Exchange Exchange
Of Thee I Singh San Francisco I would like to point out some elementary factual errors in Martha Nussbaum’s review of Joseph Lelyveld’s biography of Mahatma Gandhi, “Gandhi and South Africa” [Oct. 31]. In it she compares India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to Gandhi. Nussbaum thinks Singh’s “dignified behavior” must “make Americans wonder how he ever could have won an election.” However, Singh is a member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Parliament, similar to the British House of Lords), where people are nominated, not elected. In fact, the only time he contested for the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament), he was unable to win the seat. Nussbaum also claims that Singh, along with Sonia Gandhi, “has refocused political energy on the plight of the poorest, devising the Rural Employment Guarantee and the new Right to Food program.” This is the same Singh who is the architect of India’s neoliberal reforms, which have, since the 1990s, devastated India’s countryside, resulting in massive agrarian distress. Public hospitals have never been in sorrier shape, while swanky private hospitals catering to foreigners and rich Indians are mushrooming. Nussbaum’s claim that Singh and Sonia Gandhi devised the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is also misleading. As Arundhati Roy points out in her excellent book Field Notes on Democracy: “Ironically the NREGA only made it through parliament because of pressure brought to bear on the UPA [United Progressive Alliance] government by the Left Front, and it must be said, by Sonia Gandhi. It was passed despite tremendous resistance from the mandarins of the free market within the Congress Party.” Although NREGA is considered a revolutionary act, it is simply crumbs the state throws to the masses, who are up in arms all over India, for all the devastation the act has caused. SANJEEV MAHAJAN Nussbaum Replies Chicago I am grateful for Sanjeev Mahajan’s views about the Congress Party, which of course are shared by many of its opponents. At the time of the 2008 election, Manmohan Singh had been named as the person who would be prime minister should Congress win a majority, and he campaigned with that understanding (and he was sitting prime minister). So voters knew that a vote for Congress was a vote for him to continue in that office. They voted; the party won; he continued as prime minister. That, to me, is an obvious sense of winning an election. As for the NREGA: Mahajan does not dispute that it is a laudable achievement; he only claims that it was supported by the left parties as well as Congress. However, the record shows that India’s poor are ill advised, at least today, to rely on the left parties. In West Bengal, the CPI-M (the leading left party) went to defeat this year after years of failure to deliver a reasonable level of health, education or employment; and that party’s compromises with corporate investors, resisted by local peasants, provoked ugly assaults by the CPI-M’s cadres, who shot unarmed peasants in the back (see my “Violence on the Left: Nandigram and the Communists of West Bengal,” Dissent, Spring 2008). I do not say this to praise the new (post-CPI-M) Bengal government, which surely has little to commend it. My point is that the left has not fulfilled its promises to the poor, while Congress, on the national level, has actually crafted and passed a major program, both admirable and practical. This program, as I said, was crafted by Jean Drèze, in collaboration with Sonia Gandhi. I admire Arundhati Roy’s skill as a writer and her moral intensity; but her nonfiction writings are highly polemical and should not be one’s only source of information for such matters. MARTHA NUSSBAUM We apologize for clipping the T off letter-writer James M. Voigt’s name [“Letters,” Nov. 28].
