Three photographs : One a person at the wheel of a car, one a person at a desk and the third of two people standing, laughing
Joe Eskenazi and pop culture. By Kelly Waldron

Few political writers use pop culture references as fluidly as Joe Eskenazi. Do you ever read his pieces and think: He could have used this reference instead?

Can you beat Eskenazi? I can’t.

But I’m betting that some of you also have a full library of trivia in your heads. Please type a pop culture reference that would’ve been a better example than the ones used in this week’s column into the sections below.

Joe and others here will select the winners and post on Saturday.

To be clear: The idea is not to guess Joe’s references, but to submit your own. The winner will get a Mission Local tote bag.

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Thank you for your response. ✨

Joe’s reference: “Leaders shunting the people’s anger onto others is an elemental political tactic; it probably harks back to electing the chieftain of Cave 76.”

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

As founder/executive editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.

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2 Comments

  1. The embedded link makes it. It’s a hygienic scene, but it provides for endless possible connotations, along with subconscious flutterings of madness, vigilante justice, and raw violence.

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