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Today's
Stories
Today's Stories
March 15 /
16, 2008
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008
Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the 'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
February 20,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Lies
and Spies
Paul Krassner
My
Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The
Pakistani Elections
Farzana Versey
The
Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch
Allan Nairn
Dying for a Second Round: Israel's
New Plan to Attack Lebanon
John V. Whitbeck
If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization?
Steve Eckardt
Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News
Lee Sustar
Union-Busting at Freightliner
Mike Ferner
How Sick of It are You?
Website of the Day
The US Military Index
February 19,
2008
Uri Avnery
Blood
and Champagne
Paul Craig
Roberts
Paying
Insurgents Not to Fight
Gary Leupp
The Independence of Kosovo
Fidel Castro
The Moment Has Come
David Macaray
Management's Dirty Little Secret
Reza Fiyouzat
Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections
Valerie Morse
The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie
Walter Brasch
Bush on Safari
Website of the Day
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
February 18,
2008
Wajahat Ali
Free
Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan
Diana Johnstone
NATO's
Kosovo Colony
Paul Craig Roberts
What Do We Stand For?
Andy Worthington
Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along"
Debbie Nathan
Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes
Anthony DiMaggio
Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business
of Elections
Bill Simpich
Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq
Eva Liddell
A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash
Christopher Brauchli
The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans
Stephen Soldz
Wikileaks is Under Attack!
Johann Rossouw
The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism
Website of
the Day
Sick of It Day!
February 16
/ 17, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan
Ralph Nader
We
the Corporations ...
David Macaray
The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin?
William J.
Peace
Wheelchair Dumping
Ron Jacobs
War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption
Diane Christian
War Corrupts
Alan Maass
Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen
(and Beyond)
Ramzy Baroud
Iraq and the US Elections
Michael Donnelly
Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Art of Finding Whalers
James L. Secor
China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008
Eve Bachrach
Bush Returns to Africa
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army
Stephen Gowans
Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian
Missy Beattie
To Vote or Not to Vote?
David Michael
Green
Warming Slowly to Obama
Wajahat Ali
Attack of the Info-tainment Circus
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther
Website of the Day
Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!
February 15,
2008
George Szamuely
The
Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo
Patrick Cockburn
Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability
to Baghdad?
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban,
Bin Laden and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg
Alan Farago
God and the Democrats
Chris Genovali
Alberta's Black Gold Rush
Jacob Hornberger
Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture
Dave Lindorff
Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull
Website of the Day
Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams
February 14,
2008
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Palestine
in the Mind of America
Mike Whitney
Swan Song for NATO
Clancy Sigal
Strike Notes from a Screenwriter
George Wuerthner
A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
Peter Morici
Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit?
John Ross
Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border
Allan Nairn
Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can
Whack Anyone
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon's Warmongers
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein
Donna Volatile
Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It
Seth Sandronsky
The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes
Website of
the Day
Conventions: the Land Around Us
February 13,
2008
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet
John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America
Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line
Christina Kasica
King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America
Vicente Navarro
How to Read the U.S. Primaries
Hall Greenland
Australia's Finest Hour
Lee Sustar
Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most
David Macaray
The Writers' Strike Finally Ends
Roderick Frazier
Nash
Celebrating Wilderness
Patrick Irelan
Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT
Anthony Papa
Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases
Carl Finamore
Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted
by Politicians
Website of
the Day
John He Is
February 12,
2008
Frank J. Menetrez
The
Case Against Alan Dershowitz
Paul Craig
Roberts
War Without End
Dr. Trudy Bond
The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink
Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the
Torture?
Col. Dan Smith
The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away?
Ronnie Cummins
Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road
Ralph Nader
Open the Government
John V. Walsh
Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered
Dave Lindorff
Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms
the Candidate
Michael Donnelly
Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules
Ron Jacobs
La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life"
Ben Tripp
Beggars Collide
Website of the Day
Springsteen and Youngstown
February 11,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Lessons
for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate?
Wajahat Ali
A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby
Ray McGovern
Waterboarding for God and Country
Allan Nairn
The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta
Uri Avnery
An End Foreseen?
