we break down the good, rightwing, and confusing in the final 2020 debate.
2020-10-23 14:28:25 +0000 UTC View Post
“Climate change is real.” “Three words — science, science, and science.” “From coastal towns to rural farms to urban centers, climate change poses an existential threat.” “Now it is time to put our coalition to work and pass bold climate solutions.”
These are just some of the many statements — all of them true — that the U.S. public routinely hears from its Democratic Party leaders, expressing their unbridled commitment to acting on the ever-urgent issu...
2020-10-21 16:27:44 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patreon News Brief, we discuss the new Netflix film "The Trial of the Chicago 7" which continues Hollywood's storied tradition of stripping the 1960s of its romantic, radical ideas and reducing it to one-off political preferences, aesthetics, and oedipal neurosis.
2020-10-19 01:31:04 +0000 UTC View Post
As a follow-up to our three-part 2020-10-14 14:51:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi all--
Here is this fortnight's news letter. Thank you for your support as always. We are immensely grateful. We say it a lot but we truly are. Your Patreon support allows us independence and sustainability.
Thank you again,
-- Florence, Nima, Adam, Marco, Julianne.
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On this Patreon News Brief we discuss why wishing bad things on bad people who are actively harming millions isn't the same as wishing bad things on powerless, vulnerable populations.
2020-10-03 03:25:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Every year, a series of highly anticipated listicles of "successful" and "influential" people hailed for their accomplishments surface in corporate media. Forbes reveals the most successful 30 people under the age of 30, and Fortune hails the most successful 40 Under 40. Meanwhile, other business outlets like TechCrunch, Fast Company and CNBC seek a taste of the hype with their own spinoffs.
Each time one of these lists is published, a flurry of meta-pre...
2020-09-30 15:33:58 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patreon News Brief, we respond to the voter-suppressing rat fuck Fox News debate.
2020-09-30 05:28:43 +0000 UTC View Post
By now, it's largely taken for granted that country music is a racialized signifier, interchangeable with right-wing politics. And it’s not such an unreasonable generalization: the political currents of twanged and drawled patriotic paeans like Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," and Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" leave little to the imagination.
But how, exactly, did this come to be? After all, country ...
2020-09-23 14:44:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Waiting tables. Bartending. Hospitality, food delivery, beauty salons, rideshare driving. The service industry, as anyone who has worked in it knows all too well, is notorious for relying on tipping to undercut employee wages and deputize individual customers to determine how much money a worker should be able to take home. Amid increasing recognition of these injustices, a number of campaigns and new laws surfaced, pre-pandemic, to abolish or meaningfully reduce the practice of tipping.
<... 2020-09-16 15:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostHi all,
Thank you so much again for all your support. Our thoughts are with our West Coast listeners--we hope you are doing okay.
New episode drops tomorrow morning. Keep a look out for it.
Thank you again!
-- Florence, Nima, Julianne, Marco, and Adam
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Covid-19 Workers' Comp Claims Are Being Held Up ...
2020-09-16 05:18:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone,
Citations Needed is back for Season 4! And apologies for this morning's post which didn't have audio attached. This one is fixed. Hope you enjoy.
****
"U.S. military tactics falling behind those of adversaries, Pentagon official warns," The Guardian proclaims. "Russian Propaganda Is Pervasive, and America Is Behind the Power Curve in Countering It," reads a report from the RAND Corporation. "U.S. falling behind in new space race, says CIA's ...
2020-09-09 16:42:06 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patreon News Brief, we discuss the problem with trying to outflank Trump on "Law and Order" and the obvious trap of accepting the rightwing premise that "riots and looting" stem from a moral failing on the part of discrete, sister actors rather than being the logical result of a decades long-regime of austerity-fueled racism.
2020-09-04 14:40:31 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patreon News Brief, we discuss Democratic leadership and the Biden campaign's recent high profile turn to the right and what it says about who still controls the party.
