Posts

Posted on

Wisdom in Old Books

Shortly after writing about Sophie Gerson’s passing a few weeks ago, I was contacted by her grand-daughter Frieda and daughter Deborah. They’re cleaning out the family house in Bensonhurst and thought I might be interested in some of Si Gerson’s books. Would I! Si had a voluminous book collection on topics like socialism, the labor movement, election law and policy and New York City politics that stretched back decades.

There was an impressive diversity to Si’s collection, as it was not limited, like too many young leftists’ today, to those writers with whom he agreed. Si’s habit of underlining sections and scribbling exclamation points in the margin suggest his opinion of the material. My favorite so-far being the prominent question mark beside Norman Thomas’ preposterous claim, in “Socialism Re-Examined,” that Marx’s theory of surplus labor value could not account for automation (Marx, of course, devotes several chapters of “Capital Vol. 1” to the topic, and Thomas’ claim reveals the Socialist Party’s standard bearer as one who read Marx in order to claim that he read Marx and disagreed with him).

My selection’s from Si’s library suggest my own narrowness. I declined, for example a handsome, multi-volume set of Stalin’s writings, clearly preferring books on or by A.J. Muste, Norman Thomas and Morris Hillquit – heroes from “my” corner of “our” left. I was delighted to find five rare books from my favorite tragic hero, William Z. Foster, all inscribed “To Si Gerson, With Comradely greetings, from Bill Foster” (or something like it).

So, now I am the owner of a big box of historical socialist and labor books, and seeking “time enough at last” to read it all. Today I am reading Morris Hillquit’s “Loose Leaves From a Busy Life” and want to share a pearl of wisdom from it with you. Hillquit, for your possible edification, was a Jewish immigrant who was a leader of the strong socialist movement in the Lower East Side, centered around the garment unions, “The Daily Forward” and the Socialist Party from the 1890’s well into the 1930’s. A National Chairman of the Party and frequent candidate for political office, he lived long enough to become the leader of the “Old Guard” that was challenged by Norman Thomas.

In 1917, Hillquit was the Socialist Party’s candidate for Mayor of New York, running on an anti-war platform. The election was the first since the United States entered the World War and a Socialist victory, Hillquit challenged, would show that the people of the largest city in America wanted an immediate end to the war. The campaign attracted national attention and at one point Hillquit was ahead in the polls. In the end, Hillquit polled about 21% in a four-way contest, losing to Tammany Hall’s candidate, John F. Hylan. (Hillquit notes that he added about 110,000 votes to the previous election’s Socialist tally, and that a constitutional amendment extending voting rights to women – which had failed two years prior – passed by 100,000 votes – mostly from the Lower East Side.)

The Socialist Party, then a major force in U.S. politics, with a quarter million members and hundreds of elected Mayors, city councilmen, state assemblymen and even a Congressman, was opposed to the war and to U.S. entry into it, and huge demonstrations – not unlike the demonstrations that put millions of people in the streets marching against the current war back in 2002 and 2003 – were held across the country. Once the United States entered the war, Hillquit believed it was the role of Socialists to press for an immediate negotiated peace. And, here, from a stump speech in 1917, is your pearl of wisdom:

“A victory in arms would mean terms of peace imposed upon the vanquished. It would lead to rancor and striving for vengeance. It would not be a peace on firm foundation but one founded on quicksand and would lead to more war.”

It’s as fine a statement of pragmatic pacifism as I have ever read. Hillquit’s words were, regrettably, all too prophetic. The terms of the Versailles treaty were imposed upon Germany and did lead to a striving for vengeance that was harnessed by Hitler and the Nazi movement and led to more war. A typical challenge put to pacifists is what we would do about a Hitler. A pacifist position on the “good” war is not an easy or obvious one, but a continuation of the cycle of militarism should be obviously unwise. The history of the bloody 20th century should show what a vicious cycle it is.

As for our modern case, when public opinion has swung decidedly and emphatically against the war in Iraq and the presidential contenders hem and haw over a withdrawal of forces “with honor” and with our chosen government in place, heed Hillquit’s 90-year-old words. What each of the Democratic and Republican candidates for President propose are terms of “peace” to be imposed upon the Iraqi people. Such a peace could not last. Anything less than an unconditional withdrawal and offer to pay reparations to a government of their choosing will result in a dark day of reckoning for us in the future.

