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Event
David Sirota / Back to Our Future:
DAVID SIROTA
Back to Our Future:
How the 1980s Explains the World We Live in Now Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything
Berkeley Arts & Letters at the Hillside Club
$12 general, $6 student, in advance, at Brown Paper Tickets, online or call 800-838-3006; $15 at the door
"Sirota makes a compelling case that 1980s culture and politics have an outsized influence on how we think now. To build his case, he apparently hacked my brain and downloaded my entire age-7-to-age-17 cultural intake. From Rerun Stubbs on 'What's Happening' to the 'Missile Command' videogame, the roots of how we
think now are there. Scary. Wildly entertainingand scary."
Rachel Maddow, host The Rachel Maddow Show
Wall Street scandals. Fights over taxes. Racial resentments. A Lakers-Celtics championship. The Karate Kid topping the box-office charts. Bon Jovi touring the country. These words could describe the current moment -- or the vaunted iconography of the "Reagan Era," three decades past.
In his wide-ranging and wickedly entertaining new book Back to Our Future, New York Times bestselling journalist and author David Sirota takes readers on a rollicking DeLorean ride back in time to reveal how so many of our present-day conflicts are rooted in the larger-than-life pop culture of the 1980sfrom the "Greed is good" ethos of Gordon Gekko (and Bernie Madoff) to the "Make my day" foreign policy of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush) to the "transcendence" of Cliff Huxtable (and Barack Obama).
Today's mindless militarism and hyper-narcissism, Sirota argues, first became the norm when an 80s generation weaned on Rambo one-liners and "Just Do It" exhortations embraced a new religionwith comic books, cartoons, sneaker commercials, video games, and even children's toys serving as the key instruments of cultural indoctrination. Meanwhile, in productions like Back to the Future, Family Ties and The Big Chill, a campaign was launched to reimagine the 1950s as America's lost golden age and vilify the 1960s as the source of all our troubles. That 1980s revisionism, Sirota shows, still rages today, with Barack Obama cast as the 60s hippie being assailed by Alex P. Keaton-esque Republicans who long for a return to Eisenhower-era conservatism.
"The past is never dead," William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past." The 1980s -- even more so. With the native dexterity only a child of the Atari Age could possess, David Sirota twists and turns this multicolored Rubik's Cube of a decade, exposing it as a warning for our own troubled present -- and possible future.
"An irreverent, astute and provocative look at the ways in which the culture of the Me decade shaped three decades of me first politics. People may think we live in the age of Reagan, but really it's the age of Alex P Keaton." -- Christopher Hayes, editor of The Nation
David Sirota is a journalist, nationally syndicated weekly newspaper columnist, radio host, and author of The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington and Hostile Takeover: How big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government. His weekly column is based at The Denver Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Oregonian, and The Seattle Times and now appears in newspapers with a combined daily circulation of more than 1.6 million readers. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine and The Nation and hosts an award-winning daily talk show on Denver's Clear Channel affiliate, KKZN-AM760. He is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and a Huffington Post contributor and appears periodically on CNN, The Colbert Report, PBS, and NPR. He received a degree in journalism and political science from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Sirota was named one of The Nation magazine's 30 Media Heroes of 2010. He lives in Denver with his wife Emily, son Isaac, and his dog Monty.
Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street near Arch, Berkeley
Books will be available, and book signing will follow the program.
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LocationThe Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street
Berkeley, CA 94709
United States
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| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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