Our cultural context for understanding what we see on the news and hear in our politics, is often informed by the films and TV shows we’ve grown up watching. Pop culture is powerful and persuasive, and — for a century now — racist, Orientalist and cartoonish portrayals of Arabs and Muslims have littered our screens, big and small. This is the second episode in our three-part Citations Needed series on anti-Muslim racism in Hollywood. On Part I, we discussed big budget action and adventure films like Delta Force, American Sniper and True Lies, where Muslims get blown away at every turn.

But not every movie and TV show is quite so overt in its vilification of the designated enemy. Since the release of these movies, the state curated narrative in film has diversified, broadening to include savvier Oscar-bait productions in which anti-Muslim racism is dressed up in elaborate plot structures and supposedly nuance "debates".

Films like Argo, Syriana, and Zero Dark Thirty are lauded for their ostensible complexity, subtlety, and nuance, such as their willingness to suggest that government agencies like the CIA are bloated and bureaucratic. Instead of scenes with a tough action hero bodyslamming or mowing down teeming hordes of Muslim terrorists, these films are part of a smarter genre of jingoistic action film — the prestige thriller — featuring flawed protagonists, some meta comedy, and women CIA agents excelling in a historically male-dominated field of coups and torture. 

But ultimately, they project the same tired nationalism and ideology reinforcement just in a sleeker, more modern form. On this episode, we’ll examine how anti-Muslim and anti-Arab propaganda is disseminated through the contemporary prestige thriller genre.

We're joined by historian, artist and author Maytha Alhassen.

Episode 114: Anti-Muslim Racism in Hollywood (Part II) - Oscar-Bait Imperialism

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 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)

Waiting tables. Bartending. Hospitality, food delivery, beauty salons, rideshare driving. The service industry, as anyone who has worked in it knows all too well, is notorious for relying on tipping to undercut employee wages and deputize individual customers to determine how much money a worker should be able to take home. Amid increasing recognition of these injustices, a number of campaigns and new laws surfaced, pre-pandemic, to abolish or meaningfully reduce the practice of tipping.

But despite the best efforts of these campaigns, tipping remains the industry - and American society - standard. Indeed, the perverse logic of tipping has broadened into an ever-present 'snitch economy' - an ecosystem of tactics like mystery shoppers and Uber and Yelp rating systems designed to police the behavior of workers while outsourcing the costs of said supervision to customers and other workers. 

In the process, our snitch economy pits those being surveilled against those doing the watching, and the judging. Through a ubiquitous public-facing network of rating and reviewing other people’s labor - and often the behavioral disposition they exhibit while working - people with otherwise very little power are elevated to temporary positions of authority over others, fostering a culture of surveillance rather than one of solidarity. The snitch economy serves the dual purpose of not only giving working people a false sense of power when they’re the ones being served, but also reducing millions of human interactions to opportunities for not only snap judgments, but subjective rewards and retribution.

In this episode, we detail how businesses in the service industry, bolstered by friendly media, use tactics like tipping, mystery shoppers, and ubiquitous ratings systems in order to turn us all into petty, mean, busybodies carrying out the agenda of capital with nothing to show for it but a fleeting sense of self-satisfaction. 

Our guest is writer, editor and agitator Vicky Osterweil.

Ep. 118 - The Snitch Economy: How Rating Apps and Tipping Pit Working People Against Each Other

UNLOCKED SUBSCRIBER EPISODE 81
We are joined by the legal galaxy brains from the ALAB podcast to disrobe the criminals on the Supreme Court, shed light on the dark ecosystem of legislation mills and demystify the perverted institutions of Big Law

UNLOCKED! Episode 81: SCROTUS

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

Episode 102: Fed As Folk

Every year, a series of highly anticipated listicles of "successful" and "influential" people hailed for their accomplishments surface in corporate media. Forbes reveals the most successful 30 people under the age of 30, and Fortune hails the most successful 40 Under 40. Meanwhile, other business outlets like TechCrunch, Fast Company and CNBC seek a taste of the hype with their own spinoffs. 

