Letters Letters
Energy Justice Cataumet, Mass. American progressives are still in denial about energy policy [Mark Hertsgaard, “The Cancún Compromise,” Jan. 3]. Even The Nation publishes commentary about climate change without acknowledging that there are millions of people in the world who need to increase their use of energy in order to live with some measure of dignity. Terms like “fuel poverty,” “energy poverty” and “energy justice” are seldom seen in US publications. In the 1930s, the left fought for electrification and enlightenment. Voters were excited about energy justice. Nowadays, self-styled liberals throw cold water on the world, saying, “Stop wasting energy. Turn out the lights.” If this is liberalism, Thomas Malthus and Ebenezer Scrooge were liberal prophets. Bah, humbug. Robert F. Murphy Tiptoeing the Af-Pak Tightrope St. Louis Anatol Lieven’s analysis of the Afghan/Pakistani puzzle, “How the Afghan Counterinsurgency Threatens Pakistan” [Jan. 3], is among the very best I have seen. He mentions one important variable I haven’t noticed elsewhere regarding Pakistan’s reluctance to suppress the North Waziristan Afghan Taliban, who use this border region as their rear area bolt-hole. Beyond the more recognized desire of the Pakistanis to preserve the Afghan Taliban as a rear reserve force for possible conflict with India, Lieven mentions that such a military move would be so unpopular as to create a grave government crisis. And he is right to argue that developments in Pakistan are far more important to US and Western security in the long run. Another point, perhaps speculative but worth concern: President Karzai may be unenthusiastic and even foot-dragging about the fundamental US goal of “standing up” the Afghan army (and police) to take on the Taliban. Aside from the questionable cultural mechanics of the Afghan army’s training, Karzai may suspect, and fear, the loyalty and motivation of a large semimodern army largely made up of recruits from the non-Pashtun minorities. Past coups still echo. In the face of somber analyses on “unwinnability,” President Obama is sending in 1,200 more troops to keep fighting during the winter off-season, perhaps to catch the Taliban hibernating or as an easy way to occupy vacated land. This sounds like one of the serial gimmicks General Petraeus keeps pulling out of the “throw it against the wall” bag of bootless ideas, perhaps for a meager but meaningless uptick in Taliban casualties. AL EDGELL Copyright? How Quaint New Orleans What is most disheartening about the letters [“Exchange,” Dec. 27] published in response to “The Pirate’s Prophet” [Nov. 15] and the piece itself is that the whole conversation takes for granted that no kind of culture worth having could grow or survive in the absence of copyright, the free market, the profit motive. Is this really the sine qua non of the artistic impulse, of the human spirit? This seems to be the animating principle of this argument, which has found a strange berth in The Nation. Or is merely to ask such a question hopelessly naïve, “anarchistic” or, most shameful, “romantic”? And how is it that these terms (in various dreary permutations) pass for reasoned argument, as though they were shorthand for some unassailable argument or commonplace of everyday wisdom that only fools such as I could possibly be unaware of? Bottom line: is it a historical fact that culture—the sort of culture our own wan culture supposedly reveres—is viable only under the aegis of copyright and capitalism? It is not a fact, and even Wallace-Wells’s examples tell against his assumption. This whole debate savors of a gaggle of myopic theologians straining to see how many angels they can find dancing on the head of a pin. A lot of us are waiting for somebody to make the pronouncement: “Could it be possible? These old saints in the forest have not yet heard anything of this, that copyright is dead!” RUBY QUINCUNX Shoot Me Now Carlsbad, N.M. It’s so much fun reading The Nation. It’s a way to get all fired up to do something about the dire situation we find ourselves in. So many fronts require attention—the wars; joblessness; homelessness; lack of healthcare and unions; dwindling resources; out-of-control corporations, banks and Wall Street; misguided education policies; immigration reform; poverty; tax cuts for the superwealthy but budget cuts to social programs. If only we could muster the will to get out there and take to the streets, contact our Congress members, make phone calls, write letters, donate to all the causes. But how do you do all that when you’re working multiple low-paying jobs; are sick because you don’t have the money to see a doctor and are stuck eating low-quality, pesticide-laden GMO foods that make you sicker; are being foreclosed upon and are looking for a cheap motel to park your family in; or are worried about your son or daughter who is fighting for questionable reasons in far-off lands because he/she couldn’t get loans to go to college and can’t get scholarships because public education is so lacking; feel apathetic about politics because the people you vote for turn out to be different from what you hoped. Tell those neocons who want to start yet another bankrupting war, this time in Iran, to do it themselves [Robert Dreyfuss, “The Hawks Call for War Against Iran,” Dec. 20]—we the people don’t have the money or the time. MARGARET BARRY American Apparatchik Ann Arbor, Mich. In his superb review of the recently republished writings of Vasily Grossman [“The Maximalist,” Dec. 20], Jochen Hellbeck says that a Grossman story showing the “corrosive impact of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on the crew of the Enola Gay” had been “inexplicably left out of the present collection.” But Hellbeck also notes that the US editor of the Grossman volumes, Robert Chandler, retailed a false description of the Ukraine famine under Stalin that aligned with the propaganda of Ukrainian right-wingers. Bear those two editorial choices in mind and the omission of the story is no longer “inexplicable.” Grossman was anti-totalitarian but not anti-socialist. He was not a cold warrior. But clearly Chandler is. He preferred, like an American version of a Soviet cultural apparatchik, to censor Grossman rather than to expose readers to Grossman’s critique of the potential for totalitarianism inherent in US imperialism. JOHN WOODFORD For Crying Out Loud Winter Park, Fla. How about this for a slogan? “Speaker Boehner—a crying shame” [“Letters,” Jan. 31]. ROBERT J. HAVEL
Jan 27, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