Nov 21, 2011 / Our Readers and Martha C. Nussbaum
Letters Letters
Compassionate Austerity New York City Ari Berman’s characterization of Pete Peterson as a proponent of austerity at all costs in “How the Austerity Class Rules Washington” [Nov. 7] is inaccurate and misleading. Peterson has stated many times that given the economic situation, we need a plan that stimulates short-term job creation while setting reasonable goals to reduce our long-term structural deficits. In addition to recognizing the need to create jobs now, the foundation and Peterson have consistently stated that our fiscal challenges must be addressed in a compassionate way that maintains a strong safety net. One of the primary goals of the foundation is to ensure that Social Security and other key safety net programs are strong, solvent and secure for future generations—particularly for America’s most vulnerable populations. While the article suggests that the Peterson Foundation funded the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission, a more accurate and responsible description would have noted that the foundation was one of a diverse group of organizations (including progressives) that donated staff and expertise to the commission. The foundation did not provide monetary support to the commission. The primary mission of the Peterson Foundation is to raise public awareness about debt and deficit issues, not to advocate specific solutions. We are pleased to have voices from across the political spectrum engage in this important conversation. That is why we are proud to provide grants to organizations with a broad range of opinions, including the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network. The foundation and Pete have publicly stated that given the magnitude of our fiscal challenges, no single solution can address these imbalances. All options, including tax increases, reductions in defense spending and a review of benefits for better-off Americans, must be part of a comprehensive reform plan. The foundation and Pete are dedicated to assisting with the development of a bipartisan consensus that puts the country on a more secure and sustainable fiscal path. If we fail to do so, we will put our safety net programs, our economic future and the future living standards of Americans at risk. LORETTA UCELLI, vice president Peter G. Peterson Foundation Berman Replies Washington, D.C. There is nothing inaccurate in my article or in my portrayal of the Peterson Foundation. I wrote that Peterson-backed groups had staffed the Bowles-Simpson commission and organized town hall events on its behalf, underwriting what was purported to be an independent government entity. The November 11, 2010, Washington Post reported that “the salaries of two senior staffers, Marc Goldwein and Ed Lorenzen, are paid by private groups that have previously advocated cuts to entitlement programs. Lorenzen is paid by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, while Goldwein is paid by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is also partly funded by the Peterson group.” Furthermore, the Post noted that America Speaks, which has received nearly $2.4 million from the Peterson Foundation, organized a twenty-city electronic town hall meeting for the commission in June 2010. “This is a truly unusual event,” added Mother Jones, “because it marks the first time a presidential commission’s activities are financed by a private group that has long been lobbying the government on the very subjects the commission is supposed to ‘study.’” The foundation did give $200,000 apiece to the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network (with grants to the conservative Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute); but that money pales in comparison with the millions it has donated to center-right groups like the Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Finally, one wonders about the Peterson Foundation’s commitment to “a strong safety net,” given that Peterson has called Social Security a “publicly subsidized vacation” and has spent a fortune distributing inaccurate and alarmist statistics about the program’s impending collapse [see William Greider, “The Man Who Wants to Loot Social Security,” March 2, 2009]. The fact is, the Social Security trust fund is fully solvent until 2038, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and does not add a dime to the deficit. The most pressing problem facing the country right now is not the debt and deficit or the so-called “entitlement” programs but our massive unemployment crisis. Putting people back to work is the best way to boost the economy and reduce the deficit. ARI BERMAN Wrong, You Writhing, Whingeing Wimps Sevierville, Tenn. I am compelled to respond to letters in the November 7 edition regarding this president. To the writer who wrote “I have no clue what the man stands for, what he believes in”: he obviously stands for and believes in a multitude of things the Republican/Tea Party doesn’t. For me, that is good enough. To the person who wrote “We were promised a Churchill, but we got a Chamberlain”: Churchill didn’t have his citizenship, religion and patriotism questioned; wasn’t black and wasn’t dealt a lousy, lazy governing body. This president is a model of decency, composure and intelligence leading a country that still loves to hate. To the person who wrote “Needless to say to most Nation readers, I am beyond disappointed”: disappointment doesn’t begin to describe the feeling I would have if this president isn’t re-elected. We