Straight Up |: December 2007 Archives

When The New York Times announced that William Kristol will be a weekly columnist for its Op-Ed page, the first thing it said about him is that he's "one of the nation's leading conservative writers and a vigorous supporter of the Iraq war."

Which prompted a friend to ask two questions: 1) "Hasn't America suffered enough from the actions of these nut-jobs?" And 2) "Is Kristol the Times' move in anticipation of the Murdochization of The Wall Street Journal,  sort of the way CNN moved to the right to counter Fox News?"

Well, 1) Apparently not. And 2) WSJ's news columns are more likely to feel Rupe's impact than the editorial page, which is already so far right it can't move further in that direction. If anything, its vicious brand of conservativism is more likely to be moderated in pragmatic support of Rupe's global business agenda.

(Jan. 16 -- Have a look: "Murdoch to Bury the Leder? Rethinks Journal Strategy")

Meanwhile, the lead editorial in this morning's Times, "Looking at America," offers at least some assurance that, despite losing the zip in its prose with the departure of Gail Collins as editorial page editor, it remains the most outspoken establishment newspaper opposing the BananaRepublic. Except for the tooth-fairy conclusion -- a rose-tinted final sentence about hoping to look in the mirror after the 2008 presidential election to "see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America" -- today's editorial is a serious year-end critique.

Here's a tale you won't find in "Students for a Democratic Society, A Graphic History," a new book due out soon. I always meant to write it down but never did. I'm telling it now before I forget all the details, because I don't think it's been recorded anywhere.

It was the winter of 1970, probably in February. I'm not sure of the exact date. It must have been around the time that Tom Hayden and four others of the Chicago Seven were convicted of inciting a riot in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention.

The place was Jessica Mitford's house in Berkeley, California, where a crowd of Bay Area radicals, politicos, artists, poets, journalists, professors and other high-minded riffraff had gathered. We were there to hear the latest news and to rally the troops, raise money, and generally show our solidarity with the leaders of the antiwar movement.

The house was packed. Rumor had it that Jean Genet would be there, along with the Black Panthers. They were squiring him around the country as part of their campaign to free Bobby Seale, who had been on trial with the Chicago Seven until his case was separated from theirs. (You may recall that he'd been bound, gagged and chained to a chair in the courtroom).

A painter's ladder was set in the middle of the living room as a sort of platform for the speakers. Several speeches had already been made when a huge red convertible with the top down roared up to the front of the house. Genet jumped out, surrounded by Black Panthers with weapons bulging under their leather jackets. Among them was David Hilliard, who had taken over running the party in Seale's absence.

I no longer recall the speakers or their speeches. But I do remember Hayden, clearly the main speaker, being very low-key and looking like a Berkeley grad student in jeans and sneakers. His modesty and reasonableness were apparent. I was impressed. Hilliard was not. As soon as Hayden finished speaking, he challenged him. He wanted to know: Why was Hayden out on the street while Bobby Seale was in a jail cell? (Two of the Chicago Seven had been found innocent of all charges. Hayden must have been out on bail, while his conviction, like that of the others, was being appealed.)

Hilliard's question was an accusation. Calmly and with what seemed to me a sadness in his reply, Hayden refuted the implication that he had betrayed Seale in any way. There was only one reason he was free and Seale was not. It could be summed up in the word racism. "Bobby is black," he said. "I am white." Those words I do recall, perhaps because they were so simple. The reply did not satisfy Hilliard. His aggressiveness seemed menacing.

At this point a friend of Hayden's -- I think it was a UC Berkeley student president or former president who had come with him -- stepped in front of Hayden, as if to protect him. He shouldn't have. Hilliard hadn't done anything physically threatening, and Hayden was as composed as a turtle. Now, however, incited by the sudden move of the self-appointed bodyguard, Hilliard picked up an empty beer pitcher and swung it. It was a roundhouse swing that couldn't miss. He and Hayden were standing no more than an arm's length apart.

Incredibly, Hilliard did miss. Instead of hitting Hayden, who somehow hadn't budged or even flinched, the blow struck a young girl (the poet Michael McClure's daughter) who was sitting on the floor at their feet. Two sounds -- a hollow, leaden bonk! followed by a high-pitched cry of pain -- went off like a siren. This sent the crowd into a panic. People dove out of the way.

Genet went into a boxer's crouch, evidently believing he had to defend himself. He was wearing an army fatigue jacket, his head had white stubble and so did his face, like he hadn't shaved. Ready to take on all comers, he planted his front foot on a coffee table. Pugnacious. I remember thinking he couldn't have understood much of what was said. From the few words he'd spoken, you could tell his English wasn't very good.

Somebody shouted that the police had been called and were on their way. The crowd spilled out the front door onto the street and scattered. The last thing I remember of the pandemonium that day was how blue the sky looked and how puzzled Hayden appeared to be as he walked away unhurried, and it seemed to me, forlorn.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Once upon a time I wrote a story called "Christmas on the Bowery." It began like this: "Monsignor John Ahern, the redoubtable Skid Row priest, is expecting 800 guests Sunday for an early Christmas dinner."

Most will arrive from a dozen grandly named flophouses along the Bowery -- the Palace, for instance, or the Sunshine -- where they sleep in windowless $5 rooms enclosed in chicken-coop wire. Some will come from the municipal men's shelters, open dormitories where the beds are free but said to be unsafe at any price. Others will flock in from the city's streets, where home may be a piece of cardboard in a doorway on a frigid corner. Whoever they are and wherever they're from, they will receive a full plate of roast beef and mashed potatoes and as full a measure of human dignity as the Holy Name Center for Homeless Men can bestow.

