Supernovas: The Dialectic of Celebrity in Society

Celebrity is manufactured in a society that has access to mass communications. But it still carries a mystique. Part of the appeal: romantic tales of discovery, fall, recovery and redemption.     

The Age Gap in the 2008 Presidential Election

The 2008 presidential election suggests a significant realignment among voters entering the electorate, with younger voters deviating considerably from older voters in their partisan preferences. Barack Obama won the vote of those under 30 years old by a 66% to 32% margin and first time voters favored him by an overwhelming margin of 69–30%. The fact that the age gap between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination contest was also among the largest age gaps in American electoral history suggests that part of the age gap was undoubtedly due to the appeal of Obama with younger Americans. Part of the age gap, however, was also due to the unpopularity of the George W. Bush administration. The strong youth vote for Obama in 2008 was thus both pro-Obama and anti-Bush in nature. The huge age gap in 2008 suggests a split of the electorate along generational lines and the long-term consequences of the age gap appear to overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party. George W. Bush’s unpopular and divisive presidency helped to make the youngest generation of American voters increasingly Democratic in their vote preference. This suggests that if younger Americans follow other generations in keeping the same partisan voting patterns throughout their life, the Democrats are potentially poised to make considerable gains in future elections.     

Reports from “Backstage” in Entertainment News

While “serious” news outlets struggle financially in the United States, evidence suggests that entertainment news coverage is thriving. By expanding upon Erving Goffman’s performance perspective and performance theory, this article seeks to illuminate representations of celebrities in the news media, with attention to the recent news stories regarding Tiger Woods and Sandra Bullock. The analysis also explores the off-screen performance of celebrities—developed and presented in news stories, interviews and photographs—and the repercussions when reports of a celebrity’s unmanaged backstage performance exposes the front stage performance as a pretense.     

The Social Construction of the Market

Although Berger and Luckmann do not specifically discuss the market, they would undoubtedly agree that the market is socially constructed. Indeed, the market is a product of social action that has an objective and subjective reality. Inspired by Berger and Luckmann’s work, this paper will describe the social construction of the market. Specifically, it will focus on the Austrian understanding of the market. It is my contention that the Austrians have articulated a “sociology of the market” that is consistent with Berger and Luckmann’s approach.     

In Defense of Dwelling in Great Minds

It seems like a small and perhaps shrinking minority of economists know reverence of individual figures. Most economists seem to be without heroes, and sometimes disparage reverence as cultish idolatry. Here I collect from Michael Polanyi’s The Study of Man (1959) a few passages that eloquently suggest that “we need reverence to perceive greatness, even as we need a telescope to observe spiral nebulae.” The selection is made in the defense of seeking out and communing with great minds.     

Why the Fair Use Doctrine Should be Eliminated

The concept of fair use was introduced in the Copyright Act of 1976 as a means of allowing limited free access to copyrighted material. However, the application of fair use principles in the adjudication of infringement cases has demonstrated a fundamental problem in our approach to intellectual property rights. In much the same way as Hardin recognized a tragedy of the commons, continued efforts to make decisions based on the fair use doctrine run the risk of creating an information anti-commons.