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By Angela Hart and PolitiFact Staff December 1, 2023

Fox News officially titled it The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate. But the faceoff quickly turned into a full-out political brawl between Gavin Newsom, Californias Democratic governor who isnt running for president; and Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican governor who is, and is not gaining ground against former President Donald Trump in voter polls.

The event was held in Alpharetta, Georgia, aired on Fox News, and moderated by Sean Hannity. Our PolitiFact partners examined the two state officials wide-ranging statements. You can read the full coverage here.

Newsom has relished taunting DeSantis on social media and Fox News and, earlier this year, he invited DeSantis to debate arguing that the red-state policies DeSantis has passed are stripping Americans of their freedoms. DeSantis counters that he is the stronger defender of freedom, and has blasted California as the petri dish for American leftism and argues that everything [President Joe] Biden is doing, they would accelerate.

True to the events billing, the nations culture wars were front and center on the debate stage. DeSantis portrayed California as a failed state with rampant crime and homelessness led by an elite politician too liberal for the rest of the country. They have failed because of his leftist ideology, DeSantis said.

Newsom shot back, playing up Californias immense economy and describing his state as one without peer. He expressed his commitment to Bidens reelection. He also called out DeSantis for his covid-19 policies, saying more Floridians died of covid due to his more relaxed public health rules: Tens of thousands of people lost their lives and for what, Ron?

Abortion was a clear flashpoint. Newsom defended Californias strong abortion protections and attacked DeSantis, alleging he criminalizes women and doctors. He also suggested that if DeSantis became president, he would further roll back abortion rights nationwide. Newsom, asked by Hannity if he would sign a law banning abortion later in pregnancy, argued that such cases are extremely rare.

I trust the mother and her doctor to make that decision, he said.

The two also sparred over book bans, parental rights, and policies regarding the LGBTQ+ community.

DeSantis criticized Newsom on Californias growing homelessness, which he said contributed to the destruction of qualify of life in the state.

Newsom pointed out that the crisis has been brewing for decades. He noted, though, that under his leadership, billions of dollars in taxpayer money has been directed toward countering homelessness. He also boasted about the states investments in mental health and addiction programs.

The difference is Im the first governor in California history to take this head-on, Newsom said, arguing that under his policies 68,000 people have been moved off the streets and into shelter or housing.

Here are the health-related claims PolitiFact examined:

Covid-19 Lockdowns

Newsom borrowed a page from Trumps playbook by misleadingly portraying DeSantis as a lockdown leader. Newsoms comments focused on DeSantis actions in the pandemics first few weeks, when nearly all governors operated in lockstep. Newsom omits that DeSantis reopened earlier than most governors in spring 2020.

You passed an emergency declaration before the state of California did, Newsom said. You closed down your beaches, your bars, your restaurants. It is a fact.

Many local governments closed beaches for a limited time, but DeSantis did not close them statewide.

DeSantis issued an executive order on March 17, 2020, directing Floridians to limit their gatherings at beaches to no more than 10 people and to support beach closures at the discretion of local authorities.

He also ordered beaches in Broward and Palm Beach counties to close for 11 days, following recommendations from local officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The governors refusal to close most beaches to spring break crowds drew heavy criticism and litigation.

Newsom was on firmer ground in his claim about closing bars. DeSantis ordered all bars and nightclubs closed for 30 days. Restaurants did not close. His March 17 order said restaurants were limited to 50% customer capacity and had to separate seating by 6 feet.

Governors nationwide issued multiple orders in March 2020 in response to the pandemic. DeSantis issued an order March 1 to establish covid response protocol and direct a public health emergency. On March 4, Newsom declared a state of emergency to help California prepare for the pandemic.

Floridas Abortion Limits and DeSantis Abortion Survivor Story

As Hannity pressed Newsom on whether he supported any abortion restrictions, Newsom attacked Floridas abortion laws.

He signed a bill banning any exceptions for rape and incest, Newsom said of DeSantis. And then he said it didnt go far enough and decided to sign a six-week ban that criminalizes women and criminalizes doctors.

