Letters Letters
Lynched and Abandoned Peterborough, N.H. I was startled that in her otherwise heartfelt and astute reflection on the case of the Central Park Five [“Diary of a Mad Law Professor,” May 6], Patricia Williams neglected to mention Joan Didion’s exhaustive 1990 New York Review of Books essay on the crime, the trial, the city. From the “abstraction” of the victim to the “swirl of collateral news,” Didion dissected the improbabilities of the commentary and the case. Interestingly, in subsequent discussions of this case, Didion is rarely mentioned. Is this because she is not, to use Williams’s formulation for neglected skeptics, “poor and black and relentlessly mocked in the media as deluded apologists”? C.K. DORESKI Amherst, Mass. Patricia Williams wonders in “Lessons From the Central Park Five” if the film of that name “would be having the same reception had a black filmmaker made it,” as opposed to Ken Burns et al. The beauty of the film is that Burns lets the boys (now men) tell their story; Burns doesn’t do the telling. The same can be said of Burns’s Jazz. There were complaints from the black community that that movie, too, was made by a white filmmaker, but the musicians told their own story. Both stories were sitting there waiting to be told. Burns let it happen. FAYTHE TURNER Williams Replies Seattle My primary concern is what it takes, first, for a narrator to be heard and, second, to be heard as credible. It is true that Joan Didion’s excellent essay has enjoyed renewed attention since the PBS debut of Ken Burns’s The Central Park Five. At the time it was published, however, it was roundly denounced by readers of The New York Review of Books, who decried it in outraged, even vitriolic terms. But at least Didion had the power to get it published; and her literary virtuosity has ensured that it endures in collective memory, if underappreciated. If an artist like Didion faced such resistance to being heard about this case, what chance did the young defendants and their families have? Furthermore, I vehemently disagree that Burns “doesn’t do the telling.” His great gift is precisely in piecing narratives together beautifully and compellingly and so seamlessly that his skilled editing becomes all but invisible. That said, this was not a story “waiting to be told.” It has and had been told over and over and over—in the courts, in the media, in the streets, in the men’s nearly unremarked exoneration in 2002, as well as in Sarah Burns’s well-reviewed but generally unread book. So Ken Burns didn’t “let the stories be told”; he deployed his exceptional craft to let them be heard, and heard as credible. Burns is undoubtedly one of the best filmmakers who ever lived. But it should not require such a rarefied combination of artistry and (yes, race-gender-class) power to convince citizens to take note of what goes on in the name of our justice system. Bottom line: this is about real-life results, not the Oscars; and as of today, the City of New York continues to block, resist, drag out and refuse to settle a lawsuit filed by the five young men, as long ago as 2003, for wrongful prosecution. PATRICIA J. WILLIAMS Vanishing New York Hartford, Conn. I loved “The Gilded City,” your special issue on New York. As a New Yorker, I am biased, but I like to think the articles provide a historical picture that is really important for those who are nostalgic about the city as well as those who don’t know much about it. I grew up in Borough Park, went to neighborhood public schools (of course), took the bus to the public library on Thirteenth Avenue and the subway into Manhattan, even when I was young (we were very safe and independent), and graduated from Brooklyn College in the 1950s. My folks were immigrants from Russia and Poland and became very assimilated (my dad was a neighborhood air-raid warden in World War II). We were a blue-collar union family and always voted Democratic. I think my family was pretty typical. Times have changed enormously in New York City; that’s why it is particularly important to think historically. Thanks. MARCIA BOK Bronx, N.Y. I have seen in the Bronx that the gentrification described in your issue is pushing the poor north to upstate towns, where rents are much lower. And now these communities are experiencing some of the problems seen here in the 1970s and ’80s, especially the spike in violent crime. As a New Yorker, I am delighted that through my government employment program I can travel on public transportation for a dollar a trip and, through the local bus transfer system, as far as Rockland County, southern Connecticut and eastern Long Island for a little more; that I can attend great theater for $9 through the Theater Development Fund; that I can avail myself of free exercise classes, summer concerts and movies through the Parks Department; that I can attend free classical music recitals at the Mannes School or Juilliard; that I can read any book, delivered directly to my neighborhood library, through the public library system; and that I can pay less than $600 “maintenance” (rent) in a well-maintained, safe building in a Mitchell Lama co-op, provided I have the $15,000 deposit (which will be returned plus interest when I vacate). It grieves me, however, that those who truly need these free and low-cost amenities cannot afford to live in this incredible city