Really enjoyed this conversation with @herberthistory.bsky.social about all things Archie Bunker!!

This is a smart @davekarpf.bsky.social write-up for all who, like me, have been looping these bars all day long: "Don't let them lead you astray, This congress does not speak for me, They're playing a dangerous game."

Happening tomorrow!! Interested in TV, comedy, political activism and/or democracy? Join us online for a conversation with @emilynussbaum.bsky.social & Kim Phillips-Fein!

Proofs? You can’t handle the proofs!

Friends, the Center for Political History, Media, and Technology at Purdue is hosting an online book launch for #ArchieBunkerforPresident. Please, join me next week (Nov 5) for a conversation w/ @emilynussbaum.bsky.social, Kim Phillips-Fein & Sage Goodwin. Register here: tinyurl.com/ArchieBunker...

Evergreen.

The responses this post is getting, combined with the animating grievances of large swathes of politics, has convinced me we need a kind of society wide PSA about how Buying Things Is Optional. You don’t think video games should cost $100? Don’t buy the videogame. Buying Things Is Optional.

LBJ was not wrong: "Some men want power simply to strut around the world and hear the tune of ‘Hail to the Chief.’ Others want it simply to build prestige, to collect antiques, and to buy pretty things. Well, I wanted power to give things to people, all sorts of things to all sorts of people."

In Boston, every day is No Kings Day

if a 84-yo Bob Dylan, voice broken and raw, belting out "I'm not the one you want, babe, I will only let you down" in front of a stadium audience is not the quintessential Dylan, at least it's damn close.

neat waking up to find the feed overwhelmed by detailed posts about what apparently was a long sports game.

*insert gif of walter cronkite removing glasses, nov. 22, 1963*

Trump is not the first president eager to have an ABC talk show host cancelled. Back in the early 1970s, Nixon was fuming over Dick Cavett, asking his aides "is there any way we can screw him?" theconversation.com/even-as-jimm...

This is dangerous. There's no other way to say it. Dangerous. Dangerous. Dangerous.

My favorite cartoonist working today is @anntelnaes.bsky.social.

Oliver North and Fawn Hall is in the news again which is the perfect excuse to re-post this vid I use to teach Iran-Contra. youtu.be/lFV1uT-ihDo?...

started rewatching The Sopranos for the first time since the original run and never really appreciated 1) how much of a middle-aged dad show it actually is, 2) how most everybody in the show is a fucking loser, and 3) how endlessly charming James Gandolfini was.

Don't tell RFK Junior.

for what it's worth, when CBS News was accused of "deceptively editing" interviews in the 1970s Frank Stanton stood up for news department and even risked facing a jail cell for refusing a congressional subpoena.

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" used to be a laugh line.

Even Spiro Agnew would be like "whoa, that's going a little far, my dude..." and Agnew was such a dick that his name was literally an anagram for grow a penis.

Looking forward to this one!

My book isn’t in this thread but it’s also on sale!! Makes my amazing masterpiece only $11! We both know you’ve spent $11 on something that wasn’t worth it—I promise this is. uncpress.org/978146968611...

Readers, @uncpress.bsky.social has a new website and is celebrating with a 48-hour 50% flash sale (US only, use code 01NEWSITE50) so I thought I'd do a 🧵of some of my favorite American modern history titles available at uncpress.org

"first they came for John Bolton and since everybody already hated him it wasn't a big deal and that was the end of it all" is not a poem people will remember.

In late March I was invited to speak at the Administrative Court Days in Helsinki and decided to use Calvinball as the frame for my remarks. Yesterday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed it is indeed an apt reference.

Imagine explaining to Bill Watterson while he was drawing this that "Calvinball" would one day appear in a United States Supreme Court dissent

does anybody else think about historians' is it fascism (?) discussion whenever hearing that i have a daughter song?

On this note: my book is out this fall and if anybody wants to assign it and/or want me to zoom in I'd be more than happy to do so. could work in popular culture and politics, post-1960s history, television and activism, or anything else that rhymes with Archie Bunker.

Sometimes I wonder if past scandals (thinking about Abu Ghraib in particular) would matter in the media/political environment of 2025?

Shameful. But this is not the first time a US president has pressured CBS to cancel a television comedy. In fact, in my book there's a story of how Nixon successfully got them to cancel the most popular show in 1969: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

just gonna leave this here...

I'll take looks like fascism for 600$, Alex.

If it walks like fascism, if it talks like fascism, if it tastes like fascism...

Every single member of congress should speak out.

This.

"You read books, eh?" A 1949 red scare Herblock cartoon about pressures on teachers that hits hard once again.

This.

remember in It Can't Happen Here when the regime arrests members of congress to intimidate them? been thinking about that today for no particular reason.

If you see this, quote the energy you bring to Bluesky

With all the talk about Murrow and See It Now, it's important to remember that Herblock was out there taking on McCarthy long before CBS News joined the fray. Heck, he even coined the term McCarthyism.

maybe my next project should just be a political history of reality television...

the funniest thing is that plane is older than Frozen. I thought it was brand new but it's been around longer than "Let It Go."

"tRumP iS so rICh tHaT nOBodY caN BuY hIM" was and remains among the dumbest takes ever. The open defiance of the emoluments clause is in and of itself a constitutional crisis. abcnews.go.com/Politics/tru...

Masked men are disappearing elected officials in broad daylight in the United States of America.

Beware of using "polarization" to describe the radicalization of the right, exhibit 872.

The key word is "was" and the reason Ann Telnaes is no longer at the Washington Post is because she resigned after the editors censored this cartoon:

Archie Bunker for President is now available for pre-order on the UNC Press site!! Pre-ordering is the best way of support a book so please consider heading over to the @uncpress.bsky.social site and make sure to use the code 01SOCIAL30 at checkout to save 30%!!

to Trump, who is very, very, very aware of himself as a "ratings machine," any tv interview should be transactional. this isn't just about the usual problems of access journalism, it's about the authoritarian intimidation and gaslighting in "just say yes."