That the award winning show Mad Men chronicles the rise of contemporary advertising should be our first warning. The fantasy machine that propels the American -- and increasingly global -- consumer culture achieves this leverage simply with make believe. It imagines what we want before we want it. It packages...

The culture is now abuzz with the latest next new thing: the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. My first reaction as one who passed a long-ago weekend at the festival and his college years at Berkeley before that is to change the channel. The fleeting attention must be yet another case...

Sitting here in a coffee house on the Pacific in Arcata, California, spiritual capital of the American counterculture (no signs, no hype, but a lot of head shops, used CD and vinyl stores, tofu take-outs and supply outlets for indoor greenhouses), it is clear we are a long way from...

The counterculture - if anyone remembers the term - has been long since relegated to the dustbin of history. It refers to that period in the last century - or was it millennium? - when a generation of young people threw off traditional American restraints. Opting for liberation and immediate...

There is an old story from Aesop's Fables about a traveler proceeding along a country road, watched over by the Sun and the Wind who debate which of them has the power to get the traveler to shed his coat. After wagering, the Wind goes first. He progressively escalates his...

Many progressives are anxious and even skeptical about the emerging Obama administration. As a card-carrying devotee of the (cardless) progressive movement and a charter member of the (unchartered) counterculture, I sympathize. The late night Grant Park dreams of a new era of change now slowly give way to the day-after...

As the nation prepares to close out the final chapter of the Bush 43 administration, it might be informative to reconsider the pinnacle of the era's popular culture. Sometimes even a box office smash can tell us things we don't want to hear. In The Dark Knight, which is really...