Chris Floyd
American
Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech
Martha Rosenberg
School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows
Stephen Fleischman
The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics
Marc Lamont Hill
Not My Brand of Hope
Liliana Segura
Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation
Peter Morici
Challenges for the New President
Christopher
Brauchli
A Drug Rant from a Former Taker
Website of the Day
Annie vs. the Blue Angels
February 8
/ 10, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Does
the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves?
Patrick Cockburn
Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold?
Mike Whitney
The Great Bust of '08
Anthony DiMaggio
How the Press Covers Waterboarding
Andy Worthington
The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists?
Linn Cohen-Cole
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?
Firmin DeBrabander
Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering
and Deaths of the Great Whales
Kenneth S. Pope
Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association
Jacob G. Hornberger
American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy
Robert Bryce
Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ...
Then What?
P. Sainath
The Last of the Buccaneer Editors
Allan Nairn
Give Me Back My Land
Fred Gardner
/
Pebbles Trippet
"The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the
Law!"
Andrew Wimmer
Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death
Robert Fantina
America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr
David Michael Green
Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves
Kevin Zeese
Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd?
Peter Morici
Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence
Chris Driscoll
Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008?
Prairie Miller
Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen
Poets Basement
Davies and Buknatski
February 7,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Baghdad Will Explode Again
Bill Christison
Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians
David Anderson
NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for
the Sake of Ratings
Ron Jacobs
Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing
Jane Rockefeller
The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation
Andy Worthington
On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden
|
Weekend
Edition
March 15 / 16, 2008
A Conversation
with Ishmael Reed
Faking
the Hood
By WAJAHAT ALI
Editors' Note: This is the second and final part
of Wajahat Ali's explosive interview with novelist, poet and
essayist Ishmael Reed. Click here
to read part one.--AC/JSC
ALI: Most people characterize
you as part of the Left; one who is mostly critical of the Right.
People couple you, politically, with Amiri Baraka [controversial
and influential African American poet and writer], as two figures
who came from the '60's movement. How accurate are both these
assumptions?
REED: I wasn't part of any
sixties movement. I'm skeptical of movements. I'm part of the
times that I'm in. Right now, it's 2008. As for Baraka, he and
I have disagreements. I mean, he becomes a demagogue when there's
an audience. He's a nice guy in private. I mean I like the guy;
he's a terrific writer. I've published two of his books. Baraka
is one of these fundamentalists who is prone to idol worship.
Once he selects an idol, then you can't criticize the idol. For
example, he said Steven Cannon and I should be murdered because
of what we said about Malcolm X. The death threat was printed
in a magazine called African American Review, edited by Joe Weixlmann,
which has received more foundation support than all of the Black
literary magazines combined. I asked Joe Weixlmann why he would
print a death threat like that in light of the fact that there
are all of these armed ideological nuts wandering around loose.
He said that for him, to "ice" someone means to reprimand
them. Recall, Baraka said that we should be "iced. This
from an editor of a Black magazine. A self appointed caretaker
of Black lit - doesn't know what "iced" meant.
ALI: What did you say about
Malcolm?
REED: I said, "You can't
criticize Malcolm X, because now he's a holiday." I mean,
no sense of irony! I mean, this is what happens with these ideological
extremists: there's no sense of humor or irony; although, Baraka
is a great satirist. But, we were on panel at NYU in Nov., and
I reminded him of some of these statements. The New York audience--
ALI: They love Baraka, right?
REED: Oh, yeah, they love him.
He's very charismatic. They think somebody being murdered because
they're critical of Malcolm X-- that's amusing to them. I was
challenged to a fistfight before a NYU audience; I don't know
what it is about Manhattan. I was challenged to a fistfight by
Margo Jefferson, the Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times writer,
who is part of a feminist clique at the Times, which believes
that Black men are the principal threat to the women of the world.
The clique is headed by Michiko Kakutani, who is hard on Black
guys but is worshipful of misogynists like Saul Bellow and even
wrote a tender tribute to him. Bellow's ex wife said of him,
"He who thinks evil, is evil."
ALI: Wait, wait, let's back
up for a moment. I need to hear this fistfight story. Why'd they
threaten you with fisticuffs in New York?
