Letters Letters
Chávez and His People Brownsville, Tex. Greg Grandin’s “Chávez: Why Venezuelans Loved Him” [April 1] prompted this reflection. Revolutions are imperfect social and economic events led by imperfect people. Venezuela’s revolution and the late Hugo Chávez fit that bill. But I recall a former student, an upper-middle-class Venezuelan, who had a telling reply when I asked her why she hated Chávez. “It’s because after the revolution you would see people in restaurants, dark people, who would have never been there before.” I had my answer. EUGENE NOVOGRODSKY Greg Grandin’s article deserves national recognition because it kills the journalistic Hugo Chávez stereotypes. See venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8064. GUILMO BARRIO, a proud subscriber Bust the Banks Back to the Stone Age! Baltimore, Ohio William Greider, in “Bank Buster Brown” [April 1], describes how a handful of banks now control 63 percent of our GNP. I wonder how obscene these numbers have to get before people begin connecting the dots on the bigger corporate game plan. When Grover Norquist said the ultra-right’s goal is to “shrink government down to a size sufficient to drown it in a bathtub,” no one seemed to recognize this as the mission statement of corporate America. DAVID COOK ‘No Child’ Heads South of the Border Philadelphia Thanks to David Bacon for “US-Style School Reform Goes South” [April 1], his comprehensive report on the Mexican government’s recent passage of a program that mimics many of the flawed provisions of “No Child Left Behind.” Basing teacher hiring, raises and benefits on standardized test scores is a familiar theme. Also familiar are the education establishment’s tactics for squashing resistance. In Mexico, they have a powerful lobbyist, Claudio Gonzalez, who calls teachers “tyrants.” He must be using the playbook of George W. Bush’s education secretary, Rod Paige, who called the National Education Association a “terrorist organization.” We need more reports like this to shine light on the move to privatize and profit from public education. GLORIA C. ENDRES New York City David Bacon ties the Mexican film ¡De Panzazo! (“Barely Passing”) to the US film Waiting for Superman as evidence of “the corporate offensive to gain control of the country’s schools.” But ¡De Panzazo! encouraged Mexican voters, in an election year, to ask candidates how they would improve schools. Despite having the eleventh-largest economy in the world, Mexico spends more on education and achieves less than its neighbors. Mexico’s National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) has total control over teachers, strangling education. Only SNTE may license, hire, fire or promote teachers, rewarding friends, punishing reformers. More than 90 percent of the money spent on education goes to teachers’ salaries, which SNTE negotiates annually, but no one can detail where the money really goes. “No-show” jobs may number in the thousands, and teaching licenses are bought and sold. SNTE’s leader was recently arrested for embezzlement. Unionism is not at fault; it is the SNTE. LAURA FLIEGNER Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico After living in Oaxaca for five years, I still find it tough to know what to think about Sección 22, the powerful, radical Oaxacan teachers’ union. On the one hand, Sección 22 provided the only organized, disciplined muscle in the 2006 insurrection that nearly overthrew and certainly crippled the overtly corrupt and widely hated Oaxacan state government. That action galvanized citizens into uniting and subsequently electing a more responsive coalition government. Oaxaca badly needs just such powerful, organized, progressive organizations. On the other hand, there’s a growing perception that Sección 22 is abusing its power and public support by “blackmailing” the state with interminable and often lengthy protests that shut down major streets, commercial areas and the entire city center, with kids out of school on those numerous protest days. The union’s protests are increasingly seen as the usual institutional imperative of prioritizing its own power and wealth while masquerading as meeting the educational needs of students. Pressure for educational reform is powerful and comes from parents and business. It’s clear some of the reforms serve to break the union and should be fought, but completely stonewalling on others, like objective testing, strikes many as self-serving avoidance of accountability—because testing, whatever its shortcomings and limitations, can and does provide useful data about student and school performance. The public justifiably wants from the schools exactly what they and the teachers demand of government: far greater accountability. Future Sección 22 viability depends on it. KELLEN CAREY Vietnam Vets Spoke—No One Listened Brooklyn, N.Y. Regarding “The Real Vietnam War,” Jonathan Schell’s insightful and provocative article about Kill Anything That Moves, by Nick Turse [Feb. 4], and your readers’ reactions [“Letters,” March 4]: I welcome Turse’s comprehensive account of the American war against the people of South Vietnam, but I must respectfully disagree that such a view was not available before. In the 1971 book Standard Operating Procedure, Vietnam veterans recount shooting civilians for target practice, torching villages, torturing and murdering captives—all the elements of the “pattern of savagery” and “systematic war against the people” Turse’s book describes. As one vet put it, “Gooks were gooks and you killed them. That’s what they were for.” The book grew out of the Citizens Commission of Inquiry, an event at which veterans gathered in Washington to tell their stories to the press and public. At the soldiers’ request, I edited the transcripts and added interviews and commentary in order to get their accounts published. Alas, neither the Washington event nor the book garnered very much attention. Perhaps, at long last, the American people may be willing to begin to listen to Vietnam vets and face the truth. JAMES S. KUNEN Update & Correction Jon Wiener, in “LA’s Homeless Vets” (April 8), reported that the Veterans Administration in West Los Angeles was leasing its land to various corporations, including Enterprise Rent-A-Car for use as a parking lot. Enterprise terminated its lease with the VA last May. Roane Carey’s “Documenting Israel-Palestine in Film” (March 11/18) should have said that according to an Israeli government commission, the Shin Bet used torture to wring confessions from Palestinian detainees from the very beginning of the occupation, not intifada.
