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  Rostenkowski on Politics 101

  Blog, Dan Rostenkowski

  “The game is compromise. That’s politics.” -Dan Rostenkowski This month The Atlantic published an article titled “How American Politics Went Insane,” diagnosing the cause of the pervasive political disintegration in Washington, D.C. as “chaos syndrome.” Joining the choir of complaints about the chaos undermining American politics, the author, Jonathan Rauch, offers a new tune: “Our most pressing political problem today is that the country abandoned the establishment, not the other way around.” Rauch contends that in the course of reforming […]

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  Love Wins

  Blog

  “That is what I think family values are all about. Love.” -Studs Terkel This Sunday, June 26th, marks the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling, Obergefell vs. Hodges, which guaranteed the fundamental right to marry to same-sex couples throughout the United States. This decision is the culmination of decades of activism, and is an important moment for human rights, especially for the couples and families directly affected all across the country. Throughout June, gatherings, marches and protests occur across the […]

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  For Fathers Day: Bill Veeck on his Daddy

  Bill Veeck, Blog, Cubs, Tom Weinberg

  “He was the nicest man I’ve ever met. I guess that’s going out of style talking about your parents that way but, he was.” -Bill Veeck  When legendary ball club owner, Bill Veeck Jr., was being posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991, his wife Mary Frances spoke of some of Veeck’s professional commandments. Among them, “in your hiring be color-blind, gender-blind, age-and-experience blind.” For Veeck, everyone held the potential to teach him something. Famous for his wild and […]

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  Vito Acconci on Changing the Landscape

  Arts & Culture, Blog, THE 90's

  “Architecture is not about space but about time.” -Vito Acconci Vito Acconci’s artistic legacy is boundless, his influence pervading all mediums of art, beyond just those he mastered. This year Acconci turned 76, and while his fertile mind has continued to produce sculptures and structures all over the world, much of his early work in video and performance has gone long unseen. This month the MoMA PS1 in Queens will open the first U.S. retrospective of Acconci’s work in three […]

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  Buckminster Fuller on money in politics

  Blog

  “The representation is not representing you, they’re representing the money that got them in.” Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), most famous for popularizing the geodesic dome, devoted his life to seeking solutions to social ills, and using technology to make the world work for 100 percent of humanity. As a teacher and philosopher, he urged people to reappraise the systems and standards of society. While he believed that we had the power to reach global solutions, he argued they would not be reached through politics. In this newly […]

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  Every day, Media Burn is saving videos that are much more endangered than you may realize.

  Blog

  The Media Burn collection was made possible by a technological breakthrough in the 1960s that put the means of creating video and television directly into the hands of everyday people. University of Chicago Professor Tom Gunning has referred to this early era as a “utopian moment” due to the unique convergence of an affordable, low-tech technology for mass communication with 1960s activist culture. Gunning has called the Media Burn collection a “national treasure, vital to our understanding of the evolution […]

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  “They aimed to kill the young ones because they were the rebels.” —Boris Ross

  Blog, Chicago Politics

  On May 30, 1937, Memorial Day, Chicago police opened fire on unarmed workers demonstrating against Republic Steel in one of the bloodiest events in our nation’s labor union history. Earlier in the year the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) had worked out a union deal with U.S. Steel, which workers had hoped would push the smaller steel companies to recognize their own unions. Instead, many of the smaller steel companies fought bitterly against union organization. That Memorial Day, the workers […]

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  Mason Reese: A truly singular boy

  Blog

  Child star Mason Reese was a TV phenomenon of the seventies, whose precocious presence in dozens of commercials led to TV talk show appearances, widespread fame, and even a starring role in a sitcom pilot. He had an uncommon and wizened quality that sometimes made it hard to believe he was actually a little boy. He frequented talk shows, especially “The Mike Douglas Show,” which he even co-hosted at times. It is almost unreal to see a seven-year-old boy, whip-quick, […]