REED: Now why did Margo Jefferson
challenge me to a fistfight to the cheers and encouragement of
the women in the audience, the type who are always complaining
about men battering women? I was on a panel with light skinned
Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining
about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and
how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was
that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in
the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland
was one inhabited by White gays. They even had the gay liberation
flag flying from the house. When I touched on racism among Gays
and Lesbians, a phenomenon recorded by the late author Audre
Lorde and film maker Marlon Riggs, the gay host of the show on
which I made this remark, on KPFA, Berkeley, started screaming
and yelling.
So, Jefferson challenged me
to a fistfight, and the women in the audience loved that! These
contradictions are fodder for my fiction and non-fiction. My
work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition
of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
In Haitian mythology there is the figure Ghede, who in West Africa,
is Iku, whose role is to show "each man his devil."
He's represented by a figure wearing a top hat and smoking a
cigar. That's my gig. Showing movements like this - what fundamentally
corrupts exclusive feminist movements - its devil.
ALI: Let's go back to Baraka
-
REED: I don't know why people
always compare us [Baraka and I.] I was never part of the Black
Arts Repertory Theater or the Black Arts Movement; people who
claim that I was are wrong. I was downtown. I was living in Chelsea
when they were operating in Harlem. I said they were "goons"
at the time, because I knew all of them. I was roommates with
2 of the guys who were influential in forming the Black Arts
philosophy. I called them "goons," and Baraka took
offense at that. But if you read his autobiography, the night
we went up there for a fundraiser, he talks about how he wished
that some violence would happen to us. How do you like Baraka
as a gracious host? I participated in two fund raisers for the
Black Arts Repertory Theater and then, on the occasion of the
second one, we, who had gone up to help out, were threatened.
ALI: What's the tiff you
both had at Howard University?
REED: Howard University holds
something called "Heart's Day," an all day ceremony
in which a writer is honored. I was the recipient of this honor.
It's a wonderful ceremony that Eleanor Traylor chair of English
at Howard University organizes for writers. Writers from around
the country came to pay tribute to my work. It was very flattering.
Baraka gets up there and rehashes
some encounter we had forty four years ago, when I was a young
writer and told him that I thought his early work to be weak.
It was so elliptical; it was inscrutable. He was influenced by
the downtown art scene. Compare his book " Dead Lecturer"
with his breakthrough " Black Magic," a brilliant work
which came about as a result of his coming in contact with Black
nationalists. He said himself that his previous downtown art
scene writing was weak. He came into contact with writers like
Askia Toure and Charles Patterson. The change in his style was
dramatic. He never forgot my remark. At Howard he laced into
me about my calling W.E.B DuBois, his idol, a Nazi. I didn't
call him a Nazi.
In an essay I wrote I posed
the question, "Was W.E.B DuBois Pro Nazi?" W.E.B DuBois
was the guest of the Nazi government under a fellowship arranged
by a man who was Pro Nazi and who had dined with Hitler. During
the trip there, he was wined and dined by Nazis and said that
the Hitler dictatorship was necessary. Well, he might not have
been a Nazi, but he seems to have admired the Nazi regime at
one point.
ALI: But, wait, you guys
are also friends, right?
REED: Yeah, we're friends.
Just like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier are friends.
ALI: (Laughs) Well, good to know there's
some love there at least.
REED: The cultural wars of
the sixties are over. I've reconciled with those who were my
critics and opponents years ago. I was at odds with some those
who were Black nationalists. Yet when feminists attempted to
end my career and leave me as literary road kill, it was the
Black nationalists who came to my rescue. Gwendolyn Brooks, the
great poet, got me a George Kent Award in the late eighties.
Do you think that Ms. Brooks would give an award to someone who
hated Black women, the lie that was circulated throughout New
York and reached all the way down to Martinique where I was a
guest Professor? The lie was circulated by people who don't read
my books.
ALI: Let's talk about the
media. Here are some popular examples of media content and personalities
that have gone mainstream and are successful: Oprah. Will Smith.
Jamie Foxx. Tyra Bank. Tyler Perry. The Wire. Barbershop.
American Gangster. You're known as a vociferous critic
of mainstream media and its tendency to stereotype. So, why complain
now? You guys-- African Americans - have made it.
REED: The Wire-- you
know, David Simon [the creator of The Wire] and I have
a running controversy for years. It all stems from a telephone
call I made to KPFA [Pacifica radio] when he was a guest there
in the 90's on Chris Welche's show. He was going around the country
with a Black kid from the Ghetto to promote something called
The Corner-- it was all about Blacks as degenerates selling
drugs, etc.
