Political Controversy

This work provides the first full-scale examination of the eighteenth century periodical Political Controversy and of the essay-sheets reprinted therein, Briton, Auditor, North Briton, and Monitor. These essay-sheets were published in England at the end of the Seven Years' War with France, in support of and in opposition to Lord Bute's proposed terms in the treaty negotiations. Political Controversy reprinted the essay-sheets weekly along with the editor's annotations, material from other publications, and original contributions from readers. The journal provides modern readers with a good example of eighteenth century propaganda techniques, and is a guide to the issues revolving around the war, the struggle for governmental control, the British Empire, and the liberty of the press. This book provides a clear analysis of the methods used in the political propaganda of the journal and the essay-sheets, including the writings of three significant authors, Tobias Smollett, Arthur Murphy, and John Wilkes. The work opens with a discussion of the essay-sheets and their relationship to one another, and follows with two chapters devoted to Political Controversy. The final chapter covers the most significant case for freedom of the press in England up to that time, North Briton, No. 45. This book will be of interest to scholars and students concerned with journalism, history, political science, and literature.

Critical Republicanism proposes an entirely new approach to the management of religious and cultural pluralism, based on the pursuit of the progressive ideal of non-domination in existing, non-ideal societies."--BOOK JACKET.

​This book provides a newer definition of political scandal and applies it in a way to remove “ordinary corruption” from the discussion. It then defines pop culture and examines how scandal and pop culture interact. The discussion addresses the question: when does a scandal actually enter into our pop culture. The mechanisms or vehicles by which this occurs include editorial cartoons, Broadway shows, music, movies, television, and more. The first chapter lays out the two main definitions and gives a bit of historical background to the discussion that follows. Chapters 2 through 8 deal with scandals from Watergate to the Trump Administration and from presidents to members of Congress and governors. Chapter 9 ties all of the previous discussion together and makes an assessment of the contemporary state of scandal and pop culture. This book works well as a supplement in a course on American Government, in American Studies, and is aimed at a wide range of readers from college freshmen to more advanced scholars and political junkies.

There are many types of political scandals: sex, corruption, and election scandals are but a few. Political scandals are public events that have tremendous consequence on citizenry and can undermine democratic institutions-when we pay attention to scandal, we risk ignoring weightier matters. This volume brings together an array of academics to explore the impact of political scandals. What makes this book different from others is the wide spectrum of perspectives brought together to help analyze a single subject.

A lavishly illustrated, witty, and original look at the awesome power of the political cartoon throughout history to enrage, provoke, and amuse. As a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and the longtime editor of The Nation, Victor S. Navasky knows just how transformative—and incendiary—cartoons can be. Here Navasky guides readers through some of the greatest cartoons ever created, including those by George Grosz, David Levine, Herblock, Honoré Daumier, and Ralph Steadman. He recounts how cartoonists and caricaturists have been censored, threatened, incarcerated, and even murdered for their art, and asks what makes this art form, too often dismissed as trivial, so uniquely poised to affect our minds and our hearts. Drawing on his own encounters with would-be censors, interviews with cartoonists, and historical archives from cartoon museums across the globe, Navasky examines the political cartoon as both art and polemic over the centuries. We see afresh images most celebrated for their artistic merit (Picasso's Guernica, Goya's "Duendecitos"), images that provoked outrage (the 2008 Barry Blitt New Yorker cover, which depicted the Obamas as a Muslim and a Black Power militant fist-bumping in the Oval Office), and those that have dictated public discourse (Herblock’s defining portraits of McCarthyism, the Nazi periodical Der Stürmer’s anti-Semitic caricatures). Navasky ties together these and other superlative genre examples to reveal how political cartoons have been not only capturing the zeitgeist throughout history but shaping it as well—and how the most powerful cartoons retain the ability to shock, gall, and inspire long after their creation. Here Victor S. Navasky brilliantly illuminates the true power of one of our most enduringly vital forms of artistic expression.

One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.