Righting the American Dream : How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision

Winston, Diane

University of Chicago Press（2023/07発売）

University of Chicago Press（2023/07発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 256 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780226824529
• DDC分類 973.927

Full Description

A provocative new history of how the news media facilitated the Reagan Revolution and the rise of the religious Right.
 
After two years in the White House, an aging and increasingly unpopular Ronald Reagan looked like a one-term president, but in 1983 something changed. Reagan spoke of his embattled agenda as a spiritual rather than a political project and cast his vision for limited government and market economics as the natural outworking of religious conviction. The news media broadcast this message with enthusiasm, and white evangelicals rallied to the president's cause. With their support, Reagan won reelection and continued to dismantle the welfare state, unraveling a political consensus that stood for half a century.

In Righting the American Dream, Diane Winston reveals how support for Reagan emerged from a new religious vision of American identity circulating in the popular press. Through four key events—the "evil empire" speech, AIDS outbreak, invasion of Grenada, and rise in American poverty rates—Winston shows that many journalists uncritically adopted Reagan's religious rhetoric and ultimately mainstreamed otherwise unpopular evangelical ideas about individual responsibility. The result is a provocative new account of how Reagan together with the press turned America to the right and initiated a social revolution that continues today.

Contents

Introduction

Part One. Context: Media, Politics, and Religion
1. Faith in the Media
2. 1973: The Body Politic and the Religious Body
3. An American Religious Imaginary

Part Two. Reporting Reagan's Imaginary
4. Evil Empires: Communism and AIDS
5. The "New Patriotism": The Mission in Grenada
6. Scrooged: Moralizing Welfare and Racializing Poverty

Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index