These Are Your Letters on Drugs Noti, Ore. Thanks for devoting a special issue to the "war on drugs" [Dec. 27], a maladaptive, bigoted, dishonest and unjust policy that has been running for decades. When alcohol-consuming legislators decide their substance is the one acceptable choice, and they seek to punish all for the problems of a few, we have a hypocritical policy. Silence implies consent for its dishonesty, injustice and prejudice and the persecution of the people imprisoned because of it. Speaking out for drug policy justice shows real courage. R.C. STILWELL Alexandria, Va. Tracy Velázquez, in "The Verdict on Drug Courts," acknowledges that drug courts save lives but feels the money could be better spent on other community programs. Science says otherwise. Two decades of rigorous research—including a nationwide study sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, hundreds of evaluations and five meta-analyses (advanced statistical procedures)—prove beyond a reasonable doubt that drug courts outperform all other programs for addicted offenders. For every $1 invested in drug courts, taxpayers reap at least $2 to $3 in net economic benefits, often considerably more. It is naïve to expect the same results without the backing of a judge. Outside the courts, 25 percent of addicted offenders never enroll in treatment and another 50 percent drop out. Less than 5 percent achieve long-term sobriety. Drug courts double, triple and even quadruple the odds of success. Requiring a guilty plea is one critical ingredient. People who have hurt themselves and others are given a choice: go to trial or go to treatment. If they choose treatment, the guilty plea provides just the right leverage to keep them coming back when the cravings, withdrawal symptoms and drug-using lifestyle beckon. And after they have succeeded in treatment, the guilty plea and its consequences are withdrawn. Drug courts draw on and expand the resources in their communities. No services are usurped and no one is arrested who would not otherwise have been arrested if the drug court never existed. Let's face it, substance abuse treatment professionals have little public recognition and almost no political influence. But in partnership with the courts, they can effect real change. Decades of political anomie are fading away as these professionals are making a real difference that can be felt at the societal level. Why would Velázquez want to turn back the clock? DOUGLAS B. MARLOWE National Association of Drug Court Professionals Velázquez Replies Washington, D.C. Doug Marlowe's comments miss my point: drug courts are an expensive attempt to use the justice system to fix a public health problem. He tries to address their expense by restating that they have greater benefits than costs, but the reality is that treatment in the community produces $18 in benefits for every dollar spent, clearly an exponentially greater benefit. Perhaps if the public were more aware of this value, treatment providers wouldn't, as Marlowe suggests, need the justice system to validate their worth! And recent experiences in places like Denver counter Marlowe's assertion that drug courts don't cause more arrests. A judge there reported that the number of criminal drug filings increased three times in the two years following the implementation of the drug court, while the number of drug admissions to prison doubled. With corrections costs already straining state budgets, we just can't afford to continue dealing with addiction as a crime. Threatening people with legal sanctions and coercing them to engage in treatment would not be OK for any other public health issue, even those, like obesity, with social costs rivaling or surpassing illegal drug use. And it's not the way people with means generally get to handle their own or a family member's addiction. "Old school" is to think the justice system can solve our social problems; let's move to a paradigm where our resources are focused where they do the most good, namely on front-end social investments that improve the well-being of people and their communities. TRACY VELÁZQUEZ, executive director Justice Policy Institute More of Our Readers on Drugs… Brooklyn, N.Y. In "Obama's Drug War" Michelle Alexander unfortunately ignores important antiracist, budget-based antiprison organizing. As the prison system has metastasized, spending on cages and cops has drained funds from education, housing, health and other programs. The burden of such cuts falls on poor people of color—the same people being rounded up to fill America's new prisons. Antiprison activists are making common cause with advocates for public schools, health and housing programs, aiming to shrink the prison system and channel funding spent on prisons toward programs that meet the needs of our most vulnerable residents. We're not worried that the race card
will be played. It is played daily in courts, police stations and prisons. Our protection against the next "Willie Horton" ad will come from work that insists that public safety is a matter of more preschools, not more cops; of more health clinics, not more prisons. Such antiracist, budget-based, antiprison organizing provides fertile ground where a large-scale movement to transform the New Jim Crow state can grow. CRAIG GILMORE California Prison Moratorium Project Fort Bragg, Calif. Living happily in the pot culture here in the Emerald Triangle of cannabis cultivation, I was interested in Sasha Abramsky's "Altered State." I voted against Prop 19—pot's virtually legal here as it is. I agree that the local economy would be decimated if Big Tobacco moved in, and I, too, have heard that it is already acquiring land. My greatest concern is for the health of this planet, related to the GMO revolution. The reason Big Tobacco and the medical-industrial complex are so threatened by cannabis is that anyone can throw a few seeds in his backyard and have enough supply for a year. The craze over the miraculous healing from cannabis oil is all over the Internet and is fueling the AMA and Big Pharma to gain control over another inalienable right—to grow our own God-given herb for personal health and well-being. GE companies like Monsanto are already on their way to holding the patents on all plants in our food chain, and this would be another coup for control of our choice in safe health remedies. Just one dusting of "terminator pollen" would wipe out any independent outdoor grower. I am not naïve; we're heading toward legalization. But I would send an urgent message to start growing seed crops indoors. And let's all keep fighting hard against genetic pollution. KIM CASTILLA Lakeside, Calif. Altered states, pleasure, pain management and the pursuit of meaning have always been central to the richness of life. The list of these pursuits dwarfs our Calvinist preoccupation with drugs: sexual intimacy; religious mysticism; danger and violence; entertainment and sports; the arts and intellectual pursuits; lifelong hobbies ["Rebalancing Drug Policy"]. All drug use, including drinking and smoking, certainly needs to be approached with care. But as we rationally require drivers, pilots and gun owners to have training and licenses, we could choose to distribute drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) in a rational manner. Prescribing specialists would provide access and science-based information on safe use, health consequences and treatment. As with tobacco, costs would be kept high enough to minimize harmful use and low enough to suppress criminal enterprises. Manufacture and distribution would be provided by contractors, free of promotion by corporations and street dealers. Economic and social costs would be much lower than incarceration and current public health outcomes; drug-related crime and violence would be largely eliminated. Drug use will not go away; Prohibition taught us that. We have eaten fruit from the tree of knowledge, and more than ever we understand the biochemistry of our pleasures. Rational solutions are abundant. We need the political will to choose sensible policies. RUSSELL DEHNEL