DeSantis signed legislation in 2022 that outlawed abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It does not make exceptions for cases of incest, rape or human trafficking but includes an exception for a mothers life.

DeSantis signed a stricter bill in April that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Whether the law takes effect hinges on how the Florida Supreme Court rules in a lawsuit against the current 15-week ban. The 2023 law does contain exceptions, including to save a pregnant womans life or in cases of fatal fetal anomalies. Abortions for pregnancies involving rape, incest, or human trafficking would be allowed until 15 weeks of pregnancy if a woman has documentation such as a restraining order, police report, or medical record.

The law penalizes physicians, but whether it also criminalizes women is less clear, so we have rated a similar claim Half True. The law says that anyone who actively participates in an abortion commits a third-degree felony, which opens the door to prosecutors charging women, but we dont yet know whether they will or how courts would respond to such charges. DeSantis has also said that he doesnt want women prosecuted, only doctors.

Defending the law, DeSantis repeated an anecdote from the first GOP presidential debate about a Floridian named Penny Hopper. Miriam Penny Hopper is a real person, and an anti-abortion activist. Some of the details about her birth story have been called into question.

Hopper said she survived an abortion attempt in Florida in 1955. Her claim has been featured by anti-abortion groups and used to support what abortion opponents call born alive bills in state legislatures, which aim to protect infants who survive abortions, even though there are federal laws for that purpose.

In interviews, Hopper has said she had been delivered around 23 weeks of gestation after her mother went to a hospital in Wauchula, Florida, while experiencing bleeding. Hopper said the doctor induced labor, and she was born at 1 pound, 11 ounces, and that the doctor told staff to discard her dead or alive. She said her grandmother found her the next day on the hospital porch in a bedpan. Then, Hopper said, a nurse volunteered to take her to a larger hospital that was about 40 miles away.

That a baby born at 23 weeks could survive overnight without medical attention in 1955 is medically dubious, experts said. From the 1950s through 1980, newborn death was virtually ensured for infants born at or before 24 weeks of gestation, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology says on its website.

The Washington Post also reported that contemporaneous newspaper accounts offer a different scenario at the hospital, and said the staff spent days keeping her alive before arranging a police escort to rush her to another hospital.

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Explosive DeSantis-Newsom Debate Reflects Nations Culture Wars - KFF Health News

Listen and follow DealBook Summit Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

DealBook Summit includes conversations with business and policy leaders at the heart of todays major stories, recorded live at the annual DealBook Summit event in New York City.

When he was last chief executive of Disney, one of Bob Igers favorite things to do was to sit in a reconstruction of Walt Disneys office.

It sounds a little weird, Iger told Andrew Ross Sorkin of The Times at the DealBook Summit, but its kind of a nice way to relax and appreciate the legacy of the company.

After a three-year absence, Iger came out of retirement to return as chief executive of Disney. His ambitious plans, combined with strong revenues for Disney theme parks and experiences, have given investors hope that a turnaround is imminent. But the company still faces significant headwinds, including slowing subscriptions to its streaming network Disney+ and a fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Whats Igers next move? And what would Walt think of the company now?

Follow DealBooks reporting at https://nytimes.com/dealbook

Hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin, a columnist and editor of DealBook, a daily business and policy report from The New York Times, DealBook Summit features interviews with the leaders at the heart of todays major stories, recorded live onstage at the annual DealBook Summit event in New York City.

The DealBook events team includes Julie Zann, Caroline Brunelle, Haley Duffy, Angela Austin, Hailey Hess, Dana Pruskowski, Matt Kaiser and Yen-Wei Liu.

Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Nina Lassam, Ravi Mattu, Beth Weinstein, Kate Carrington, Isabella Anderson and Jeffrey Miranda.

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Bob Iger of Disney on Culture Wars and Streaming - The New York Times

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In olden days, a glimpse of stocking

Was looked on as something shocking

But now, God knows

Anything goes

Cole Porter

America is a tough room. You cant joke about anything anymore.

