In the U.S., the '50s and '60s marked the documentary's golden age, especially at CBS, where pioneering television journalist Edward R. Murrow, immortalised in George Clooney's 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' produced such landmark investigations as the CBS Reports programme 'Hunger in America.'
It is standard practice for corrupt leaders who are seeking a certain political outcome to hype or manipulate a terror threat or a threat of violent domestic subversion. While sometimes the threat is manufactured, frequently the hyped threat is based on a real danger.
French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it is a cynical, individualistic school of thought that posits the self and personal choice as the measure of life's entire meaning.
No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.
Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - is innately disruptive of 'business as usual.' That is why it is effective.
When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.
There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had developed a series of litmus tests.
Citizens who live or work near protest sites or marches have every right to be free of violence from protesters, and they should never be subjected to destruction of property.
For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen. I am just much more likely to try to link essays to webcasts or videos. The best way for these two media to move forward, to inform and make change, is in tandem; together they are more than the sum of their parts.
'The End of America' details the 10 steps that would-be dictators always take in seeking to close an open society; it argued that the Bush administration had been advancing each one.
In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of 'overpermiticisation' - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.
Madonna is that forbidden thing, the Nietzschean creative woman. Her preoccupation with a high level of work doesn't allow her to follow the usual script that powerful women are expected to follow - 'don't hate me for my success, don't hate me for my power.'
To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality.
The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.
Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our 'beauty' so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.
If you look at weak democracies, the oligarchies that have taken undue control of them always seek to tamper with the vote. It is important for oligarchs to have elections to give their guy a veneer of legitimacy - and important for the vote always to turn out 'their way.'
It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.