Jan 19, 2011 / Our Readers and Tracy Velázquez
Letters Letters
Cruciverbalists Over Easy Berkeley, Calif. I'm a cryptic crossword constructor/editor and a member of a group of two to eight or more that has met weekends since 1982 to solve Frank Lewis's puzzles over breakfast. As an American cryptic crossword constructor, Lewis stood alone: he was in this business far longer than any of us, he constructed more cryptics than any of us and his puzzles were exceptional [Judith Long, "A Puzzler's Puzzler," Dec. 20]. Easy cryptic crosswords limit themselves to a narrow vocabulary and have a rigid cluing style that makes them trivial and, to be honest, boring for experienced solvers. Difficult cryptics are impenetrable to beginners. But Lewis's puzzles have a unique freewheeling quality—he adhered to his own rules, and his clues were the great equalizer, challenging to the experienced and beginners alike. Also, his entries encompassed a vast vocabulary and many areas of knowledge. For these reasons, Lewis's cryptics were ideal for group solving. We often cursed him, but we never got tired of his puzzles. As my cryptic colleague Joshua Kosman put it, Lewis was "candid, ageless at heart and uncannily wise. (5,5)" HENRI PICCIOTTO Boulder, Colo. Ah, the sad state of classical education, even among our heroes. I'm afraid there is confusion in the crossword puzzle of December 20, 1975, reprinted in the December 20, 2010, issue. The answer to 8 down—"Lucius to Horatius, or perhaps East if one is West (6,7)"—is clearly "bridge partner." But Lucius was certainly not that to Horatius. The author confused Publius Horatius Cocles and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, who were not partners (see Thomas Babington Macaulay's epic poem Horatio at the Bridge, about the classic battle, ca. 505 BC), with Marcus Horatius Barbatus and Lucius Valerius Potitus, who were Roman consuls somewhat later, and might have walked across a bridge together, but are hardly known for it. SIDNEY SHINEDLING ¡No CIR! Jackson, Miss. An addendum to Roberto Lovato's letter in the last issue ["Exchange," Jan. 24]: the biggest problem faced by the Washington advocates of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) was that they wrote and promoted terrible immigration bills, which have faced widespread rejection by the immigrant communities and workers they were supposed to help. Grassroots groups like the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) that are fighting raids, detentions, deportations and mass firings recoiled from bills that increased enforcement. Nothing, not even withered promises of legalization, could convince activists that more enforcement is a good idea. Last year 400,000 people were deported, and thousands were fired from their jobs. How could the DC lobbyists spearhead a campaign to stop the administration's enforcement policy, when their own bills called for more enforcement? As movement activists sat down at the gates to detention centers, what lobbyists would want to come
explain why their bills treated mass detention as a permanent fact of life? From the beginning, the CIR bills refused to address the root causes of migration—the trade agreements and structural adjustment plans that produce high corporate profits in countries like Mexico but force millions of farmers and workers to leave home. CIR advocates sought a strategic alliance with employers based on forcing future migrants into guest-worker or contract labor programs. Since changing trade policy would meet fierce opposition by CIR's employer backers, the DC groups chose to ignore these root causes. The CIR bills failed because they lacked popular support. Yet major foundations poured millions of dollars into those failed efforts while grassroots movements everywhere scratched around for resources to fight deportations, firings, guest-worker abuses, local anti-immigrant legislation and bad trade policy. A social movement for immigration reform isn't built by legislative strategists in Washington. It comes from people fighting in communities all over the country. They can and will make possible tomorrow what's considered politically impossible today. Fortunately, outside DC many organizations have clear alternatives to the CIR bills. The Dignity Campaign has one detailed proposal. Community2Community has been organizing dialogues throughout Washington State to formulate another. The Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations makes its own proposal for progressive reform for the United States while advocating the "right to not migrate" in Mexico. In Mississippi, MIRA pioneered a coalition of African-American and immigrant communities, fighting the racists to a standstill in our legislature while advocating a rights-based reform. The CIR bills and the strategy behind them are dead, at least for a while. It's time to listen to people building the movement outside Washington. BILL CHANDLER, executive director Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance In Orbit Santa Cruz, Calif. I am so grateful for Marilynne Robinson's brilliant essay on William James ["Risk the Game," Dec. 13]. I had not read James since my college days and had forgotten the enormous pleasure of being awarded a meaningful position in the bewildering universes of thought and the cosmos. Reading Robinson's exquisite presentation of James's thought has filled me with a kind of joy and release that, at nearly 80 years of age, I had not expected to feel again from the written word. I will now reread James with more love and comprehension. JAN HARWOOD It's a Bone! It's a Bane! It's... Juneau, Alaska Re the verse inspired by Calvin Trillin's deadline poem on John Boehner ["Letters," Jan. 3; Nov. 29]: I'm reminded yet again of the liar's gift for corrupting language. The clown's name is BONER, no matter how long he pretends it's BANER. More doublespeak in days of universal deceit. As Orwell knew, "truth-telling is a revolutionary act." KARL SCHOEPPE (pronounced Shep-ee) Back to the Future A production error caused a random "2" to appear in Elaine Blair's "Trakt Marks" in last week's issue. Ian Frazier returned to Siberia in 1999, not 12999.
Jan 12, 2011 / Our Readers
Exchange: Who Speaks for Immigrants? Exchange: Who Speaks for Immigrants?