Or so were told. Were in this place where everyones like, You cant say this, you cant say that, Whitney Cummings told Matt Wilstein on The Last Laugh podcast. I think its particularly worrying at the moment because you can only create in an atmosphere of freedom, where youre not checking everything you say critically before you move on, legendary Monty Pythons Flying Circus member John Cleese told an interviewer.

Kliph Nesteroff has heard all this before. As he chronicles in his new book, Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, the comedy historian and author of the essential book, The Comedians, maintains that America has not suddenly lost its sense of humor. The so-called culture wars have been waged for centuries.

In the colonial era, he writes, the Continental Congress passed a law decreeing the closure of all places of public entertainment. In the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, dance shows were raided if too much leg was shown. Decades before Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, a female audience member attacked Welsh comedian Ossie Morris after he uttered two profanities. In the 1950s, when Desi Arnaz wanted to work his wife Lucille Balls pregnancy into I Love Lucy, sponsor Philip Morris told him, You cannot show a pregnant woman on television. (You couldnt even say the word; the episode itself was titled, Lucy Is Enceinte.)

The idea you that cant say anything anymore is hyperbolic, Nesteroff says in a phone interview. Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor were each arrested for the language they used onstage. Mae West went to jail. Today, even if a comedian caused outrage, nobody would be arrested. Its disrespectful to those who came before and blazed this path when you really couldnt say certain things.

As a complement to his book, Nesteroff has recently been posting on X (formerly Twitter) contemporaneous letters to the editor from irate TV viewers who were shocked and offended by what they were seeing in prime time. Like viewer Bernie Splim, who protested the food fight on a 1986 Thanksgiving episode of Cheers: Couldnt they have had Sam [Malone] open the bar to feed the homeless? he complained.

Nesteroff believes that social media is fueling the misperception that we are overly sensitive these days. In the days before the Internet, peoples reactions to show business was very similar to the reaction we see on social media, he says. The difference was if 100 people wrote 100 letters to the editor, only one or two would be published. Today, letters to the editor exist without the editor. They are sent out as tweets or Instagram posts and all 100 are posted. I dont believe this conceit that people are more sensitive or easily offended today. Its just now there is no filter. In reality, people were probably much more sensitive in the past because we had far greater taboos when it came to sex, religion, politics, and language.

Today, at least five of George Carlins Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, can be heard in prime time. There is more freedom of speech and freedom of expression today, Nesteroff maintains. But were being told the opposite.

For example, Nesteroff points to controversial films in cinema. While D.W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation advanced cinema as an art form, it also glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. Gone With the Wind may be one of the most honored and beloved films of all time, yet it presents a benign view of the antebellum South. But as Nesteroff writes, America did not just suddenly get more sensitive toward these controversial films (HBO Max temporarily pulled Wind in 2020). They were banned or protested at the time of release in 1915 and 1939, respectively.

Outrageous is not officially dedicated to comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who died last April, but some stories in the book were absolutely included with Gottfried in heart and mind, Nesteroff says. For instance, Nesteroff writes in Outrageous about game show fans being repulsed by Family Feud host Richard Dawsons penchant for kissing female contestants on the mouth. In response, the show instituted a policy by which male and female contestants had to undergo a mouth test for herpes and other diseases.

Part of including that is the spirit of Gilbert Gottfried and what would make him laugh or make his jaw drop on the floor, Nesteroff says. The Richard Dawson herpes test is one I never got to share with him. I guarantee that if he were alive, I would lead with that on my next podcast appearance. (Nesteroff was a popular guest on Gilbert Gottfrieds Amazing Colossal Podcast, which was devoted to old school show business with eager digressions into entertainers behaving badly.)

Gottfried himself had multiple controversies throughout his career, Nesteroff says, and I wanted to have at least one Gilbert story in the book. That story is Gottfrieds 1991, well, outrageous, appearance on the Emmy Awards, which coincided with Paul Reubens arrest in an adult movie theater (in comedy, timing is everything). Gilbert was supposed to read material off the teleprompter, but he went rogue and did a series of jokes about masturbation, Nesteroff says. He got huge laughs, but the shows writers said they were disgusted by his performance. Michael Medved singled out Gilbert as an example of what he called Hollywoods contempt for middle America.