are damned fortunate to have this man and his family in the White House. My question to all Nation readers is, What hopes and dreams does the alternative bring? Proud to say, without regrets or reservations, Obama 2012. WILLIAM DAYTON Duluth, Minn. I’m so astonished and infuriated by the whingeing tone of those who are “disappointed” in President Obama. He didn’t bring peace to the Middle East. He didn’t reverse climate change. He didn’t create jobs; he didn’t reduce the deficit; he didn’t close Guantánamo; and he shouldn’t have killed Osama bin Laden like that or interfered in Libya. He shouldn’t have let the Tea Party take the House, and he lost the filibuster-proof lead in the Senate. All by himself. What is wrong with you people? You’ll stay home and let the Perrys and the Romneys and the Cains run our nation? Please, please don’t do this. NORBERT HIRSCHHORN, MD Weathersfield, Vt. So Obama can’t walk on water. Boo-hoo. Are we going to vote for whichever clown the GOP chooses to oppose him? Or not at all (which will have the same effect)? CHRIS HARRIS Springfield, Va. Many liberals are so irate, they won’t vote for Obama in 2012. So, from the rest of us: many thanks for President Romney and his neocon foreign policy loons, his right-wing Supreme Court picks, Medicare vouchers, Social Security cuts, a terrified Hispanic community and so much more. KATHRYN THOMAS
Nov 16, 2011 / Our Readers and Ari Berman
Letters Letters
Class Warfare Starts at Home San Francisco Arab Spring and Occupy America—people are rising up to demand economic justice for all. For too long the mega-wealthy have ignored their responsibilities to The People who made them wealthy. Ninety-nine percent is a lot of dissatisfied people; we greatly outnumber the monied class. They cannot win; not even with bullets or bought politicians. GARY REGINALD DODGE Sprague River, Ore. We who support the Wall Street protest are misguided if we are waiting for the protesters to define the protest. Their job is to be place keepers on the street until the rest of us frame the point, from the safety of our homes and offices, free from pepper spray and police batons. It is our responsibility to do this—and we number in the millions! DON SCOTTEN Portland, Ore. I’ve been having buttons made that read “99%,” white on shiny black. I immediately recouped my original $50, paid out of my Social Security, and have reordered twice, turning it all into more buttons. I can’t keep up with the demand. I hope to make enough to give them away. Anyone can do this. I hope you will, all over the country. You can do it to make money if you’re broke, or simply to help create a way for ordinary workers to wear their opinion over their heart. The Occupy camps will come down or be destroyed. It is urgent that we who support them make ourselves known. GAIL AMARA In Living Black and White Portland, Ore. I wholeheartedly agree with Cliff Ulmer [“Letters,” Oct. 31]. I find your magazine plain, hard to read—dull. Like Ulmer, I’m a liberal and former print newsman. I won’t be renewing my subscription. That was a one-sentence paragraph, unlike the mega-sentence blocks of grayness favored by your editors. Count me as one of the ’60s pioneers introducing modular makeup, larger typefaces, fewer columns and increased use of graphics—designed to make news publications more readable and attractive. Your editors emulate textbook publishers by favoring drabness and vocabulary bloviation, forcing captive readers to experience eyestrain and routinely consult dictionaries. USA Today, a highly successful publication, captures a large readership because of visual appeal and brevity. And by acknowledging that readers have limited time to endure editorial roadblocks to the understanding of issues and events. JAMES M. VOIGT Port Jefferson, N.Y. I think The Nation is just fine without bells and whistles. The last thing it needs is to take up column space with gimmicks. I don’t buy it for colorful graphics; I buy it because it is the best damn alternative periodical out there (FYI, I also subscribe to In These Times, Extra!, The American Prospect and the Hightower Lowdown). KEN WISHNIA Fort Worth Cliff Ulmer says The Nation is dull and not “colorful.” Not one word on the excellent content inside, just carping about looks. If he wants flash with no substance, he need look no further than the current slate of Republican presidential candidates. JUDITH SPENCER Bethlehem, Pa. Regarding Cliff Ulmer’s suggestion that The Nation include cartoons, may I suggest he contact Funny Times (funnytimes.com). It features contributors like Dave Barry, Colin McEnroe and Will Durst in newspaper format. The many cartoons are sure to amuse any Nation reader. MATTHEW REPPERT
Nov 9, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Anita Hill: The Truth Hurt Cincinnati Re Patricia J. Williams’s “Twenty Years Later… We Still Believe Anita Hill” [Oct. 24]: we believe Anita Hill because she was telling the truth. The debacle surrounding her personal trials, along with the gross abuse of power shown by those sitting on the bench, are the legacy of the right wing of the current Court, eroding respect not only for their Court but for all courts—and, sadly, for the rule of law in this country. E.A. TAVERNER Marina del Rey, Calif. It has always seemed strange to me that in all the enraged talk about how the Senate Judiciary Committee savaged Anita Hill, nobody ever mentions who chaired that committee and allowed that to happen. It was none other than our esteemed vice president, Joe Biden. He is, in fact, the