Apr 10, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Woodward and Manning: Patriots Suquamish, Wash. Re “Bob Woodward’s Tantrum, Bradley Manning’s Torment” [March 25]: I find it disturbing that The Nation is trashing Woodward. When someone in the White House sends an e-mail to a journalist, I expect he considers every word carefully. The phrase “You will live to regret…” is, to me, chilling. Rather than supporting a journalistic colleague, you accuse him of being thin-skinned, and you imply, with no evidence, that Woodward was more interested in the Sperling threat than in Manning’s situation. BERNADETTE FOLEY Hudson, N.Y. Your mention of Bob Woodward’s tussle with the White House reminded me of how he became famous—by exposing the corruption of the Nixon White House. This was a courageous act by a whistleblower of the first order. I wonder if Bradley Manning could be seen as a man of similar courage? Remember the Pentagon Papers? When are acts of courage more dangerous for those who blow the whistle than for our national security interests? And who decides? CATHARINE TYLER The Wrath of God Sebastopol, Calif. At the risk of bringing down on my head the wrath of Barry Schwabsky and the artists he discusses, I submit that the paintings he presents by Griffa and Nozkowski are boring, void of talent and just plain silly [“Endless Representation,” March 25]. I am no doubt out of touch with what one might call modern modernity, or perhaps meta-avant-garde. Frederick Karl, certainly no enemy of the modern, said, “Very possibly the health of a culture depends on its support of the avant-garde, however antagonistic the avant-garde may prove; when that support withers, perhaps we can say the whole culture is dying.” I suggest the reverse: the health of an art form depends on the health of its culture. If our culture is falling into the pits of meaninglessness or nihilism, then art may follow. But I don’t see that necessarily being the case. For me, an old-fashioned guy, art must inform, inspire and move one. I suppose Griffa’s art kind of does that: I am inspired to feel indifferent and moved to look away. If art can be boiled down to tubes of unused paint and unstretched canvases, then indeed it has fallen into a gulch of absurdity, out of which would no doubt grow the idea that The Pietà is simply overworked stone. RICHARD SANSOM Schwabsky Replies New York City No need to fret about my wrath when I’m laughing. BARRY SCHWABSKY Israel: The Nation and Its People Providence, R.I. Vivian Gornick’s “Darkness Lit From Within” [March 25] makes me feel fortunate to be a Nation subscriber. Despite numerous discussions of the political situation in Israel, few, like Gornick, give a perceptive critique of Israeli society. Thirty years ago, Gornick traveled to Israel to write on the country as she found it, but was “unable to connect” with Israelis, and her accumulated notes “were all in the negative.” She could not, in good conscience, write a book “without sympathy.” As an Israeli living in America, I can help Gornick with what is admirable in Israel: it is an upstart state, built on the shoulders of pioneers who drained the malaria swamps, worked the land, fought Arab assaults, and built roads, ports, factories, kibbutzim and cities. Tel Aviv is now a beautiful city with parks, beaches, arts centers, museums, shaded avenues and vivid gardens. A city that thus invests in its citizens could not be entirely “negative.” I agree with Gornick, however, that it is the people who make Israel such a difficult place to live. During her recent visit, she heard A.B. Yehoshua speak. Although a leftist, he pontificated on who is and is not a Jew, writes Gornick, “like a West Bank settler with a gun in his hand and murder in his heart, declaring the land of another his land.” She adds, “It’s the bully behind the sound…that makes one cringe.” This is a profound observation, and I fully agree: relationships in Israel are rarely based on tolerance, compassion or love. Israelis often think of themselves as fighters: they fight not only the Palestinians but often each other—in the streets, in the banks, in hospitals, in schools, in lines, in stores. Israeli society is an angry society, where rage and insults may erupt around seemingly peaceful corners, or among family members. Why are Israelis so closed up, unfriendly and suspicious of one another? One of Gornick’s answers is particularly insightful: the “tribalism” of Israeli culture. At a young age, I migrated from my native Hebrew to the English language and eventually became an English professor. I loved the Hebrew language, but I discovered that while Hebrew literature is preoccupied with Zionism and its politics, Anglo-American literature taught me about personal feelings, moral courage and my own inner world. One hears endless discussions on how to bring about peace in Israel. Yet the human factor is rarely present. The intolerance and hatred of the Other should be discussed openly. If both peoples could apologize and create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, perhaps the Middle East could be redeemed. But I don’t see this happening soon. SHELLY SPILKA Variations on a Theme Roseville, Minn. I prefer Glenn Gould’s first version of the Goldberg Variations [“Letters,” Feb. 18]. I listen to music on a forty-year-old Magnavox