and take advantage of them. SHARON BETH LONG Burp Rochester, N.Y. I commend Nation art critic Barry Schwabsky for his recent article “Sugar Rush and Stomachache” [May 6]. Sometimes when I read other art critics writing about the New Museum, I wonder whether we actually saw the same show! Barry is not afraid of observing the critic observing the art, therefore humanizing the experience. Not surprising was his annoyance at the lack of abstract painting (in “NYC 1993” at the New Museum), since he has so eloquently written about the art form in his books and articles. I always look forward to what he has to say. ALAN SINGER Launch a War; Win an Election Ottawa Alone amid the media hype, Maria Margaronis, in “Thatcherism Triumphant” [April 29], mentioned the sinking of the Belgrano—outside the exclusion zone, moving away from the Falklands toward the Argentine mainland. This event also sank any hope of a negotiated settlement, ensuring that there would be war, and won an election for Margaret Thatcher. It was either a war crime or an act of terrorism. Government officials have been hanged for less. JORDAN BISHOP
May 21, 2013 / Our Readers and Patricia J. Williams
Exchange—Mental Illness: Lighter and Darker Exchange—Mental Illness: Lighter and Darker
Mental Illness: Lighter and Darker Brooklyn, N.Y. Miriam Markowitz, in “Madness in the Method” [April 22], on the TV series Homeland, speaks with false authority about mental illness and risks perpetuating dangerous stereotypes. She positions herself as an informed liberal who cares about past fights for civil rights and religious and sexual freedoms, but then she writes, “Profoundly different from race, sexual orientation, gender or creed, the stigma surrounding mental illness contains a dark unknown that is real rather than socially constructed. Some (and by no means all) mental disorders, no matter how much light they may generate, contain voids darker than a terrorist’s hidey-hole. Manic flights, voices, paranoia, suicide—these are not just the outside pressures of a treacherous social landscape. They are contained within the self, and the traditional rhetoric of diversity and inclusion cannot accommodate them. The minds of people with mental disorders are not just like ours.” With this, Markowitz thoughtlessly diminishes people with mental health issues by implying that they deserve their marginalized status because they are different. This is offensive and embarrassing in the same way that ignorant statements from the past about people of color, women or LGBT people are offensive. I expect that in ten or fifteen years, statements like Markowitz’s will be scorned the way earlier statements about blacks being less than human—or that women cannot be trusted with the vote, or that gay people should not serve in the military—are scorned today. Similar statements about people with mental health problems, even though couched in liberal rhetoric, are also ignorant and discriminatory. [NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST] Richmond, Va. We believe that society should accept mental conditions the same way it accepts physical conditions. Whether or not Homeland is offensive to those diagnosed as bipolar is up to the individual with the condition. TV writers will dramatize any kind of situation to make compelling programming, regardless of how far it strays from plausibility. If one accepts Homeland’s depiction of the bipolar condition, one should consider it the reality of only one fictional character. One thing the show got right is that folks who are bipolar can be subject to a loss of trust in others and of legitimacy in the eyes of others, a core stigma of this condition. If there is something helpful about Homeland, it is that it shows this stigma in action. But what we’d love to see is a nation that is aware and accepting of those with mental issues so that when a person with such issues is featured in the media, it isn’t so unusual that an article is written about it. This awareness will come with exposure to, and learning from, those diagnosed with these conditions, and will bring an end to the stigma and mystery. Real change will come when we open up a dialogue with those suffering with mental issues instead of keeping them stigmatized and out of the conversation. So shows that bring such issues to the forefront could be a positive thing. GARY LLAMA Mind(ful) Liberation Project San Francisco In her treatise on the portrayal of mental disability in the hit television series Homeland, Miriam Markowitz makes a critical point that any fan of the show would likely nod in agreement with: that we as a society lose out when people with mental disabilities are isolated and excluded from the workforce. Markowitz notes the Catch-22 that people with mental disabilities face in making any disclosure to an employer. As Carrie experienced when the CIA discovered her mental disability in Homeland, any disability-related protections come at the price of losing one’s privacy and risking being viewed as a stereotype or a caricature. Although Homeland is fiction, many of our greatest creative thinkers—including Beethoven, Winston Churchill and J.K. Rowling—acknowledged having mental disabilities. When we stereotype and marginalize people with psychiatric disabilities, we not only harm individuals; we also risk the loss to society of the talent and