2020-08-19 17:31:41 +0000 UTC View Post
One point brought up in Episode 116, in particular, highlighting the connection between real estate interests and over-policing, solicited a lot of feedback from listeners. In this News Brief, we wanted to expand upon this topic by interviewing an academic source we cited in the episode: assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Denver Brenden Beck, whose work focuses on the intersection between "urban development" projects and the targeted, sustain harassment of communit...
2020-08-11 16:26:15 +0000 UTC View Post
The popularity of HGTV house-flipping TV shows can’t be overstated: In the second week of July, HGTV was the fourth highest rated cable network, behind only Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, making it the highest rated entertainment network in the United States. Its most prominent programming: the reliable, risk free formula of home flipping shows. All of these shows—Flip or Flop and its many regional spinoffs, Good Bones, Flipping 101, to name just a few—share a basic...
2020-07-29 15:28:05 +0000 UTC View Post
For over a hundred years, the American film industry has been promoting and glorifying U.S. foreign policy, initially working with the military and Department of Defense, and eventually, the CIA as well. From its origins as a producer of wartime propaganda like 1911’s The Military Air-Scout to its contemporary role as purveyor of high-tech action epics like Iron Man, Hollywood and the American war machine reinforce each other — myth and politics intertwine.
In the ...
2020-07-22 15:11:51 +0000 UTC View PostHi all, we hope your summer is going well. Thanks, as always, for all of your support. Here is this fortnight's newsletter.
All the best!
- Florence, Julianne, Marco, Adam, and Nima
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Remembering Our Friend and Comrade Michael Brooks Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin (July 20, 2020)
Michael Brooks’ unexpected death on M...
2020-07-21 21:51:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Our cultural context for understanding what we see on the news and hear in our politics, is often informed by the films and TV shows we’ve grown up watching. Pop culture is powerful and persuasive, and — for a century now — racist, Orientalist and cartoonish portrayals of Arabs and Muslims have littered our screens, big and small. This is the second episode in our three-part Citations Needed series on anti-Muslim racism in Hollywood. On Part I, we discussed big budget action and adventu...
2020-07-15 15:13:56 +0000 UTC View Post
A bizarrely vague, cliquish letter demanding everyone be open-minded has no interest in explaining what, precisely, it wants.
A full transcript of this episode is available here.
2020-07-08 16:07:05 +0000 UTC View Post
The United States and its close allies Saudi Arabia and Israel have been bombing and occupying large sections of the so-called “Muslim world” for decades – drastically ramping up after the 9/11 attacks and seemingly with no end in sight. The U.S., like all empires, cannot operate a large, complex system premised on violence, meddling and subjugation without a moral pretext. This moral pretext, even before 9/11, was primarily about fighting a war on so-called “Terrorism” or “Islami...
2020-07-08 15:37:17 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patreon-only news brief, we breakdown John Bolton's recent media rollout and his continued attempts to bait Democrats into attacking Trump from the right.
2020-06-29 14:56:43 +0000 UTC View Post
"Polarization Is Dividing American Society, Not Just Politics,” laments The New York Times. “The Constitution Is Threatened by Tribalism,” frets The Atlantic. “American politics has reached peak polarization,” declares Vox. After the past few election cycles, and as uprisings occur throughout the country, we’ve seen endless concern about our alleged zenith of “polarization” and “tribalism.”
The Right and the Left, we are told, have grown to...
2020-06-24 15:16:21 +0000 UTC View PostHi all,
Here is this fortnight's newsletter. Thank you so much for your continued support. We hope you are having a healthy and relaxing summer thought this is probably unlikely. But we hope for it and wish it. Thanks again,
-- Marco, Adam, Florence, Julianne, and Nima
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2020-06-23 20:33:37 +0000 UTC View Post
“Obama lauds small business owners in his State of the Union,” announced The Washington Post. “I have always said that there is nothing more optimistic – perhaps maybe getting married – than starting a small business,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells us. “John Kerry would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses,” insisted a reelection ad for George W. Bush.
Everywhere we turn we are centering the needs of and reminded of the glowing status of the “small bu...
2020-06-17 14:56:11 +0000 UTC View Post