Month: February 2009

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Last night in his address to Congress Obama argued that the economic crisis requires structural shifts involving health care, energy and education reform. The Republican Party’s answer: just say “no.”  JOHN NICHOLS will comment: he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation, and he writes The Beat blog at TheNation.com.

The KPFK fund drive continues!  Please call 818-985-5735 during the show to pledge your support, or pledge online at kpfk.org.
Our featured fund drive premium today is the DVD of Werner Herzog’s awesome documentary Encounters at the End of the World. “Few filmmakers make the end of days seem as hauntingly beautiful as Werner Herzog does, or as inexorable,” Manohla Dargis wrote in the New York Times.  “This professional madman and restlessly curious filmmaker travels to the blinding white of the Antarctic, where he meets melancholic scientists, brooding journeymen and various poets of the soul.”

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“Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story,” nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film,  is about Israeli soldiers’ memories of one night in Beirut in 1982 when they stood by while Christian militia members massacred thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The New York Times called it “a furious act of conscience and lament.”  It’s been compared to Art Spigelman’s Maus.
Now Waltz with Bashir is also a gorgeous graphic book, and we’ll be speaking with co-author DAVID POLONSKY — and featuring the book as a premium in the KPFK fund drive.

ALSO: “MAKE ’EM LAUGH: The Funny Business of America” is a six-hour documentary that explores how comedy has dealt with our politics, race relations, gender issues, and the taboos in everyday life over the past century. Hosted by Billy Crystal.  We will listen to Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, “All in the Family,” and others featured on the program — and we will be featuring the DVD of “Make ’em Laugh” as a premium in the KPFK fund drive.

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The essential guide to the left in America – to help find our kinds of places close to home and on the road. Editor RICHARD LINGEMAN will talk about the new book THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION: organic and slow-food restaurants, bookshop cafes, parades and festivals, no-sweat clothing stores, and alternative weeklies — and also the blogosphere.
We are featuring The Nation Guide to the Nation as a KPFK fund drive premium.
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ALSO: “THE TRAP: What happened to our Dream of Freedom” is the latest BBC documentary from award-winning director ADAM CURTIS – the man who made “Century of the Self”and the unforgettable “Power of Nightmares.” “The Trap” criticizes the idea that  human beings are inevitably self-seeking.  Contributors include R.D. Laing, Clancy Sigal, Tom Frank, Robert Reich, Kevin Phillips, and Franz Fanon. We are featuring “The Trap” on DVD as a KPFK fund drive premium.

And: Your Minnesota Moment: the Al Franken Senate saga continues–we’ll have an update.

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Dick Cheney yesterday said if there’s another terrorist attack, it will be Obama’s fault.  Rush Limbaugh says about Obama’s economic stimulus plan, “I hope he fails.”  HAROLD MEYERSON will comment – he’s editor-at-large of the American Prospect, and writes for the op-ed page of the Washington Post. He also had a piece on “Labor’s Real Fight” in the LA Times on Sunday.

Also: “I was tortured by the American military”: that’s what DAVID MORRIS says – as a marine, he was sent to the military’s secretive torture school—it’s been called “a repository of the world’s knowledge about torture.” Dave writes for Slate and The Nation; his book is Storm on the Horizon, about a Gulf War battle.

Plus: Christian punk and heavy metal: EILEEN LUHR talks about how the evangelical right embraced rock n roll in the Reagan-Bush era. Eileen teaches history at Cal State Long Beach; her new book is Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture; Mike Davis calls it “highly original, witty, and at times mind-boggling.”

And: Your Minnesota Moment: yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly – he was on his way to perform in Moorhead Minnesota.

More stuff to read: my new piece at The Nation, “Let the Sun Shine In.”