The Story Behind the Iconic Obama Campaign Poster

in Art, Current Affairs | January 22nd, 2009

obamaposter The sto­ry behind the art­work that defined the Oba­ma cam­paign is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. Shep­ard Fairey’s posters achieved promi­nence much in the same way that Oba­ma did. They rose from the ground up. Every­day peo­ple sup­port­ed and pro­mot­ed his imag­i­na­tive posters on the web, until they became some­thing of a pub­lic phe­nom­e­non. And they turned the sta­tus quo — in this case, the tra­di­tion polit­i­cal poster — into some­thing fresh and new. In this inter­view (iTunes — Feed — Stream), Fairey, once a self-pro­claimed “out­law street artist,” talks about how got start­ed with his Oba­ma pieces, and how his most cel­e­brat­ed work end­ed up in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion at the U.S. Nation­al Por­trait Gallery.

P.S. As you’ll see, we’re in the midst of launch­ing a new design. Things are going rather smooth­ly. But if you encounter any prob­lems, please be patient and please let us know. We’ll be mak­ing small tweaks here and there. Thanks!

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Obama’s Inauguration and Address

in Current Affairs | January 21st, 2009

If you did­n’t see how the inau­gu­ra­tion of the 44th Amer­i­can pres­i­dent went down, here it goes.

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Foreign Policy: The 10 Top Stories You Missed in 2008

in Current Affairs | January 19th, 2009

In 2008, our atten­tion was most­ly focused on the long Amer­i­can pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and the dra­mat­ic crash of the glob­al finan­cial sys­tem. These two sto­ries over­shad­owed many oth­er impor­tant ones. And so For­eign Pol­i­cy has put togeth­er a col­lec­tion of the most over­looked for­eign affairs sto­ries of ’08. Rus­si­a’s move into Africa, the begin­ning of a new Dar­fur, solar pan­els emit­ting green­house gas­es — these sto­ries and more get cov­ered here.

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For MLK on His Birthday

in Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | January 18th, 2009

The full “I Have a Dream” speech. The place: The Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al. The Date:  August 28, 1963. The Why: To bring about many small changes in Amer­i­can soci­ety, which even­tu­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly bring us to Tues­day. Take it away Mar­tin:

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The Clash of Civilizations (and the Passing of its Author)

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | December 29th, 2008

When the twin tow­ers were tak­en down in Sep­tem­ber 2001, Amer­i­ca looked to make sense of what hap­pened. And it was­n’t long before many start­ed turn­ing to The Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order, a book writ­ten by Samuel Hunt­ing­ton, the Har­vard poli sci pro­fes­sor who passed on last week.

The book itself was an elab­o­ra­tion upon a con­tro­ver­sial arti­cle that Hunt­ing­ton pub­lished in For­eign Affairs in 1993. In the open­ing lines, he wrote: “World pol­i­tics is enter­ing a new phase… It is my hypoth­e­sis that the fun­da­men­tal source of con­flict in this new world will not be pri­mar­i­ly ide­o­log­i­cal or pri­mar­i­ly eco­nom­ic. The great divi­sions among humankind and the dom­i­nat­ing source of con­flict will be cul­tur­al. Nation states will remain the most pow­er­ful actors in world affairs, but the prin­ci­pal con­flicts of glob­al pol­i­tics will occur between nations and groups of dif­fer­ent civ­i­liza­tions. The clash of civ­i­liza­tions will be the bat­tle lines of the future.” Par­tic­u­lar­ly he sug­gest­ed, it would be the “West ver­sus the Rest,” and with­in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, he lumped in Islam.

Below, we have post­ed Hunt­ing­ton’s 1997 appear­ance on the Char­lie Rose show, where he expand­ed on his world view. You can also get Edward Said’s gen­er­al retort, The Myth of the Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions, here and Noam Chom­sky’s thoughts on the con­cept here.

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Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | December 14th, 2008

Ayn Rand’s clas­sic gets dust­ed off and humor­ous­ly brought into 2008 over at McSweeney’s. Worth a read. 

As a side note, you may want to revis­it the New York Times 2007 piece, Ayn Rand’s Lit­er­a­ture of Cap­i­tal­ism, which talks about the influ­ence that Atlas Shrugged (and its free mar­ket phi­los­o­phy) has had on For­tune 500 CEOs and par­tic­u­lar­ly Alan Greenspan, the for­mer head of the Fed­er­al Reserve, who helped archi­tect the dereg­u­lat­ed bank­ing sys­tem that’s now unwind­ing around us. Belat­ed­ly, Greenspan would acknowl­edge a “flaw in the mod­el” that he “per­ceived is the crit­i­cal func­tion­ing struc­ture that defines how the world works” — which is a fan­cy way of say­ing “on sec­ond thought, maybe the free mar­kets don’t always reg­u­late them­selves.” And there we have it, anoth­er utopi­an ide­ol­o­gy col­lides with real­i­ty. Not the first, and it won’t be the last.

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A Short Introduction to The Great Depression & The New Deal

in Current Affairs, History | December 9th, 2008

Eric Rauch­way, an Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an at UC-Davis (and an old grad school col­league of mine), pub­lished a time­ly book ear­li­er this year, The Great Depres­sion and the New Deal: A Very Short Intro­duc­tion. And it sets him up per­fect­ly to talk about an his­tor­i­cal moment that’s now back on our minds.

Rauch­way appeared last week on Econ­Talk (iTunes — Feed — MP3), a pod­cast that’s get­ting some play late­ly, and spent a good hour sur­vey­ing the eco­nom­ic cri­sis that all oth­ers will be mea­sured against. The con­ver­sa­tion starts with the after­math of World War I, where John May­nard Keynes saw the eco­nom­ic prob­lems begin­ning. (Read online his 1919 book, The Eco­nom­ic Con­se­quences of the Peace.) Then, it moves through the 1920s, the stock mar­ket crash, Hoover’s attempts to restore sta­bil­i­ty (which weren’t as bungling as his his­tor­i­cal rep­u­ta­tion now sug­gests) and final­ly FDR’s New Deal and the effects of World War II. If you have an hour, you’ll learn a good deal.

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Capitalism with Humility

in Current Affairs | December 1st, 2008

It’s pret­ty hard to pull this off, but the titans of Amer­i­can indus­try have made Her­bert Hoover look like a very wise man, at least when he said: “You know, the only trou­ble with cap­i­tal­ism is cap­i­tal­ists; they’re too damn greedy.”

But we should­n’t con­sid­er Hoover reha­bil­i­tat­ed. Not quite yet. The video clip below sug­gests that in Japan the CEOs have fig­ured out how to run their cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem with a degree of humil­i­ty. And they’re doing it vol­un­tar­i­ly. That’s a news flash that you can send to our polit­i­cal lead­ers before they fun­nel more tax­es to mis­man­aged insti­tu­tions with no real strings attached.

(A quick PS: Europe’s lead­ing philoso­pher and soci­ol­o­gist recent­ly spoke in the Ger­man press about the finan­cial cri­sis and what it means for the future of our glob­al­ized soci­ety. You can find an Eng­lish trans­la­tion here.)

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