Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: California Comeback
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://communicationleadership.usc.edu/fellows/senior/zacchino/ * https://www.linkedin.com/in/narda-zacchino-62267b4
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:University of California, Los Angeles, B.A., 1970.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, editor, writer. Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, reporter, became government and politics editor, Sacramento bureau chief, editor of Orange County edition, deputy managing editor, vice president, 1970-2001; San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, CA, deputy editor, 2001-07; Time Capsule Press, San Leandro, CA, editor/publisher, 2008–; Daniel Pearl Foundation, Los Angeles, executive director, 2012-13; USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, Los Angeles, senior fellow, 2010–.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Narda Zacchino is a writer and editor who worked at the Los Angeles Times for over thirty years. She later joined the San Francisco Chronicle and has recently served as a fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center.
Boots on the Ground
In 2008, Zacchino assisted Mary Tillman in writing the story of Tillman’s son, a National Football League player who joined the service and was subsequently killed in battle in Afghanistan. Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman reveals the confusions and cover-ups that surrounded Tillman’s death. Mary Tillman was originally told that her son was shot once in the head while stepping out of a vehicle. Soon after, a second report had him killed while running up a hill in pursuit of the enemy, for which he was awarded the Silver Star for bravery. A third report a month later revealed that he had actually been shot in the head three times by friendly fire.
Reviews of Boots on the Ground were mixed. A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that “Tillman recounts her story bravely, but her obsession with fixing blame and her recourse to conspiracy theories compromises her credibility. The result is a troubling, uneven account that raises serious questions, but offers little in the way of insights or answers.” David Pitt in Booklist wrote: “The book, which superimposes Mary’s search for the truth over memories of her son’s life, is both emotional and frustrating.”
California Comeback
In 2016, Zacchino was the sole author of California Comeback: How a “Failed State” Became a Model for the Nation. Zacchino chronicles the recent political history of California, from its experiments with a progressive agenda under Governor Jerry Brown in the 1970s to how it swung to the right when Ronald Reagan became governor, the near financial ruin it experienced under Arnold Schwarzenegger, and how it turned around and became stable under the return of Brown.
Reviews of California Comeback were positive. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote: “Under governors Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, California had drifted ‘stutteringly rightward,’ endorsing deregulation and slashing environmental protections and social services.” The reviewer observed: “Although income inequality, overcrowded prisons, drought, and traffic continue to challenge California, Zacchino persuasively portrays the state as vibrant, farsighted, and civic minded.” A Library Journal reviewer commented: “Although more pages are dedicated to the Enron debacle than to either education or California’s overcrowded prisons, Zacchino makes a compelling argument for Brown’s success in turning California’s economy around.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote: “Zacchino does a balanced job of portraying a talented politician who achieved the seemingly impossible.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 1, 2008, David Pitt, review of Boots on the Ground at Dusk: The Life and Death of Pat Tillman, p. 28.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2016, review of California Comeback: How a “Failed State” Became a Model for the Nation.
Library Journal, June 1, 2016, Barrie Olmstead, review of California Comeback, p. 109.
Publishers Weekly, March 10, 2008, review of Boots on the Ground at Dusk, p. 74; May 30, 2016, review of California Comeback, p. 49.
Reason, January, 2017, Erica Grieder, “California Should Be More like Texas: Golden State Reforms Are Overhyped,” p. 58.
ONLINE
University of Southern California Web site, http://www.usc.edu/ (March 14, 2017), author profile.
Narda Zacchino
Independent Writer and Editor
Greater Los Angeles AreaWriting and Editing
Current
Center for Communication Leadership and Policy, Time Capsule Press
Previous
Daniel Pearl Foundation, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times
Education
University of California, Los Angeles
429
connectionsSend Narda InMailMore options
https://www.linkedin.com/in/narda-zacchino-62267b4
Background
Experience
Senior Fellow
Center for Communication Leadership and Policy
January 2010 – Present (7 years 2 months)USC Annenberg, Los Angeles
Editor/Publisher
Time Capsule Press
2008 – Present (9 years)
Executive Director
Daniel Pearl Foundation
March 2012 – August 2013 (1 year 6 months)Greater Los Angeles Area
Deputy Editor
San Francisco Chronicle
2001 – 2007 (6 years)
Associate Editor
Los Angeles Times
1970 – 2001 (31 years)
Skills
Top Skills
33News Writing
24Journalism
22Feature Articles
21Storytelling
15Copy Editing
15Editing
13Publications
12Breaking News
10Editorial
9Newspaper
Narda also knows about...
