Tidbits - February 10, 2013

Published by Portside
Readers respond on - The White South's Last Defeat; Henry Wallace; The Americanization of the United States; Climate RALLY - Bay Area - Sunday Feb 17

The Persistence of Racial Resentment

Thomas B. Edsall New York Times
Is the country more or less racist? How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term? In fact, the shifts described by Tesler and Pasek are an integral aspect of the intensifying conservatism within the right wing of the Republican Party.

Antibiotics And Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria In Meat: Not Getting Better

Maryn McKenna Wired Science
It’s worth noting that this continued antibiotic use, and continued and rising appearance of resistant bacteria on meat, is happening as the FDA has abandoned attempting to regulate livestock producers’ use of antibiotics, and has switched to a voluntary approach. Given the trend, I think it’s worth asking how well that voluntary approach is going to work.

Super Bowl Is As American As .... ?

By number of viewers, the Super Bowl is a cross section of America. From the faces in the ads, not always. The first video below challenges us to rethink who we are as a nation. It ran as a Super Bowl ad -- in a few select markets. The second video never ran as a Super Bowl ad, but it does fix some things that a Super Bowl ad that ran nationwide (third video) got wrong. See if you can spot the difference. And then help to spread this discussion by emailing, tweeting and sharing these videos, using the links below. -- video moderator  

"Aspiring Americans" is an ad that played during the 2013 Super Bowl on broadcast and cable television in a few select markets. 

We saw Dodge's "God Made A Farmer" ad and we thought it didn't reflect the whole picture. So we gave it a bit of a fix.

'Farmer' Super Bowl ad sponsored by Dodge.

On Our Own or All Together?

Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon Jacobin
The burgeoning popular literature about how to navigate the “new old age”