insight that these people can contribute. This was done in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, with the resurrection of the long-debunked stereotype of people with mental disabilities as violent. We must not isolate and stigmatize those living with mental disabilities. Doing so only discourages them from seeking treatment, and from acknowledging their disability to family, friends and employers. SUSAN MIZNER, Disability Counsel American Civil Liberties Union Markowitz Replies New York City Like the first writer, I believe that in the future we will look back at this moment with shame and anger, or I hope we will, given the gross transgressions committed against those with mental illness—a population that is arguably the most powerless in the country—every day, but especially right now, in the wake of last year’s series of mass shootings. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have deflected responsibility for these tragedies by proposing new measures to identify “the dangerously mentally ill”—future Lanzas and Loughners—through laws that are unlikely to prevent another Newtown but would make it mandatory to report and database someone who has voluntarily hospitalized herself for, say, depression or anorexia. (In some states, these laws are already on the books.) It’s easy to blame a mad world on the mad, even though those with mental illness are far more likely to be the targets of violence than its perpetrators. Yet the crass, uninformed rhetoric surrounding mental illness may hold one kernel of truth: that “unquiet minds” are indeed different, and that to pretend they are not is silly and counterproductive. There is a clear connection between bipolar disorder and creativity, particularly in music and the language arts. (Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament is the seminal book on this topic.) The trope of the mad genius is not just a romantic idealization. Serious, well-designed studies have demonstrated that people with bipolar disorder are overrepresented in work in the creative arts, as are their first-degree relatives. Temple Grandin has become an unbelievably successful advocate for the autistic brain and its value to society, claiming that many of the great scientific minds of the past, present and future lie, as we now say, “on the spectrum.” The autism community has boldly suggested that mental disorders or illness may not represent pathology but rather neurodiversity. This sounds like a euphemism, but I believe they are right. There is ample evidence that in our society, which is still so enamored of that horrid corporate cliché, “thinking outside the box,” there are many who think not just outside it but around and through and beyond it; for them, the box does not exist. This is not to diminish the struggles of those with mental illness. The defunding of asylums and hospitals in the last century was widely hailed as a liberation, but many of these institutions provided humane care and a stopgap against destitution. Now a great number of the mentally ill reside in prisons or on the streets, and those who can access basic mental healthcare often find themselves fobbed off with fifteen minutes of face time and a handful of very expensive pills. As for “false authority,” the first writer knows nothing about my connection to mental illness professionally or personally, but the question of who is qualified to understand mental illness has long been debated, rarely productively. Can the mad know their madness better than the sane? I think they can and often do, and that sanity is an unfortunately rare quality in modern America, even among the neurotypical. The radical form of sanity that so many with mental illness must cultivate in order to live—despite and because of their brushes with madness—is remarkable, and a wonder in a world where not much is. MIRIAM MARKOWITZ
May 15, 2013 / Our Readers and Miriam Markowitz
Exchange: While We Wait for the Post-Patriarchy… Exchange: While We Wait for the Post-Patriarchy…
TheNation.com suffered a near meltdown from the firestorm of comments that erupted over Deborah Copaken Kogan’s “My So-Called Post-Feminist Lit Life” [April 29]. A few samples from the hundreds of offerings: “Amazing article. Brava.” “Brilliant and infuriating!” “I’ll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy. Wooooooooooo!!” “After millenniums of patriarchy the world isn’t going to change in just a few decades…. Give it a couple of hundred years.” “It seems we are as post-feminist as we are post-racist.” “You have earned my respect—as a writer, a feminist, a person. This piece is fantastic and moving, and your brutal honesty deserves applause.” “It bears pointing out that anytime a woman dares to have sex and complain about sexism, it strikes the biggest nerve.” “I hope you win that ‘prestigious if controversial’ British [women’s]literary prize.” “This piece rang so many bells I’m practically deafened.” “Thank you, thank you, thank you. This. Is. Necessary.” Some longer comments follow. —The Editors I applaud Kogan’s courage in writing the book that came to be called Shutterbabe. Titles are stuck on books by publishers against the will of the author—it has happened to me several times. Because she is female, her book was doomed to be reduced to sexploits. —Nina Burleigh As a photographer, I’m always interested in