9Online Journalism
8Publishing
7Investigative Reporting
6Proofreading
4Magazines
2Fact-checking
1Book Editing
1CMOS proficient
1Ap Style
Education
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
BA, English
1968 – 1970
Activities and Societies: Staff writer ('68) and associate editor ('69) UCLA Daily Bruin
Narda Zacchino
Narda ZacchinoNarda Zacchino is an author and award-winning journalist who served as a top editor at the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. During her 31 years at the Los Angeles Times, she was a reporter, government and politics editor, Sacramento bureau chief, Editor of the Orange County edition, Deputy Managing Editor and Vice President. She was deputy editor of the San Francisco Chronicle from 2001 until 2007, when she left to co-write a book on NFL star/Army Ranger Pat Tillman with his mother, Mary, entitled Boots on the Ground by Dusk.
Zacchino was an editor at the Center for Investigative Reporting before co-founding Time Capsule Press, whose inaugural book, The LA Lakers: 50 Amazing Years in the City of Angels, was published in October 2009. She is an editorial and business consultant at the daily news website Truthdig and is working on a new book about California.
As a senior fellow, Zacchino works on programs exploring the role of media in democracy with a focus on state government financial crises.
Contact Zacchino at narda.zacchino@usc.edu.
California should be more like Texas: Golden
State reforms are overhyped
Erica Grieder
Reason.
48.8 (Jan. 2017): p58.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Reason Foundation
http://reason.com/about
Full Text:
ALL TEXANS KNOW that Texas is the greatest state in the country. Many national observers would disagree, of
course; they often do so for no apparent reason and with what I would describe as an objectively disproportionate
degree of hostility. Narda Zacchino, a writer from California, is one such example. Her new book, California
Comeback, sets out to explain how the state, which suffered more than most during the Great Recession, has turned
things around.
Her goal, actually, is even more ambitious than that. "California," she writes, "has become the economic, social, and
political model of the twentyfirst century, which stands in contrast to the alternative examples of Texas, Kansas,
Florida, and others hobbled by rightwing ideology."
As recently as a few years ago, California was the functional equivalent of a clown stepping on a rake and then bursting
into flames, but matters appear to have improved somewhat since then. There seems to be an intriguing story to be told
about the state's recent history, and the sheer swagger of Zacchino's opening salvo raised my hopes that it would be one
with a happy ending.
It's not easy to wrap your head around a state as large, complex, and dynamic as California. It has 38 million people. If
it were a standalone country, its economy would rank as the seventh largest in the world. Its politics are
incomprehensible. California is a blue state, but it had a Republican governor as recently as 2010 and, furthermore, that
governor was The Terminator.
Zacchino's resume includes 31 years at the Los Angeles Times followed by six as deputy editor of the San Francisco
Chronicle. She has amassed nearly four decades' worth of expertise on a substantively interesting circus, and she uses it
to relitigate the relative merits of Texas vs. California. Zacchino claims that this is a "grudge match, manufactured in
large part by the media and politicians."
To be fair, there are a lot of Texans who talk about California as a rival. Former Gov. Rick Perry has done so many
times, and he capers through her book with the rambunctious vim that recently dazzled viewers of Dancing with the
Stars. I understand what Zacchino is getting at when she says that people like me, including me specifically (I wrote a
book on Texas in 2013), were "piling onto the meme" that Texas and California represent a study in contrasts between
what one proTexas partisan summarized as "two opposing versions of the American dream, one based on liberty, the
other, government."
The person she's quoting there, though, is Chuck DeVore, a former state assemblyman from Orange County. Texans
don't actually define our state in opposition to Californianot even Perry does, come to that.
Californians shouldn't either. There are good things happening in the Golden State, but having read Zacchino's book,
my impression is that it's still struggling with the collective cognitive dissonance that seems to be at the root of its most
painful public travails.