ALI: Was that HBO?
REED: Yes. HBO does all this
kind of stuff. I called in and told Simon, "You're using
this kid." Later I said it [was] like Buffalo Bill going
around the country exhibiting Indians. He got really pissed off
and went to the New York Times, where he has a supporter there
named Virginia Hefferman, another Times feminist who, when it
comes to Black urban Fiction, can't tell the difference between
the real and the fake; she's his supporter. She said that George
Pelecanos, David Simon, and Richard Price are the "Lords
of Urban Fiction," when the Black Holloway authors like
Iceberg Slim can write circles around these guys when it comes
to Urban fiction.
Simon, Price and Pelecanos'
Black characters speak like the cartoon crows in those old racist
cartoons ["Heckle and Jeckle."] Henry Louis Gates knows
this about "The Wire," yet his right wing blog,
The Root, carries an ad for "The Wire" today
and a glowing article about this piece of crap. Henry Louis Gates,
Jr. is an intellectual entrepreneur all right. He condemns my
work as misogynist yet supports Simon's Neo-Nazi portrait of
Black people. "The Wire" and novels by Price
and Pelecanos should be submitted to the Jim Crow museum at Ferris
State University-- this is the website: www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/,
where they can have a honored place alongside of some of Robert
Crumb's Nazi cartoons.
When I was researching my novel
Reckless Eyeballing, I attended a lecture sponsored by
the San Francisco Holocaust Museum, March 26,1984. The program
said that the stereotypes about Jewish men in the Nazi media
was similar to that about Black men in the United States. I thought,
what on earth are they talking about? And then I went out and
examined some of this junk, especially the cartoons in the newspaper
Der Sturmer - see Julius Streicher Nazi Editor of the Notorious
Anti-Semite Newspaper Der Sturmer by Randall l. Bytwerk.
I was shocked. Jewish men were depicted as sexual predators,
raping Aryan women. They were exhibited as flashers. Both Bellow
and Phillip Roth's books include Black flashers. Jewish men especially
those immigrants from Russia were depicted as criminals. Jewish
children were seen as disruptive, a threat to German school children
and so on.
If any one looks at this stuff
for example, you'll find a perfect match for the way that David
Mamet, David Simon, George Pelecanos, Stephen Spielberg and Richard
Price portray Blacks. They are very critical in their projects
about the way Black men treat women, yet none of them has produced
a project critical of the way that men of their background treat
women.
ALI: Ok, so you've mentioned
Simon, Pelecanos and Price for fake "Urban fiction."
Spielberg, I'm assuming is for the "The Color Purple" and perhaps
"Amistad."
But why Mamet?
REED: Mamet is another hypocrite.
His idea of Black man is a pimp who abuses women, [Edmond],
yet his play Oleanna [1994] ends with a White professor
slapping an uppity feminist, at least the version I saw at San
Francisco's ACT. Of course, there's an old tradition of this.
Joel Chandler Harris, who created a multi billion dollar industry,
everything from his books, to Disney's "Song of the South"
based upon the Uncle Remus stories. He got his start by transcribing
the stories of slave Informants. I'm sure that none them got
a dime. Richard Price, who has made a fortune writing fake ghetto
books, says he takes a cab into the ghetto, transcribes Black
speech for a brief time and returns home. His fake ghetto books
have bought him a townhouse in Gramercy Park and home on Staten
Island while P. Lewis, author of Nate, one of the best
African American writers since Richard Wright, had to self publish
his book and sell his books in subways.
Price got a million dollar
advance on one fake film book based on a paragraph outline and
is able to seduce gullible White reviewers who know less about
ghetto life than he. The New York Times has devoted more
space to Price's tourist, ghetto writing than to any Black writer
in history. Even Morrison. I'm sure that his ghetto sources like
Chandler's slave informants didn't get a dime either. Why are
they so hard on Margaret Seltzer for her fake ghetto book for
which she received a one hundred thousand dollar advance and
yet have Virginia Hefferman and Michiko praise Richard Price
for his fake ghetto books?
