{"id":8098,"date":"2017-01-08T17:23:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T01:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=8098"},"modified":"2017-01-08T17:24:10","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T01:24:10","slug":"nat-hentoff-is-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2017\/01\/nat-hentoff-is-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Nat Hentoff Is Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-8099\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Hentoff-head-shot.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Hentoff-head-shot.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Hentoff-head-shot-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>Last night we lost Nat Hentoff, a defender of civil liberties and\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnotably, for this readership\u00e2\u20ac\u201da lifelong champion of jazz. He was 91. His son Nick reported&#8221;\u00a0that members of the family were nearby and a Billie Holiday record was playing when Hentoff died in his Greenwich Village apartment in New York. Influential as a jazz critic for <em>DownBeat<\/em>, the <em>Village Voice<\/em> and other publications, he was even better known for his books and columns explaining and defending First Amendment freedoms.<\/p>\n<p>He once said that his unyielding protection of civil liberties and the First Amendment was, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of all my obsessions, the strongest.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He often expressed his conviction that the United States\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 destiny was inseparably bound to the responsibility of the electorate to be informed. In an interview eight years ago, he told <em>The New York Times<\/em>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in a perilous state, in that, to paraphrase [President] Madison, the way to keep this republic is to have an informed electorate.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Instead, he said, we have \u00e2\u20ac\u0153constitutional illiteracy, which is rampant.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>He expanded on that and on his involvement with jazz in a 2014 interview with the website Fire.org., which is what Hentoff is referring to in his frequent mention of the word &#8220;Fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CXsBCzozR10\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A personal note: Nat and I&#8221;\u00a0were acquaintances in New York in the 1970s and eventually became friends. He was supportive and helpful in many ways. In our phone calls, he was as open, frank and tough-minded\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsometimes moreso\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthan in the interview you just saw. We talked about music, of course, but always came back to the First Amendment and the deteriorating standards of print and broadcast journalism. Both of us were saddened by what is happening to the profession and, by extension, to the citizens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 right to know. We didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always agree, and we argued about our differences\u00e2\u20ac\u201don President Obama, for instance. Hentoff was one of the great arguers. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll miss him.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">RIP Nat.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/obituaries\/la-me-nat-hentoff-obit-20170108-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">comprehensive obituary<\/a>, see today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s &lt;<em>&gt;Los Angeles Times&lt;&gt;. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night we lost Nat Hentoff, a defender of civil liberties and\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnotably, for this readership\u00e2\u20ac\u201da lifelong champion of jazz. He was 91. His son Nick reported&#8221;\u00a0that members of the family were nearby and a Billie Holiday record was playing when Hentoff died in his Greenwich Village apartment in New York. Influential as a jazz critic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}