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The passage of Proposition 187, in 1994, is a good example. The measurewhich sought to establish a statewide
citizenship screening system for unauthorized immigrants and bar them from using nonemergency health care services
was struck down by the courts, and Republicans have subsequently paid a heavy electoral price for having championed
its passage. Even today, though, there's a kind of bewildered anguish in the accounts that Californians give of the saga,
and Zacchino's is no exception. California, she explains, is not the kind of state one would expect to embrace a
draconian approach to illegal immigration, much less a punitive attitude to the migrants themselves. California is
supposed to be better than that. It's the red states, like Texas, that one would expect to succumb to the ills of
intolerance.
"Still, the measure passed," concedes Zacchino. She hastens to add that "Texans might have voted for a Proposition
187type measure given the opportunity, but there is no initiative process there." That's true. But it's also true that in
2001, via the oldfashioned techniques we still use down here, Texas adopted a statelevel DREAM Act that extended
instate tuition at our public universities to noncitizen students who came to the U.S. illegally as children.
It's not hard to understand why Texas' elected officials would take such a forwardthinking approach to the subject, if
you step away from the stereotypes for a second and think about the facts. It doesn't make much sense to soapbox about
how unauthorized immigrants are taking advantage of your lavish welfare state when no such thing exists.
ULTIMATELY, I'M DUBIOUS that the "California model" Zacchino is touting is entirely coherent. There is, of course,
a "bluestate" analogue to the redstate model that Texas has come to represent, and it has served certain states well.
Massachusetts, for instance, may not be a jobcreating machine, but it doesn't need to be. It's a relatively small state,
and its comparatively expansive public sector is funded by one of the most highly educated workforces in the country.
California has so many eccentricities that it doesn't seem like a particularly useful paradigm, especially since one of
them is the kind of magical thinking that explains its relatively recent flirtation with fiscal disaster. As far as I can tell,
California's "comeback" is being singlehandedly engineered by its governor, Jerry Brown, who has been busy
MacGyvering the largest economy in the nation back from the brink since returning to Sacramento in 2010. He's also
been routinely harassed by environmental activists while doing so. Zacchino presents that side of the story as if it helps
make the case for the California way, but her account of the state's recent fight over hydraulic fracturing points to an
underlying problem with the concept.
In 2013, Brown signed legislation establishing regulations on fracking, rather than fighting to place a moratorium on
the technique. This was, according to Zacchino, "disconcerting and confusing to environmentalists who had
consistently been in his corner," and "his past reputation was not enough to protect him from the fury of greens on this
issue." In October of that year, he was confronted by Paul Rogers, a reporter from the San Jose Mercury News, who
asked Brown to explain how he could reconcile his support of fracking with his stated belief that climate change
represents an existential threat to the world.
For the record: This is not a very good gotcha question. It can be answered by referring the concerned citizen to
Google, which he can use to look up the 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study "The Future of Natural
Gas." Brown, more politely, explained the key takeaway: "In terms of the larger fracking questionnatural gasbecause
of that, and the lowered price, the carbon footprint of America has been reduced because of the substitution of natural
gas for coal."
This was, according to Zacchino, "a rare incoherent sentence" from Brown and, moreover, "perhaps a bit disingenuous"
on his part. She also warns that the governor's stance on the issue "may not be enough for the public." A 2014 poll
found that 68 percent of California voters were in favor of a bill reviving the call for a moratorium, although it
ultimately failed after the the oil industry, which she says "has more clout than the voters," spent $1.5 million lobbying
against it.
It's puzzling that California's environmentalists weren't more receptive to Brown's point that natural gas is displacing
coal. He's correct about the energy portfolio, and his stated commitment to addressing climate change is backed by a
decadeslong record as one of America's most influential tree huggers.
In Zacchino's account, Brown made his decision after analysts at the California Department of Finance concluded that a
moratorium would have adverse effects on jobs and revenue. Those considerations are surely germane if you're the
governor of a state in dire need of both. Yet Zacchino seems to believe that stopping all fracking is the normatively
correct approach, and many Californians apparently agree.
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The whole saga suggests that a key component of the California model is refusing to accept that life is not actually a
dream. But given that a policy of ferocious idealism has been known to result in multibilliondollar budget shortfalls,
the moral picture is a little murkier than that. Brown has walked his state back from the edge largely by resisting the
utopianism that got it there in the first place. His constituents should consider that.
The book's Manichean outlook makes no sense. Zacchino laments that "to the extent that environmental problems are
admitted at all in Texas, they are seen as quantitative technical challenges to be adapted to rather than qualitative moral
dilemmas that must be faced." No state is perfect, but Texas was the first in the nation to pass legislation mandating
disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking in 2011. California followed suit three years later.
