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Highlights

A collection of news and information related to Richard Hofstadter published by this site and its partners.

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    Mar 21, 2010 |Story| Los Angeles Times

  1. Caught in a paranoid conspiracy grip

    Along the stretch of U.S. highway where I live, there is a small sign announcing that the road has been "adopted" by the John Birch Society. This fringe group of yesteryear -- whose Dallas members distributed commie-baiting "Wanted for Treason" leaflets of President Kennedy prior to his visit and assassination there -- now sponsors litter removal like any other proper civic-minded organization. The Red-under-every-bed zealotry that Richard Hofstadter dissected in "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" and Bob Dylan satirized in "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" has been rehabilitated. Or maybe it's just been coyly rebranded, given a veneer of halfway respectable populism by the grass-rootsy Tea Party label, as an outlet for "angry minds" who get to cherry-pick among speculations that the president of the United States is a socialist traitor, a foreign agent/illegal immigrant, a secret Muslim, a tool of Jewish bankers, a black Hitler or all of the above.
    Along the stretch of U.S. highway where I live, there is a small sign announcing that the road has been "adopted" by the John Birch Society. This fringe group of yesteryear -- whose Dallas members distributed commie-baiting "Wanted for Treason" leaflets...

    Tags: Crimes, Stranger Than Fiction, Frontline Limited, Guerrilla Activity, Franklin Delano Roosevelt

    2. Jan 7, 2009 |Story| Los Angeles Times

  2. 'Family of Secrets' by Russ Baker

    The tendency Richard Hofstadter so aptly labeled "the paranoid style" in American politics operates independent of ideology. "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," the great historian wrote in a 1964 issue of Harper's magazine. He...

    Tags: Crimes, History, White House, The Washington Post, Lee Harvey Oswald

    3. Jun 22, 2008 |Story| Los Angeles Times

  3. Two timeless, Depression-era novels from Edward Anderson

    Edward Anderson had a strange and sad career. He was born in Texas in 1905 and grew up in Oklahoma, serving his apprenticeship as a journalist on a small paper in Ardmore, Okla. Restless, he worked as a deckhand on a freighter, plied his fists as a prizefighter, had some small success as a musician and, when the Great Depression of the 1930s hit, roamed the roads and rails, learning the life of the hobo. This crucial experience led to fiction, and to his first novel, "Hungry Men" (University of Oklahoma Press, currently out of print, but with plenty of copies available on Amazon), which in 1933 caused the Saturday Review of Literature to pronounce him the heir to Hemingway and Faulkner.
    Edward Anderson had a strange and sad career. He was born in Texas in 1905 and grew up in Oklahoma, serving his apprenticeship as a journalist on a small paper in Ardmore, Okla. Restless, he worked as a deckhand on a freighter, plied his fists as a...

    Tags: Crimes, Great Depression (1929), Jorge Luis Borges, Upton Sinclair, University of Oklahoma

    4. Nov 30, 2008 |Story| Los Angeles Times

  4. The GOP's McCarthy gene

    Ever since the election, partisans within the Republican Party and observers outside it have been speculating wildly about what direction the GOP will take to revive itself from its disaster. Or, more specifically, which wing of the party will prevail in setting the new Republican course -- whether it will be what conservative writer Kathleen Parker has called the "evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy" branch or the more pragmatic, intellectual, centrist branch. To determine the answer, it helps to understand exactly how Republicans arrived at this spot in the first place.
    Ever since the election, partisans within the Republican Party and observers outside it have been speculating wildly about what direction the GOP will take to revive itself from its disaster. Or, more specifically, which wing of the party will prevail...

    Tags: Republican Party, Parties and Movements, Richard Nixon, John McCain, Karl Rove

    5. Feb 1, 2009 |Story| Los Angeles Times

  5. 'The Lincoln Anthology' edited by Harold Holzer, 'The Best American History Essays on Lincoln' edited by Sean Wilentz, Ronald C. White's biography 'A. Lincoln' and others

    It was Tuesday, May 30, 1922, the day of the dedication of the solemn and splendid memorial to Abraham Lincoln in Washington, and the ceremony on the Mall featured speeches by President Warren Harding and Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
    It was Tuesday, May 30, 1922, the day of the dedication of the solemn and splendid memorial to Abraham Lincoln in Washington, and the ceremony on the Mall featured speeches by President Warren Harding and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. The most...

    Tags: Mark Van Doren, H.L. Mencken, History, Defense, Literature

    6. Sep 17, 2009 | Los Angeles Times

  6. In today's pages: False steps, botched arrests and phony outrage

    Opinion L.A.
    Miriam Pawel details how the United Farm Workers switched from backing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to increase Central Valley water supplies to opposing it. Backed by the Change to Win union coalition, Pawel writes, the UFW established a $1...
    7. Nov 9, 2009 | Los Angeles Times

  7. Apocalypse now: 'Collapse' and the end of the world as we know it

    The Big Picture
    America has a bad case of the doomsday jitters. You don't have to be a Glenn Beck follower to know that whenever things go wrong in this country, you can always find all the anger, bitterness and fear-mongering bubbling up......
    8. Feb 22, 2010 | Los Angeles Times

  8. The History Channel's JFK miniseries: Is it really right-wing character assassination?

    The Big Picture
    For the past week, liberals everywhere have been up in arms over the horrifying prospect of a new History Channel miniseries about John F. Kennedy hatched from the brain of Joel Surnow, a creator of Fox's hit TV series "24"......
    9. Feb 28, 2008 |Story| Los Angeles Times

  9. In his own right

    William F. Buckley Jr., as anybody who has seen the great Buckley impressions by Joe Flaherty or Robin Williams can attest, was hardly inimitable. But the contributions of the National Review founder and long-serving icon of conservatism extended far...

    Tags: Ronald Reagan, Death, Science and Technology, Sociology, Robin Williams

    10. Sep 17, 2000 |Story| Los Angeles Times

  10. "The Golden Age" by Gore Vidal

    For years now, the promise of a new Gore Vidal book has been something to get the blood running or boiling. No other American writer has maintained quite such a radical, iconoclastic vision of his nation's past, and nowhere has Vidal been more provocative...

    Tags: Stranger Than Fiction, Republican National Conventions, Crimes, Hudson River, Franklin Delano Roosevelt

    11. Mar 8, 2012 |Story| Baltimore Sun

  11. When well-educated politicians cry 'snob'

    With the Republican presidential nomination contest in high gear, Marylanders might be forgiven for smiling. The word "snob" has returned with full force to presidential politics after a four-decade hiatus. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Penn State University '80, University of Pittsburgh '81, Dickinson School of Law '86), in an old-fashioned beat-down on higher education, recently informed us that President Barack Obama is "a snob" for wanting Americans to go to college, where they would be indoctrinated by "some liberal college professor."
    With the Republican presidential nomination contest in high gear, Marylanders might be forgiven for smiling. The word "snob" has returned with full force to presidential politics after a four-decade hiatus. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Penn State University...

    Tags: Education, Adlai Stevenson, Columbia University, Newt Gingrich, Regional Authority

    12. Jan 5, 2012 |Column| Tribune Media Services

  12. The comedy club

    Tribune Media Services
    It seems former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter has undertaken a second career as a stand-up comic. He's now switching occupations the way he once switched political parties. At 81, the longtime Republican then Democratic senator from Pennsylvania opened the...

    Tags: Republican Party, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon

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