Not long ago, they were the pulse of the American political campaign: Mom and Dad, sitting in front of the nightly news broadcast on TV, armed with a dog-eared copy of the daily newspaper. The ads, the daily coverage and editorials, televised debates, polls and TV ratings—over dinner-table discourse, it all mattered.
Richard Nixon had always been more of a rat-catcher than a heartthrob. All jowls and forehead, and sporting that rictus of a smile, he was a perennial runner-up. Willy Loman by way of Yorba Linda.
White America seems to be in a funk these days. The economy may be growing, the unemployment rate may be down, the Bureau of Labor Statistics may assure us—no, really, disbelieve your lyin’ eyes—that the recession is long over, but according to the 2015 American Values Survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, less than half of white Americans believe that the country’s best days lie ahead. Most blacks and Hispanics, noting a marked improvement in the nation’s culture since the 1950s, do not share this pessimism. The despondency is race specific.
Berkeley Law professor Jesse Choper first got into horse racing in 1969, when he and his friend’s father, a district attorney outside of New York, took a trip to the track. At first, Choper didn’t really get the appeal: “I never did understand how a person who worked really hard, I mean long hours, would take off a whole afternoon in the middle of a week to go to the races…. But then I did.”
Posted on September 12, 2016 - 10:38am
The public, the press and many politicians (at least on the right) can’t stop fulminating over Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server to conduct government business when she was Secretary of State. Little attention has been paid, however, to the IT systems that are supposed to guide, support and monitor functionaries with security clearances.
Posted on September 8, 2016 - 3:12pm
In a letter to the editor in The New York Times last October, Susan Neely, president of the American Beverage Association, wrote: “Taxes on beverages do not improve public health.”
Posted on September 7, 2016 - 11:40pm
Since 2000, at least 160 “active-shooter” incidents have occurred in the United States, according to an FBI study from 2000-2013. And shootings have become more frequent—from 6.4 incidents annually in the first seven years of the study, to 16.4 in the last seven. Like many institutions, the University of California has responded by making training available.
Posted on August 29, 2016 - 12:19pm
Since most of the inmates in private federal prisons are immigrants—a population shown to be less violent and less inclined to present security threats—the government’s plan to cut ties with private prisons due to safety concerns show just how sub-par these private prison conditions can be, according to Stephen Raphael, professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
Posted on August 19, 2016 - 5:21pm
On Oct. 22, 1966, the Beach Boys released “Good Vibrations,” the Soviet Union successfully launched an unmanned spacecraft toward the moon, and on the UC Berkeley campus, Robert F. Kennedy lectured liberals about the limitations of protest.
Posted on August 17, 2016 - 1:18pm
The debate raging about testosterone tests in track and field will come to an ugly climax in Rio, and reasonable people on both sides agree it is unfair that the ugliness has landed squarely on the shoulders of women like South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya.
Posted on August 11, 2016 - 10:43am
More than a decade ago, Noga Wizansky went searching for her place in academia. Her 15 years at UC Berkeley had earned her a Ph.D. in visual arts history, and it was time. She soon landed a job teaching drawing at California College of the Arts in Oakland. There, she imagined herself blending research with practice, art with ideas, passion with job security and, on top of it all, tenure—except there was no tenure.
Posted on August 1, 2016 - 11:28am
The link between Russian hackers and last week’s WikiLeaks release of 20,000 Democratic National Committee’s internal emails may never be proven conclusively. However, a federal investigation has reported that the leak was probably conducted by Russian hackers and orchestrated by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)—two of Russia’s major intelligence agencies.
Posted on July 28, 2016 - 4:22pm
If it takes a village to win a presidential nomination, evidently it helps if the locals include a veteran policy advisor, a civil libertarian and social justice warrior who ran a law school at 29, and an advocate who is braced for battle over issues
Posted on July 26, 2016 - 4:33pm
Over a long, somewhat tumultuous, and at times fractious four-day stretch, the delegates at the Republican National Convention managed to release a platform for 2016, and crown Donald Trump its presidential nominee, all while party officials struggled to contain blowback from Melania Trump’s plagiarism scandal, Ted Cruz’s very public un-endorsement of Trump, and the general dystopian tone of the event.
Posted on July 22, 2016 - 12:11pm
Last week Hillary Clinton was tied with Donald Trump for broad discontent among voters in a New York Times tracking poll.
Posted on July 21, 2016 - 10:44am