It's always nice to see parts of the Lone Star model implemented successfully abroad.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
ERICA GRIEDER is a senior editor at Texas Monthly.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Grieder, Erica. "California should be more like Texas: Golden State reforms are overhyped." Reason, Jan. 2017, p. 58+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474769730&it=r&asid=b7b15eb6d39fa813c64f85a9b09b9474.
Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
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QUOTED TEXT: Under governors Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, California had drifted "stutteringly
rightward," endorsing deregulation and slashing environmental protections and social services.
Although income inequality, overcrowded prisons, drought,
and traffic continue to challenge California, Zacchino persuasively portrays the state as vibrant, farsighted, and civic
minded.
Zacchino, Narda: CALIFORNIA COMEBACK
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Zacchino, Narda CALIFORNIA COMEBACK Dunne/St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $25.99 8, 16 ISBN: 9780312
649357
An informative history of troubles and triumphs in the Golden State.Journalist and editor Zacchino (coauthor: Boots
on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman, 2008), a Californian since she was 4 years old, has been reporting
on the state since the late 1960s (including 31 years at the Los Angeles Times), when Jerry Brown, now governor, took
his first elective office as a member of the Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees. Since then, she has
followed his "meteoric rise," which included becoming secretary of state in 1970 and, four years later, California's 34th
governor, the youngest in more than 100 years. By the time he again took office as the 39th governor, in 2011, the most
populous and ethnically diverse state in the country had evolved from being "the seductress of the Wild West" to a state
facing severe economic, social, and political problems. "The financial meltdown had walloped" California, where the
bursting housing bubble resulted in unprecedented foreclosures, and the recession brought high unemployment; state
government, "collapsing under a crippling deficit, began issuing IOUs to pay its bills" and cut spending for education
and health care. Under governors Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, California had drifted "stutteringly
rightward," endorsing deregulation and slashing environmental protections and social services. Some Californians
looked to Texas as a model of the benefits of limited government, since that state enjoyed a boom during the recession,
due to its oil industry. Zacchino, however, contrasts the two states to highlight California's progress, notably under
Brown's second governorship, defined by liberal pragmatism and responsible policies. As Texas' growth flagged with
the drop in oil prices, California outperformed the rest of the country, while "raising taxes to pay for schools, investing
in infrastructure," and actively addressing climate change. Although income inequality, overcrowded prisons, drought,
and traffic continue to challenge California, Zacchino persuasively portrays the state as vibrant, farsighted, and civic
minded.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Zacchino, Narda: CALIFORNIA COMEBACK." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454176912&it=r&asid=2f4784b31a7b2c8402ec2fe755edc744.
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QUOTED TEXT: Although more pages are dedicated to the Enron debacle than to either education or California's
overcrowded prisons, Zacchino makes a compelling argument for Brown's success in turning California's economy
around.
Zacchino, Narda. California Comeback: How a
"Failed State" Became a Model for the Nation
Barrie Olmstead
Library Journal.
141.10 (June 1, 2016): p109.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Zacchino, Narda. California Comeback: How a "Failed State" Became a Model for the Nation. Thomas Dunne: St.
Martin's. Aug. 2016.336p. notes, index. ISBN 9780312649357. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250100894. HIST
Zacchino, an awardwinning journalist who covered politics for the Los Angeles Times for 31 years and served as the
paper's Sacramento bureau chief, illustrates in her latest book that California has made a comeback under Gov. Jerry
Brown, currently in his fourth term. California is an incredibly diverse state geographically, ethnically, and
economically. From the Gold Rush through the heyday of the Hollywood studios to the triumph of Silicon Valley,
California has always been a frontier for America's dreamers and schemers. However, the downside of overnight
success is often an egregious lack of foresight and sustainability. Zacchino argues that thengovernor Ronald Reagan's
hard swing to the right in the 1960s and 1970s, partly in response to student protests and gains made by women and
minorities, ultimately resulted in disastrous deregulation and vast income inequality. The author highlights
improvements in education, immigration, environmental regulations, and a stabilization of California's budget to
demonstrate the advances made by Brown, whose abstemious approach, though controversial, has brought California
back from the brink. Although more pages are dedicated to the Enron debacle than to either education or California's
overcrowded prisons, Zacchino makes a compelling argument for Brown's success in turning California's economy
around. VERDICT Suitable for all readers but of primary interest to those familiar with California politics.Barrie
Olmstead, Sacramento P.L.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Olmstead, Barrie. "Zacchino, Narda. California Comeback: How a 'Failed State' Became a Model for the Nation."
