Word: matusow
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Unraveling of America. A History of Liberalism in the 1960s By Allen Matusow $42 pages, $22.95, Harper...
...policies nearly a generation old are fiercely contested political issues, and, as a result, one might expect any account of the Great Society to be resolutely partisan. But that is exactly the obstacle which Allen Matusow overcomes so impressively in his history of liberalism...
...Matusow is a liberal, perhaps a disillusioned one. He believes that economic inequality in the face of tremendous prosperity results in a less than great society an assumption that will, no doubt, irritate many conservatives. But he goes far beyond the widespread and simple view that the Great Society faltered and eventually disintegrated because of the increasing economic drain of the Vietnam war. The war's effects, both economic and social, cannot be discounted, but Matusow emerges from the partisan fog to reveal the contradictions and tensions within the Great Society programs...
...ironic, Matusow writes, "that the administration begun by John F. Kennedy should have become the sponsor of liberal reform...for he was transparently a conventional politician of conservative inclination. But Kennedy was also a politician keenly sensitive to shifts in the political climate, and that climate altered perceptibly during his years in the White House. Diminishing obsession with the Cold War permitted intellectuals to look critically, at their own country once again. The era's affluence spawned both social optimism and the revenues to pay for modest new welfare measures. The civil rights movement touched the nation's conscience...
...with ABC executives and has been told he will be reassigned. The fact that Robinson is black creates diplomatic problems for ABC. But it seems not to be an issue for audiences: in a fact-filled book about anchors and their contract negotiations, The Evening Stars, Author Barbara Matusow reports that ABC research showed that Robinson's race made little difference to viewers...