Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture
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Mason, Bobbie Ann
b. 1940
Born in Kentucky Mason worked as a journalist in New York before receiving a PhD
in English from the University of Connecticut in 1972. Her first story collection,
Shiloh
and Other Stories
(1982), describes the lives of rural people of her native state, and won
the Ernest Hemingway Award in 1983. Mason’s most famous novel,
In Country
(1985),
recounts the efforts of a young Kentucky woman to come to grips with her father’s
death
in Vietnam before she was born, and how her search for meaning helps others deal with
the impact the war has had, and continues to have, on lives.
JIM WATKINS
mass media
While journalism,
television,
movies, music and informational mass media are all treated
extensively in multiple articles, they also share several important characteristics as
American mass media that set them apart from the structure and experience of other
world media. These include the near absence of government ownership and regulations,
their structures of corporate consolidation and their global presence combined with
national insularity.
N
ewspapers
and
publishing
established independence in 1791 before the American
century on the basis of
Bill of Rights’
p
rovisos for Freedom of the Press. The 1st
Amendment, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, has allowed American media to be free
generally from the handicap of official government
censorship
and control (except in
certain emergencies), and has patterned the landscape of later media. However, the 1st
Amendment also guarantees freedom of money. In the early twenty-first century while
everybody can express views freely, only those with deep pockets can easily reach the
masses. Newspapers, television and other media pay attention to advertisers, political war
chests and markets.
Even though airwaves are generally seen as public goods, the government has not
owned and rarely censored them. Instead, government regulation has ensured an
unquestioned culture of commercial broadcasting based loosely on the concept of the free
markets in which
radio
and television
networks
are primarily funded through
advertising
. Another strongly held American belief in this realm is that competition
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 706
benefits the consumer because it leads to “higher-quality” works, at least in a technical
sense. This, however, prevents people with limited resources from producing and
distributing works or reaching a wide audience trained to expect certain standards o
f
“production values.” While electronic media have taken shape as a free-for-all field, they
have increasingly been viewed as commodities in the marketplace. Many
Internet
browsers rely increasingly on their advertising revenues.
Though relatively free, American broadcasting companies are under the supervision o
f
the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). All media companies have to apply for
a license from the FCC: to broadcast is a privilege, not a right. During the 1960s, for
example, the FCC imposed rules for mandatory hours for educational and
children’s
television, and the fairness doctrine that guaranteed the airing of opposing views.
However, with bills culminating in the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
Congress
clearly favored deregulation. These changes range from the national percentage o
f
television stations a company can own (from 25 percent to 35 percent), to longer intervals
between license renewal, to the complete deregulation of
cable
rates. The FCC has
effectively allowed broadcasters unlimited power to
own
the media.
Still, media are not unchecked. Concerns over violence and sexuality generate
grassroots responses that government has capitalized on so that media industries adopt
self-censorship, from the
Hollywood
Production Code (1930s to 1960s) to film and
television
rating
systems, to the proposed V-Chip. The mass-media industries polish
their public image as responsible broadcasters even as they respond to less civic-minded
markets.
While the government created public broadcasting channels in both radio (NPR) and
television (CPB) in the 1960s, both have operated as independent corporations. There
was initial debate on whether they should be funded by
taxes
or by allocation from
Congress. It was decided that taxing broadcasting involved too much government
intervention. Therefore, federal and other public funding (including corporate
sponsorship) has become a hotbed for politics. In 1999, for example, Governor Jesse
Ventura eliminated public funding for Minnesota Public Broadcasting, leaving them to
rely on corporate underwritings and members’ support. Reliance on public funding and
corporate sponsorship has restricted the public broadcasting corporations’ ability to be
independent, once again, making it harder for minority viewpoints to air. Direct
government-owned media have been limited to propaganda channels (Voice of America)
and military media.
Freedom, hence, has not produced democratic media. Instead, corporations have
centralized mass media—whether newspaper publishers, radio chains, television
networks, music producers, cable suppliers or toll booths on the information highway.