San Francisco As a Nation writer, I am not in the habit of publicly critiquing other Nation writers, especially on articles about immigration. That's because I mostly agree with the excellent coverage concerning an issue I've worked on and reported about for some time. But I am moved to change my habit because of observations I have about Daniel Altschuler's "Immigrant Activists Regroup" [Dec. 20]. The article makes crucial and unfounded assumptions that orbit around a critical mistake made by the mainstream media: talking about immigrant rights groups in Washington as if they speak for the larger immigrant rights movement. Although these groups do play an important role in shaping policy, they have a very different role in the nonpolicy arena of the "movement" mentioned in the article. Groups like the Center for Community Change, the National Immigration Forum, the National Council of La Raza and others highlighted by Altschuler have collectively received more than $100 million to advocate for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR), legislation that combines the legalization of 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States with punitive policies that will jail, deport and terrorize immigrants even more. The DC groups backed legislation like the McCain-Kennedy bill of 2006–07, which contained about 100 pages focused on legalization and about 700 pages focused on punishment. Altschuler fails to mention how CIR and its DC advocates have fragmented and divided the immigrant rights movement, which is also made up of groups that support neither CIR nor the DC groups. Unlike the outside-the-Beltway immigrant rights groups that organized the spectacular marches of 2006—groups that have been consistently and vociferously critical of President Obama and the Democrats since 2006—Obama's allies in the immigrant rights movement have, until this past year, largely avoided criticizing the president. Even after reports that Obama had broken records on persecution, prosecution and deportation of immigrants, the DC groups provided him a Jumbotron-size video platform at their mobilization for CIR. When these groups do criticize Obama, their approach is to target DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano or ICE Director John Morton, a very different approach from the Bush era, when they regularly named and denounced Bush. Altschuler's claims that the DC groups organized marches and did civil disobedience to "express their frustration with Obama's de facto enforcement-only policy" are, at best, partly and only recently true. The criticisms have come only this past year, when the terror rained on immigrant communities by the administration became so devastatingly bad that nobody in immigrant rights could ignore it without appearing callous, co-opted or irrelevant. I again saw the DC groups' tacit submission to the Democrats when I called the heads of some of these groups to get their opinion about the most recent CIR legislation, presented by Chuck Schumer. When I asked about Schumer's ideas on including, for example, a national ID card as part of CIR, the DC leaders' response was either to avoid me, say "no comment" or declare that they needed time to "study" the matter further (the ACLU and other outside-the-Beltway immigrant rights groups, by contrast, condemned Schumer's national ID proposal before, during and after the CIR debate). Quoting only the heads of DC groups simply reproduces the MSM's spin and keeps Obama's depredations on immigration out of the public view. The inability to find actual immigrants, immigrant voices to speak for immigrants, is also noticeable in this article. While nonimmigrants can and should speak in the movement (full disclosure: I, a US-born Salvadoran, used to lead an immigrant rights organization), I always try to find and include in my stories the voices of those most affected by immigration policies; many of them can be heard disagreeing with the DC consensus on immigration in the vast immigrant universe just beyond the Beltway. ROBERTO LOVATO Altschuler Replies Amherst, Mass. Movements are, by their nature, complex creatures. As people organize, it can be relatively easy to find agreement on what they are against. It is more difficult to craft consensus on what they support and which compromises they can accept. So I welcome Roberto Lovato's comments and fully acknowledge the recent tensions among immigrant rights activists and advocates on matters of legislative strategy and how to respond to current enforcement policies. And while the limited length of my piece may not have permitted a full treatment of these divisions, I have explored strategic debates within the movement elsewhere and will continue to probe further in subsequent pieces. But the core of Lovato's comment concerns issues of representation and the Beltway–grassroots divide. Here, I think he oversimplifies. First, a clarification: although my article quoted only two leaders of national, DC-based organizations, it was based on interviews with leaders from national and grassroots groups across the country. The quotations expressed ideas broached by many with whom I spoke. Second, and more important, the organizations and coalitions I referred to have unquestionably been the central actors pushing for immigration reform over the past few years. The Reform Immigration for America (RIFA) campaign has been joined by more than 800 organizations in its push for CIR (reformimmigrationforamerica.org/blog/about/organizations). Through this network, RIFA recently delivered nearly 200,000 contacts to Congress in four days to support the DREAM Act. (Incidentally, while RIFA groups have received a great deal of foundation support, I have not seen conclusive evidence of "more than $100 million.") Moreover, certain "DC groups" to which Lovato refers engage continuously with grassroots organizations. Take the Center for Community Change: far from just being a Beltway insider, CCC participates in the movement through its Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) network, which consists of more than 200 organizations nationwide (full disclosure: in 2008, I consulted for CCC on an unrelated project). FIRM's approach is shaped by a two-way dialogue between national leaders (themselves experienced community organizers) and groups like the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, the New York Immigration Coalition, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and CASA de Maryland. FIRM has worked not only on CIR and the DREAM Act but also on campaigns against punitive enforcement measures and for better state legislation. And, contrary to Lovato's assertion, FIRM and affiliated groups have been mobilizing in response to Obama's enforcement policies since his first year in office. Not all of the national groups under the RIFA tent share this structure, but to say that the DC groups have imposed their agenda misses this give-and-take and the vibrancy of the debates that have taken place within these networks. Finally, Lovato suggests that the groups pursuing CIR have conceded too much. My article mentioned the unsettled debates about legislative strategy; whether other strategies over the past two years would have borne more fruit is certainly an open question. But without compromise, legislative victories are unattainable. The recent campaign for the DREAM Act is illustrative. Lovato has rightly railed against the "securitization" of the immigration issue. But even people he has worked with accepted that it was essential to keep military service as part of the DREAM package, and that the bill be introduced in September as part of a Defense Department bill. Given the country's conservatism on this issue, DREAM activists were aware that overcoming a filibuster might require accepting additional enforcement provisions as the price of citizenship for roughly 1 million undocumented youths. Advocates and activists will continue pushing back against draconian enforcement policies and the likely restrictionist surge to come. But, to paraphrase Saul Alinsky, they will achieve little progress—particularly in the legislative arena—if they mistake the world as it should be for the world as it is. DANIEL ALTSCHULER
