Thanks Carl for saying what I wanted to say.
I've not followed Scheer's career with the LA Times, but let's assume he's
moved towards the center and that I would disagree with him on five or six
political positions. Does that make him a sell-out? No! We just disagree
on certain issues and hopefully we'd work together on the issues we go
agree on.
People on the left still read people out of "the party" over every petty
disagreement. With maybe 5% of the population with us we continually strive
to get down to the 4% who are the purist (rather than striving to make it
5, 6, 10, 50%). And when someone breaks with us on a particular issue, we
denounce them personally (he's sold out") instead of engaging them.
Recall the 1980's when we were all anti-interventionists, fighting against
U.S. intervention in Central America. Our best and bravest allies were
priests and nuns in the Catholic Church!
Fuck purity and savor the contradictions!
Marx's observation that "I wouldn't join any party that would have me as a
member" seems to hold true on the left today, just as it did in the past.
Marty Jezer
At 02:15 PM 8/10/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>DEAR JEFFERY,
>
>FROM ONE NADER SUPPORTER TO ANOTHER:
>
>TO WRITE THAT BOB SCHEER IS "NO LESS A SELL-OUT" THAN DAVID HOROWITZ IS JUST
>PLAIN IGNORANT. IT IS ALSO THE KIND OF LOW LEVEL ATTACK THAT IS A PART OF
>THE LEFT'S PAST WE CAN AND SHOULD DO WITHOUT.
>
>CARL BLOICE
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-sixties-l@lists.village.virginia.edu
>[mailto:owner-sixties-l@lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of Jeffrey
>Blankfort
>Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 8:40 AM
>To: sixties-l@lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: [sixties-l] Re: sixties-l-Robert Scheer Sells Out
>
>
>I picked up the National Edition of the LA Times yesterday to see what
>it had to say about the choice of Lieberman and what do I find but a
>column by Bob Scheer attacking Gore's choice but for the wrong reasons:
>that Lieberman "betrayed" Clinton.
>
>Scheer, for those who don't remember, was one of the leading voices
>against the Vietnam War in the SF Bay Area, and even ran for Senate. He
>edited Ramparts during its glory days. He was an early supporter of the
>Panthers and lived in a communal household with Tom Hayden, unsubtlely
>called, "The Red Family." Since those days he has drifted toward the
>center, accompanied by a cushy salary from the LA Times, as an op-ed
>writer, and as an interviewer for Playboy. Since Clinton's election, he
>has become an unapologetic PR man for the White House, managing to
>overlook all those issues which would have engaged and enraged the
>Scheer of the Sixties.
>
>Scheer, far more pernicious and dangerous than his old colleague at
>Ramparts, David Horowitz, and no less a sell-out, writes that Lieberman
>should be "boasting about the record of the Clinton-Gore years...The
>fact is, Clinton has been a great president, presiding over eight years
>of unprecedented prosperity and progress towards world peace."
>
>This from someone who has completely expunged the radical past from his
>web site (the past which led to the position where he could sell his
>soul to the LA Times and could even afford to sleep in the Brooks
>Brothers fashions he is never seen without).
>
>In differing with Scheer on Clinton's record, I don't need, for this
>list, to bring up the details of such domestic issues as so-called
>welfare reform, the "effective death penalty and counter-terrorism act"
>which has been the highlight of the greatest attack on our civil
>liberties by any recent president, the elevation of incarceration levels
>through the phony anti-drug war, and the trade agreements and support of
>merger-mania which has widened the gap between rich and poor to
>third-world proportions, nor to the international issues such as the
>genocidal sanctions against Iraq and the promotion of the Star Wars
>missile program that threatens to escalate the tensions between the US
>and Russia and China, etc.
>
>Actually, I just remembered that Sweet Old Bob (or just the initials, as
>I prefer) interviewed Nixon before he died or perhaps he was writing
>immediately afterward, but then, too, he praised Nixon as one of
>America's great presidents.
>
>Jeff Blankfort
-- Marty Jezer * 22 Prospect St. * Brattleboro, VT 05301 * p/f 802 257-5644Author: Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words (Basic Books) Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel (Rutgers University Press) The Dark Ages: Life in the USA, 1945-1960 (South End Press) Rachel Carson [American Women of Achievement Series] (Chelsea House) Check out my web page: http://www.sover.net/~mjez To subscribe to my Friday commentary, simply request to be put on my mailing list. It's free!
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