one most responsible for Hill’s shabby treatment and for Thomas’s confirmation. The Democrats had a majority in the Senate and could have blocked that appointment. Biden not only allowed that travesty; he voted for Thomas’s confirmation. So you can stop complaining that the Republicans gave us Clarence Thomas. SANFORD THIER Philadelphia In 1991, as a young twentysomething, I landed a job in investment banking and was grateful for the break. I soon found myself in the surreal situation of being chased around the desk, literally, by my boss, while Anita Hill’s testimony played in the background. I complained to no one and deflected his advances. I dreaded travel for work because of the inevitable grope. I invented social plans so I could find my own ride after meetings. I thought it horribly unfair that because of his behavior, I could be marked as a troublemaker, or worse: “Did she or didn’t she?” Meanwhile my boss derided Hill; if it was true, he said, why did she wait until now to speak up? If the subject of Anita Hill’s credibility ever comes up, I tell my story. I can imagine if my tormentor had remained an influence in my career how the stakes would have kept getting higher. I too would have kept quiet. However, if he were someday to verge on such a position of influence as Supreme Court justice, I knew I would be compelled to speak out—no matter how many years had passed. I am grateful to Anita Hill; I have defended her story with my own. Unfortunately, like so many pioneers, she took a bullet. As a young lawyer, she may have dreamed of one day sitting on the Supreme Court herself, not of being the subject of my “Anita Hill moment.” KATHY PUTNAM When America Didn’t Need to ‘Occupy’ Bellingham, Wash. My family lost their Kansas farm during the Great Depression. As tenant farmers, my parents lived with indebtedness until 1943, finally recovering from depression, dust, storms, grasshopper plagues and severe drought. Does the present government have any understanding of the anguish people go through when they lose their homes, their farms, their livelihoods? It does not seem so. In the early ’30s we had a president who gave us hope. In our little town of 600, federal assistance made it possible to construct an entire municipal sewer system to replace hundreds of unsanitary outdoor privies, while hiring dozens over an extended period. This resulted in jobs for carpenters and plumbers too. Some dozen women, including my widowed aunt (with four children), were employed in the “sewing room” making overalls and shirts for those who could not afford to buy them. My aunt was also the recipient of “commodities”—rice, grapefruit, canned meat, peanut butter, cornmeal and prunes. An older brother, a cousin and many other young men enrolled in the CCC and constructed a county lake, still in recreational use today. Another brother and cousin, both in high school, were paid to help elementary teachers grade papers. My father and other tenant farmers were hired to repair a bridge. Although we were very poor, we had the feeling that our government cared and was doing something about poverty and unemployment. In 2011 that feeling is gone. DON PILCHER It’s a Man’s World Out There Purchase, N.Y. In her “Subject to Debate” column “Ban Birth Control? They Wouldn’t Dare…” [Oct. 24], Katha Pollitt has it just right. I am a veteran of more than thirty years in the politics of reproductive rights, as co-founder and president of Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion. With men in charge, it’s always been their game, and women’s lives are at their mercy. Today, Republicans in Congress are ganging up to take even birth control (!) out of women’s reach. This should astonish and spark a reaction in the electorate, if only they knew about it. These GOP Congress members get away with it because the mainstream media, with some exceptions, choose to ignore it. In years of debating the opposition, I’ve heard them say one or another version of “they [women] had their fun; let them pay for it.” I have never forgotten the comment of a Long Island Republican on an antiabortion amendment to a Defense Department funding bill: “If a Peace Corps volunteer wants to have a roll in the hay with the local witch doctor, why should we pay for it?” Why do Republican women stand for such attitudes and policies? They avail themselves of the full range of reproductive healthcare the same as the rest of us. POLLY ROTHSTEIN Marine, You Funny Little Sunny Little… West Chester, Pa. If Marine Le Pen does not win the presidency of France, I wish she could run in the US [Agnès Catherine Poirier, “Can Marine Le Pen Win in France?” Oct. 24]. She is everything I’m looking for in a candidate and cannot find in either party here. She is strong, articulate and has very good ideas. ELAINE JACOBS Red Bluff, Calif. The progressive agenda advocated by a politician known for her right leaning reveals a democratic deficit here in the United States. It is hard to imagine any of our presidential candidates expressing similar views without being tarred, feathered and branded a commie pinko. JOE BAHLKE Keep On Trillin Cyberspace I dearly love Calvin Trillin’s lines. Poetically he well defines What it means to understand Political chicanery and underhand. I never miss his sterling verse. He says things well, and also terse. The Nation is my only bible— It’s full of news I consider reliable. And if Calvin T. should fail to appear In the Nation pages I so revere, I will immediately cancel my sub And drown myself in my own bathtub. ALICE F.