and play CDs on monaural mode because, as band leader Stan Kenton told us between sets at a concert in St. Paul, “that’s the way you hear the music live.” I love Gould, but I also like hearing other Goldbergs, especially on the harpsichord, e.g., with Wanda Landowska. WILLARD B. SHAPIRA Jackson, Mich. Forget Glenn Gould. If you want to hear the secret voices in the Goldberg Variations, and I do not mean Gould’s humming, listen to Minsoo Sohn. MARK MUHICH Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50! About Those ‘Timeless Whoppers’ Ads Franklin, N.H. I just have to tell you how much color and entertainment you have provided for my drab little subsidized senior apartment (which is owned by a different set of crooks, but that’s another story). I have formed a line of your “nose ads” at eye level across my living/dining area, taped at the top only and directly over baseboard radiators so that they not only provide color, but also motion as they wave in the breeze of the rising heat! I think I have every one of the nose ads, plus the 1 Percent Court ad and the Greedy Lying Bastards ad. That particular one is posted near the door so no one can leave without seeing it. My few guests spend time looking them over. Thank you for the marvelous additions to my drab off-white walls. SELDEN R. STRONG
Apr 3, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Cue the Tumbrils… Queens, N.Y. However phony the cry “Fix the Debt!” may be [“Stacking the Deck,” March 11/18], it seems the superrich have prevailed. Their castle was gallantly defended at the ramparts by their minions (vanquishing loophole closures and taxes on their gold). The superrich will continue to live in comfort in the castle, and outside, the country will be in turmoil. But sooner or later the castle dwellers will hear the roar from outside… G.M. CHANDU King Coal Deposed Toronto Kudos for suggesting that the climate crisis requires a radical solution in “The Keystone Test” [March 11/18]. But when it comes to coal-fired electricity plants, your solution isn’t radical enough. The answer isn’t improved emission standards; it’s the elimination of coal as a fuel. Utopian? Not in Ontario. By 2014, this province will have closed its entire fleet of coal-burning power facilities, which at their peak produced as much air pollution as 6 million cars. And many of the jobs connected to coal combustion will be preserved because the plants are not being destroyed; they’re being converted to burn cleaner things such as natural gas and sustainably harvested wood pellets. Ontario is proving that an advanced industrial economy can renounce the most climate-destructive fuel while still providing sufficient power. What we need from The Nation is not more discussion of emission standards but insistence that the “zero option” is now entirely viable. GIDEON FORMAN, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment Aquarian Love-Rock Be-In Oakland, Calif. About author Seth Rosenfeld’s letter on Berkeley in the late ’60s [March 11/18]: the writer either never attended a performance of the Living Theatre’s Paradise Now or didn’t understand what was going on. “Stripping down and lighting up” was not a disruption of the performance; it was one of the goals of the performance. Audience participation (of whatever kind) was what the theater troupe was trying to incite. It didn’t follow a typical script. DAVID WIDELOCK The Bureaucrats of Academe Amherst, Mass. After asking “When was the last time a college or university president produced an edgy piece of commentary, or took a daring stand on a contentious matter?” [“University Presidents—Speak Out!” March 11/18] Scott Sherman takes us way back to the presidencies of James Conant, Robert Hutchins, Kingman Brewster and Clark Kerr and, working his way up to the present, cites a few examples of leaders who have spoken out on issues that are “closer in to higher education.” He ends his timely and provocative piece by citing a 2001 article by Theodore Hesburgh, the former president of Notre Dame: “We cannot urge students to have the courage to speak out unless we are willing to do so ourselves.” In 1972, John William Ward, the president of Amherst College, said almost the same thing after taking a more daring stand than any of the men Sherman mentions. In May of that year, after having blocked traffic by sitting in at the entrance of Westover Air Force Base in nearby Chicopee, Massachusetts, to protest the Vietnam War, he was arrested for civil disobedience. Soon after, John Coleman, then president of Haverford College, wrote in The New York Times that Ward, along with Father Hesburgh, was “on his way into the leadership circle,” but warned that he would find it “a lonely place” once he got there. “Administrators now administer. They don’t lead,” he said. Sherman’s point. Ward’s example only strengthens it. KIM TOWNSEND Art in the Time of War Woodstock, Vt. James W. Loewen’s “At War With Art” [March 11/18] suggests that the Smithsonian exhibit “The Civil War and American Art” may have overstated, in his words, “the ambiguous relationship between art and history”—particularly in reference to Albert Bierstadt’s paintings of Yosemite Valley. Art was in fact a valuable ally to conservation. Carlton Watkins’s striking portfolio of mammoth photographs of Yosemite Valley was first exhibited