books about photos and photographers. I recently saw a copy of Shutterbabe and didn’t even pick it up because I made a snap judgment based on my visceral reaction to the title. Now I’ll look for that book again. —Byard Pidgeon I loved Shutterbabe—and so did many women I know. Yes, do start that women’s literary prize here in the United States. —Hannan Aron This is why so many women have decided to take their writing career into their own hands and self-publish. —Mona Karel You don’t need The New York Times. Reviews of books, movies, restaurants are irrelevant. You can skip that part of the dying infrastructure and get directly to the people who care with your dignity intact. —CoriNorthwest This article is fraud. Well-crafted fraud that fooled me, but fraud nonetheless. It is a clever rant against people who reviewed her books negatively…. Only someone fiendishly clever could make so many people sympathize so much with the problems of an Emmy-winning, bestselling, Harvard-educated journalist from the richest country in the world. Talk about privilege. —Johnasmithand Nation, you have really slid downhill printing the petulant complaints of a bestselling author who wishes she was a slightly more respected bestselling author. Every day I read indignant comments, articles and posts by successful, assertive, well-educated women who are kvetching that this, that or the other thing can, with absolute certainty, be attributed to the pernicious, institutional and yet somehow personally targeted sexism to which the complainer has fallen victim. Sorry, “girls,” this is just how things are. Sometimes you don’t get into the magazine. Sometimes you don’t get reviewed. Sometimes the promotion is denied you. And, male or female, if you talk about using sex as a medium of exchange, people are going to call that what it is. —Thesmophoriazusae “Sorry, ‘girls,’ this is just how things are.” Aw, thanks for mansplaining it to us! Our fwuffy widdle girly-brains needed that! —Origami_Isopod Carmichael, Calif. I was so relieved to see this essay, because it allowed me to believe that my failure wasn’t mine alone. Like Louisa May Alcott, I have been a “scribbler” all my life but have never been published. Kogan talked about the reviews in The Nation—men writing about books written by men—and I must confess that I often skip them. She also included a long list of women writers she’s been reading. My list, though not as high-brow, includes the likes of Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, Rita Mae Brown, Gwendoline Butler and Mary Daheim. GAYLE VOELLER New York City I am one of the book critics to whom Deborah Copaken Kogan refers. Readers can go to nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/4349 to see for themselves whether my 2001 review of Shutterbabe for New York magazine took Kogan’s book, and the issues it raised, seriously. I think it did. (For the record, I did not choose the titles of my New York mag reviews.) It was in response to my largely positive review—which gave tremendous credit to the book, and which I ended on a strong critical note only because I found Kogan’s climactic rhetoric about the joys of motherhood and family, and her pity for people who didn’t have children, to be disturbingly anti-feminist—that the author twice phoned me at my home to announce that she wanted to correct what she saw as my numerous misinterpretations. That episode ended in her mailing me a multi-page complaint pointing out all manner of sins against her book—not dissimilar, as I soon found out, to the complaints she was mailing or reciting to other reviewers and editors at the time. (Few authors that I know of have been heard out by offending reviewers and editors at comparable length, in fact.) This struck us as unfortunate: we felt that this first-time author, whose work we had all admired in various ways, was doing herself no great favors. And so I was impressed when, five years ago, Kogan e-mailed me a heartfelt apology for the behavior that she herself characterized as unprofessional. I now find it odd that her remorse has vanished and her resentment resurfaced at the moment her latest book has received a nomination for a women’s writing award. Her desire to cast her professional disappointments as a feminist story strikes me as insulting to genuine feminist concerns. DANIEL MENDELSOHN Brooklyn, N.Y. I wrote the Salon review (salon.com/ 2001/01/29/shutterbabe) Deborah Copaken Kogan references in her essay. It is hardly an example of slut-shaming, and it is not libelous, as Kogan alleges. These are serious things to be accused of. I have two questions: Where, exactly? And, if she felt so strongly about it, how come it took her twelve years to say something? Unlike Daniel Mendelsohn, I never received a phone call or a letter from Kogan—given his experience, I feel fortunate. As a successful author myself, though, I understand how painful it is to feel that a reviewer simply doesn’t get you and isn’t giving you, or your work, the credit you feel you are due. Contrary to what Kogan suggests, you don’t actually learn how to write a book in school—I certainly didn’t learn it that way; I learned to write my own book by doing, and redoing and redoing. After all of that, it is deeply wounding to feel that your efforts aren’t appreciated. But that’s disappointment. That’s not, as Mendelsohn smartly