Library Journal, 1 June 2016, p. 109. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453919957&it=r&asid=d0b67fd9d565b54af994048e41fe80b5.
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QUOTED TEXT: Zacchino does a
balanced job of portraying a talented politician who achieved the seemingly impossible.
California Comeback: How a "Failed State"
Became a Model for the Nation
Publishers Weekly.
263.22 (May 30, 2016): p49.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
California Comeback: How a "Failed State" Became a Model for the Nation
Narda Zacchino, with Christopher Scheer. St. Martin's/Dunne, $25.99 (336p) ISBN 9780312649357
Los Angeles Times veteran Zacchino does a workmanlike job of presenting the recent history of the Golden State, in
service of her contention that its current leftleaning political orientation is a model to be emulated. Readers unfamiliar
with the consequences of Enron's fraudulent manipulation of the energy market or of Proposition 13, the 1978 law that
capped property taxes and wrecked the state's budget, will find both clearly explained here. Current governor Jerry
Brown, himself the son of a California governor, is the hero of the book. Zacchino traces his complicated political
trajectoryelected in 1974, out by 1983, and reelected in 2010culminating with his successful push for passage in
2012 of Proposition 30, by which Californians approved a major tax increase to fund basic services. Zacchino does a
balanced job of portraying a talented politician who achieved the seemingly impossible. The force of her analysis,
however, is vitiated by hyperbolic claims that California is "the key test case" for the entire planet as to whether a
"multicultural, democratic, and postindustrial society" can endure in today's globalized world. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"California Comeback: How a 'Failed State' Became a Model for the Nation." Publishers Weekly, 30 May 2016, p. 49+.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454270621&it=r&asid=cd221cac204732fea2d3461c00efa5cc.
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QUOTED TEXT: Tillman recounts her story bravely, but her obsession with fixing blame and her recourse to conspiracy theories compromises her credibility. The result is a troubling, uneven
account that raises serious questions, but offers little in the way of insights or answers.
Boots on the Ground at Dusk: The Life and
Death of Pat Tillman
Publishers Weekly.
255.10 (Mar. 10, 2008): p74.
COPYRIGHT 2008 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Boots on the Ground at Dusk: The Life and Death of Pat Tillman MARY TILLMAN AND NARDA ZACCHINO.
Rodale/Modern Times, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 9781594868801
Tillman, the mother of the late professional football player and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman, and former journalist
Zacchino collaborate for this disturbing story of a mother's desperate search for the truth of her son's death. Pat Tillman
constantly defied expectations; following 9/11, he shocked his family and football fans everywhere when he quit the
NFL and joined the army rangers. On April 21, 2004, while on a combat mission in Afghanistan, Pat was killed in a
firefight. Although commanders knew almost immediately that "friendly fire" was the likely cause of his death, the
family wasn't told for weeks. Her suspicions aroused, his mother demanded answers, and the more she learned about
the army's inept handling of her son's death, the more she was convinced that there was a conspiracy. Bereft, besieged
by suspicions that the "administration orchestrated [Pat's] death," Tillman recounts her story bravely, but her obsession
with fixing blame and her recourse to conspiracy theories compromises her credibility. The result is a troubling, uneven
account that raises serious questions, but offers little in the way of insights or answers. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Boots on the Ground at Dusk: The Life and Death of Pat Tillman." Publishers Weekly, 10 Mar. 2008, p. 74. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA177591857&it=r&asid=9ae98383058dd9fc0edf9a04426152fb.
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Boots on the Ground by Dusk: The Life and
Death of Pat Tillman
QUOTED TEXT: The book, which superimposes Mary's search for the truth over memories of her son's life, is both emotional and frustrating.
David Pitt
Booklist.
104.13 (Mar. 1, 2008): p28.
COPYRIGHT 2008 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Boots on the Ground by Dusk: The Life and Death of Pat Tillman.
By Mary Tillman and Narda Zacchino.