Constance L. Rice, co-director
of the Los Angeles of the Advancement Project, told the Times
that Seltzer might have been influenced by David Simon's fake
ghetto series, "The Wire." It figures. Isn't
this sexism? Isn't this a double standard? They're hard on this
young woman for her fake ghetto book, yet praise these White
guys for theirs. So there's a big market in downing Black men.
In 1899, Joel Chandler Harris
even took on a persona of a fictional Black woman, Aunt Minervy
Ann, to scold Black men, a genre that's been recycled for money
in recent times. Phillip Roth uses his Black women characters
to make anti intellectual remarks about Black history month,
begun by a man who reached intellectual heights that Roth will
never attain. [Reed reads the following]
"Carter Godwin Woodson
began his education at the age of 20. Finished high school in
two years. He graduated from Berea College in 1903, a year before
Kentucky passed a law prohibiting interracial education. He taught
at Frederick Douglass High School in West Virginia. He taught
in the Philippines from 1903 to 1907. He received a master's
degree in European History. He submitted a thesis on French diplomatic
policy toward Germany in the 18th Century. He studied at Harvard
University with Edward Channing, Albert Bushnell Hart, and Frederick
Jackson Turner. In 1912,Woodson earned his PhD in history, completing
a dissertation on the events leading to the creation of the state
of West Virginia after the Civil War broke out. After teaching
at Howard University and West Virginia Collegiate Institute,
in 1922 he returned to Washington to direct the Association for
the Study of Negro Life and History full time. In this role,
he founded the Journal of Negro History. In 1926 he launched
the annual celebration of Negro History Week."
ALI: What's your beef with
Phillip Roth? The establishment and critics love him, and he
is quite successful and thoroughly celebrated.
REED: Roth is a petty bigot
and his ignorant remarks about black culture expose him as a
buffoon to scholars the world over. Feminists swoon all over
him. When Esquire asked him what feminists would say about
one of his books, he answered, "Fuck the feminists."
His wife Clarie Bloom said that he has an "irrepressible
rage toward women." I guess when it comes to this privileged
White racist feminist movement they respect someone who treats
them rough: John Wayne. Frank Sinatra. Phillip Roth.
Two of the great leaders of
the past - Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass-- had
White fathers - who deserted them. Now Margo Jefferson, who is
hard on me and the fellas, wrote in the Times that she has nocturnal,
erotic fantasies about John Wayne. What's up with these feminists?
Do you see these double standards these feminists have? They
dream about John Wayne, but they're hard on us [Black men.] (Laughs.)
So, I reminded her that John Wayne said, "I'm all for women's
liberation as long as they have dinner ready when I get home."
Like the feminists at NPR who are so hard on the brothers. When
Frank Sinatra died they were crying on the air. According to
his biographer, the fearless Kitty Kelly, he once shoved a woman
through a plate glass window.
ALI: It's amazing how all
the best selling Urban Ghetto writers - they're all White.
REED: Right. "The Lords
of Urban Fiction." What I can't understand why Blacks can't
achieve royal status when it comes to forms that they have largely
created? I mean there's a White King of Rock n' Roll, there's
a White King of Jazz, how come we can never achieve titles of
royalty in these fields we are supposed to prevail in? They held
a so called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the other night, where
White judges credit people who resemble them with the invention
of Rock and Roll. I didn't even see Blacks in the audience.
There would be no Rock and
Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino,
Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music.
Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaoke makeover of
James Brown and Chuck Berry.
Anyway, David Simon goes to
the Jewish Weekly and said he's made all this money, but
he can't enjoy it because of criticism by people like Ishmael
Reed. He told Virginia Hefferman, I think that's who it was,
she said he said I was against him because he was a White man
writing about Black people. We've given awards to White writers
over the years, many years, who've written about Black life.
ALI: White writers writing
about the Black experience is OK then? So, that wasn't the problem?
REED: Of course not! He's the
one who is against White writers writing about the ghetto. Amy
Alexander, who worked with Simon at The Baltimore Sun
said that he got all pushed out because another White reporter
was assigned to cover the ghetto. He feels it's sort of like
his gold mine where he has staked a claim and that all ghetto
stories and humans are his property.
I'm not against White writers
writing about Blacks as long as they are as objective as say
James McPherson writing about an Irish American janitor in his
brilliant short story "Gold Coast." I use non-fiction
work written by Whites in my research. It's indispensable. That
wasn't the problem. I said that "The Wire" was
a cliché! It's like my writing a series about Jewish life
and casting all of the characters as inside traders.