in the East not long after the battle of Antietam. Frederick Law Olmsted pointed out in the preface to his 1865 Yosemite plan and report, “It was during one of the darkest hours, before Sherman had begun the march upon Atlanta or Grant his terrible movement through the Wilderness, when the paintings of Bierstadt and the photographs of Watkins, both productions of war time, had given to the people on the Atlantic some idea of the sublimity of the Yosemite.” In 1864, President Lincoln signed legislation setting aside Yosemite Valley for the benefit of the public, “inalienable for all time.” Olmsted, the visionary of Central Park, certainly understood and appreciated the extraordinary powers of scenery and art. Olmsted also believed that “establishment by government of great public grounds,” such as Yosemite, “for the free enjoyment of the people” did not stand apart from the Union war effort, but was consistent with Lincoln’s policies that redefined and expanded American freedom and the rewards of citizenship. ROLF DIAMANT Washington, D.C. James W. Loewen gave readers the impression that I have written about Reconstruction, particularly in relation to the exhibition “The Civil War and American Art.” I have not, and I did not. Furthermore, Mr. Loewen speculates on my educational background. This is the kind of unprofessional meandering I would expect from a drunken Facebook post, not The Nation. Of course, I would also expect you to assign art reviews to someone with a professional background in or demonstrated knowledge of art. TYLER GREEN Loewen Replies Washington, D.C. Creating Yosemite Park, like continuing work on the Capitol dome, showed we were functioning as a nation while fighting the war. Tyler Green praised “The Civil War and American Art” as a work of “American history.” He shouldn’t have. That was my conclusion when drunk on Facebook, and I stick by it today when sober on decaf. JAMES LOEWEN NB: In this review, an editor added that General Sherman burned Atlanta. Actually, 70 percent of Atlanta never burned. ‘Writing to Live’ Wiscasset, Me. “Safety Net” [Feb. 18], Holly Case’s review of Thomas Bernhard’s writing life, is warmhearted and accurate, a sober analysis of how a violent world leads to loss of personal and collective narrative. He could survive only by “living to write, writing to live” in a world gone mad. Our only hope is in the arts and with true Lebensmenschen. GLENN PLYLER
Mar 26, 2013 / Our Readers and James W. Loewen
Exchange: Does America Stand for Drones? Exchange: Does America Stand for Drones?
London When I was a child at the end of World War II, I was told the good guys won. Reading David Cole’s remarks on drones [“Remote Control Killing,” March 4], I wonder. He writes, “We should not confuse [drones] with assassinations and torture.” Why not? The concept of the “rule of law” he invokes is meaningless as long as the authority to kill without due process is public policy; worse when that authority resides in one man. What profiteth a nation to win a war against fascism only to adopt its policies? JEFFRY KAPLOW Kansas City, Mo. What has happened to The Nation? I wait for some discussion of the fascist takeover of our country and the world. When it was Bush, you covered crimes. Now with Obama, it’s just a slap on the wrist. David Cole, your legal affairs correspondent, says of drones, “We cannot forswear their use.” Yes, we must. Thanks to Katha Pollitt in the same issue, who writes more about the immorality of drones and kill lists. ELIZABETH SMITH New York City David Cole is right that there is something very wrong with the Obama administration’s “targeted killing” program. It is shrouded in unnecessary secrecy, but publicly available information makes clear that the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command have killed hundreds of people without knowing very much about who they are, what they’ve done or whether they present a direct threat to the United States. The administration’s former ambassador to Pakistan, who helped implement the targeted killing program there, has complained that the CIA regards “any male between the ages of 20 and 40” as a lawful target. The British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which tracks drone strikes, estimates that as many as 4,300 people have lost their lives to US drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Lindsey Graham, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says the number of dead is even higher. This is not only a human rights travesty; it is unwise and unlawful. Few things are more certain to swell the ranks of terrorist organizations than the perception that the United States is indifferent to the loss of innocent life. And international law is unambiguous: outside actual battlefields, lethal force may be used only against threats that are truly imminent, and then only as a last resort. The Justice Department white paper recently leaked to the press confirms that the administration’s targeted killing program does not observe these limits. For moral, strategic and legal reasons, the program should be made more discriminating and more transparent. As Cole says, it should also be subject to judicial review—which should take place in federal courts, not in a new security tribunal set up specifically to issue death warrants. The federal