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celebrity



  • Texas State Prof. Launches Harry Styles History Course

    Louis Dean Valencia realized during the pandemic that icebreaking conversations with students about pop music opened up many avenues for discussing historical subjects including the politics of celebrity. 



  • Black Celebrities Have a Long History of Endorsing Republican Presidents

    by Leah Wright-Rigeur

    What may seem like a last-ditch effort to garner votes by the Trump campaign is in fact a well-worn political strategy designed to shield candidates from accusations of racism, while diverting attention away from individual candidates and their political administrations.



  • Babe Ruth's New York @ 100

    by Jonathan Goldman

    When Babe Ruth started hitting home runs, the US started to change.



  • George Packer: Celebrating Inequality

    George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author, most recently, of “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.”THE Roaring ’20s was the decade when modern celebrity was invented in America. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby” is full of magazine spreads of tennis players and socialites, popular song lyrics, movie stars, paparazzi, gangsters and sports scandals — machine-made by technology, advertising and public relations. Gatsby, a mysterious bootlegger who makes a meteoric ascent from Midwestern obscurity to the palatial splendor of West Egg, exemplifies one part of the celebrity code: it’s inherently illicit. Fitzgerald intuited that, with the old restraining deities of the 19th century dead and his generation’s faith in man shaken by World War I, celebrities were the new household gods.