That seems to be a recurring line of attack in the culture wars: us vs. them. Perhaps one of the key lines in Outrageous is Nesteroffs observation that While the showbiz of a hundred years ago may seem remote, it is remarkable how similar the issues of the past are to the concerns of today. For example, theres this quote: We must take our country backcleaning up what I think is the dismal swamp, draining that swamp. Donald Trump in 2016? No, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan in 2000.

The culture wars rage on. Nesteroff hopes people can chill out a bit. I do not care for these doomsday prophecies that the world is coming to an end, he says. People used to say this in reference to the tango, the jitterbug, rock and roll, and comic books. You hear the same thing today when people refer to drag queen story time, The 1619 Project, or a comedian making a joke you dont like. Every generation thinks that everything happening in their day is unprecedented. You feel the hysteria that is sent to us intentionally and unintentionally on the Internet. But controversies quickly dissipate as the years pass. Were still here.

Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars is now available from Bookshop and other retailers.

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Outrageous: The History of Comedy, Culture Wars, and Kissing Contestants - The Saturday Evening Post

COMEDY BOOK: How Comedy Conquered Culture and the Magic That Makes It Work, by Jesse David Fox

OUTRAGEOUS: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, by Kliph Nesteroff

Did you hear the one about cancel culture?

Of course you did, several times over, if youve paid any attention to modern comedy and its purveyors, many of whom have groused about how hard it is to be funny in todays climate. But two new books share an exasperation with the common sentiment that theres never been a worse time to express oneself than the present. Taking them, well, seriously can liberate us from repeating the past.

Kliph Nesteroffs fact-packed Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars finds American entertainers in a perpetual state of despair over the censorious climate of their day whatever day it happens to be. Steve Allen, the original host of The Tonight Show, complained about the very touchy times in 1955; in 2015, Jerry Seinfeld said hed been warned away from playing colleges because of students sensitivities.

Social media gives the impression that people are more irrational, humorless and overly sensitive than in the past, Nesteroff writes, but vintage letters to the editor contain remarkably similar sentiments.

To Jesse David Fox, the author of Comedy Book, the risk of backlash is part of the point. Fox, a senior editor at New York magazines Vulture and a podcaster who regularly interviews comedians, puts it this way: Does political correctness make comedy harder to do? Sure, in the sense that it would be easier to run for a touchdown if you didnt have to worry about holding the ball, but thats the game. Its what makes it more exciting than watching a bunch of men sprinting with helmets on.

This is just one example of Foxs keen insight in his energetic and wise book, which focuses on the 90s and beyond, when, the author reckons, comedy became an ever-present, important, valued societal force. (Fox points out that before Seinfeld premiered in 1989, no comedian had ever headlined a show at Madison Square Gardens arena, yet by the time he wrote his book, 18 had.) Within broadly named chapters (Truth, Context, Audience), he crams vivid examples; his Timing section, which explores 9/11 jokes and the notion of too soon, is particularly adept at illustrating the use of humor in the face of tragedy.

Like many of his subjects, Fox knows his way around a pointed one-liner. A roast might sound mean, but its another way of saying I see you is one. If you are saying supposedly offensive things and the audience is instantly all onboard, it is not a comedy show, its a rally is another. That such rigorous thinking should at one point lead him to defend an Adam Sandler poop joke is a great gag in itself.

Fox is allergic to the kind of snobbery directed at broad comedy, maintaining that if its funny to anyone, its funny. Still, hes interested in parameters how 8:46, Dave Chappelles Netflix monologue inspired by the murder of George Floyd, functions as a piece of work in conversation with the history of comedy, and why the same comedians jokes targeting queer people fall short.

Comedy, Fox writes, is fundamentally play, and in his deft hands, the analysis of comedy can be playful, too. Fox knows that grand pronouncements on what makes funny things funny is dicey territory: The sense of what is funny is so subjective so completely built into your person that it feels objective, he writes.

