Interview — Corey Robin (Audio Only)
Added 2025-02-10 22:41:50 +0000 UTCCorey Robin is a political science professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY, as well as the author of The Reactionary Mind, which you might remember from the end of my most recent Jon Stewart video.
I called him to ask him about an article he wrote in Dissent Magazine titled "The Obamanauts," to talk about the ideology of the Obama Administration and its similarities to vision of liberalism that is put forth in The West Wing.
It was a really enlightening conversation about the history of neoliberalism in the Democratic Party, deliberative democracy, and what Robin calls the "moral minimalism" of Obama's presidency.
Some of the works we referenced:
The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey (The Atlantic, 2021)
Barack Obama's Speech on Race (2008)
Good-bye, Pamela Paul by Andrea Long Chu (New York Magazine, 2025)
NOTE: The video version of this conversation will be up later today (which includes an adorable cat). Going forward I'm going to upload interviews in both audio and video formats.
Comments
Great interview! I have a lot of thoughts on everything covered but will spare everyone the political rant. That said, what he says about Jon Stewart's fixation on voting is enlightening. It goes a long way towards the Dem's refusal to even acknowledge the most obvious GOP election fuckery, much less investigate, prosecute, and fix it. Re: Obama, my take is similar - what I've always said is "He's always been a pretty speechifier; too bad he doesn't mean a word of it. Best Republican president of the modern era!" I think I'll leave it at that. Well done!
Craig H
2025-02-11 03:39:33 +0000 UTCIt was amazing how Corey was not a West Wing watcher and yet so much of what we talked about kept being incredibly relevant to The West Wing
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2025-02-10 22:58:40 +0000 UTCOh man, I am totally on board for this! Just yesterday I ran across and shared a Ron Iver quote: "It is imperative that we elect Democrats that have never seen the West Wing." Can't wait to listen to this.
Craig H
2025-02-10 22:57:13 +0000 UTC