Jan 5, 2011 / Roberto Lovato and Daniel Altschuler
Letters Letters
…but Were Afraid to Ask Eugene, Ore. In "Ten Things You Should Know About Slow" [Dec. 13] Dian Duchin Reed considers endeavors that are common to all of us (eating, socializing) or to just some of us (driving, shopping, parenting). She forgets, however, another key slow endeavor that concerns us all: sex. Yes, there is slow sex, a delightful practice, sometimes known as karezza or tantric sex. This practice of generous touch is relaxing and fulfilling rather than fiery and consuming. Read Cupid's Poisoned Arrow by Marnia Robinson and Tantric Sex for Men by Diana and Michael Richardson. LAURA AND JOHN HOFER The Divine Sarah Stirling, N.J. Melissa Harris-Perry's thoughtful arguments in "The Misunderestimation of Sarah Palin" [Dec. 13] confirm my thinking. An inveterate blogger and writer of letters to the editor, I've repeatedly said, "underestimate this woman at your peril." Month by month she gains in stature and popularity while a chorus from the left wing of our national stage excoriates her. I don't care for her either, but I see how the media are buffing her luster. She will wind up with more electoral cred than she ever deserved. L.E. ALBA Rapid City, S.D. Melissa Harris-Perry says people will regret their "mocking" and "dismissive" attitude toward Sarah Palin. She is wrong. Jana Prikryl has it right a few pages on in "The Dirty Halo," where she describes Palin as a "glossy, unflappable" figure who sashays "her degraded political slapstick" onto the national scene and gets the attention of the talking heads. "Photogenic star power" does not qualify her as anything more than an attraction, kind of like Disneyland. Is that "dismissive," or a true grasp of reality? ELIZABETH COOK-LYNN New York City I intend to adopt the Republican strategy of "starving the beast." I will not click through any story that reports on, quotes, analyzes or otherwise pays attention to Sarah Palin. Please, I implore you, ignore her. D. MACLEOD Chariot of Fire Findlay, Ohio I was stunned by Anne Carson's translations "[3 fragments of Mimnermos]" [Dec. 13]. I had never heard of Mimnermos. Indeed, little is known of him other than that he died around 600 bc. What I found remarkable were the lines from "[that lucky old Sun]": "already tomorrow goes riding his bed of daysided/gold goes skimming/sleep countries from west to east…" If I interpret this correctly, the image appears to be that the earth is moving (rotating) from west to east! Otherwise, if the sun were revolving around the earth, it would be "skimming" from east to west. That such an image appears some 350 years before Aristarchus was allegedly the first to claim that the earth revolves around the sun is what I find remarkable. Carson is a classics scholar and has made her translations freely into modern English, so perhaps this is not an exact replication of Mimnermos' imagery. But if the translation does reflect his image, we may have to re-evaluate our understanding of when the geocentric theory was first challenged. JIM FLECHTNER Carson Replies Brooklyn, N.Y. I thank Jim Flechtner for his sensible question about my translation of Mimnermos fr. 8. The text is conveyed to us by a Hellenistic author named Athenaios, who says: "Mimnermos says in the Nanno that it is in a golden bed made for the purpose by Hephaistos that the sun, while he is asleep, crosses to the east, with riddling reference to the hollow of the cup…." I take this to mean that the sun has to get back from the west to the east each night in order to ride from there in his cup each morning, so he accomplishes this covertly while everyone is asleep and the lights are out. The "skimming" is this nightly transit, not his diurnal journey in the conventional direction. ANNE CARSON Charity Robs the Treasury San Mateo, Calif. Hoo-rah for David Nasaw's "The 'Giving' Season" [Dec. 6]! Charitable contributions do often directly or indirectly benefit the donors. Nasaw also raises the question of who should "make basic decisions about our schools, healthcare institutions and cultural priorities." I strongly support his preference for such decisions being made by a democratically elected body. Let me add that this deduction is even more regressive than he said, because wealthy donors may contribute appreciated assets. These contributions get special treatment: the donation is deducted from ordinary income at appreciated value with no capital gains tax paid. DONALD T. ELLIOTT Baton Rouge, Louisiana David Nasaw obscures important issues by equating "every $100 donated to charity" with "$35 less to the Treasury." Those of us working toward the Gulf Coast's recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the BP disaster know that the nonprofit sector does work that the government either will not or cannot do. In the immediate aftermath of the storms, small community organizations and faith-based groups were first on the scene. While state and federal governments were still strategizing, local (underresourced) nonprofits were rescuing the stranded and feeding the hungry. Without the nonprofits—most of which rely on funding from large foundations—which aid low-wealth communities and racial/ethnic minorities, the policies developed to rebuild and repopulate the gulf would have left tens of thousands (and more) behind. Granted, this work falls mostly into that meager "10 percent of charitable giving" that "goes to the poor and needy," as Nasaw says. But since these are our most vulnerable populations and do rely heavily on the nonprofit sector, it is essential that this sector not be incapacitated by efforts to curb wealthy power blocs. Thank you for your top-notch journalism—it is an oasis! JESSICA MCKELVIE KEMP Drip, Drip, Drip Boynton Beach, Fla. I see the drawn faces of poverty in puddles on rain-soaked streets. Victims of trickle-down economics. STEPHANIE LANGSON Clarifications Christian Parenti's "Green Strategy Now" [Dec. 20] may have created the impression that the Environmental Defense Fund accepts donations from the fossil fuel industry. It does not. Due to a production error, the version of Eric Alterman's "Liberal Media" column that went to press last week was not the final version. The final version is here.