courts are accustomed to evaluating the government’s use of lethal force in a domestic law enforcement context. They have also become accustomed to evaluating the lawfulness of national security detentions. They could certainly review the lawfulness of targeted killings. Indeed, as the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights are arguing in a case pending before a district judge in Washington, the Constitution requires the courts to do so. There is no need for a new “kill court,” and the creation of such a court would be more likely to normalize the targeted killing program than to narrow it. JAMEEL JAFFER, deputy legal director American Civil Liberties Union New York City As David Cole rightly notes, targeted killing can be lawful when the United States is in an armed conflict. It can also be lawful if the United States is acting within constitutional and international law recognizing the right of national self-defense. We have faced wars and imminent attacks in the past; we will face them again. We need to have a clear process governing how targeting decisions are made and how those rules are enforced when we do. The US armed forces have such a process. The international law of war—embodied in treaties we have ratified, implemented through domestic regulations applicable force-wide—requires armed forces to establish systems of rules, training and discipline to make sure that targeting operations are conducted lawfully. The US military’s targeting doctrine, including its practices for how targets are chosen and checked, is designed to comply with this law and is available in a joint forces publication online. Members of the armed forces who violate orders within this system may be punished according to, among other things, the rules set forth by statute in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Civilians, at least in Afghanistan, who wrongfully suffer damage from attacks (including the families of those killed) can seek amends through various US compensation programs there. The military system is imperfect. Training requirements should be enhanced. Remedies for the wrongfully injured should be made more robust—including through the availability of civil remedies in US federal courts. But the current conflict has stretched the definition of what counts as an armed conflict, and who within it may be targeted; it is thus a policy-level responsibility to make clear and public which rules are applied. Still, there is a deep infrastructure not only of rules and regulations, but also of professional norms and culture here on which to build. In substantial contrast, the CIA’s targeting authority is not limited by the statute passed by Congress authorizing the use of force against Al Qaeda and associates. The CIA, from what can be intuited from its rare public statements, does not necessarily consider itself legally bound by the law of war. According to some reports, the CIA has its own “kill lists,” based on its own criteria, which are publicly unknown. How CIA targeting personnel are trained to comply with what rules there are, what measures of discipline they may be subject to if they do not, what kinds of compensation may be made available to those who wrongfully suffer a misdirected attack—all of these are unknown. It may be possible to develop an elaborate parallel system of rules, training and accountability mechanisms to ensure that the CIA complies at least to the same extent as the military with US and international law. Or there is another approach: relieve the CIA of its targeting mission. What do we lose? Not capacity—over the past decade, the CIA and the military have come to work closely in joint operations, and intelligence and force capabilities can be shared while keeping operations under military legal authority. Neither need we lose secrecy—the military has proven itself able to operate in a remarkably clandestine fashion. What of deniability—the fiction that if the CIA is doing it, the government is not officially, diplomatically responsible? There are circumstances in which that may matter. But today, there is no one in the world who doubts that the United States is responsible for the ongoing drone operations in, for example, the tribal areas in Pakistan. For the price of shedding this fig leaf of denial, we could begin to reclaim the mantle of law. DEBORAH PEARLSTEIN Cardozo School of Law Cole Replies Washington, D.C. Jeffry Kaplow and Elizabeth Smith equate targeted killing with fascism. That would make every country that has ever gone to war, even in self-defense, a fascist regime. There is plenty to be concerned about regarding Obama’s drone policy, but killing is a part of war and not in itself unlawful. Notably, both Jameel Jaffer and Deborah Pearlstein—one at the ACLU and the other formerly with Human Rights First—agree with me that targeted killing, unlike torture, is sometimes permissible. The issue is how broadly the administration is employing this power, and subject to what checks and balances. I agree that the administration’s program remains unacceptably shrouded in secrecy, that it goes too far in extending beyond the battlefield to situations that do not pose an immediate threat, and that the CIA, which lacks the structure, experience and rules of the military, should not be conducting strikes. I’m skeptical that the administration believes it can target “any male between the ages of 20 and 40.” If that is really the case, why the reportedly extensive internal wrangling over who should or should not be on a “kill list”? They’re not spending all that time debating their targets’ ages. But there are serious unanswered questions about the scope of the administration’s “signature strikes,” which target people based not on individualized intelligence, but on patterns of activity. What should be clear—and what is uniting not only human rights activists and civil libertarians, but also voices on the right such as Rand Paul—is that the executive branch cannot be allowed the authority to kill in secret, far beyond the battlefield, without clear rules and public accountability. DAVID COLE