Each time one of these lists is published, a flurry of meta-press ensues. CNN, BBC, and The Los Angeles Times run pieces fawning over these high-profile lists, cementing their status as career launchers within the worlds of tech, politics, finance, venture capital, and other pockets of industry prized in capitalist economies. To the extent left types are chosen, it’s almost always due to their ability to mimic capitalist brand-building or channel activist energy into billionaire-backed nonprofits. Thematically similar stories of “success” are just as ubiquitous: headlines such as Business Insider’s "What 31 highly successful people were doing at age 25" or Oprah's "20 Things Everyone Should Master by Age 40" all create a ticking time bomb notion of "achievement" and success operating under a very specific capitalist framework of human worth. 

But why are these outlets entrusted with determining whose "success" or "influence" matters? How do these concepts punish – or at least – disappear the poor, disabled and people of color who don’t have the institutional resources to “achieve” capitalist success at such a young age? And above all, how does American media’s constant fetishization of "youth" and "accomplishment" create psychological wear and tear for the 99 percent of the population who cannot – or don’t want to – meet this definition of "success" by their 30s or 40s. 

On this episode, we analyze the ways in which corporate media’s narratives of "success" peddle neoliberalism, undermine labor solidarity, reinforce unrealistic expectations that degrade collective mental health, and overwhelmingly center the interests of the white professional class.

We are joined by Edward Ongweso Jr. and Sarah Jaffe.

Episode 120: 30 Under 30 Lists and The Problem with Our Youth-Obsessed 'Success' Narratives

Journalist Talia Lavin joins us to discuss her research on the alt right, q-anon, and why boomers think there are underground child sacrifice sex tunnels everywhere. We also talk HP Lovecraft, the Michigan militia who tried to kidnap their governor, and Trump.

TALIA LAVIN
@Chick_in_Kiev
Patreon.com/TaliaLavin
SATANIC PANIC Q ANON PIECE:
https://newrepublic.com/article/159529/qanon-blood-libel-satanic-panic
BOOK:
https://www.hachettebooks.com/titles/talia-lavin/culture-warlords/9780306846434/?utm_expid=.OyywKgKNQfKo0ZgN1WBZtg.0&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

MUSIC
JAKE HART - Go Away
IG: JakeHartEatsBrains

DEAD OIL - Drip
https://dead-oil.bandcamp.com/releases

MERCH (SHIRTS, BANDANAS, POSTERS)
PodDamnAmerica.BigCartel.Com

PATREON FOR BONUS EPISODES
Patreon.com/PodDamnAmerica

@PodDamnAmerica
@feraljokes
@ptakjokes
@andersleehere

LISTEN TO ALEX'S THIRD PODCAST AND ALSO WHY YOU MAD AND WATCH REDACTED TONIGHT OK BYE

Q Detective w/ Talia Lavin

In this News Brief follow up to Episode 115 on Hollywood's symbiotic relationship with the Pentagon and CIA, we spoke with director and screenwriter Oliver Stone about his experience making mainstream motion pictures about often taboo subjects like the American imperialism and war crimes.

News Brief - Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Follow Up Conversation with Oliver Stone

Comedian James Austin Johnson joins us to do expert reporting and analysis on the election that's still happening or is over or is still happening I can't tell. Then Donald Trump calls us to announce his resignation sort of.

JAMES AUSTIN JOHNSON
@ShrimpJAJ on Twitter and IG
@WTAWTPod

ATLANTA SOLIDARITY FUND
https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/contribute-to-the-atlanta-solidarity-fund
@ATLSolFund

PHONE BANK FOR RAPHAEL WARNOCK
https://www.mobilize.us/warnockforgeorgia/event/331688/

MERCH
PodDamnAmerica.BigCartel.Com

PATREON
Patreon.com/PodDamnAmerica

2020 ELECTION ANALYSIS BREAKDOWN w/ James Austin Johnson & Donald Trump

On August 31, 1997, the world changed forever when the famous Princess Diana died in a car crash. This documentary explores new evidence about what really happened that day. (Written by @necrobranson Starring @DanBoeckner @_devojka_ @humidnightblue @RahRahRaina @ByYourLogic @intellegint @charlesraustin)

E1 on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/e1podcast

155 - Crown of Mist: The Final Day of Princess Diana

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Ep. 118 - The Snitch Economy: How Rating Apps and Tipping Pit Working People Against Each Other

Citations Needed Podcast