Dec 22, 2010 / Our Readers and Anne Carson
Letters Letters
The Bucks Don't Stop Here Austin, Tex. "The hard truth is that we have a corporate class that funds electoral conflict for the purpose of forging a political class that will govern in its interest" is as brutally honest and accurate as is the entire article by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney "The Money & Media Election Complex," [Nov. 29]. Yet a majority of voters would not understand its audacity and complexity, nor would they understand how their vote, based on negative TV ads, endangers our democracy. Do voters realize that their vote in 2012 could help disable our democracy? Do they understand they are voting for a plutocracy? This essay is too important and outstanding to keep within The Nation. It needs to be the basis of a push for campaign finance reform. I suggest a ban on political advertising on TV because it's dangerous to your health, like the ban on TV cigarette peddling. CYNDI COLLEN Corvallis, Ore. John Nichols and Robert McChesney blast election campaign TV ads: "As ads become the primary source of political information, we create a politics based on lies or, at best...quarter-truths." Strong words. Their solution? More TV ads! "Free TV ads for every candidate on the ballot." Since, by the writers' account, TV campaign ads absorb two-thirds of all campaign funds, wouldn't the proper solution be a legal ban on those TV ads? TV campaign ads are already banned in England. Let's think big. Repeal any First Amendment protection for election campaign ads on television, radio and billboards, and prohibit all such ads. Candidates could still use debates, newspaper, magazine and Internet ads, mailers, fliers, books and phone calls. This could reduce the amount of money any candidate needs by two-thirds. Citizens lacking wealth could run for major public office! LEO W. QUIRK 'Don't Cry for Me': B. Obama Mt. Lebanon, Pa. Re William Greider's "Obama Without Tears," [Nov. 29]: my shoe leather is where my heart is. I am one of thousands who walked, and knocked, in the last two elections. I have been inspired by President Obama, but not lately. The president has changed from a transformational leader to mediator. When Wall Street went down, I wanted a president who would indict the perps while fixing the system. (W. didn't, but I thought Obama might.) Instead, his opening position was compromise. Compromise is necessary, but you often get the best deal by championing your values, defending the ideal and explaining the process to the faithful. You negotiate but assert that the dream shall never die. We need candidate Obama back. Let someone else broker the deals. I didn't walk a hole in my shoe for a mediator. I sweated for the best, most inspiring leader since Bobby Kennedy. TOM O'BRIEN Santa Fe I continue to be confounded by President Obama's inability to evidence real indignation against a know-nothing, do-nothing GOP. Perhaps he doesn't want to be perceived as an angry black man; but he is beginning to look more and more like Gen. George McClellan, whom Lincoln despaired of ever engaging the fight with the forces seeking to divide and conquer. For far too long Obama has suppressed legitimate outrage in favor of lawyerly, overly conciliatory, above-the-fray detachment while the right seizes the narrative. For the sake of the country, "fired up and ready to go" from candidate Obama needs a revival from within the bruised-but-not-bowed presidential psyche. BARBARA ALLEN KENNEY Gwynedd, Pa. Those of us who were moved by Obama the candidate and cheered him on to victory must feel let down by Obama the president. Perhaps we should have known better—a bright, caring, very articulate black president would be anathema to America's white reactionary establishment. The Tea Party is the well-financed bully mob of this establishment. Future historians will have to grapple with Barack Obama, the black, bright and sensitive youngster with a strange foreign name, who must have learned early to be nice if you don't want to get beaten up. I know: growing up in Weimar Germany as "Jesaja, that Polish Jew-boy," you avoided even eye contact with "them." But it never works, no matter how accommodating you are. SI LEWEN Nashville I've always maintained that the key to understanding Obama is to study Abraham Lincoln. Both men were rather detached, cerebral and able to inspire crowds with lofty language. Both men were brilliant and cautious by nature. Both men sought areas of consensus with their adversaries even as their adversaries rebuffed them. Both men had genuinely progressive core principles and sensibilities; yet because they sought consensus first, both men's actual policy positions were more moderate, and frustrating to progressives. Both men saw this approach as the key to getting any progress out of this profoundly conservative country with a government of checks and balances. Both men took fierce criticism from the right—much of it race-based—and from the left. And somehow, both men managed to move the country in a more progressive direction in spite of itself. What's different is us. Progressives. In Lincoln's day, facing bigger obstacles than we face today, abolitionists had a cause that was larger than Lincoln, and they never stopped fighting for it. Although immediate abolition was out of the question, they sought out every smaller fight they could find. Can we exclude slavery from the new territories taken from Mexico? If Congress can't abolish slavery in the states, can we at least disentangle the federal government from slavery by abolishing it in military posts and the District of Columbia? If a true abolitionist is unelectable, can we at least elect Lincoln, who is a moderate on abolition but is with us at heart? The right wing understands this. Its leaders announced before Obama even took office that they would work to make him fail, and they've been doing that nonstop ever since. And what of the left? A lot of the turnout that elected Obama stayed home inNovember and allowed Republicans and Tea Partiers to win in state and Congressional races. That side never stops fighting. Obama told us this. The causes we believe in are bigger than him, and we would have to keep fighting even after Inauguration Day—and every single day. The abolitionists knew this. We do not. That is the difference. That's where progressive change is won and lost. KIM WHITE No Fan of the Tan Man Holmes, N.Y. More on Boehner as muse ["Letters," Nov. 29]: Pelosi and Reid, I must accede, Just couldn't go the distance. And so the switch to McConnell, Mitch, and the Boehner of my existence. JEREMY WOLFF
Dec 16, 2010 / Our Readers
Exchange: ‘Hit Piece’ by a ‘Takedown Artist’ Exchange: ‘Hit Piece’ by a ‘Takedown Artist’
