Introduction 1
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Notes Introduction 1. Sharon Stephens, “Children and the Politics of Culture in ‘Late Cap- italism,’ ” in Children and the Politics of Culture, ed. Sharon Stephens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 7. 2. Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, “Introduction,” Evil Paradises (New York: The New Press, 2007), p. ix. 3. Louis Uchitelle, “The Richest of the Rich, Proud of New Gilded Age,” New York Times (July 15, 2007). Online: http://www.nytimes. com/2007/07/15/business/15gilded.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. 4. Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 52. 5. Zygmunt Bauman, “Happiness in a Society of Individuals,” Soundings (Winter 2008), p. 21. 6. Tony Pugh, “US Economy Leaving Record Numbers in Severe Poverty,” McClatchy Newspapers (February 23, 2007). Online: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0223-09.htm. 7. Cesar Chelala, “Rich Man, Poor Man: Hungry Children in America,” Seattle Times (January 4, 2006). Online: http://www.commondreams. org/views06/0104-24.htm. 8. Cited in Bob Herbert, “Children in Peril,” New York Times (April 21, 2009), p. A25. 9. Paul Krugman, “Banks Gone Wild,” New York Times (November 23, 2007). Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/opinion/ 23krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print. 10. Peter Dreier, “Bush’s Class Warfare,” Huffington Post (December 21, 2007). Online: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/bushs- class-warfare_b_77910.html. 11. Associated Press, “Jimmy Carter Slams Bush Administration,” Dallas Morning News (May 19, 2007). Online: http://www.dallasnews. com/sharedcontent/dwsb/news/politics/national/stories/051907 dnnatcarterbush.91ad00.html. 12. Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2007). 13. Susan Buck-Morss, Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (New York: Verso, 2003), p. 29. 190 Notes 14. Stanley Aronowitz, The Last Good Job in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), p. 160. 15. Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 36–37. 16. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 341. 17. Editorial, “So Little Time, So Much Damage,” New York Times (November 4, 2008), p. A26. 18. Robert Pear, “Rush to Enact a Safety Rule Obama Opposes,” New York Times (November 30, 2008), p. 1. 19. Editorial, “So Little Time, So Much Damage.” 20. Jesse Jackson, “Bush’s Last 100 Days the Ones to Watch,” Chicago- Sun Times (November 4, 2008). Online: http://sudhan.wordpress. com/2008/11/05/bushs-last-100-days-the-ones-to-watch/. 21. Both quotes are taken from Michael Hardt, “Books: Best Books: Best of 2008,” Artforum (December 2008), p. 83. 22. George W. Bush, “The Surest Path Back to Prosperity,” Man with No Name (November 2008). Online: http://www.dallasdancemusic.com/ forums/awareness-politics/276597-surest-path-back-prosperity-george- w-bush.html. 23. Ibid. 24. On the Gilded Age, see Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of Amer- ica: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2007); Michael McHugh, The Second Gilded Age: The Great Reaction in the United States, 1973–2001 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006). See also the classic Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861–1901 (reprint) (New York: Harcourt, 2001). 25. Thomas Lemke, “Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique,” Rethinking Marxism 14:3 (Fall 2002), pp. 49–64. 26. Nick Couldry, “Reality TV, or the Secret Theater of Neoliberalism,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 30:1 (January– March 2008), p. 1. 27. Brown, Edgework, p. 40. 28. Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture 15:1 (2003), p. 40. 29. Kenneth Saltman and David Gabard, eds. Education as Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools (New York: Routledge, 2003). 30. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 31. Chip Ward, “America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters,” TomDispatch.com (April 2, 2007). Online: http://www.alternet.org/story/50023. 32. Ibid. Notes 191 33. Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, and Matt Corley, “Katrina–FEMA Knowingly Allowed Katrina Refugees to Suffer from ‘Toxic Trailers,’ ” Progress Report (July 20, 2007). Online: http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/ 2007/07bush_vetoes_kids.html. See also Amanda Spake, “Dying for a Home: Toxic Trailers Are Making Katrina Refugees Ill,” The Nation (February 15, 2007). Online: http://www.alternet.org/module/ printversion/48004. 34. Jean Comaroff, “Beyond Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio)Politics, and the Neolib- eral Order,” Public Culture 19:1 (Winter 2007), p. 213. 35. On the importance of the social state, see Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear (London: Polity Press, 2006). 36. Paul Krugman, “Bush’s Class-War Budget,” New York Times (February 11, 2005). Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/ 11/opinion/11krugman.html?ex=1265864400&en=c5baff37424e2a 5d&ei=5088&. 37. Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, and Matt Corley, “Bush Vetoes Kids,” The Progress Report (July 20, 2007). Online: http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/ 2007/07/bush_vetoes_kids.html. 38. Ibid. 39. Peter Dreier’s “Bush’s Class Warfare” provides a detailed list of addi- tional consequences arising from the class warfare waged by the former Bush administration: For example, Bush has handed the pharmaceutical industry wind- fall profits by restricting Medicare’s ability to negotiate for lower prices for medicine. He targeted huge no-bid federal contracts to crony companies like Halliburton to supply emergency relief, recon- struction services and materials to rebuild Katrina while attempting to slash federal wage laws for reconstruction workers. He repealed Clinton-era “ergonomics” standards, affecting more than 100 mil- lion workers, that would have forced companies to alter their work stations, redesign their facilities or change their tools and equipment if employees suffered serious work-related injuries from repetitive motions. He opposed stiffer health and safety regulations to protect mine workers and cut the budget for federal agencies that enforce mine safety laws. Not surprisingly, under Bush, we’ve seen the largest number of mine accidents and deaths in years. Bush’s Food and Drug Administration lowered product-labeling standards, allowing food makers to list health claims on labels before they have been sci- entifically proven. His FDA chief announced that the agency would no longer require claims to be based on “significant scientific agree- ment,” a change that the National Food Processors Association, the trade association of the $500 billion food processing industry, had lobbied for. Bush resisted efforts to raise the minimum wage (which 192 Notes had been stuck at $5.15 an hour for nine years) until the Democrats took back the Congress in 2006. 40. Marian Wright Edelman, “Where Are the Children in Presi- dent Bush’s Budget?” Huffington Post (April 8, 2008). Online: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/10/7594/. 41. Ibid. 42. I take these issues up in detail in Henry A. Giroux, The Abandoned Gen- eration (New York: Palgrave, 2004); and Henry A. Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux, Take Back Higher Education (New York: Palgrave, 2004). 43. John Dilulio, “The Coming of the Super-Predators,” Weekly Stan- dard 1:11 (November 27, 1995), p. 23. For an analysis of the drop in youth crime in the 1990s, see S. D. Levitt, “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 18:1 (Winter 2004), pp. 163–190. 44. Emily Gould, “Exposed,” New York Times (May 28, 2008), pp. 32, 34–39, 52, 56. 45. I have taken this phrase from Garrett Keizer, “Requiem for the Private Word,” Harper’s Magazine (August 2008), p. 11. 46. Gould, “Exposed,” p. 52. 47. Joel Walkowski, “Let’s Not Get to Know Each Other Better,” New York Times (June 8, 2008), p. ST6. 48. Ibid. 49. Madeleine Bunting, “From Buses to Blogs, a Pathological Individ- ualism Is Poisoning Public Life,” The Guardian/UK (January 28, 2008). Online: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/ 28/6672/. For a critical examination of these issues, see two classic sources: Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: W.W. Nor- ton, 1992); and Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (London: Polity Press, 2003). See also Henry A. Giroux, Public Spaces, Private Lives: Democracy Beyond 9/11 (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 50. Judith Warner, “Kids Gone Wild,” New York Times (November 27, 2005), p. A27. 51. Andy Newman, “In Trial, Defense Casts Slain Girl, 7, as a Terror,” New York Times (January 17, 2008). Online: http://www.nytimes. com/2008/01/17/nyregion/17nixzmary.html. 52. Ibid. 53. Susan Searls Giroux, “Generation Kill: Nietzschean Meditations on the University, War, Youth, and Guns,” Works and Days 51/52:1 and 2 (2008), p. 24. 54. Anya Kamentz, Generation Debt: Why Now Is a Terrible Time to Be Young (New York: Riverside, 2006), p. xiii. Notes 193 55. Bob Herbert, “The Danger Zone,” New York Times (March 15, 2007), p. A25. 56. Lawrence Grossberg, Caught in the Crossfire (Boulder: Paradigm Pub- lishers, 2005), p. 16. 57. Bob Herbert, “Arrested While Grieving,” New York Times (May 26, 2007), p. A25. 58. Lawrence Grossberg, “Why Does Neo-Liberalism Hate Kids? The War on Youth and the Culture of Politics,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 23:2 (2001), p. 133. 59. Howard Witt, “School Discipline Tougher on African Americans,” Chicago Tribune (September 25, 2007). Online: http://www.chi cagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070924discipline,0,22104. story?coll=chi_tab01_layout. 60. I have taken up a detailed critique of No Child Left Behind in Henry A.