They never printed this discussion
in the NYT, so I wrote a response to The Jewish Weekly
where Simon said that he couldn't enjoy [the loot] he's made
for showing Black as depraved individuals because of criticism
by people like Ishmael Reed. To their credit, The Jewish Weekly
published it. So I said he ought to do something new like write
a new series about the family of a suburban, illegal arms dealer
who's bringing guns into my neighborhood.
So, the Times had a story about
Simon's ghetto informants, who, like Chandler's slaves, provided
Simon with his material, but, who, I doubt, will get a share
of his royalties which must amount to millions. One was a recovering
heroin addict and the other did some wretched thing like armed
robbery. Their problems made the front page of the NY Times [Aug.9,
2007], of course, in what must have been one of the longest stories
in the Times history! Then, they made the society page later
[Aug.19,2007] because they got married and Simon was their best
man.
How does the Times treat White
pathology? They reported an epidemic of heroin addiction in the
Philadelphia suburbs [March,20, 1995], which included emergency
admissions and overdoses; these White people in the suburbs were
doing heroin like it was going out of style. I counted the words:
the article consisted of 200 words. "Heroin Epidemic"
in the back section. Out here in California, the typical drug
addict is a housewife or suburban White woman. [Reed finds
a newspaper and reads from it]
"Few experts would have
suspected that the biggest contributors to California's drug
abuse, death and injury toll are educated, middle-aged women
living in the Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest-declining,
lowest-risk populations are urban black and Latino teenagers."
wrote Mike Males on Jan.3, 2007 in The New York Times.
Think that HBO will do a series
about this? Like a "White Wire?" Richard Price,
who creates projects which cast blacks as junkies and dealers,
is a former cocaine addict himself. They could hire him to write
it. Write about something he knows about.
ALI: I've read White addicts
are unfortunately succumbing to Meth and prescription pills at
extraordinary rates.
REED: That's right. Another
California study counted 30,000 substance abusers who are pregnant
are White woman. So, The Wire paints the picture of drug
addiction, drug dealing, and drug abuse as being a specifically
a Black issue.
Now, I hate to say this, but
I know somebody has got to say it and somebody has got to do
it. I confronted Richard Price about his role in The Wire
on a panel held at Ax En Provence, and his friend, I won't mention
his name-- a very famous writer-- and members of this New York
delegation, Price's buddies, jumped on me for pointing this out.
My friend, whom I have known since the 70s, said that I was bringing
up a local issue before international audience. The International
Herald Tribune, which was on sale at the conference, had
a full-page display ad for "The Wire." This
hateful material travels the globe. A few years ago, CNN, America's
Der Sturmer, ran a story about Black parents being so low down
that they abandoned their children and the children had to eat
rats. I was at a University in Wisconsin at the time and the
mother of a student from South Africa called to see whether the
story was true. She had seen it all the way over there. The story
was untrue. The children lied. CNN never corrected the story.
Now at this French conference, I was thought of as an angry Black
nationalist, when my questions to Price were polite. When Price
began his career, writing terrific books like "The Wanderers,"
I was one of his supporters and he has acknowledged this.
But some where along the way
he decided to go for the money. I said to Price, "Why are
you dealing with these people: Pelecanos and Simon? You're a
great writer. Why are you hanging out with George Pelecanos?"
You read Pelecanos' Soul Circus: it's got Black people
talking like what you hear on Klan website: Nigger Watch. I heard
Pelecanos on a radio show out here and he went into all of these
stereotypes about Black men that have been around for a few hundred
years. So his writing about Black life is a real fox guarding
the chicken coop situation.
ALI: And Pelecanos is a
White guy?
REED: Yes. I recorded
a episode of "The Wire," all about Black kids
selling drugs Here's the typical line that Simon puts into the
mouths of his Black characters: "Hey, I'm gonna put some
whup ass on you!"
So, I told Price's defender,
famous novelist, why don't' you look at the first episode [of
The Wire]-- I have a recording. He came back and said,
"Yes, these are White guys trying to be White Negroes who
are putting Amos and Andy lines in the mouths of Black people."