Brooklyn, N.Y. Beneath its facade of unassailable erudition, David Wallace-Wells's article on Lewis Hyde ["The Pirate's Prophet," Nov. 15] bears all the markings of that most unserious of critical genres: the hit piece that doesn't even bother to get its facts right. Wallace-Wells seems determined to portray Hyde—erroneously, sneeringly—as some starry-eyed Romantic, and he isn't above misrepresenting the evidence to achieve his ends. As the author of a profile of Hyde on whose reporting Wallace-Wells sometimes relies, I feel a duty to point out one particularly egregious misrepresentation. Wallace-Wells writes that Hyde's new book, Common as Air, "peddles an attractive but confected fantasy" about the pre-modern English agrarian commons. To support this claim, he cites "what the historian Jackson Lears has called Hyde's 'prelapsarian vision,' one that is 'common to some Marxists, most romantics and all Christian nationalists: Once upon a time, people lived in harmony with their world and one another; then they fell from grace—prodded by capitalism, scientific rationality or original sin.'" These remarks by Lears appeared in a 1983 Nation review of Hyde's landmark book The Gift; they follow Lears's summary of a chapter in it devoted to a history of usury. Lears's remarks read: "Summarized quickly, this view of history seems threadbare. It is a prelapsarian vision common to some Marxists, [etc.]... The nostalgia pervading this view makes it an easy target for the slings and arrows of historians, but Hyde sidesteps the volleys. He is well aware of the corruption and cruelty of medieval Christianity, the vicious anti-Semitism that sometimes powered the opposition to usury, the oppressive restraints of tribal community." Lears's point is precisely that The Gift does not join in this widespread "prelapsarian vision." Wallace-Wells is a takedown artist, but takedown is an exacting business, and honesty and accuracy are its prerequisites. DANIEL B. SMITH Washington, D.C. It was dismaying to find Lewis Hyde lumped in with copyleft extremists in David Wallace-Wells's review of Common as Air. Hyde's discussion of the founders' debates about what rights in literary property the government should grant makes a refreshing change from contemporary "copyright wars" rhetoric imbued with a strain of cheap moralism in which Wallace-Wells participates. Hyde points out that the founders sought pragmatic policies that could encourage the making and circulation of culture, always bearing in mind the social costs of monopoly. Wallace-Wells appears commendably interested in keeping culture lively, underneath all that hectic flourishing of his liberal arts education. But while noting grudgingly that Hyde doesn't "denounce copyright writ broadly or...advocate for the abolition of intellectual property entirely," he charges that "these gestures are accommodationist rather than principled" and urges readers to explore fair use within copyright as an alternative to rejectionism. Hyde has done just that, as an active contributor to three projects to create codes of best practices in fair use that we run at American University (centerfor
socialmedia.org/fair-use), for online video creators, media literacy teachers and poets (the last one is forthcoming). Fair use is only one of the structural features of copyright that constrain monopoly, including term limitation, the distinction between idea and expression, and users' rights to resell their purchases. If the framers' vision is to be realized, these must be reinvigorated, while recent disfiguring additions to the law, such as proliferating statutory damages, are reconsidered. Far from being a disguised call to abolish copyright, Common as Air is an ideological blueprint for returning this important body of law to its proper place. PATRICIA AUFDERHEIDE PETER JASZI Cambridge, Mass. In Common as Air, Lewis Hyde makes just the sort of argument American society needs right now: an argument about the "mixing of private sovereignty and public service," about how to create "a social market, one constrained by moral concerns." With respect to intellectual property—and virtually every other kind—the balance between public and private has been badly skewed in recent decades, an imbalance driven largely by corporate propaganda and lobbying. With unshowy erudition and analytical scruple, Hyde sets this development in historical and philosophical perspective, at the same time acknowledging that "if there is no [intellectual property], there is no way to make money and thus...o incentive to produce," so that "legally bestowed exclusive rights" can "actually enrich the commons." Hyde's ingenuity and nuance were unfortunately lost on David Wallace-Wells, in whose view Hyde is a romantic-anarchist buccaneer, a giddy celebrant of cultural "piracy," advocating "the plundering of culture," eager to "deprive artists of their right to profit from their work" in order to "make that work available to others," determined to "obliterate ownership to preserve access." Blinded by a "fundamental antipathy to the market," Hyde ignores the need of "those working in the arts to secure their livelihood from that work" and forgets that "to support culture we must find ways to support those who make it." Hyde and his fellow "digital Maoists" even want artists to refuse "royalty payments and song-writing credits." None of this is true; Hyde says the opposite, clearly and often. Common as Air is as cogent and eloquent a meditation on the sorry state of cultural commerce in America as anyone could hope for. One might have expected uncomprehending jeers in Reason or Wired, but not in The Nation. GEORGE SCIALABBA Wallace-Wells Replies New York City Daniel B. Smith is right to point out that Jackson Lears was admiring in his 1983 review of The Gift, and that Lears was careful to argue, in it, that Hyde was too nimble a thinker to succumb to the charms of a "prelapsarian vision," even if his worldview resembled it in its broad outlines. I disagree that Hyde avoided succumbing, but that context should certainly have been made clear, and I apologize for the mistake, both to Hyde and to Lears. I've been heartened to read the heated response to my review of Common as Air, in these letters and elsewhere, because I share with Hyde and many of his comrades a sense that the health and well-being of culture is under new threat in our shape-shifting marketplace. Hyde is not as naïvely utopian as some of the free culture champions—he acknowledges the legitimacy of pragmatic objections to a truly "free" regime of cultural ownership—but he shares with the most radical of them a problematic, collectivist ideal: a guiding belief that "art and ideas, unlike land or houses, belong by nature to a cultural commons, open to all" and that "if the monopoly privileges that we've granted to 'content providers' stand in the way of" the self-erasing participatory cultural regime he calls "true citizenship," "then the privileges should be called into question." But a campaign to defend culture should not begin from first principles that question the status of creative work as intellectual property, encourage artists and writers to provide their labor at no cost out of distaste for the market or undermine their ability to profit from that labor. If we truly believe in the value of artistic work, we must find ways to reward it, and sustain those engaged in it, rather than impoverishing culture in order to make it "free." Not all members of the free culture movement share all of these perverse impulses; as I wrote previously, the movement is a loose alliance that includes anarchistic hackers, bottom-line businessmen and entrepreneurs, and self-styled iconoclasts in music, writing and art, some of them more reckless in their advocacy than others. But their common cause, promoting cultural production and exchange outside the marketplace from which we draw our daily bread, amounts to little more than a quixotic resistance to those market forces arrayed against culture. This campaign does not constitute a true battle against those same forces so much as a principled capitulation to them. DAVID WALLACE-WELLS
Dec 8, 2010 / Our Readers and David Wallace-Wells
A Traveler’s Tale: On Patrick Leigh Fermor A Traveler’s Tale: On Patrick Leigh Fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor's fifty-year correspondence with Deborah Devonshire reads like an accidental memoir of a disappearing world.