Nov 1, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Letter from prison; Keynes takes pains to ensure gains; living at the Post Office
Oct 25, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Mm-mm Good! Fairfield, Iowa I cannot thank you enough for your outstanding coverage of the global food movement [Oct. 3]. Here in Iowa, we are surrounded by industrialized agribusiness-as-usual and its seeming stranglehold on the state economy and our legislative processes. And yet we are also gifted with Practical Farmers of Iowa, Seed Savers Exchange, Jeffrey Smith and his leading-edge campaign for labeling foods containing GMOs, a fast-growing number of farmers’ markets, CSAs, food co-ops and grassroots organizations advocating “buy fresh, buy local.” There’s a lot of work to be done, but there are also many reasons for hope, which your world-class authors cited. PATRICK BOSOLD Just Deserts New York City Eric Alterman made a rare writing gaffe when he wrote of Keynes’s theories, “Data-wise, the proof has been in the pudding” [“The Liberal Media,” Sept. 19]. The correct aphorism is, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”—i.e., if you want to know how well a pudding or anything else stands up, test it. “The proof is in the pudding” makes no sense unless you are in the habit of hiding economic figures or other evidence in your dessert or side dish. That’s not how my mom made kugel. ROBERTA GOLD Alterman Replies New York City This really takes the cake… ERIC ALTERMAN Occupying Wall Street Audubon, N.J. Citizens gather in Liberty Plaza in New York City to protest the greed and corruption of Wall Street and its corrosive effects on our nation’s economy and well-being. We witness the spectacle of police guarding the bronze bull statue on Wall Street—a sight almost biblical in its significance. The powers that be order their enforcers, the police, to guard the Golden Calf in front of the Temple of Greed, where the elites worship their great gods: money, power, greed, envy and lust. It is easy to envision the rituals in the Temple of Greed: with hands in the air, the high priests and their followers chant, “More, more, more.” But more is never enough. RUDY AVIZIUS CartooNation! Ray City, Ga. I’m a liberal to the bone. That’s why I like your great magazine. But I can’t get into the look. The magazine is very, very plain. Lots of copy, small print. A guy my age finds it hard to read it. Also, there’s almost no photos! And where are the cartoons? People, those tea-baggers can make up ten pages of laffs. I’m a newspaper and magazine man from way back. Trust me when I say The Nation needs help, big time. Make it stand out, make it colorful. When someone picks it up, it should jump out at ‘em. If a magazine don’t grab you, you won’t read it. And worse, you won’t subscribe. I was about to, but I just could not get over how dull it looked. If you change the look, I sure will buy it—and so will others. Excelsior! CLIFF ULMER We hope Mr. Ulmer has reconsidered after taking a gander at our “Arab Awakening” issue, the food issue (pictured above) and after seeing last week’s cover. —The Editors What Rhymes With ‘Schnackenberg’? Lewiston, Me. On awakening and picking from a bedside bookshelf, I happened to find my copy of Heavenly Questions by Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Later that day, I was surprised and gratified to open The Nation to Susan Stewart’s excellent review of that book and three other fine volumes of elegies by American women [“Discandied,” Sept. 12]. Were the average voter so in tune with politics and the written arts as is The Nation, we might have a democracy worthy of the name. A quibble: did I hear some damning with faint praise in Stewart’s typification of Schnackenberg’s pentameter lines? “Unabated,” “relentless,” “startlingly graceful,” “nearly invisible” and “historically, scientifically and emotionally literate” might be more appropriate characterizations. Of course, you cannot convince me (and I’ve tried my damnedest to read them all) that Schnackenberg is not quite simply the greatest poet working in English today, and her expert handling of meter is at the heart of her talent. It should also be mentioned that she burst onto the scene (as much as any poet can “burst” onto such a widely neglected stage) with Laughing With One Eye in 1977, a superb small book of formal elegies about her father, Walter, a history professor. Collected with others as Portraits and Elegies in 1982, these poems are the summit of this genre in our literature. It seems that, sadly for her and impressively for the rest of us, no one in America has a better grip on what it means to be mortal than Gjertrud Schnackenberg. If Americans knew and regarded Schnackenberg (or even the comprehensively incisive Stewart, for that matter) with the same fervor and interest as they do, say, Kim Kardashian, this would be a culture and a country much more worth the saving. As it is, blind materialism, with its hostility to poetry, intellection, pure scientific inquiry and transcendence in any form, is destroying civilization, and the biosphere. Every emperor keeps fiddling, nonetheless—and who anymore can recite a favorite poem by heart? Hell, when’s The Nation’s swimsuit issue? MICHAEL T. CORRIGAN