points out, a “feminist story.” And what it really isn’t—or shouldn’t be—is a marketing tool by which a successful author can promote her very real achievements by casting herself as the unfortunate victim of sexism. JANET REITMAN Kogan Replies Harlem, N.Y. Thank you, dear readers. I was floored by your generous and moving responses to this essay, which continue unabated even as I type this three weeks later. Tens of thousands of strangers from all over the world—men and women, young and old—have written either privately via e-mail or publicly via social media to express some version of “This made me cry” or “Thank you for writing” or “Don’t give up.” I heard you all, even if I didn’t have the wherewithal to respond personally to each missive. As for Daniel Mendelsohn and Janet Reitman, I’m sorry they felt the need to out themselves publicly. I purposely did not name them in my essay. It was not about them. It was about a quarter-century of working as a woman in a man’s world, in which their critique of my life choices and the unfortunate titles imposed on their work (“Battlefield Barbie” and “Bang-Bang Girl”) played just two small roles. I also don’t blame them for judging an author’s life—as opposed to her book—based on culturally ingrained stereotypes: the stay-at-home Madonna, in Mendelsohn’s case; the whore, in Reitman’s. I chose to lay myself bare, warts and all. I just didn’t expect to get judged for them. To set the record straight on Mendelsohn’s response: I never expressed pity for childless women. Nor would I. The passage in question can be found on pages 276–77 of Shutterbabe. The “multi-page complaint” to which Mendelsohn refers was two and a half pages, and it was both a thank-you letter for the positive review as well as a correction of factual inaccuracies. I recently dug up that letter. Here are a few condensed highlights: “Let me start off by saying thank you. Thank you for taking the time to read my book, for putting your thoughts to paper both eloquently and with great humor, for the many compliments, for your appreciation of my attitudes about sex and freedom. Let me also say that while I disagree with what you wrote about the last chapter of the book and, obviously, about my choices as a woman, I can understand from whence such sentiments spring. Family life, kids ain’t for everyone. But if you read the book carefully, I never said it was. Nor did I ever say I traded a career for motherhood.” Last, there were not multiple other letters. Just one, to the editors of Salon, in which I explained that it was offensive to call an author a stay-at-home mother and that I did not “screw half the foreign press.” With regard to Reitman’s letter, I’ll let The Nation’s online reader response to her questions stand, with one important caveat: I did not “screw strategically.” I never—ever—used my body or sexuality to gain access to a story. To posit otherwise or, worse, to base one’s argument on this false and damaging premise is the very definition of libel. Ironically, though I was worried about the public smearing that might ensue in the wake of the essay’s publication, it was only these two critics, Reitman’s editor at Salon, and their various social media acolytes who went on the offensive. I think it’s useful to share just one of those tweets, since erased by its author. I keep a screenshot of it on my desktop, a daily reminder of the ingenious ways we shame a woman’s voice into silence: “amen to broken records. I know Holocaust survivors who complain less than you, Deb. Genug!” For those not versed in German or Yiddish, that last word means “enough.” DEBORAH COPAKEN KOGAN
May 7, 2013 / Our Readers and Deborah Copaken Kogan
Letters Letters
Korea seen clearly, the poop on the pipeline, a blast of fresh arctic air, Jared Diamond, Anthony Lewis again
Apr 30, 2013 / Our Readers and Stephen Wertheim
Letters Letters
Whistleblowing while you work; jocks’ rape culture; gay marriage: outdated from the start?; Anthony Lewis and Noam Chomsky
Apr 23, 2013 / Our Readers and Eric Alterman
Letters Letters
Time to ditch the word ‘choice’?; act locally; the barbarism of empire; corrections and clarification
Apr 23, 2013 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Andrew Cuomo: Gov for All Seasons? Ithaca, N.Y. Eric Alterman describes Governor Andrew Cuomo’s response to global warming as progressive [“The Cuomo Conundrum,” April 8]. But Cuomo’s response to global warming is troubling. While he talks about it—which is a good thing—Cuomo is considering allowing the oil and gas industry to frack New York. Contrary to industry propaganda, fracking does not help reduce global warming. In fact, because fracking inevitably leaks methane—which exacerbates climate change much more than carbon dioxide—fracking is a major climate threat. Fortunately, Governor Cuomo has better, safer energy options. A recent peer-reviewed study by Cornell and Stanford scientists shows that New York could shift to renewable energy by 2030. Under the plan, 40 percent of energy would come from offshore wind farms, 10 percent from onshore wind farms, 38 percent from solar sources and 5.5 percent from hydroelectric plants. Not only is the plan good for public health and the environment; it is good for New York’s economy—creating 4.5 million construction jobs and 58,000 permanent jobs from the new energy facilities alone. The