Since the 1980s, in fact, critics have noted the dramatic vertical integration of multiple
media, coupled with the idea of synergy, in huge conglomerates like AOL/
Time Warner
or ABC/
Disney
. With mass media in the hands of a few unregulated big companies,
which have ties with other non-mass-media companies, like GE, an over-riding
commercialism can shape culture and politics. There is a further fear that the news
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departments in many of these companies will adopt self-censorship measures for self-
preservation. While alternatives exist—public access on cable,
independent film,
grassroots
video,
micro-radio—they are peripheral to the audience and revenues of these
mega-corporations.
Nor is the impact of these mass media limited to the US. Many major media
conglomerates are global, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Incorporated. They are, however,
American based. American productions like
Hollywood
films and television are
distributed all over the world. Hollywood
blockbusters
and television series outdraw
even the most popular local works, except in a few markets (India, Hong Kong and Iran,
for example). Meanwhile, Hollywood’s huge national market is rarely disturbed by
foreign films that make it beyond art-house distribution. Popular music, infused by an
African American
beat, has reshaped global traditions while absorbing new sounds and
artists from Great Britain and, more recently from Africa, the
Caribbean
and Latin
America. While television faces cultural differences and tight government controls
abroad, American productions of night-time
soaps
, dramas and even highly American
sitcoms
alarm foreign purists with their popularity (and become bargaining chips for
regional and private networks). MTV, as both producer and distributor, reaches sixty-four
countries with relatively transnational, yet homogenous products. In cable news, CNN is
transmitted to 210 countries and territories worldwide. With the Internet as well,
American corporate and technological domination seems to be evolving from this pattern
within a new mass medium.
Further reading
Hazen, D. and Winokur, J. (eds) (1998)
We the Media,
New York: New Press.
CINDY WONG
mass transit
s
ee
aviation, commercial; buses; commuting; trains
Mastercard
s
ee
credit and credit cards
Masterpiece Theatre
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 708
English television shows imported by
PBS,
beginning in the 1970s. The first show,
Upstairs, Down stairs
was a serial imported for many seasons, depicting the trials and
tribulations of the Bellamy family and their many servants, set in Edwardian England.
With this production, the tone of the series was set; it brought “highbrow”
television
made abroad to a seemingly well-educated American public, dissatisfied with American
fare. Always introduced by a literary or thespian
celebrity
(initially the intensely Mid-
Atlantic Alistair Cooke), the series has gone on to other adaptations of English novels,
notably
Jewel in the Crown
and the soon-to-be camp classic
I Claudius
.
EDWARD MILLER
mathematics
Mathematics comprises both a set of pragmatic procedures (applied mathematics) and a
set of rigorous deductive systems (pure mathematics). Pure mathematics derives its
ultimate inspiration from practical problems, but its domain is purely mental. Beginning
with axioms, which are rules for manipulating undefined terms, mathematicians proceed
through the purely mental process of deductive inference to derive new mental constructs
called theorems. While this abstractness seems to make pure mathematics utterly remote
from experience, it does facilitate the application of these constructs to new areas. Also,
through abstraction, pure mathematics strives to achieve absolute certainty. Alas, such
certainty has proved elusive. Gödel’s Theorem (1931) established that no formal system
rich enough to include the natural numbers could be both consistent and complete. Either
deductive reasoning cannot yield all that is true in mathematics, or it will yield
contradictory results. Since pure mathematics is a mental construct, such a conclusion
raises fascinating questions about the nature of the human mind.
A
p
plied mathematics has been wildly successful in describing the natural world and in
p
roving its usefulness in nearly every area of human endeavor. Since the time of Sir Isaac
Newton (1642–1727), the physical sciences (especially
physics)
have sought
mathematical description rather than ultimate causes. The effectiveness of a mathematical
procedure as applied to science is typically evaluated not by the rigor of its justification,
but by its ability to make predictions about the outcomes of experiments.
While the mathematization of the underlying laws of the life and social sciences has
met with spotty success, there can be no doubt that the branch of mathematics called
“statistics” forms the basis of nearly all research. Any study that is based on more than
anecdotal evidence relies on statistical design and analysis. It follows that a rudimentary
understanding of statistics is essential for anyone making decisions based on the results
of research, including, for example, decisions about the efficacy and safety of new
medications.