Oct 11, 2011 / Our Readers and Eric Alterman
Letters Letters
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Obama? Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Of all the talking heads, William Greider comes closest to understanding the real function of the deficit/debt debate for Republicans [“Obama’s Bad Bargain,” Aug. 15/22]. Democrats must understand it in order to save our country. Greider nails it with: “The president has done grievous damage to the most vulnerable by trying to fight the GOP on its ground—accepting the premise that deficits and debt should be a national priority.” But even this falls far short of what Republicans are really after: profits. Huge, unimaginable profits. The government, starved by draconian cuts in “expenses,” will be unable to carry out its functions, which will then be privatized, sold off to corporations piece by piece. The grand prizes are Social Security and Medicare. Republicans have told us what they want to do to those programs, but always in terms of reducing the debt and never in terms of the real purpose: profit. Trillions of dollars from these programs would flow to Wall Street, banks and insurance companies, yielding windfall profits of trillions upon trillions, at enormous and debilitating expense to the poor and the middle class. The ruling class will have expanded its wealth and power to untold dimension. Greider identified the false front Republicans have used to frame this challenge and the gullible acceptance of it by Democrats, but he didn’t show why. THOMAS HUNTER Las Vegas As a liberal, I hate the deal President Obama agreed to. As an American who loves his country, right and wrong, I consider the Tea Party and its adjunct, the Republican Party, unpatriotic and anti-American for hating Obama more than they love their country. That said, when William Greider attacks Obama, I wonder whether he remembers a bill Obama pushed in 2009. It reformed healthcare. It wasn’t liberal enough, to be sure. But what did my friends on the left do? They attacked the bill rather than concentrating their fire on those opposed to healthcare reform. As the left formed itself into a circular firing squad, Republicans spread lies about “death panels.” The Tea Party became, sad to say, a force. For Greider to lament “the fearful possibility of right-wing crazies running the country” isn’t enough. When we contemplate those crazies, the left should look in the mirror. MICHAEL GREEN Cotuit, Mass. I thought Obama-bashing was Fox News territory. Too many liberal pundits are singing in that chorus. GOP speechwriters must be collecting anti-Obama clippings to quote in 2012. The Nation shouldn’t be feeding their files. RICHARD C. BARTLETT Denver We are bitterly divided, not unlike before the Civil War. But Lincoln had the vision and courage to say that secession simply was not an option. Yes, it led to war in the near term, but it put us back on track toward “a more perfect union” in the long term. Sometimes, strong leadership must trump an intransigent minority blocking the greater good. Obama squandered an opportunity to be a historic president. GARY MARTIN Charlottetown, P.E.I., Canada I find it difficult to understand why the president undermined his ability to bargain. As a fellow Alinsky veteran, I agree that one must negotiate from strength. Obama’s strength was his campaign’s galvanizing of the grassroots via the Internet, together with the fruits of Howard Dean’s hard work in reorganizing the Democratic Party on a local level. In 2009 Obama unaccountably got rid of Dean and the Internet organizers. Had he kept these populist sources, he would have been able to inspire floods of letters, e-mails, phone calls to Congress—a tactic successfully employed by FDR in the radio era—and the 2010 elections would have been a different story. JAMES MUNVES Brooklyn, N.Y. William Greider correctly notes Obama’s fabrication regarding Social Security’s contribution to the public debt. Greider also notes that the government borrowed the trust fund’s huge surplus to offset its red ink. This surplus, and extending the payroll tax to all earned income over $106,000 and applying it to disguised income in executive compensation, would come close to maintaining Social Security solvency until the baby boomers have been replaced by the baby bust generation. JEROME JOFFE Sierra Madre, Calif. William Greider is almost 100 percent dead on, especially when he says progressives have to pick a fight. Where I disagree is that the fight should be with Obama, within the party. My solution for true progressives is to challenge Obama in the primaries. We have some real progressives of proven talent we could enlist: Howard Dean, a guy with a lot of experience to whom presidential politics are not foreign. Russ Feingold, a great progressive leader. Bernie Sanders; he’d be dandy. MICHAEL A. MURPHY Randolph, N.J. William Greider concludes that progressives might have to pick a fight with their own party. This assumes that progressives have a place in the Democratic Party. With few exceptions, the party