Dispatches From The Culture Wars:
How The Left Lost Teen Spirit
Danny Goldberg

review by: Mike Webb
Date: 11/1/03

With Ah-nold’s recent election, Jay-Z campaigning for Al Sharpton in South Carolina, Dennis Miller and Kelsey Grammer considering runs for office, P-Diddy’s new found civic involvement via “Diddy Runs The City” (think of it as a “sample” of Russell Simmons’ activism), and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s desire to bring peace to the Middle East, we’re entering a new age of celebrity rule. Why the public gives a damn about what the famous have to say on any particular issue is beyond me, but that’s the way our society is heading.

So why should anyone care what a record company exec/artist manager/writer/movie producer/card-carrying member of the ACLU has to say about modern politics? Because he’s actually battled on the front lines and touched the masses, and now offers sound advice about how the left can get back in the game.

In his new book Dispatches From The Culture Wars: How The Left Lost Teen Spirit, music impresario Danny Goldberg offers a thesis that the left has been losing ground in America because it has forgotten how to speak to young people with different cultural values. Although pols like George McGovern and Gary Hart were able to excite and motivate a youth brigade to get involved in their campaigns, Goldberg believes Democrats never really felt comfortable with its younger voters. And the voting patterns show that he has a point.

Goldberg underscores his point again and again with real life examples. From how he helped found the Musical Majority to beat back the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), to his work with Musicans United for Safe Energy (MUSE) that brought about the No Nukes film which created greater awareness of energy issues to the mainstream, Goldberg shows that when the cause connects to the youth it will affect, change can be made. He also cites the example of Jimmy Carter winning the presidency by effectively quoting Bob Dylan in his stump speech, getting the Allman Brothers to raise money for him, and letting Hunter S. Thompson inside his campaign to write about it in Rolling Stone.

While Goldberg often dwells on his battles with (and the failings of) Tipper and Al Gore (and there are MANY of them), you can tell he’s got some level of affection for the woman who led the PMRC charge to have albums labeled with ratings. Goldberg has been and remains an absolutist on issues involving free speech, and he offers compelling reasons for not censoring artists even if he finds them personally repugnant.

Ultimately, Dispatches is more or less an autobiography of Goldberg’s life. It recounts his hippy years when he did drugs and dropped out of Berkeley after one week, his work for Billboard magazine, his involvement with Led Zeppelin as their publicist, how he began managing artists like Sonic Youth and Nirvana, his overall progressive political vision, and countless other battles he’s had with Washington elites who shun and don’t understand the value of popular culture. Frankly, the only complaint this 2Walls writer had with Dispatches From The Culture Wars is I’d like to know more about Kurt Cobain and the numerous other artists he’s worked with, and less about the youth culture-phobes Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.

Goldberg manages to name drop more often than Al Gore twisted the truth. You’ll read about his exploits with Jesse Jackson, Sr., Bonnie Raitt, Michael Moore, Abbie Hoffman, Don Henley, Cornel West, Ralph Nader, Timothy Leary, Jackson Browne, Jack Newfield, Clint Eastwood, Lenny Kravitz, Tom Hayden and Bruce Springsteen. So if you judge a man by the company he keeps, then Danny Goldberg is as good as it gets. Let’s just hope the next Democratic presidential nominee heeds his advice and finds some teen spirit.