Comedian Bonnie McFarlane is the director of one of David’s favorite documentaries “Women Aren’t Funny. Her new book “You’re Better Than Me” comes out in February. She also hosts the wildly popular podcast “My Wife Hates Me” with her wildly unpopular husband Comic Rich Vos. On today’s show Bonnie and David share their love for Rich.
Richard Beck is author of “WE BELIEVE THE CHILDREN: Moral Panic In The 1980s” published by Public Affairs. WE BELIEVE THE CHILDREN IS A brilliant, disturbing portrait of the dawn of the culture wars, when America started to tear itself apart with doubts, wild allegations, and an unfounded fear for the safety of children.
During the 1980s in California, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, day care workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, social workers and prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and they consisted of a brutality and sadism that defied all imagining. The dangers of babysitting services and day care centers became a national news media fixation. Of the many hundreds of people who were investigated in connection with day care and ritual abuse cases around the country, some 190 were formally charged with crimes, leading to more than 80 convictions.
“Intellectually nimble… [Beck’s] argument should prove far more enduring than all the lies and self-deceptions, so credulously believed in the 1980s, that this book does a devil of a job correcting.” —NEW YORK TIMES
“Understanding a moral panic requires perspective—distance from the emotional heat of anger and anxiety. Sometimes it is precisely those who didn’t live through it who are best suited to providing that perspective. In WE BELIEVE THE CHILDREN: A MORAL PANIC IN THE 1980S, Richard Beck accomplishes this difficult feat, and he does so calmly, detail by meticulous detail…. A thorough account… His important book gives readers who don’t know the story—or who think it is over, so 20th century—an understanding of its lingering, pernicious effects on our lives…. Mr. Beck’s book is valuable because it is timely and comprehensive. He not only tells the story of a moral panic with a fresh eye but provides context, identifying the forces that preceded it as well as those that fed it and have kept it going today.” —WALL STREET JOURNAL
“[Thirty] years ago America was described as experiencing an ‘epidemic’ of sexual abuse in day care. Richard Beck, an editor at N+1, does a herculean job of investigating why this happened in his absorbing book WE BELIEVE THE CHILDREN.” —WASHINGTON POST
“In this sharp, sensitive debut [Beck] deftly examines all the forces that came together in this strange moment in our history.” —BOSTON GLOBE
It would take years for people to realize what the defendants had said all along—that these prosecutions were the product of a decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria on par with the Salem witch trials. Social workers and detectives employed coercive interviewing techniques that led children to tell them what they wanted to hear. Local and national journalists fanned the flames by promoting the stories’ salacious aspects, while aggressive prosecutors sought to make their careers by unearthing an unspeakable evil where parents feared it most.
Using extensive archival research and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteria’s major figures, n+1 editor Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents—most working with the best of intentions—set the stage for a cultural disaster. The climate of fear that surrounded these cases influenced a whole series of arguments about women, children, and sex. It also drove a right-wing cultural resurgence that, in many respects, continues to this day.
Justin Gifford is the author of “Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim.” On today’s show we learn about Robert Beck AKA Iceberg Slim whose “Pimp” sold more copies than any other book written by an African American author. Written in 1967, “Pimp” has played a major role in the shaping of gangsta rap as well as actual pimping.
Confessions of An Economic Hit Man Author JOHN PERKINS talks Obama, Hillary and Bernie Sanders. Director and Star of That Sugar Film, DAMON GAMEAU, talks about his new documentary on the poison that is SUGAR. For more information on all our guests please go to www.davidfeldmanshow.com and become a member. JOHN PERKINS is an American author. His best known book is Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), in which Perkins claims to have played a role in an alleged process of economic colonization of Third World countries on behalf of what he portrays as a cabal of corporations, banks, and the United States government. His other books include Hoodwinked and The Secret History of The American Empire. DAMON GAMEAU is an Australian television and film actor who is the director of, and lead role in That Sugar Film. Damon also appeared in the Australian series Love My Way, the 2002 Australian film The Tracker, and in a small role in the US series How I Met Your Mother.
Plus Ethel & Julius Rosenberg’s youngest son joins us with new evidence that suggests his mother was wrongly convicted and executed. Robert Meeropol (born Robert Rosenberg in 1947) is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Meeropol was born in New York City. His father Julius was an electrical engineer and a member of the Communist Party. His mother Ethel (née Greenglass), a union organizer, was also active in the Communist Party. In 1953, when Robert was six years old, his parents were convicted and executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, and specifically for passing secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Fred Stoller is an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, writer, and voice artist. He is best known for portraying Gerard on Everybody Loves Raymond. He is also the voice of Stanley in the Open Season franchise, and Rusty the monkey wrench in the Disney Jr’s Handy Manny. His new show on iTunes is The Mild Adventures of Fred Stoller. Become a member of the David Feldman Show.
Director of CARTEL LAND Filmmaker Matthew Heineman. With unprecedented access, CARTEL LAND is a riveting, on-the-ground look at the journeys of two modern-day vigilante groups and their shared enemy – the murderous Mexican drug cartels.