I haven't been down to the center lately. But I was willing to bet it is now a gentrified condo for Wall Street honkies. Anybody who's been to Manhattan's Lower East Side these days probably wouldn't have taken the bet, either.

The free Christmas dinner, a Holy Name custom for five decades, needs no invitation and is, moreover, emblematic of the center's longtime purpose. Located since 1939 in a mammoth old school building at 18 Bleecker St., the center began caring for the destitute in 1906. ... Ahern, who looks more like a Marine officer in civilian clothing than a 58-year-old Catholic priest, has iron-gray hair and a ramrod bearing that exudes military authority. ... "We offer the men a place to come to every day," he says. "For the old guys, it's a safe place where they won't get mugged. For the young guys, it's a bit of hope."

Well, I just checked. The center, it turns out, is still operating two decades later -- though in a much reduced way -- within spitting distance of the most publicized symbol of Bowery gentrification, The New Museum of Contemporary Art. And wonder of wonders -- amid the boutique hotels, the multimillion-dollar condos, the liveried doormen, the custom-shopping grocers, the expensive cafes, the uptown art galleries for rich collectors now lined up on the Bowery in a "gallery row" -- Monsignor Ahern is still there at age 79, offering what he can. These days "he looks like a bantamweight," says Patrick Wynne, the center's program director. The Christmas dinners, however, are long gone.

Like every two-bit journalist at this time of year, I grabbed a look over my shoulder to see what was left behind. It was uglier than roadkill. The mush rush of the past 12 months turned my stomach. Here's why that is. Not to mention this shitty reminder. Which is where brave Olaf came in.

Our old friend Liam O'Gallagher, the artist and sound poet, checked out on Dec. 4 in Santa Barbara, Ca. He had a good run, though. He turned 90 in October. Coincidentally, the date of his death is almost the same (it's off by a day) as that of Sri Aurobindo, the yogi master whose teachings he greatly admired. (E.g.: "An inch of experience goes farther than a yard of logic." "The example is more powerful than the instruction." "Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind.") Liam was buried in Santa Barbara. He is survived by Robert Rheem, his partner of 58 years.

Now that Rupert Murdoch has moved his top guys into place to remake the Wall Street Journal, veterans at the paper who are familiar with the dithering of their previous corporate bosses can't help marveling at his speed, decisiveness and personal involvement. "We know that's his M.O., but it's amazing to see," one Dow Jones exec is quoted as saying in today's New York Times. Meanwhile, nervous WSJ reporters and editors were heartened by the wisdom of Rupe's one-word decision to reject at least one plan to remake the paper. It circulated in the newsroom as Design Proposal No. 4.

If this video doesn't illustrate the power of a signature, nothing does:

Today, as noted last week, is Human Rights Day and the culmination of Amnesty International's Global Write-a-Thon, an annual letter-writing campaign to help "human rights defenders, prisoners of conscience, and other victims of human rights abuses." Does letter writing work? Amnesty International says, "It absolutely does." See the Q&A.

"aieeeeee," sez un buen amigo, "el keith es un hombre con cojones gigantescos!" Yes, Keith Olbermann still sizzles. His latest special commentary, an exemplary piece of trash-tawkin' disapproval, hews to the same high standard he set for himself here and here. It's not just that he's so good at delivering his epithets for the BananaRepublican-in-charge. Or that he's doing it on mainstream TV, no less. But that all his epithets ("a pathological presidential liar" who is "transcendently stupid," "an idiot-in-chief," "a president manifestly unfit to serve") have the ring of truth and a conviction behind them worth a thousand pictures. Especially when he looks straight into the camera and says in his closing remarks, "You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar."

Who knew? I didn't. But that's what Tom Hayden reveals, give or take a few details, in a blurb for "Students for a Democratic Society, A Graphic History," a new book due out in January from Hill and Wang. "My own radical journey began with Mad Magazine," he says, "so it feels great that SDS should enter the culture of comic folklore ..."

OK, it's only a blurb. But I believe him. And in one of those perfect coincidences that border on the paranormal, Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle, who collaborated on the book with others, will discuss comics and politics at The Graduate Center, CUNY, on Monday -- Dec. 10 -- which also marks International Human Rights Day and the culmination of this year's Amnesty International Global Write-a-Thon.

Pekar is best known for his comic book series "American Splendor." He's also the subject of the movie documentary with the same title. Buhle was the founding editor of the 1960s SDS magazine Radical America. They'll be joined in a panel discusion by Jeff Jones, an environmental activist who was a former SDS officer and one of the founders of the Weather Underground. Hayden won't be there, hélas.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Since Buhle and Pekar will be, here's some of what they say in the introduction to their graphic history:

[The book] is, finally, a series of stories from the life of a generation, ending where SDS peaked, at around eighty to a hundred thousand activists and followers. So much had happened so quickly around them, it was no surprise that many young radicals and quite a few conservatives imagined American society to be on the verge of some vast transformation. A significant chunk of SDSers joined and in some cases actually organized the women's liberation movement, the gay and lesbian movements, the environmental movement, and so on. These causes, still far from won almost a half century later, had been essentially invisible before the era of SDS. It is difficult for today's young people to conceptualize a society at once so self-satisfied and so deep in social conservatism, race sentiment, homophobia, environmental indifference, and the assumptions of fixed roles of the sexes, and just as difficult to imagine that all these issues were tackled almost simultaneously, and very largely by the young themselves.

Can't make it to the panel discussion? How about the SDS Comic Show? It's a traveling exhibit of all the graphics from the book, and free, too, in the Graduate Center lobby. Just walk in any time.

It's an excerpt from William Osborne's 50-minute music video, "Music for the End of Time." He also composed the music. The video features digital stills by Norbert Bach and the trombone playing of Abbie Conant. And here's a trailer for the video, which gives a broader sample of the work.