has shunned progressive positions for at least thirty years. How many times do the Rahm Emanuels of the world have to call progressives “fucking retards” before we once and for all abandon the Democrats? CHUCK AUGELLO Bristol, Ill. I go beyond Greider’s recommendations. The leaders of the Democratic Party should insist that President Obama not seek re-election. The remarkable successes of his presidency have been offset by equally remarkable failures. A possible loss is too much to be risked. As a public duty, he should announce that he will not seek re-election, turning over his campaign organization and treasury to Hillary Clinton. In other words, give the Republican Party its ultimate goal but on terms that assure its defeat in 2012. This is not to demean the president, who clearly deserves better. But a decision not to seek re-election would in time open a path to a long and deserved career in public affairs. JAMES VAN VLIET Columbus, Ohio Enough already with this hand-wringing over poor Obama being forced into a bad deal because the Republicans held the nation’s credit hostage. Yes, they did. Not surprising, since they’ve been saying since January that their first priority is to prevent his re-election and to “break him.” He passed up one opportunity after another to win this fight. Why wasn’t he out campaigning all year, explaining that the debt wasn’t a threat to the economy—instead of appointing the Catfood Commission to consider cuts to Medicare and Social Security? Why didn’t he insist on a debt-limit increase in return for extending the Bush tax cuts? Why didn’t he ask them to raise the limit instead of negotiating with the Republicans? And why wasn’t he doing his job last year, slapping down the nonsense being spewed out by the Tea Partiers instead of sitting in his ivory tower and letting the Republicans win the House? Americans will suffer from the cuts Obama himself proposed, the ones he agreed to and the ones the new Catfood Committee will make. Obama isn’t the victim here. LINDA SLEFFEL Greider Replies Washington, D.C. Who knows?—when President Obama executed his recent turn to the left, he might have been influenced by some of us “whining” liberals who support him. Now is a good moment to make ourselves even more bothersome. Obama has made a start toward a more aggressive agenda. People should keep pushing him toward more ambitious and substantive ideas. WILLIAM GREIDER Hello Kitty! Tempe, Ariz. I am so enamored of the new crossword compilers that I have named my two kittens for them—Joshua and Henri! JAN HOSSIENZADEH
Oct 4, 2011 / Our Readers and William Greider
Letters Letters
Kudos on ‘Arab Awakening’ Shoreline, Wash. Your special issue on the Arab Awakening [Sept. 12] is one of the best in years. Great in-depth coverage we’ll never get in the commercial press, giving real dimension to the various movements and changes in the Middle East and North Africa. Thanks to all your contributors and editors. CHRIS NIELSEN Love and Honor but, Above All, Obey Shippensburg, Pa. Katha Pollitt’s examination of the contradictions in which Michele Bachmann has become enmeshed—putting herself forth as a leader while at the same time holding to St. Paul’s directive that wives be submissive to their husbands—is right on target; it reminds me of the heartfelt denunciations decades ago by a bestselling novelist of such biblical passages [“Subject to Debate,” Sept. 12]. Pearl S. Buck, who grew up in China the child of American missionaries and who knew a thing or two about the fundamentalist mindset, wrote in her bittersweet 1936 biography of her mother, The Exile: “Since those days when I saw all her nature dimmed I have hated Saint Paul with all my heart and so must all true women hate him, I think, because of what he has done in the past to women like Carie [Buck’s mother], proud free-born women, yet damned by their very womanhood.” In his February 12, 1936, review of the book in The Nation, Mark Van Doren quoted these powerful lines, which are, unfortunately, back in the news long after we would have thought they’d be relevant only to historians. ROBERT SHAFFER Shrinking Prisons? Ionia, Mich. The Sentencing Project’s report that Michigan “has closed twenty-one facilities” since 2002 is misleading [“Noted,” Sept. 12]. I have watched from the inside for twenty-nine years. Many of the reported closures have simply been consolidations. In the 1980s and ’90s Michigan built regional brick-and-concrete prisons (population about 1,200) with adjoining “temporary” prisons (pole barns, population about 1,000). Many of the temps have been closed on paper in the past decade and placed under the administration of the adjoining regional. The total population of the remaining prison is the sum of the temp and the regional. People are still in the beds of these “closed” prisons. RAYMOND C. WALEN JR. Bigots Turn on the Spigots Los Angeles Mark Oppenheimer needs to spend less time reading philosophy and more time reading the newspaper [“Sentimentality or Honesty?” Aug. 29/Sept. 5]. He claims that in the United States “even outright bigots tend not to think anymore that their bigotry should be written into the law” and