Computers have naturally had an enormous influence on mathematics. To begin with,
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by removing the computational burden from humans,
computers
affect the way we think
about math education. Americans have always had difficulty deciding whether the goal o
f
math education should be the mastery of procedures or the understanding of abstract
concepts. The ubiquity of computers and calculators at the very least diminishes the need
for arithmetical proficiency, while increasing the need to understand algorithms and
numerical accuracy.
Computers have also opened the doors to fascinating new areas of mathematics,
including chaos theory The self-similarity of some fractal images (based on chaotic
systems) suggests links between the visual arts and designs seen in nature. Chaos theory
also links the qualitative and quantitative descriptions of phenomena with wide
application to domains previously beyond mathematical analysis.
Further reading
Guillen, M. (1983)
Bridges to Infinity,
Los Angeles: Jeremy P.Tarcher.
Kline, M. (1980)
Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty,
New York: Oxford University.
ROBERT SCHWENK
Mayfield, Curtis
b. 1942; d. 1999
African American
singer and composer. Draw ing on gospel roots, his smooth
Chicago,
IL
sound and social vision produced anthems of
civil rights
and social change in the
1960s, including “Keep on Pushing,” “People get Ready” and “This is My Country.”
Mayfield’s work with the Impressions and as a solo artist also included romantic hits
(“Gypsy Woman”) and the score for the movie
Superfly
(1972). After a career slowdown
and a crippling accident in 1990, Mayfield was recognized nationally and globally for his
powerful vision and impact in the 1990s.
GARY McDONOGH
mayors
Cities are units of taxation, representation, service and identity. All these demand
governance, which, since the American Revolution, has been vested in locally elected
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 710
officials at City Hall. Over the centuries, patricians have given way to immigrant bosses,
reformers, politicians and outsiders. In the early twenty-first century, a mayor, city
council or city manager must manage conflicting factions and guide a city, while shaping
regional, national and international images. Hence, mayors have included charismatic and
controversial figures on the frontline of politics—LaGuardia and Giuliani in
New Yor
k
City, NY, Alioto and Feinstein in
San Francisco, CA,
the
Daleys
in
Chicago, IL,
etc.
Only two American mayors, however (Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge), have
become president.
City governments vary widely in their constitution and powers, set by states (or the
federal government for
Washington, DC
). Urban administration generally must appoint
officers, set agendas and budgets (on the basis of local revenues and, in the postwar era,
increasing federal inter-vention) and manage services including parks, security education
and ceremonial visits. Strong mayors control—or delegate to department heads and
managers—most functions of government; others, however, share functions with their
elected city councils, which may represent
neighborhoods
or interest groups. Depending
on the city charter (itself often dependent on the state),
police
chiefs, Boards o
f
Education, and somewhat autonomous institutions dealing with water, housing,
transportation and health may further divide responsibility. Moreover, the complexities o
f
urban laws and records mean that even small cities have bureaucracies that endure long
after any mayor leaves office. Finally, city government must balance interests of state and
federal government, competing regional interests and divided citizens. This becomes
critical as development and welfare programs have become areas of shared responsibility
or in emergent policy questions—environment or
immigration
—in which the city cannot
control policies, although it must deal with consequences. The need for coordination also
underscores the impact of
suburbs
on city administrations: cities are swamped by, yet cut
off from, metropolitan growth. The era of annexation ended well before the Second
World War, although few real consolidated planning and governance structures have
emerged in expanding metropolitan areas. Suburbanites, in turn, may be more likely to
identify a charismatic urban leader than the bureaucrats generally charged with the
planning and politics of sprawl. Hence, mayors negotiate constantly—with other
governments, unions, businesses and citizens.
Traditional mayors tend to be found in large American cities, older cities and the
Northeast
. Such mayors are intensely political, often within a highly partisan framework
(although socialists dominated
Milwaukee
and reform candidates have beaten the system
elsewhere). For most of the twentieth century mayors were identified with political
machines that organized, coerced and bought votes—with money or patronage—in order
to promote party interests; Chicago’s Richard Daley was such a kingpin. Local
organization, from ward politics and political clubs through urban patronage, can play a
strong role in state and national elections as well. The urban dead, according to folklore,
have voted many times in Chicago and
Philadelphia, PA
. Civil-service reforms and
other watchdogs have been used to control such party bosses.