He said that Price had to do it because he's in debt. Here is
Price helping Simon to diss Black people, while he has admitted
to cocaine addiction himself. He could have been a great novelist.
He went to Hollywood instead.
ALI: You know, you'll get
a lot of heat for this, right?
REED: Well, you know, this
is something that should be brought up: why are they promoting
the same images of us that were promoted against minorities in
Nazi Germany and set them up for the camps?
ALI: You think there's no
self-reflection there?
REED: They don't know their
history. They're a generation that doesn't know their own history.
I'm sure that a previous generation of Jews who published radical
newspapers and journals would be critical of Simon's projects.
These were left wingers who suffered casualties in some of bloodiest
strikes in American history. They were red baited, Black balled
and lost their jobs. They helped to create a safety net that
helped millions. They supported the drive for the emancipation
of Black people. They were lawyers who went South risking their
lives to defend Blacks who were victims of Jim Crow justice.
They were among the first to publish great Black writers. They
were writers who were Black balled in Hollywood. The Rosenbergs
were executed by the government. This generation of Jews would
be ashamed of people like Simon and Price. They would turn over
in their graves and be disgusted at these people who are cheapening
people who can't fight back, who can't tell their story, for
money.
ALI: What are some of the other stereotypes of
Jewish men in the Nazi press?
REED: It was all about Jewish
men [accosting German women]: that was the favorite theme of
the Nazi newspaper. That the only reason Jewish guys went to
the medical profession was so they could be gynecologists to
examine German women. Der Sturmer printed cartoons of Jewish
men lunging at half naked German women while grinning, lecherously.
ALI: What about Henry Gates's charge that Blacks
are the last of the anti Semites?
REED: They have a funny way
of showing it. When Joesph Lieberman ran for
President, he was the first choice among African American voters,
and when Sharpton entered the race, Lieberman was the second
choice So, a comet must've passed the Earth and all the Blacks
suddenly changed their minds! The Times promised to follow Gate's
op-ed with one about the racist attitudes of some Jews against
Black people; it never appeared. If one ever appeared I'd suggest
that it challenge some scriptwriters, novelists, producers and
directors who are peddling Der Sturmer type portraits of Black
people. I walked out on American Gangster: this evil piece
of dreck. Defenders of this junk say that these movies give Black
actors jobs. So did "Birth of a Nation."
ALI: You couldn't take it?
REED: First movie I ever walked
out in my life. Remember, when they did this Fallujah type attack
on the projects? When, they ran in there and blew all these Black
people away in the projects? Like Fallujah or something. And,
they always get a Black guy on the side of the White invaders
so the scene wouldn't appear to be so racist. This movie like
"The Color Purple" and "What's Love
Got To Do With It," were written directed and produced
by White men.
ALI: However, to be fair,
I read both Alice Walker and Tina Turner protested certain depictions
in those movies.
REED: Right. Both Alice Walker
and Tina Turner objected to the way the Black guy in Purple
and the way Ike Turner were portrayed. Tina Turner said that
the film was unfair to Ike. The Times called Turner an Ogre in
their obituary of him and Yahoo News said that his name was synonymous
with domestic violence, yet Paul McCartney's ex says that he
beat her even when she was pregnant. Turner is condemned. McCartney
gets a knighthood and Starbucks.
Think that White feminists
in New York will picket Starbucks like they wrote
letters objecting to a dying Ike Turner's receiving an award?
I doubt it. As for
"American Gangsters" about the life of a man,
a despicable drug dealer, who conned Denzil Washington into believing
that he was close to Bumpy Johnson, the Harlem gangster, Bumpy's
widow recently published a book saying that this character made
it up and Bumpy thought of him as a jerk. The guy who wrote the
script also wrote "Schindler's List." Think that he
would [know] better than to participate in such a vile product.
The producer, Ridley Scott, I think also was involved with Training
Day --another evil
piece with which Washington cooperated.
ALI: We've talked about
White writers speaking for Black culture. The movie Crash, which you and I have discussed in private, won
Best Picture as you know. They said this movie shows how "we
have moved and can move beyond race." When I saw that movie,
I thought to myself, "I've never met a Persian guy like
this crazy, gun wielding Persian in this movie. I've never met
Black people who talk like this in real life."
