Dispatches From the Culture Wars - Hardcover

Danny Goldberg is chair and CEO of Artemis Records. He co-produced and co-directed the rock documentary No Nukes and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and others. He lives in New York City and is a longtime ACLU officer and board member. This is his first book.

In a meeting with Jack Newfield, according to Goldberg, liberal Sen. Charles Schumer confessed to having never heard of Eminem. This illustrates record producer and civil liberties activist Goldberg's powerful critique of the left and the Democratic Party's failure to stay in touch with its broad popular base and with popular culture as a way of reaching them. It takes a while for the political content to kick into gear, but once broached, it never lets up. Here is that rare breed of book that can deconstruct gangsta rap as effectively as it analyzes the 1988 presidential election, a book in which Lenny Kravitz and Kurt Cobain have an equal footing with Joe Lieberman and John McCain. The long battle Goldberg helped wage against Tipper Gore over rock lyrics in the 1980s underscores many of the book's themes, such as the disconnect between politics and popular music and the "arrogant sense of entitlement" among many powerful Democrats and leftists, which alienates young voters. The author's own record label, Artemis, has sparked controversy, releasing both the Steve Earle song "John Walker's Blues," which infuriated conservative pundits, and Cornel West's rap album, which Harvard president (and former Clinton treasury secretary) Larry Summers said "embarrassed" the university. Whether boomer Democrats heed his call to abandon their hostility to younger voters (whom, Goldberg says, they term "ignorant") remains to be seen, but few people could make the case as effectively as Goldberg does.
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