Yet the immediacy and intensity of city government has made it an area o
f
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breakthroughs for those outside the system, including minorities and women. In the turn-
of-the-nineteenth-century
South,
for example, Jewish mayors were elected as reformers
from
Savannah, GA
to
New Orleans, LA
. Irish and Italian ethnics also made
mayoralties stepping stones to urban recognition. Later, in the 1970s,
African American
mayors spoke to changing majorities optimistically or defensively;
Hispanic
mayors in
San Antonio, TX
and
Miami, FL
also have marked changes in urban demographics.
Women have most readily gained urban power in small cities, but San Francisco,
Chicago and Washington, DC all have elected women mayors.
Yet one must not over-emphasize macro-
p
olitics. In fact, most American cities have
only figurehead mayors, eschewing personality and corruption for a professional city
manager. This format, in which city councilors contract an administrator, was first
adopted in Dayton, Ohio in 1913. It remains most common in the
West
and in cities o
f
under 100,000, although these have become
Sunbelt
metropoles. City managers are
apolitical, without the
community
roots mayors rely on; nor can they set policy
independently.
Strong or weak, the mayor often shapes the image of the city in significant ways. In the
1960s, liberal
Republican
John Lindsay was stylish for New York, while Ed Koch
p
roved down to earth and David Dinkins, as an African American, recognized the new
minority mosaic in the city Mayor Rudolph Giuliani focused on creating a “civil” city,
sometimes crossing the line between quality of life and denying those who mar the clean
city. By contrast, Mayor Marion Barry’s arrest for crack possession seemed to epitomize
the decay of Washington. Symbolism and power converge in the effectiveness o
f
decisions, actions and planning.
M
ass media
are also critical. City government gains constant attention—
p
olitical,
economic and personal—in local
newspapers
and
television
. Mayors become
spokespersons and lightning rods in crises: Tom Bradley addressed both fellow citizens
and national media to calm a rioting
Los Angeles, CA
. Fictional media seem rather
unsympathetic: movies and literature have concentrated on corruption and bossism from
the 1930s onwards. Later cinematic mayors face crime or disaster until the “real” hero
arrives—a
Batman
scenario. In television’s
Spin City
(ABC, 1996–), in fact, a bumbling
New York City mayor is completely managed by the administrators around him.
Further reading
Morgan, D. and England, R. (1999)
Managing Urban America,
New York: Chatham
House.
Bissinger, B. (1997)
A Prayer for the City
New York: Random House (an analytic
chronicle of the Rendell administration in 1990s Philadelphia).
GARY McDONOGH
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 712
McCarthy, Eugene
b. 1916
Minnesota member of Congress who launched a quixotic antiwar challenge to
President Lyndon
Johnson
in the 1968
Democratic
primaries that galvanized youthful
anti-Vietnam movements. While Johnson eventually chose not to seek the nomination,
McCarthy was defeated by Hubert Humphrey’s nomination by a deeply divided party
lacerated by the assassination of Robert
Kennedy
as well as Chicago convention protests.
McCarthy subsequently became better known as a commentator and poet, although his
campaign buttons and bumper stickers remained liberal keepsakes for decades.
Further reading
McCarthy, E. (1987)
Up ’Til Now: A Memoir of the Decline of the Democratic Party,
San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
GARY McDONOGH
McCarthyism
The anti-communist movement associated with Joseph McCarthy was underway well
b
efore his election to the Senate in 1946. Though the American government had long
worked to obstruct the presence of communists and socialists in American politics, this
campaign took on unprecedented urgency after the Second World War.
The search for internal subversion was carried out by
Congress
through its
House
Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)
, organized in 1938 and not abolished
until 1975. Though relatively ineffective during the New Deal, after the war the
committee stepped up its work, in part a response to President Harry
Truman’s
own
increasingly strident anti-communist rhetoric and new internal security program. In fact,
many scholars have argued that McCarthyism owed as much energy to the rivalry
between the
Democratic
and
Republican
parties as it did to any “real” threat o
f
communist influence over governmental policy.