His own life experiences and tastes are integral to his reporting. The first and last chapters of the book recount the deaths of immediate family members, which, he says, comedy helped him process. Comedy Book is not the definitive history of the past three-plus decades. Its Foxs history, and better for it.

Outrageous, the product of herculean research, has a wider purview than just comedy. Nesteroff touches on rock n roll, talk radio, the initial blowback received by early critics of Hitler and more.

However, what does and doesnt, should and shouldnt, make us laugh does take up a lot of space (Nesteroffs 2015 The Comedians is a full-fledged history of the form). Sometimes the laughs are inadvertent, as in a 1959 complaint from a viewer of the TV series Lassie who compared its portrayal of a litter of puppies to a sex show.

In no-frills prose, Nesteroff races through some two centuries of expression and backlash from blackface minstrelsy (criticized early on by Frederick Douglass) to the (formerly Dixie) Chicks (the country music trio whose titanic profile shrank several sizes after its lead singer publicly criticized President George W. Bush) rarely pausing for analysis and sometimes breezing by useful context. The book tends to home in on the moment when each brouhaha reached a fever pitch, which can give a distorted picture of the controversies and their ensuing fallouts.

Outrageous is nonetheless a useful compendium. Placing so many outrages next to one another exposes a call-and-response pattern, in which both sides of the political divide have tried to dictate acceptable speech for all. We may be partial to the intentions of one side, but the mechanics often look identical.

Unsurprisingly, its those already in power who often succeed. If there is a main character in Nesteroffs sea of stories, its Paul Weyrich, a John Birch Society alum who helped build an elaborate Culture War infrastructure with corporate cash and evangelical muscle, eventually cofounding the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority.

In sometimes clandestine ways, those groups have had a major impact in seeding American culture with conservative ideology, raging against what Weyrich called the Cultural Marxism of an elite few to dictate words, language and opinions while, Nesteroff writes, doing precisely that.

Outrageous portrays a country divided; theres no shortage of strife in Foxs book, but he believes fundamentally in the unifying power of comedy, which smooths conflicts and unites disparate groups. His faith is contagious.

Comedy is not stifled, he argues, but has enmeshed itself in how millennials and now Gen Z communicate. Superstars like Chappelle and Amy Schumer are endowed with the kind of trusted status once reserved for those in the purported truth business, like journalists, public intellectuals and politicians.

Can comedy make everything all better? Fox asks in conclusion. Of course not. But it makes it easier.

COMEDY BOOK: How Comedy Conquered Culture and the Magic That Makes It Work | By Jesse David Fox | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 353 pp. | $29

OUTRAGEOUS: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars | By Kliph Nesteroff | Abrams | 312 pp. | $30

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Two New Books Consider Comedy and the Culture Wars - The New York Times

REPORTS OF GRASSROOTS outrage have been greatly exaggerated. Bankrolled anger is a big business, often weaponized for money, power, or both, and cancel culture, as it is often described, has become an increasingly complicated political football in the digital age. However, there is one area where outrage culture has always been a potent forcepopular culture. Kliph Nesteroffs new book, Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, details the evolution concept within, and levied against, film, television, radio, music, and comedy. Nesteroff shows us the importance of sharing the history of fear and intimidation surrounding popular culture so that we can be more informed when we see it today, as the issues facing the moral crusaders of yesteryear are not unlike what we find in 2023.

In the class that I teach on censorship, I regularly welcome our campus librarian to discuss book banning. Her relationship with popular culture outrage became terrifying when she was a small-town librarian and the pushback against certain books led to death threats targeting members of her occupation. Understandably, several resignations followed. Stories like hers show the real life, local impact of defending literacy (not to mention those pesky First Amendment rights) in some communities.