Dec 2, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Wes Davis
Letters Letters
Anglicans Against Apartheid Princeton, N.J. Katha Pollitt's "Postcards From Cape Town" ["Subject to Debate," Nov. 15] mentions apartheid-compliant Anglican clerics. Many Anglicans were out front in the civil organization against apartheid for decades. Father Trevor Huddleston, who came to work in Sophiatown in 1943 and was made president of the antiapartheid movement in 1981, is the most notable example of their active conscience, which leads directly to Bishop Desmond Tutu's high-profile presence. D.E. STEWARD Black Women Fight Back Cummington, Mass. Thanks to Melissa Harris-Perry for "To Whom Apologies Are Really Due," which places Virginia Thomas's request for an apology from Anita Hill into historical perspective ["Sister Citizen," Nov. 15]. The good news is that alongside the persistent vilification of black women Harris-Perry recounts, there is an equally long history of resistance. Hill stands in a continuous line of women who have fended off assaults and refuted the stereotype of immorality, from the slave known as Celia to Rosa Lee Ingram to Dessie Woods, to name a few. Until that strand of resistance is woven into our national narrative, conservatives will peddle myths and half-truths that serve their ends. Just as Clarence Thomas resorted to a skewed account of lynching that overlooks sexual violence against black women, the antiabortion movement today spins a twisted tale that sidesteps black women's realities. The religious right is waging an "endangered species" campaign, alleging that a genocidal conspiracy proceeded inexorably from slavery to lynching to eugenics to legalized abortion. This warped argument portrays black women as dupes of white elites and profit-driven abortion providers rather than as moral agents who negotiate economic inequalities and discriminatory policies to make difficult reproductive decisions. Black women are fighting back. When the "endangered species" campaign targeted Atlanta recently, Loretta Ross, Dázon Dixon Diallo, Paris Hatcher and supporters from SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, SisterLove and SPARK stood them down in the streets and in the legislature. They defeated legislation that would criminalize abortion as a coercive, racially motivated procedure. These leaders have formed Trust Black Women and rallied allies like Toni Bond Leonard, Barbara Smith, Faye Wattleton, Angela Davis and the Black Women's Health Imperative to challenge the campaign in other states (sistersong.et/trust_black_women.html). The sooner we heed these voices from the front lines, the sooner we'll get behind a reproductive justice agenda grounded in the truth— all of it. JOYCE FOLLET Cape Elizabeth, Me. As a woman I totally agree with Harris-Perry's indictment of a system that doesn't support women and children; but I disagree with her conclusion that women should ignore the lack of a support system and have children anyway. For many years I've been wondering when someone is going to speak up for the children. I am a retired teacher from a white, Christian, rural upstate New York school system. I see the results of single-parent homes. It is virtually impossible to give children the time they need to be successful in school when you are struggling to feed them. The problem is not color; it is poverty. Unless a single woman can afford to move to a safe community with services that support her children, it's not fair to the children to bear them. KATHLEEN MIKULKA Can Brits Throw Bricks? Saratoga Springs, N.Y. In "(G)rêve général(e) in France" [Nov. 15], Agnès Catherine Poirier claims that whereas France has a long tradition of popular protest, "it is not in the British DNA to demonstrate." Having lived through Britain's miners' strikes, Greenham common protests and poll tax riots of the 1980s and early '90s, I beg to differ. BEN GIVAN Tea Party Blues (Reds?) Ann Arbor, Mich. A sobriquet for hate-spewing opportunists who have seized the Boston Tea Party as a symbol of justice-seeking protest: Hatriots. GORDON E. BIGELOW Deadline Funny Bone San Antonio The first thing I do with The Nation each week is check in with Deadline Poet Calvin Trillin. What a breath of fresh air! Perhaps growing up in Kansas City, in the heart of the nation, gives him such poetic clarity on the foibles of the world. LAFE WILLIAMS As Many of You Have Told Us... Diane Simon, in "The Merry-Go-Round" [Dec. 6], writes, "In an effort to 'get' Herbert Hoover, Anderson and his 'legmen'...followed the FBI chief to lunch with his handsome young deputy, Clyde Tolson." Needless to say, the FBI chief was J. Edgar, not Herbert.
Dec 1, 2010 / Our Readers
The Whole Human Mess: On Saul Bellow The Whole Human Mess: On Saul Bellow
Drollery, mordancy, tenderness and soul talk: Saul Bellow's letters are a Saul Bellow novel!
Nov 23, 2010 / Books & the Arts / William Deresiewicz