Nationwide attention was given to HUAC in 1948 when, in front of a committee
chaired by freshman
California
member of Congress Richard
Nixon,
Whittaker
Chambers, a journalist and former member of the Communist Party accused Alger Hiss
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of passing classified documents to the Soviets during the 1930s. Hiss, a highly respected
Democrat who held influential positions in the federal government during the New Deal,
and who accompanied President
Roosevelt
to the Yalta conference in 1945, could not be
tried for subversion; the statute of limitations had expired. But Hiss was convicted o
f
lying to
Congress,
and to many the possibility of his guilt legitimated the search for
subversives within the government. To those who doubted his guilt, however, the
hearings resembled a witch-hunt devoid of any hard evidence linking Hiss to the
accusations.
The search for communists was not limited to the federal government, but also
included the entertainment industry, higher education and the nation’s literary
community. Other targets of investigation and intimidation were American homosexuals,
considered by some to be a poisonous presence by virtue of their sexual identity, just as
communists were suspect for their political identity. In all, hundreds of lives were ruined
b
y the careless and savage attacks made by a few overzealous men wielding substantial
power.
The anti-communist crusade was linked to Joseph McCarthy in early 1950, after he
claimed in a speech given in Wheeling, West Virginia, to have a list of 205 known
communists working in the federal government. Though the number of “communists”
McCarthy claimed to have identified changed over the next few years, what proved
relevant for most Americans was the accusations themselves rather than their validity.
McCarthy’s influence ended suddenly in 1954 when he made the mistake o
f
investigating the presence of communists in the United States Army. A more absurd
accusation could not have been made. The fact that a Republican was now in the White
House signaled to many Republicans that McCarthy was now more of a liability than an
asset to their party. Televised hearings revealed McCarthy to be a vulgar and
disrespectful man, and his basis of support quickly evaporated. Censured by the Senate in
1954, McCarthy receded into obscurity and died an alcoholic in 1957.
S
ee also:
Cold War; Truman, Harry S.; gay and lesbian life and politics
Further reading
Fried, R. (1990)
Nïghtmare in Red,
New York: Oxford.
Oshinsky, D. (1983)
A Conspiracy so Immense,
New York: The Free Press.
SUSAN SCHULTEN
McCullers, Carson
b. 1917; d. 1967
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 714
Born in Georgia, and later a close friend of Tennessee
Williams,
McCullers is
considered an heir to the Southern Gothic tradition of William Faulkner. An essayist and
p
oet, she is primarily known for her allegorical fiction, which explores the feminine
aspects of spiritual isolation in the
South
of the mid-twentieth century She published
The
H
eart is a Lonely Hunter
(1940) at age twenty-three, following that with several well-
received novels and a successful stage adaptation of her novel
The Member of the
Wedding
(1946). McCullers battled a series of strokes and serious illnesses as well as
personal tragedies throughout her adult life.
JIM WATKINS
McDonald’s
Who hasn’t tasted one of the “Billions and Billions served?” The McDonald Brothers,
who had founded a burger and
barbeque
joint, complete with carhops, in the 1930s,
revamped their system in 1948 to promote speedy service and cheaper
food
(and
incidentally attract a
family
clientele). After lackluster franchise results, their project was
acquired by salesman Ray Kroc in 1955 who went on to create a global empire. He
redesigned the service, ambience and food itself to fit changing mores and new locations
at home and abroad, while families, leisure and travel adapted in turn to the emblematic
golden arches. This process is analyzed in John Love’s (1986)
McDonald’
s
: Behind the
Golden Arches,
while Watson (1997) and others consider the interactions of McDonald’s
and Asia in
Golden Arches East
. Other major competitors in the hamburger and family-
meal market include Burger King and Wendy’s (with a folksy image), as well as regional
chains like Carl, Jrs, Jack-in-the-Box (hit by food-poisoning scares) and Hardee’s.
Further reading
Love, J. (1986)
McDonald’s: Behind the Golden Arches,
Toronto: Bantam Books.
Watson, W. (ed.) (1997)
Golden Arches East,
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
GARY McDONOGH
McInerney, Jay
b. 1955
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