Mar 20, 2013 / Our Readers and David Cole
Letters Letters
Immigration, second-class wages, torture and taboo
Mar 12, 2013 / Our Readers and Samuel Moyn
Exchange: Adrienne Rich—Fact Check Exchange: Adrienne Rich—Fact Check
Brooklyn, N.Y. I have always been a huge admirer of Ange Mlinko’s poetry and her shrewd criticism. But I must part ways with her opinions in her review of Adrienne Rich’s Later Poems, “Diagram This” [Feb. 18]. Mlinko uses swaths of my essay to buttress her point that Rich is no longer relevant to a younger generation of poets because that generation favors indeterminacy as opposed to Rich’s poetry of conviction. I’m afraid that Mlinko greatly misread my essay, which is in fact a celebration of Rich. Mlinko quotes me as follows: I “had a period when I reacted against her in college…. It was a reaction against white bourgeois feminists who assumed their plight was universal.” Mlinko does not include my rebuttal to my younger, knee-jerk self in the essay: “I misread her of course. It wasn’t until after college that I read ‘Diving Into the Wreck’ and I realized that her poetry was so breathtaking and so powerful because of her commitment to the collective.” I did imply that perhaps a younger generation does favor play over conviction, but this was actually an implied criticism of present trends in poetry. It was also an inward critical look at my own cynicism about poetry’s social function. “At such cynical moments,” I wrote in my essay, ”I turn to Rich for her courage.” But I would also caution against making such polarizing generational distinctions. There is so much negative capability in Rich’s poetry. Re-examine her “Twenty-One Love Poems,” which struggles to remake the sonnet so that it makes room for lesbian love. Read her open-ended ghazals and her “Phenomenology of Anger.” Her lines “quiver with equivocation,” but they also quiver with a rage that was not permitted in poetry. There is no irony in Rich’s writing, which is the largest distinction between her work and poetry like my own and some of my peers. But at the same time, she has inspired and continues to inspire legions of young poets. True, you will rarely see her being taught next to John Ashbery and Charles Olson in a graduate poetry seminar. But when I teach her in grad and undergrad workshops, students are awed by her poems and not just by her legacy. Rich had an omnivorously diverse aesthetic appetite—unlike some of the other “old guard” poets, she didn’t care about camps. What mattered was that the poem took risks conceptually and formally. She inspired an aesthetically diverse field of poets: Elizabeth Willis, Anne Waldman, Ed Pavlic, Peter Gizzi, Suzanne Gardinier and, yes, even Charles Bernstein. When I was in Cape Town, young South African poets all cited Rich as the American poet who inspired them the most. Her influence travels widely and divergently. I’m glad that Mlinko wrote the review. Debates should be generated from Rich’s poetry. Rich, in her poetry and as a poet, was divisive. She was not uniformly venerated; she did not play it safe or quietly wait her turn until she won her big awards. She pissed people off with her poetry, with her stances, with her contrarian opinions, with her strong conviction for justice. This is why she’s so important and why she’s been so transformative. It’s only appropriate, then, that Rich’s work continues to generate heated debate today. CATHY PARK HONG Paris; Wakefield, R.I.; Tarrytown, N.Y.; Brooklyn, N.Y. Ange Mlinko’s review includes a surprising number of factual errors. She refers to “poetry collections from younger white or Jewish poets whose emotional lives are inextricably bound up with new motherhood” and includes Brenda Shaughnessy. Leaving aside the peculiarity of “white or Jewish,” we note that Shaughnessy is neither. (It is opinion to add this, but to imply that younger women poets writing about motherhood are reacting against Rich seems peculiar: poets, not all “white or Jewish,” have been writing such work since the resurgence of the women’s movement in the 1970s.) Mlinko cites “Paul Valéry’s words to Edgar Degas: ‘A poem is not made of ideas, it is made of words.’” But it was Mallarmé who said, “Mais, Degas, ce n’est point avec des idées que l’on fait des vers…. C’est avec des mots.” Mlinko says “the famous sequence ‘Twenty-One Love Songs’ feels misnamed; these aren’t songs…but further meditations, addresses, in a rhetorical mode.” But the sequence is in fact titled “Twenty-One Love Poems” (and is referred to as such earlier in the review). “Feels