Frank Sinatra fans attending an academic conference at Hofstra University on his influence on American life were bewildered at the use of academic terminology such as "stranger-ness," "tropes," "hermeneutics of suspicion," "class allegory embedded in the master narrative," and "Sinatra-ism of the Left." During one panel that attributed Sinatra's success as the product of his "blue eyes" and white skin, one exasperated fan finally shouted out, "Why don't you go back to Moscow?"

Another panel pondered Sinatra's gradual political shift rightwards, evidenced when he gave his progressive-minded song "The House I Live In" a more patriotic feel when he sang it to Ronald Reagan in 1986 on the deck of an aircraft carrier, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop.

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