When did American government become the enemy of American pop culture? Music insider and progressive activist Danny Goldberg has spent decades tuning in to the rhythms and voices that speak straight to the hearts and desires of America's youth. In that time, one fact has become increasingly clear: our venerable political leaders are tone deaf. In this startling, provocative book, Goldberg shows how today's professional public servants have managed to achieve nothing less than the indefensible, wholesale alienation of an entire generation.

Elvis has left the building — and he's taken just about everybody under thirty with him.

To anyone born after 1960, it's hard to imagine that there was a time in the United States when mass, popular culture actually helped to shape and advance the social agenda. When contemporary music and film were not greeted with arrogant disdain or willful incomprehension. When new forms of self-expression inspired our leaders to take action, not to demand censorship and warning labels. Danny Goldberg takes us into the trenches of the so-called culture wars to find out what caused this radical change in our national psyche.

He shines a spotlight on the conservative pundits and party leaders who are orchestrating dangerous attacks on civil liberties and youth culture. Granted, Goldberg doesn't expect and Ashcroft to Cheney to suddenly confess an appreciation for Nelly's lyrics or Pink's feminist ethos. But what about the people who should be making every effort to bridge this cultural chasm — liberal democrats? With intelligence and wit, Goldberg blasts the hypocrisy of all those who claim to speak for the very citizens — mainly young Americans and black Americans — whose culture they would prefer to sanitize and shrink-wrap. As a baby boomer, Goldberg is particularly disappointed in the failure of his own generation to reach out to younger people.

Goldberg has unique insight into the way business gets done in both Hollywood and Washington, D.C. For over four decades, he has worked closely with a vast number of great performers — everyone from Led Zeppelin to Bruce Springsteen, from Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne to Kurt Cobain and rap impresario Russell Simmons. As an activist, he's gone to head-to-head with countless political figures, including Gary Hart, Michael Dukakis, Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Joseph Lieberman, and Al and Tipper Gore.

From the intersection point of popular and political culture, Danny Goldberg now issues a rousing call to reclaim our democracy, so that we might once again see ourselves — and our children — reflected in our leaders' words and deeds.

"Here is that rare breed of book that can deconstruct gangsta rap as effectively as it analyzes the 1988 presidential election, a book in which Lenny Kravitz and Kurt Cobain have an equal footing with Joe Lieberman and John McCain." Publishers Weekly

"Throughout his winding narrative, which chronicles his sentimental education as an activist (and which music buffs will find much fun to read), Goldberg urges lefties to let down their hair and start trusting the under-30 crowd, whereupon a new age of Aquarius will descend on the land and the likes of Dubya will go unemployed. Members of the DNC will want to study up on this one." Kirkus Reviews

A lively, totally original, no-holds-barred commentary on the cultural state of the union from the 1960s to the present, "Dispatches from the Culture Wars" speaks to those disenfranchised by today's tepid, cautious liberal elite.

Danny Goldberg is chair and CEO of Artemis Records. He co-produced and co-directed the rock documentary No Nukes and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and others. He lives in New York City and is a longtime ACLU officer and board member. This is his first book.

Introduction : rock, rap, reactionaries, and liberal snobs — The sixties : the cartoon vs. the realities — The sixties II : culture vs. politics — The real seventies show — The early eighties : Ronald Reagan and the new Hollywood left — 1985 : the Parents Music Resource Center — The late eighties — Who ruined the Democratic Party? : the late-eighties version — Mend it, don't end it — Clinton's second term — The 2000 election : Ralph Nader, Joe Lieberman, and Eminem — The media marketing accountability act — September 11 — 2002, the beat goes on — War clouds, the midterm election, and the Democrats' downward spiral — To my fellow former hippies.