Last semester, she brought a stack of regularly banned childrens books from the local library for our students to analyze. In Mary Hoffman and Ros Asquiths The Great Big Book of Families (2010), for example, one of my students found the line Some children have two mummies or two daddies carefully taped over. These college-age digital natives, who rarely bat an eye at viral outrage, were appalled and surprised to see this poorly implemented real-world example. These local instances are products of national debates and controversies. In 2009, religious fanatics near University of WisconsinMilwaukees West Bend campus wanted Stephen Chboskys The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) removed and replaced by books written by ex-gays. This same community just got rid of Orson Scott Cards 1985 novel Enders Game for eighth graders. Even more confusing is the case of the Texas teacher who was recently fired for instructing her students to read from an illustrated adaptation of Anne Franks diary.

Comedy (and the larger scope of popular culture) has always pushed boundaries and, therefore, has been designed to offend. Though Nesteroff is careful to avoid any showbiz controversy in the 21st century, he recognizes that so many national conversations are intentionally composed to incite and manipulate the reader. While this may feel like a new phenomenon to some, sadly it is not. Nesteroff quotes historian Richard Hofstadters 1964 The Paranoid Style in American Politics to establish continuities with the present: The paranoid spokesperson sees the fate of this conspiracy [to upend a specific way of life] in apocalyptic terms [] [H]e constantly lives at a turning point: it is now or never in organizing resistance. This paranoid style of outrage and fearmongering has been at work in our society for well over a century.

Outrageous starts by showing us that American show business essentially begins in the 1830s with the blackface minstrel show. Ever since that time, writes Nesteroff, audiences have complained. Though Outrageous makes very minimal connections to today, these minstrel controversies persist, most commonly relating to digital blackface and white peoples use of GIFs featuring African Americans. However, as Nesteroff chronicles, not all outrage has aged as well. Many people disapprove of blackface todaythough perhaps not as many as youd think. There was also a time when the Twist sent shock waves through the nations prudes, but today the dance raises very few eyebrows. Same goes for the Beatleswhat was once the Devils music is now classic rock playing at your local department store.

Attacks on mass popular culture first peaked with outrage over the nascent art of cinema. Fearing federal censorship, the film industry decided to self-censor. Outrageous includes some history of film controversy, featuring the technologically influential but socially reprehensible Birth of a Nation (1915). Its director, D. W. Griffith, was raised in the postbellum South, his childhood draped in the Lost Cause legends that plagued the region and circulated throughout the country via films like his. (Importantly, Birth of a Nation, controversial then as now, brought a fledgling NAACP to national attention.)

Nesteroff also highlights the Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle scandal, as it lit a fire for antipop culture crusaders looking to paint Hollywood as a sanctuary of vice and debauchery. When sound movies came in, Mae West had an all-too-brief peak of fame for her sexually suggestive comic roles; when censorship strictures were tightened in 1934, Wests career took a major hit. Even with the decline of the Motion Picture Production Code and the rise of the ratings system in the United States, fear and intimidation over movies have persisted.

During the rise of television, the continued backlash against Amos n Andy produced enough pressure to end the mediums use of blackface altogether. Predictably, comments flew regarding the death of comedy. Taboos have killed off most sources of American humor, complained one newspaper column at the time. Nesteroff shows how, as public taste changed, previous generations of comicsincluding West and the legendary Lucille Ballscoffed at televisions increasing inclusion of profanity. Organizations of moral crusaders came out of the woodwork. Conservative activist group Morality in Mediawhich, as Nesteroff shows, was funded by the Coors fortunefought to get Playboy magazine banned from stores and went after screenings of The Godfather (1972) and anything else that was going to push the United States into barbarism. The irony of a beer company funding the morality police may have been lost on this group.

One of the books greatest strengths is how it outlines the origins of outrage, tracking its evolution (and stasis) historically. What was once anger expressed by religious groups became lavishly funded outrage machines stemming from the Cold Warera John Birch Society, an organization which continues to impact the nation. Among the founders was candy and conspiracy solicitor Robert W. Welch Jr. One of the Societys bookstores was operated by Charles Koch (whose last name should ring a few bells). The Society propagated anti-integration views, held book burnings, and kept pressure on Hollywood and the media for liberalizing the country. Some members of Hollywood were recruited by the Society, such as screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, who authored some marvelous comedies of the 1930s, including Animal Crackers (1930) and My Man Godfrey (1936). Ryskinds son Allan, it is worth noting, published Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters; Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler in 2015, a book carrying evaporated water and decrying Hollywoods communist-infiltrated Golden Age. The John Birch Society was lampooned by comedians in every medium. Original Tonight Show host Steve Allen received death threats for his jokes about the Birchers.

