Past Present

On this week’s Past Present podcast, Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and Neil Young discuss Benghazi and the history of Congressional hearings, Ben Carson and black Republicans, and the state of reality TV today. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Hillary Clinton’s testimony before the Congressional committee on Benghazi is just the latest event in a Congressional investigation that has lasted 72 months, inviting comparison to other Congressional hearings, including the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra affair. Natalia remarked that liberal media outlets, like the New Yorker, have concluded Clinton emerged triumphant from the hearings, while Neil noted that Fox News had cut away from its broadcast of the hearings once the Republicans appeared to have bungled their case against Clinton.Ben Carson has emerged as a frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, but African-American Republicans are an increasingly rare group. Niki