misnamed”—but it’s Mlinko who does the misnaming. In addition to making these possibly trivial but cumulatively disconcerting errors, Mlinko quotes selectively from a recent essay by Cathy Park Hong. Claiming that younger poets are not influenced by Rich and are not attracted to the poetry of “commitment,” Mlinko writes, “Cathy Park Hong…has admitted that she ‘had a period when I reacted against her in college,’” but does not mention that further in her essay, Hong repudiates that view. Mlinko again quotes approvingly from Hong, who writes: “I thought about the word commitment. This is a word that rarely comes up in workshop. Instead, there is this word: play.” But, again, Hong is repudiating, not endorsing, this position. How could Mlinko have missed this? MARILYN HACKER, LINDA GARDINER, ALFRED CORN, JESSICA GREENBAUM, JESSICA REED Mlinko Replies Houston The letter writers are chagrined that their idol is not unequivocally praised in the pages of The Nation. But Marilyn Hacker et al. see animosity where none was intended. Going by Emily Dickinson’s criterion for poetry, I don’t feel as though the top of my head were taken off. Hong’s poetry does not “repudiate” the aesthetics of play—she is the very model of the linguistically playful, daring poet. I quote Hong’s first impressions of Rich’s work because it is a viewpoint shared by many (much as it may pain the letter writers to hear it). If Hong softened her stance, one cannot wholly discount the fact that Rich bestowed a huge prize on her and subsequently befriended her. This is not to disparage Hong, or to question her devotion to Rich, but to point out the obvious: having lunch with elders who give you prizes may have a mellowing effect on your aesthetic judgment. In any case, she didn’t feel the top of her head taken off at first read, either. If this is controversial, then as Hong suggests, let the controversy rage. The Shaughnessy criticism is trivial. Is she Japanese because she was born in Japan? Or Japanese-American because she was raised in the United States? If she is a Japanese-American poet, then I, with two immigrant parents, demand to be known henceforth as a Belorussian-Hungarian-American poet. Clarification on a Million Moms Katha Pollitt, in “Subject to Debate” [Aug. 27/Sept. 3], referred to the Million Mom March, in May 2000, as being “loosely tied to the Gore campaign.” The Nation confirms that this statement is not true. Donna Dees, who founded the Million Mom March and had a leadership role within it, has issued the following statement: “MMM was not connected to any political party, candidate or representative from the White House. In particular, MMM was not affiliated with Al Gore’s presidential campaign, and there is no basis in fact for any supposition to infer inappropriate political affiliations. MMM has always been an independent grassroots advocacy organization to promote sensible gun regulations, which include, but are not limited to, childproofing handguns, universal background checks on all gun sales, licensing gun owners and registering their firearms.”
Mar 5, 2013 / Our Readers and Ange Mlinko
Exchange: ‘Stripping Down and Lighting Up’ Exchange: ‘Stripping Down and Lighting Up’
San Francisco Steve Wasserman has taken liberties with history and with my book, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power [“Exit Stage Left,” Oct. 29, 2012]. Wasserman, a former Berkeley radical, opens his essay with an anecdote from 1969. He’d spent the day “battling cops” trying to quell a protest at UC Berkeley, and that evening attended the Living Theatre’s Paradise Now, a performance meant to shock with its outré references to pot and sex. Some in the audience disrupted the show by stripping down and lighting up (though Wasserman demurely doesn’t say if he joined in). “Bedazzled as we were by the spectacle of our own high ideals and the intoxications of making history,” he writes, “we perhaps might be forgiven for mistaking the theater in the streets as the main event.” This episode may reflect Wasserman’s experience of late ’60s Berkeley, but not the broader period I examined or the role of most students, professors and university officials targeted by the FBI. Subversives tells the story of J. Edgar Hoover’s covert operations at the University of California during the Cold War. It starts with the FBI’s investigation of Soviet nuclear espionage at Berkeley in the ’40s and shows how the bureau veered from this mission to focus on citizens engaged in constitutionally protected dissent. The book does this by tracing the FBI’s converging involvements with three iconic figures who clashed at Berkeley in the ’60s: the ambitious neophyte politician Ronald Reagan, the inspiring student leader Mario Savio and the liberal university president Clark Kerr. As the prologue notes, “It shows how the FBI’s dirty tricks at Berkeley helped fuel the student movement, damage the Democratic Party, launch Ronald Reagan’s political career, and exacerbate the nation’s continuing culture wars. Above all, it illustrates the dangers that the combination of secrecy and power pose to democracy, especially during turbulent times.” Wasserman shoots past all this, writing, “Did the bureau, despite its legal, extralegal and often criminal manipulations, actually bend history’s arrow? For all its provocations, did it