Later profiled is Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank funded by a multimillion-dollar donation by Joseph Coors. The name of the foundation may sound scholarly, but all it did on its founding in 1973 was provide a new veneer for Bircher beliefs. The organization sparked a growth of other similar groups, all Christian-affiliated, working toward the dismantling of popular culture. By the 1980s, such groups attracted televangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and stoked public fears around music and entertainment, resulting in the burning of hip-hop and heavy metal records.

Enter the Parents Music Resource Center, or PMRC, the heart and soul of moral crusading against music in the 1980s. Spearheaded by Tipper Gore and a string of other government-affiliated spouses, the PMRC sought to silence musicians whose music they didnt like. The PMRC, like previous outrage organizations, was endorsed by radical religious groups like Focus on the Family, which endorsed conversion therapy, and rejected the theory of evolution. Such outrage led to the Moral Majority, a collective of Christian conservative groups that regularly stuck their neck into the culture wars. Though not mentioned in the book, the only thing to come out of the PMRC is the often-ignored Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics label still found on some albums. Some stores, including Wal-Mart, refused to stock albums featuring the advisory.

Just about all fearmongering over popular culture is justified as a means of protecting the children. Nesteroff argues that this is a constant reminder that concern for children was [and is] a cover for bigotry. History shows how kids are used as an excuse to attack any popular culture phenomenon that has aided social and racial integration. The John Birch Society insisted they were just looking out for the kidsa very specific subset of kids, it was clearas they fought desegregation in schools.

And today, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), with which Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Senator Josh Hawley are connected, works to fight abortion, ban contraceptives, and criminalize homosexualityall to provide a hypocritical interpretation of family values about saving the children. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has cultivated an atmosphere of fear and judgment leading to nearly 1,500 book bans in the last year. Like nearly everything covered in Outrageous, book banning across the country is tied to groups like Moms for Liberty, yet another deceptively titled organization that hides behind an ostensible love of those most in need of protection.

Nesteroff covers an impressive amount of ground, but besides the opening chapter, in which he frames the history of outrage, his narrative stops short of our current moment. Nesteroff writes cogently on documentaries and on podcasts, and therefore about the presentevidently, he has the commentary chops to go there. Perhaps a reason for his hesitation is the fact that contemporary outrage passes so quickly that by the time he finished writing the discussion, his examples had moved on. The last thing any author wants is for their commentary to look stale, an adjective I dont think could ever describe Nesteroffs work.

Nesteroff doesnt explicitly tell us what to do with the knowledge hes shared, and maybe he doesnt have to. But I would argue that one thing we need to do is continue sharing the history of the culture wars. Its why I teach the aforementioned class and am considering my own book on the subject. We need to expand conversation outside of the social media black hole where algorithms privilege the most idiotic content, and books like Outrageous give us a tool to share with others. Information, especially good information, is an undervalued commodity in todays data-driven economy. If we are going to cut through the fearmongering around so-called dangerous popular culture, we first need to show that we can fight the outrage machine by exposing the hypocrisy of save the childrentype rhetoric.

This book should spark useful conversations, even debate, by offering a template for discussing the relevance and origins of historic outrage culture. Nesteroff argues that outrage against popular culture often comes from a place of religious bigotry, is a generously funded venture, and is usually launched purely out of the desire to exercise political power. The fact remains that outrage is often funded and organized from above, is rarely centered on the artifact in question rather than the feelings around it, and remains just as important now as it was 100 years ago.

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Endless Culture Wars: On Kliph Nesteroffs Outrageous - lareviewofbooks