REED: Yeah, well, I mean they
have some kind of fixed picture assigned in their mind about
whom we all are, where we're like cartoonish figures-- they can
label us that way. I objected to Crash-- I thought it
was terrible. I think Black intellectuals see too deeply. That's
the problem. It's a cause of anxiety, because we see things differently.
My generation of writers has
been prone to premature illness and death, especially the women.
When Black male writers meet it's like a session of the American
Diabetic Association. Given all of the anti-Muslim propaganda
that's being disseminated by The American Nazi media, you have
to be careful. It can stress you out.
As a pioneer you might feel
alone. But already your example has inspired a new generation
of Pakistani American writers so you won't feel isolated. And
your artistic career is supported by your parents, which is rare.
ALI: Well, we're writers.
We do what we do, and we just try our best.
REED: Your play "Domestic
Crusaders" should be ranked with family dramas written by
Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neil, but given the present anti
Muslim hysteria aided and abetted by the Clintons, there are
obstacles between you and Broadway.
You just have to be patient,
because Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy
is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were
the favored model minority over Asian Americans. You'll be joined
by some who feel the way you do. Frank Chin, the yellow Malcolm
X, never got this support. He calls Chinese Americans the Uncle
Toms of American ethnic groups. He's paid for his defiance of
assimilation and the "go along to get along" policy
of some ethnic groups with his
health.
I reached the age of 70, because
I have cultivated an association of multicultural intellectuals
who are informed and alert to whatever "tricknology"
that's laid on us by the powers that be. These include White
ethnic intellectuals- people who know their roots- as well as
Native American, Asian American, Hispanic and Black intellectuals.
These are thirty, forty-year associations with some of the best
minds around. Minds that are ignored by the media. And so, while
the Black Middle class fails to see the insidious propaganda
that's coming down - they give films like Crash awards
- my friends and I are so in tune that we might call each other
and comment on an event at the same time. Cross wires. When this
most recent fake book came out where the writer said she was
half Indian, my friend Gerald Vizenor, a Native American short
story writer novelist and critic, said that he recognized the
fraud right away.
Like on Oscar night, which
has become a White supremacist pageant, and where Tina Brown's
"Invisible" White women soak up the 3 or so hours,
and where they give awards to films like Crash or Monster's
Ball or Training Day-- all films that denigrate Blacks,
my phone is ringing off the hook from my friends who see this
thing the same way as I.
ALI: What's your objection
to Crash? It
portrays a wide variety of races, not just African American,
as prejudiced.
REED: In Crash, you've
got a pathological cop who at the end justifies police brutality.
He tells the naïve, young cop that you're going to end up
the same as him. He's the most sympathetic character in the movie.
So, the naïve cop ends up murdering this Black kid and tries
to cover up the evidence. It sort of justifies police brutality
and the planting of evidence which is what happened in the O.J.
case. You had that psychotic cop [played by Matt Dillon] molesting
this Black woman-- you know, fondling her. The feminists should've
been outraged by this movie, but they don't care about Brown
women. They don't give a damn about them. I read these articles
by some Black and Brown feminists pleading, just begging (in
whining, begging voice), "Oh, please don't exclude us,
oh White women feminists from your movement." Some years
ago, White and Black feminists clashed so at a convention in
Akron Ohio that the Governor's wife had to intervene.
ALI: Last question: You've
been writing now nearly 50 years. You look back on your body
of work. You must think to yourself, "I came out of the
era of the '60's, where we wanted progress. Trying to push things
forward." So, you look back on it and ask, "Did anything
I do with my work-- did it push things forward?" Can you
look back and say, concretely, "This! This piece-- this made a difference?"
REED: I think the novels. The
novels probably. The non-fiction. The plays raise issues that
are ignored in other forums. Look, I have Black guys who tell
me they put my books on their bed stands to read at night like
something for guidance or information. That really pleases me
a lot. I think my work has changed some things. It's changed
me.
Wajahat Ali is Pakistani Muslim American who is
neither a terrorist nor a saint. He is a playwright, essayist,
humorist, and recent J.D. whose work, "The Domestic Crusaders,"
is the first major play about Muslim Pakistani Americans living
in a post 9-11 America. His blog is at http://goatmilk.wordpress.com/.
He can be reached at wajahatmali@gmail.com
A longer version of this interview
can be found on Wajahat
Ali's website.
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