economic benefit of the plan is estimated at $314 billion during construction and $5.1 billion a year afterward. Governor Cuomo has the chance to be a true leader on climate change—if he stands up to the oil and gas industry and bans fracking in New York. Robert W. Howarth Washington, D.C. Eric Alterman says that Governor Cuomo need not worry about wealthy people fleeing New York State if taxes get too high. Perhaps not, though hedge-fund billionaire and lifelong New Yorker John Paulson publicly flirted with a move to Puerto Rico. I suspect he won’t be the last, especially if New York’s taxes, combined with federal ones, push upper-income New Yorkers into marginal rates exceeding 50 percent. But the real problem is not seen in booming Manhattan or gentrifying Brooklyn, where high taxes are outweighed by the attractions of city life. New York’s economic woes are exemplified by small cities like Poughkeepsie, Schenectady and Utica, and larger ones like Syracuse and Buffalo, which fifty years ago were thriving manufacturing centers but now languish, losing industries and people. Economic revival can be aided in such cities by state policies, such as university-connected business “incubators.” But if there is to be a real economic revival, it must be generated by entrepreneurial energy, by young people willing to start businesses and families in upstate New York. Anyone contemplating staying in or moving to, say, Utica, to start a business knows that he or she will pay higher taxes and deal with a tougher regulatory climate than in, say, Texas. Andrew Cuomo is not wrong to worry about such matters. And liberals should, too. Peter Connolly Victor, N.Y. “The complexity of the issue makes it easy for politicians to portray themselves as supporters of reform and then defang it behind closed doors,” says Eric Alterman about campaign finance reform in New York. And so it has been done. The NYS Fair Elections Bill being promoted by a broad coalition of good progressive organizations is doomed to fail, as it contains two fatal flaws. First, Citizens United did not bend the campaign cost curve even a smidgen. The increase in total spending in 2012 was predictable by extrapolation. The big difference was in the movement of money from direct contributions to outside groups. This proliferation of Super PACs and related organizations is poised to make a mockery of even ideal public financing schemes. With public funding available to all, a “corporate candidate” can refuse large direct contributions and use taxpayer money for direct campaign expenses, safe in the knowledge that his corporate godfathers will decimate his opponent with “independently” placed ads. What self-respecting capitalist would leave this perfectly legal savings opportunity in the public treasury? The avoidable flaw is of the back-room variety. Party leaders (viz., Sheldon Silver) have insisted that parties be allowed to help publicly funded candidates running on their tickets. Sounds like a reasonable point—until the limits are known. The way this bill is written, the parties reserve the right to contribute from $50,000 for assembly seats to an astonishing $2.5 million—each—for governor and lieutenant governor. This is money the parties get from the special interests the law aims to disempower! But its path to the publicly funded candidate is through the party bosses, exacerbating one of Albany’s biggest problems. This is a bill progressives should take the time to read and ponder before mindlessly supporting it. Samuel A. Fedele Breaking the Backbone of America Onancock, Va. William Greider’s “The New (Business) Left” [April 8] is a timely reminder that a great deal of what gets done in America happens outside Washington and New York. In the rural Virginia county where I live, much help for people in need is carried out by nonprofit groups and churches that stage fundraisers—from bake sales, to concerts, to golf tournaments, to spaghetti dinners. Often, small-business owners lead these events—like the chef who raises money for the food bank, or the financial planner who chairs the United Fund, or the factory owner who organizes a dinner for the Boys & Girls Club. And small-business people donate money, buy advertising in program booklets, provide materials at cost, and allow their business to be used for selling tickets or staging car washes. These people are fighting illiteracy, sheltering the homeless, protecting victims of domestic violence or paying electric bills for people in crisis. As Greider makes clear, small-business people are pretty much ignored by Washington. Our political class, including the current occupant of the White House and his team of Wall Street–admiring advisers, promote international big business to the detriment of local small business. Tilting the playing field this way will destroy most local businesses and discourage young people from starting new ones. Washington, which fails to tax the rich adequately as it cuts programs for those in need, is taking a box cutter to the social fabric of rural America. Haydon Rochester Jr. Typo Patrol A typo caused a “1” to go missing in Sarah Woolf’s “Noted” item [April 22], which stated that “only an estimated 1,500 of Warsaw’s Jews survived the Holocaust.” The estimate is actually 11,500.
Apr 17, 2013 / Our Readers
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