May 2008. 336p. illus. Rodale/Modern Times, $25.95 (9781594868801). 956.104
Reminiscent of the 1979 TV movie Friendly Fire (in which a woman tries to find out how her son, a soldier in Vietnam,
died at the hands of his own comrades), this gripping reallife account chronicles Mary Tillman's attempts to get a
straight answer about the death of her son, Pat, in Afghanistan in 2004. Tillman, who put on hold a career as a pro
football player and enlisted in the army, was shot to death during a mission that was (to judge by the evidence presented
here) poorly planned and disastrously executed. Although it seems clear that Tillman was killed by American soldiers
shot in the legs and then three times in the headby men who surely should have known they were killing one of their
own, the exact circumstances seem deliberately obscured. The army kept giving Tillman's family a new version of the
story of his death, often contradicting previous versions but never answering any of their questions. The book, which
superimposes Mary's search for the truth over memories of her son's life, is both emotional and frustrating. We, like
Mary Tillman, feel angry and bewildered over the government's apparent lack of interest in providing her with a simple
explanation for her son's death. This story has made headlines for the last several years, and while there are no final
answers here, those who have followed the controversy will be eager to hear from Tillman's mother.David Pitt
Pitt, David
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Pitt, David. "Boots on the Ground by Dusk: The Life and Death of Pat Tillman." Booklist, 1 Mar. 2008, p. 28. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA176370299&it=r&asid=cc1565092a07baa3bc095d60d3d641cd.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A176370299
California Comeback
08/19/2016 07:28 pm ET | Updated Aug 19, 2016
Thought Matters
Featuring originals essays, interviews, and excerpts from some of the world’s most influential minds
2016-08-17-1471460098-5578525-californiacomebackforthoughtmatters.png
By Narda Zacchino
The California Dream
Living in California is like living in a bowl of granola; what ain’t fruits or nuts, is flakes.
—GALLAGHER, COMEDIAN
This popular late ‘70s East Coast rip on a state already then famous for trendsetting, cultural liberation, and technological innovation was notable for its ubiquity, so common that young children shared it without understanding who, exactly, it mocked: radicals and rebels, new agers and hippies, gay men and women. The fact that those on the cutting edge only made up a tiny percentage of California’s huge and fantastically growing population didn’t temper the joke’s sentiment, since these colorful groups so dominated media coverage of the state.
And while the jibe was light, the mocking hinted at a larger American defensiveness, an attempt to write off the previous decade’s dramatic social and political upheavals as nothing more than a goof. Because if California wasn’t the site of all the nation’s conflicts over civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and the attempt to depants “the Man” and his “system,” it certainly had seemed to be the symbolic locus of changes many “mainstream” Americans were bemoaning as the root of a host of social ills. Meaner quips, in fact, often centered on the notion that if an earthquake pushed the state off the continental shelf into the Pacific, it would be no great loss.
From the rise of a bold Chicano culture in Los Angeles to the decadence and “obscenity” of an increasingly artistic and unchained Hollywood, from the myriad communes and cults dotting the forests and coastal towns along Highway 1 to columnist Herb Caen’s radical “Berserkeley” and Oakland, home of the Black Panthers, Hells Angels, and even the renegade Raiders, California seemed to have exploded with color, strife, and new ideas, some silly, some scary, some brilliant.
Nor was it all “airy-fairy” stuff, another popular dismissal of the Left Coast from Manhattan’s towers: The home-garage invention of the personal computer and the inventive commodification of the Internet created overnight fortunes even Wall Street had to respect—at least, that is, until the dot-com collapse that began in 1999 drew national mockery for the hubris and chutzpah of twentysomethings blowing billions on concept companies built around nothing more than a URL. And, perhaps a bit jealous of all the attention San Francisco’s overheated housing market had attracted pre-mortgage meltdown, the East Coast media was quick to celebrate presidential candidate Rick Perry’s mocking of California’s foreclosure crisis after the recession.
Of course, as early as the gold rush, the East Coast establishment had chuckled at those crazy left coasters, perhaps smugly glad to have emptied their cities of so many dreamers, hustlers, and con artists making the migration westward. Yet the powerful draw of California, the final frontier of continental manifest destiny, ultimately prevented it from being perceived as a backwater for outcasts in the way, say, that the British saw their old penal colony Australia.