that “America pretty uniformly sides with liberal democracy.” Is Oppenheimer oblivious of the fact that in a convulsion of Islamophobia, bigots in more than twenty-one states are pushing legislation to ban Sharia? Or that across the country bigots have tried to write their bigotry into law by persuading zoning boards and land commissions to block the building of mosques? We have a long way to go before we can blithely conclude that America uniformly sides with liberal democracy. STEPHEN ROHDE Oppenheimer Replies New Haven, Conn. I am grateful for Stephen Rohde’s letter, a useful reminder that many Americans, in particular Muslims, still face bigotry. I do not think I was being “blithe” when I wrote that in the United States the bigots “tend” not to push laws promulgating bigotry; a useful contrast would be France, where the movement to ban the burqa has wide and vocal support, or Germany, which truly oppresses Scientologists. In America, what is extraordinary are not the predictable outbursts of xenophobia but the strong resistance to them. We Americans get a lot wrong—our wars, our drug laws, our tax code—but we get religious liberty right. MARK OPPENHEIMER Spirit of Japan Laramie, Wyo. Re Hitonari Tsuji’s contribution to “Life After Fukushima” [Aug. 29/Sept.5]: What a beautiful way to express conditions in Japan after the double disasters of March. Tsuji’s words sum up for me what I have always felt was, and is, the spirit of the Japanese people. His words moved me as words have not done for a long time. “Even in the flood zone thick with mud, the cherry blossoms bloomed.” I hope they will continue to do so for a very long time. JO AELFWINE Easy Writer Gunbarrel, Colo. Kudos to The Nation for running Heather Hendershot’s meaty arts piece on the BBS boxed set from Criterion [“Losers Take All,” May 30]. While Hendershot’s otherwise freewheeling and perceptive analysis is focused on the “rise and fall” of the New American Cinema of the late ’60s and early ’70s and the “heroic new directors” who led the charge, nowhere are writers to be found in her mythological remixing. Saying Easy Rider “owes its coherence entirely to Nicholson’s performance” roils the ghost of Terry Southern—who based the George Hanson character on a Faulkner archetype miles beyond Hopper’s or Fonda’s literary ken. My father’s deft touch (much sought-after at the time) is evident throughout the film—from its American gothic tone and “iron in the soul” world-weary hipsterdom to the clear-speaking, dope-infused dialogue (also found in Terry’s Red Dirt Marijuana) that lyrically articulates the irrelevance and danger of establishment culture’s lingering and violent prejudices. As the creative team’s “elder,” and the only one with credibility at the time, Terry provided cohesion on the page and on the set, and helped secure Academy Award nominations for all three “writers.” While the BBS story is inspiring, my father’s oft-forgotten producing role on Easy Rider is a dark unspoken mark against the Raybert team—their decision to cut him out of their “big score” with Columbia clearly paved the way for what nice guys could expect from old friends in the new era of independent film. NILE SOUTHERN Hendershot Replies Brooklyn, N.Y. Terry Southern was undoubtedly treated poorly by Raybert (the predecessor to BBS), as well as by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. One suspects that much of the blame lay with Hopper, whose behavior teetered between erratic and psychotic throughout the production of the film. A fully verifiable account of l’affaire Southern will probably never emerge, given that so many of the witnesses were high as events unfolded; but the upshot is indisputable: Southern received a flat fee and no share of the film’s impressive box office profits. Regardless of who really wrote Easy Rider and who deserved credit (or cold hard cash), though, I would maintain that the film’s strength is not its script. Some of the dialogue may be clever, but much of it is sluggish and heavy-handed, and the plot is underwhelming. The film’s photography and music are responsible for most of its compelling moments. Nicholson brings terrific energy to the picture as well, playing a character with only a modicum of screen time and not enough depth to evoke Faulkner, for this viewer at least. Nile Southern is quite right, though, to observe that the New American Cinema was not a utopia of “nice guys.” Their treatment of the women in their lives was particularly reprehensible. Luckily, the films often transcended the flaws of their makers. HEATHER HENDERSHOT Correction Patricia J. Williams’s column “Sex, Lies and the DSK Case” [Sept. 19] contained an inaccuracy regarding Nafissatou Diallo’s asylum application. Diallo did not lie on her application about being gang-raped in Guinea. Rather, she falsely claimed to prosecutors that she had been gang-raped and that she had reported the fabricated incident on her asylum application.
Sep 27, 2011 / Our Readers, Mark Oppenheimer, and Heather Hendershot
Letters Letters
Readers respond to the August 15/22 special issue on sports—only the second in the history of the magazine.
Sep 20, 2011 / Our Readers