Ok but Felix has to hitchhike the whole way with a bibdlestick and bag full of Knausgard books and essays and Gladio bumper stickers and he’s gotta do a This Is Sus-style  pod about his daily mishaps leading to his embodiment as the Wandering Jew

The purity of Felix's rage was beautiful here.

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 formula: house-flippers, usually a family business in the form of a husband and wife team or parent and child with a folksy rapport, buy a neglected house on the cheap—cue zoom-ins on mold, water damage, decaying wood, dust and dead bugs—that’s often in a relatively poor or gentrifying neighborhood.

They then turn it into something they describe as "beautiful", to be sold at a much higher price to, most likely, young white people looking for a "funky" home in an "up-and-coming" neighborhood. But at what cost do these glossy, get-rich-quick reality shows entertain us?  What ideologies do they promote, and how do they erase the working class black and brown families whose housing was condemned, and communities were systemically neglected, before the camera’s even began rolling?

On this episode—our  Season 3 finale—we take a look at these shows to understand how and why HGTV became a glorified commercial for house-flipping and gentrification, examining its indifference to housing instability and its dead-eyed cheerleading of “middle-class” bourgeois aspirationalism, no matter the social cost. 

Our guests are culture writer Ann-Derrick Gaillot and Atlanta-based community organizer Kamau Franklin.

Episode 116: The Pro-Gentrification Aspirationalism of HGTV's House-Flipping Shows

WE ARE BACK -- and laden with information about Ghislaine Maxwell's post-arrest machinations, and new terrible details about her pre-arrest sprees

Episode 90: Docudump

We review the 1990 Barbet Schroeder film “Reversal of Fortune,” covering Alan Dershowitz’s representation of Danish vampire Claus von Bülow after he is accused of murdering his wife. Needless to say this depiction of Dershowitz raises a few eyebrows 30 years down the line.

Keep your eyes on twitch.tv/chapotraphouse this Tuesday and Wednesday for coverage of the DNC.

Chapo Trap House

446 - Reversal of Alan (8/17/20)

We take a look at the recent hubbub surrounding the USPS, what motivates the drive toward privatization, and the larger ideological underpinnings of the Libertarian revolution.

Episode 94: Koch'd Up (Part I)

Subscribe today for access to all premium episodes!

www.patreon.com/chapotraphouse

449 Teaser - Felix WILL Move to Minnesota for a Debate

Defector’s Patrick Redford stops by to talk the (hopefully likely) fall of JKIII, NBA strikes, and whether robots go to hell. 

Check out defector.com for all your sports blog and media needs: www.defector.com

450 -  In The Bubble feat. Patrick Redford (8/31/20)

Will talks to Jess Scarane, who is challenging incumbent Chris Coons for a U.S. Senate seat in Delaware. They discuss Delaware’s unique importance as a state, the limits of “compromise,” building power for progressive policies, and how to lift voters’ expectations for what they can demand from their politicians.  

Get involved with Jess’ campaign here: https://www.jessfordelaware.com/

BONUS: Will interviews Delaware Senate candidate Jessica Scarane

This week we figure out why everyone thinks antifa trying to kill smoky the bear. We also talk about a haunted statue of Melania.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/world/europe/melania-trump-sculpture-slovenia.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/18/scapegoating-antifa-starting-wildfires-distracts-real-causes/

MERCH:
PodDamnAmerica.BigCartel.com

PATREON:
Patreon.com/PodDamnAmerica

West Coast... You're Fired

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 music, a descendant of the blues, folk, Tejano, and other genres, with connections to labor organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World and social-justice movements, has historically attracted musicians spanning the political spectrum, and didn’t necessarily emerge from such a staunchly right-wing political tradition.

Rather, popular conceptions of country music have long been deliberately shaped by a series of broader ideological projects. Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, conservative politicians and other right-wing forces have exploited the genre to promote illiberalism, racism, revanchist politics, and runaway anti-intellectualism where not giving a shit about the world beyond one’s own cold beer, pickup truck, old lady is not only acceptable, but actively encouraged and flaunted. 

On this episode, we examine how the genre of country music has been wielded as a tool of reactionary politicking in the US, from the machinations of Henry Ford in the 1920s to the Nixon administration’s Southern Strategy in the 1960s and ‘70s to the heady Shock and Y’all days of the Bush years, and how a once working-class tradition became a cultural cul de sac of worn-out tropes and middle-class, white grievance politics.  

Our guest is writer, editor and artist Alexander Billet.

Episode 119: How the Right Shaped Pop Country Music

We're joined by historian and author Aaron Leonard to discuss his book The Folk Singers and the Bureau, which details the rise of the Communist-adjacent folk scene in America alongside the CPUSA, and the intense (and underreported) repression that followed.

Link to buy the book: 
penguinrandomhouse.com/books/651913/the-folk-singers-and-the-bureau-by-aaron-leonard/


Companion playlist by Aaron: 
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHCUjL6Jr73FNc_ak3MyOV_V-6Khic2u4

Songs: "Root Hog and Die" -- Woody Guthrie
"You've Got to Go Down and Join the Union" -- Pete Seeger
"Song of Choice" -- Peggy Seeger

449 Teaser - Felix WILL Move to Minnesota for a Debate

Chapo Trap House

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