Posted on

Every Five Years Or So

Like some strange comet that irregularly circles our solar system, two great bands graced our record stores with the rare appearance of new records. The Mekons are perhaps my favorite band. I’ve written about them extensively here and in other places. An original summer of ’77 punk band – contemporaries of the Gang of Four – our comrades from Leeds released a string of good-on-paper singles and LPs, broke up, reunited to play benefit concerts for the striking miners, kick-started the alternative country scene with a trio of indie-released records, recorded some pretty terrific rock-n-roll anthems, got signed and dropped from more records labels than the Sex Pistols, been the shoulda-been, coulda-been, woulda-been saviors of rock music and then scattered across the globe to get on with their personal lives.

With the band spread across both hemispheres, from Hong Kong to London, New York to Chicago and San Francisco, and most members keeping busy with their own solo projects, “Natural,” their first record of new music in five years, sounds less like a rock album than an art project. Propelled by incessant chanting, the mesmerizing “Zeroes and Ones” is the hit of the record, a wonderful juxtaposition of English folk music and the digital world. The infectious refrains of “Dickie, Chalkie and Nobby” and “Give Me Wine or Money” stand out and would be welcome additions to the usual Mekons live set list. Thematically organized around the natural world (or, at least, a 19th century understanding of it), this mostly-acoustic record is not without its moments of catchy song-craft, but overall is a subdued and mostly forgettable affair.

Also returning after a five year hiatus (and rumored break-up) is Imperial Teen. Their new disc, “The Hair The TV The Baby & The Band,” is full of the breezy pop hooks and male-female harmonies that make their long silence between albums so regrettable. “Finger-lickin’ gum-smackin’ sass-talkin you know what” is how Will Schwartz describes the object of his admiration on the sexy “Sweet Potato,” but he could just as easily be describing his band (and may well be). The record’s a perfect summer treat.

Posted on

In Defense of the Blond Beauty Queen

Miss Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton, seems to be the internet joke of the week for her rambling, incoherent response to the token political question lobbed at contestants in this weekend’s beauty pageant. The blond beauty queen was asked to account for why, according to “recent polls,” one-fifth of Americans can’t locate their country on a world map.

For the sake of posterity, here is the transcript of her response, which I had already read on two websites and the video of which was forwarded to me by five different people before I finished my morning cup of Irish Breakfast tea:

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some… people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, ah, education like such as in South Africa, and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.”

Now, if the statistic is correct (and I would like that verified, comrades) then the odds are that at least nine of the other contestants would have fared just as poorly as Miss Teen South Carolina in naming a bunch of countries other than the U.S., which is to say nothing of the audience. Call me elitist, but I wager the kind of people who would spend their Friday night watching a sexless teenage beauty contest aren’t exactly our best and brightest. Could they find the U.S.A., or Iraq, South Africa or even one Asian country on a world map? And yet a question meant to highlight the collective stupidity of our nation was twisted into an easy “dumb blond joke.”

In Miss Teen South Carolina’s defense, what the hell would have been an appropriate response to this question? I mean, what would have been an appropriate response in the “I would wish for world peace, I believe the children are our future” world of beauty contests? Was she supposed to decry a property tax system of funding local school districts that produces woeful inequality between cities and suburbs? Denounce the high cost of tuition that leaves college out of reach for too many? Or was she supposed to crinkle up her nose, look slightly distressed and coo something about inspirational teachers?

I like to imagine an alternative scenario in which Ms. Upton really took the issue head-on:

I personally believe that Americans (or, I should say, U.S. Americans because our fellow North Americans in Canada are a bit more globally savvy) are unable to find our nation on a world map because of a conspiracy between our media and our government to keep us blissfully unaware of the world outside of our big screen high definition TVs, sport utility vehicles and McMansions, except when there’s a country that’s a “problem” that we have to “fix” or “help,” like such as Iraq or some of the Asian countries. If we knew, for example, that half the world’s population–three billion people!–live on less than two dollars a day while the 20% of us in the developed nations consume 86% of the world’s goods, well, we might not be so silent or complicit in the imperialist agenda of our government which supports our unsustainable lifestyle.

Something tells me if the blond beauty queen gave a response like that it would still be fodder for morning chat and gossip, albeit with a far different spin.