Instead, California became the seductress of the Wild West, bedazzling her suitors with shiny gold trinkets and promises to make them rich. They came in hordes and most stayed, if only to bask in her beauty. She was starkly different from what they’d left back home, warm and welcoming, her spirit conveying a sense of adventure and abandon. Over time, she would become the envy of the entire country, while those behind were left pouting, like jilted lovers.
Occasionally, she stumbled, yet she has always recovered her balance and run ahead, racing to embrace the future. Today, several years removed from a devastating recession that deeply challenged her confidence, California is surging once more—economically, politically, and culturally—as its quirky, “ruthlessly practical” leader, Governor Jerry Brown, aggressively pushes forward a new, trimmer, yet still essentially compassionate and optimistic version of the California dream.
As historian H. W. Brands described the birth of the California dream after the staged “discovery” of gold near Sacramento: “The old American dream ... was the dream of the Puritans ... of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream ... became a prominent part of the American psyche only after [gold was found at] Sutter’s Mill.”
The dream proved remarkably enduring, even as reports began drifting back about the hell that was a miner’s life and the bawdy lawlessness of the nation’s new Paris-style theme park of debauchery, San Francisco, where venereal disease and earthquakes were equally terrifying facts of life. New Yorkers, Bostonians, Philadelphians, and the rest assumed that California would never be more than a distant novelty; the real power would always reside with the bankers on Wall Street, the industrialists in Chicago, the politicians in D.C. Let those westerners send us some fine, rowdy tall tales to read by the fire in our brownstone—tales of cowboys and sailors, miners and naturalists—and then let us get back to work.
But by 1963, California had knocked off prideful New York as the most populous state in the nation—and it seemed to have become the most interesting one, too. That many of the nation’s young people had been streaming west for more than a century left the nation’s elite a bit queasy, especially since by then the region had several bona fide industries of towering global importance: aerospace, computers, and entertainment. So it is perhaps not surprising, then and now, that when bad times befall California, pundits, historians, and leaders of other states often appear unseemly in their haste to pronounce the California dream on life support, if not already dead.
“The California Dream is a love affair with an idea, a marriage to a myth,” wrote historian Claudia Jurmain, explaining the rank disappointment of the farmers who fled the 1930s Dust Bowl for the sustained poverty they found in California—the same scenario that subsequent destitute immigrants from China, Mexico, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other parts of the developing world would find upon arrival.
“California is a tragic country—like Palestine, like every Promised Land,” wrote Christopher Isherwood. “Its short history is a fever-chart of migrations—the land rush, the gold rush, the oil rush, the movie rush, the Okie fruit-picking rush, the wartime rush to the aircraft factories—followed, in each instance, by counter-migrations of the disappointed and unsuccessful, moving sorrowfully homeward.”
It’s true that the dream, regardless of how it was marketed or perceived, could never be a promise, but many found that the strip of desert, mountain, plain, and coast spanning one thousand by four hundred miles offered greater opportunities than the rigidly stratified and frequently war-torn societies they had fled. With each receding echo of the post-World War II population and economic booms, the dream is renewed, reinvigorated. The place is just so fertile, spawning cultural trends and whole industries as easily as it produces grapes, or olives, or avocados, and this tends to alleviate the often harsh realities that threaten to tarnish the veneer of the Golden State: racial tension, exploitation of immigrants, massive and, since the 1970s, increasing economic inequality.
In fact, by the eve of the Great Recession of 2008, California had navigated a thirty-year period of increased political polarization, exacerbated by a steady stream of reactionary citizen-initiated ballot measures—targeting immigrants, people of color, and gays and lesbians—to become dominated once again by the centrist Democratic Party; the state also was a key bulwark for the historic election of Barack Obama. Host to the dominant corporate engines powering the again-booming and synergistic technology and entertainment industries and the “cool factor” they accrued, the state was in the midst of another astonishing housing boom, financed by easy credit and equity loans based on seemingly ever-rising property values.
Sure, no matter how high the share prices of Google or Apple climbed, the state was still struggling to fulfill its promise to those not able to afford a $95,000 Tesla Model S. And the once shiny educational and infrastructure systems were widely perceived as still in decline thirty years after a national “taxpayers’ revolt” was kicked off with the shocking passage of Proposition 13. But, hey, the laser, iPhone, blue jeans, and the summer blockbuster were invented here; there was even a macho, charming, cigar-chomping actor in the governor’s mansion. And the weather was still nice.