really derail or significantly disrupt the New Left? Did it truly succeed in putting the kibosh on student protest? Was it an important factor in propelling Reagan to the pinnacle of power—a summit to which he somehow might not, on the strength of his own political genius, have risen? The answer, contre Rosenfeld, is no.” “History’s arrow” is a nice conceit, but history is not one archer and arrow but many archers and arrows. And in many instances, Hoover’s hidden hand did alter the arrow’s arc. Consider some 1,000 professors dismissed without due process under the FBI’s unauthorized Responsibilities Program in the ’50s. Or Kerr, whom Hoover undermined with the public, the regents and President Johnson, who dropped him as a cabinet candidate. Or the FBI’s steady leaking of allegations to political and media allies, which darkened public opinion of UC and helped build a conservative consensus, both of which benefited candidate Reagan. I don’t claim that the FBI “significantly disrupted” the New Left or put “the kibosh” on student protest. I do show that the FBI’s dirty tricks not only failed to stop the Free Speech Movement and other protests, but backfired and strengthened the student movement. Thus, Hoover inadvertently drew Savio to Berkeley. Nor do I say Reagan won office because of Hoover. I show that Reagan was an active informer in Hollywood, that Hoover repaid him with personal and political favors, and that this covert—and improper—relationship significantly influenced Reagan’s political transformation. Absurdly, Wasserman suggests I believe everyone named in FBI records was involved in un-American conspiracies. I make clear that the bureau focused on legitimate protest. (He even misses the title’s double entendre.) He complains I lack irony, but he’s being a trifle farinaceous. One needn’t begin passages with a neon “Ironically….” The facts speak for themselves, and readers may conclude certain events are “ironic”—or are the logical result of a dictatorial director demanding agents validate his undue obsession with subversives. Beginning my research in 1981, I knew Senator Frank Church had exposed FBI activities elsewhere, and I was inspired to investigate them at Berkeley. I brought five FOIA lawsuits over twenty-seven years and forced the FBI to release 300,000-plus pages. Wasserman suggests the FBI tried to thwart their release because they reveal the bureau’s “thoroughgoing incompetence.” Amusing, perhaps, but the courts overruled FBI secrecy claims after finding the investigations unlawful. As the judge concluded, “The records in this case go [to] the very essence of what the government was up to during a turbulent, historic period.” But contrary to Wasserman, I didn’t rely solely on them but also conducted more than 150 interviews and other research. Was the systemic political corruption of the FBI really a “sideshow” to the New Left’s protests? Many might say just the opposite. Why did Wasserman so bend his review? Is he still “bedazzled” by his own spectacle? Or is his motive manifest in his conclusion: “But we did not need Hoover’s hooligans to prompt us to embrace the terrible logic of politics as a total art form. We came all on our own to believe that only by increasingly provocative spectacle could the veil of public apathy be pierced. It is we who elevated extremism to the level of strategy. It was a dialectic of defeat.” Such “extremism” may have contributed to the New Left’s decline, but it wasn’t the style of most activists during the Cold War; and other forces may have played a greater role, including the end of the Vietnam War. And who’s to say the loose amalgam of the New Left was meant to become a political institution, as Wasserman suggests. There’s a strong argument, too, that the era’s tumult led to a more democratic society. But as Wasserman makes clear, his true aim was bashing the ’60s and indulging in public self-renunciation; perhaps he did get naked. SETH ROSENFELD Wasserman Replies New Haven, Conn. Gosh. Seth Rosenfeld is an exemplary reporter. Subversives is, as I wrote, “welcome,” “important” and “adds nuance and appalling detail” to our sense of the ’60s, “whose many tumults and contradictions still lie buried beneath a carapace of cliché.” I added, “Rosenfeld’s labors help to deepen our understanding,” and I praised his “admirable dedication” to exposing what the FBI tried to hide. Rosenfeld’s aggrieved letter gives me a chance to go further: his book is indispensable though flawed (how and to what degree are matters reasonable people may reasonably disagree about). Still, I urge everyone to read it—without, however, checking your critical faculties at the title page. Read it with an open mind, but not so open that, as the old adage warns, your brains fall out. STEVE WASSERMAN
Feb 19, 2013 / Seth Rosenfeld and Steve Wasserman
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Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld Safety Net: On Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld
In his writing and life, Thomas Bernhard led a charge in the opposite direction. His publisher always broke his fall.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Holly Case
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The Morgen Freiheit; let's get real on Cuba; Bach...
Jan 30, 2013 / Our Readers and Eric Alterman