Posted on

Watching the Detectives

I want to be Philip Marlowe. Or maybe Nick Charles. My favorite kinds of movies are film noir, particularly the hard-boiled detective genre. I love the interplay of shadows and light in black and white. I love the cynical worldview, the disdain for scruples, morals and basic decency. I love that the characters drink rye and gin, smoke Chesterfields, wear fedoras and ties, consult the phone directory for research and do any number of other terribly old-fashioned things. I love the women – tall, thin, legs for miles, usually dressed in black and up to no good.

But, mostly, I hero worship the gumshoe protagonists. The hard-boiled detective is the ultimate male fantasy. He is how we would all like to envision ourselves: suave, a sense of style, quick-witted and sarcastic, a healthy appetite for liquor that actually serves to sharpen his senses, seemingly irresistible to women, knows when he’s being played and always saves the day. Dashiell Hammett, the ultimate master of the genre, acknowledged this male fantasy aspect in the creation of one of his most famous characters, Sam Spade:

“Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not, or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague, want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.”

The protagonist from Hammett’s early novels, the nameless Continental Op, was just such a Holmes-like solver of riddles. These – “The Dain Curse” and “Red Harvest” – are true mystery novels, emphasizing clues and plot twists over character, as the Continental Op has none. It was with Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” that the detective story developed true heroes. The detective hero in Hammett’s final novel, Nick Charles, has character in spades. Seen as a mash note to his lover Lillian Hellman, “The Thin Man” presents a male fantasy of a committed relationship: to a saucy heiress half his age, who mixes his drinks, massages his shoulders, countenances a fair amount of hanky panky with the novel’s femme fatales and helps him compile the clues to the mystery.

Raymond Chandler, the author who is credited as carrying Hammett’s hard-boiled mantle, did not improve upon his predecessor’s economy of words nor his gripping plots, as most of Chandler’s stories were obvious and perfunctory. But he did create the ultimate Hollywood detective: Philip Marlowe. With a back story that involves getting fired from the D.A.’s office for political reasons, Marlowe has charm of the renegade hero that Hollywood has been trying to imitate in action and adventure movies ever since. Always too quick to mouth off to cops and criminals, Marlowe frequently takes his punches and his nights in the clink. His bottle of whiskey is conveniently available to loosen up a suspect or an already loose woman. Usually hard up for cash, he nevertheless passes up opportunities to shake down his clients and often shields them from the wives, daughters and mistresses who are scandalizing them. Still, he’s no softie (“I don’t like your manner, Mr. Marlowe.” “That’s all right. I’m not selling it.”).

Playing Marlowe in the movies is a kind of drag. The early actors – Robert Montgomery, Dick Powell, George Montgomery and the best of the lot, Humphrey Bogart – played him as the traditional tough guy of noir stereotype. James Caan played an older, wearier Marlowe in “Poodle Springs.” Robert Mitchum brought his unique brand of cool to a British adaptation in the 1970’s, perhaps because the stiffness and properness of the 1940’s U.S.A. could only be recreated in the 1970’s by transporting the tale to England. Elliott Gould, also in the 70’s, played Marlowe as a man out of time in sunny L.A. That portrayal, in Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” is perhaps most intriguing for the purposes of this article. Following his iconoclastic “M*A*S*H*,” it was hoped that Altman would do for noir genre what he did for the war movie and make a kind of a “Trapper John, PI.” While Gould maintains his roguish charm, Altman maintains a certain reverence for the Marlowe archetype. He tips his hat to the nudists next door and refuses to loosen his tie even on the beach. All the characters around him tease him for his old-fashioned ways.

The film was not a success, although a recent revival at the Film Forum landed Elliott Gould on the cover of the Village Voice decades after his curious period as a smart-ass Jewish matinee heartthrob. Instead of a revival of noir, the 1970’s saw the rise of Dirty Harry and other vigilante heroes, who in turn gave rise to that loathsome archetype, the action hero. In place of black suits and fedoras, we get ripped t-shirts and bulging muscles. In place of flirtatious banter and crossed legs, we get an inarticulate bodybuilder gnawing on some starlet’s tits at around the 50 minute mark in a well-choreographed bedroom romp. In place of investigation and deduction, we get explosions and lots of them.

Why has the action hero replaced the hard-boiled detective as the male fantasy? I would chalk it up to sort of generalized anxiety that men feel about their role in society these days, except that the hard-boiled fantasy is also about being in control (of the situation, of life, of women). Maybe the difference between the two stock types is too little to fret over, and I’m just guilty once again of being nostalgic for a time before I was born.