Obscenity is out, criminalization is in: what today’s moral panics about LGBTQ+ people have in common with post-identity resilience discourse

When I was growing up, my hometown was the epicenter of three moral panics about obscene sex that snowballed to the national stage: two grew so big they went to trial and became national media spectacles and one led to…

The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X and the fight for true independence—Final Draft Introduction

As many of you know I wrote a book on 97X WOXY–it’s all going through copy editing right now and should hopefully be out in the world as a printed Thing in spring 2023. In the meantime, however, I thought…

Vibes, Vectors, and the Biopolitics of Algorithmic Legitimation

it’s the first draft of the introduction to the central chapter of my vibes book For decades, various counter- and sub-cultures used the term “vibe(s)” to describe what made them different from the mainstream. From hippies and their “good vibrations”…

SCOTUS to US: There is no such thing as civil society

The week of July 20, 2022, the US Supreme Court released a series of decisions about religious liberty, gun rights, and abortion rights that significantly reversed established precedent. The court ruled that (1) it’s an infringement on the free exercise…