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 News from Little Rock

Timeline of Little Rock public schools desegregation

Your door is shut against my face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent.
– Claude McKay, “The White House” 

What happens to a dream deferred?
…does it explode?
– Langston Hughes, “Harlem” 

My days are not their days…
My ways are not their ways…
I don’t think they dare
to think of that: no:
I’m fairly certain they don’t think of that at all.
– James Baldwin, “Staggerlee wonders” 

The biggest News I do not dare
Telegraph to the Editor’s chair:
“They are like people everywhere.”

The angry Editor would reply
In hundred harryings of Why
– Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” a poem that describes life in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 when Central High School became the site of the first federally-enforced court-ordered school integration.  

Forty years later, President Clinton returned to his home state to commemorate the occasion, while essentially ignoring the poverty and resultant violence in the area. During the first three days of Clinton’s four day stay, four young men aged 17 to 23 were murdered in Little Rock not far from Central High School – an outbreak of violence that had been foreshadowed less than two months earlier by a drive-by shooting near Central High that was the third such shooting in a five-day period which also saw the killings of four other youths. The murders and poverty went virtually unreported, as usual. The slain – Brian Young, 19; Derrick Mcbride, 17; Jamarco Woods, 23; Melvin Morning, 23; Mark Green, 26; Shameka Moore, 16; Antoine Harris, 18; Tony Davis, 20. 

I.

Historical the print deluge not once before nor since so huge – the president preached claimed he cared – emotion trite and tripe none spared  

at Central High in Little Rock where justice first was forced and won. Reporters praised in nonstop talk the proud returning native son –  

so sanguine suave a specious bit on stage displayed – adorned bright lit – sleek mugging presidential tears for racial gains of forty years.  

He harkened to the Mayflower – he mentioned Ellis Island too. To sanction patriotic power he flung around clichés half true.  

He lauded then the Little Rock Nine (and rightly so their story told how brave they crossed the color line thus much deserving glory bold)  

but spoke no word at Central’s door about reversing flight from poor though wealth had fled from center town – of monied flight he’d not talk down.  

The city splashed fresh paint around to try to make the streets look swell – a surface fix meant to confound to fool the cameras fool them well.  Continue reading Little Rock and Central High – 40 & 50 years on

An Obvious Deficiency – the Lack of Fact-Based Partisan Novels 

Is the antiwar movement “flat on its back” as some fairly prominent progressive workers have commented? If so, or if it is at least less effective than it could be and should be, is this due in part to the fact that the antiwar movement (like progressive movements generally) fails to take much advantage of fact-based partisan fiction? Fails to produce fiction that might more fully and powerfully reveal reality and possibilities for change than the comparative flood of essays and commentaries and nonfiction books currently produced? Isn’t there an extreme and indefensible imbalance between the types of progressive writing available to not only progressive workers but to the entire society and culture itself? Continue reading Orwell’s Problem and Partisan Fiction

An Interview with Tony Christini by Mike Palecek

[Initial questions by Mike Palecek. Other questions supplemented, per request.]

Q: Why use fiction as a tool for social change?

Fiction can be engaging and effective as a tool for social change. How do we know? Lots of ways – including careful studies such as Michael Hanne’s book The Power of the Story: Fiction and Political Change that document the extensive social, political, and cultural effects of “political fiction” and the ways in which governments and individuals have used and feared and counted on the public (and private) power of political fiction.  Take the case of Pakistan today which has banned all fiction imports from India. Pakistan has no such wholesale ban on nonfiction (“technical, professional, and religious” nonfiction books are allowed). Even if the author is Pakistani but the book was published in India, it’s disallowed, apparently because the state of Pakistan fears that the power and influence of fiction will undermine its control. In this case, fiction is even more feared than nonfiction. And why shouldn’t it be, given its very influential history and nature, in public and private realms both?  Continue reading The Power of Political Fiction

“MoveOn & Media Double Standards” by Robert Parry: 

MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” ad may have gotten more attention than it deserved, but it also has underscored several important points: the foolishness of MoveOn’s ad-buying strategy, the cringing hypocrisy of the mainstream U.S. news media when attacked by the Right, and the pressing need to build independent news outlets.

Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize underscores similar weakness in publishing, as I’ve detailed previously.

Donadio writes:

“Today it’s generally agreed that the multiculturalists won the canon wars. Reading lists were broadened to include more works by women and minority writers, and most scholars consider that a positive development.”

As I wrote at “Leftward Whoa! the Academy” – the institutions still have a long way to go:

“As I’ve mentioned previously, repeatedly, good strides have been made in other areas, in particular in regard to multicultural issues, in realms sometimes known as “identity politics,” thought and experience. But consider, in how many courses next year and in these past several years have students a chance to read and consider an explicit investigative antiwar novel about the ongoing US invasion and occupation of Iraq, one of the greatest calamities of our time for which our country is responsible? The answer is none, apparently. And precious few if any such novels were written for the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and World War II. And where is the criticism of that lack? Again, this example by itself doesn’t prove anything but is indicative of a general great failing of literature departments and the literary establishment as a whole (i.e., publishers, reviewers, writers and so on), which I’ve written about at length elsewhere.”

Or is it The Petraeus Plan to Abolish America and Iraq? 

As I view it, this satire re-post gets to the heart of the report to Congress that General Petraeus is presenting today.

General David Petraeus, current commander of the US occupation of Iraq, reported today, in what he terms a “nuanced” account, that exactly one half of Iraq is “shot to hell” but that the other half is “just fine and dandy” — give or take a few disagreeable conditions which Iraqis will just have to get used to, like massive truck bombs, car bombs, Air Force assaults, general firefights, and other slaughter.

Apparently given the “no go” is the remarkably popular suggestion of US troops that members of Congress and the Bush Administration (who have caused, allowed, or funded even a single day of the war) be required during every government recess and half of all other work days to drive bright yellow Volkswagen Bugs around the most dangerous roads in Iraq to find and defuse Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). Reportedly General Petraeus initially considered the plan, then shelved it, for now, as being too dependent on government employees for work that could otherwise, PR considerations aside, be outsourced to the tens of thousands of lucky corporate hires currently overruning Iraq. Petraeus again characterized his decision as “nuanced.” He foolly believes he is doing the right thing. Thus far, it must be said, there has been no independent confirmation of the “nuance” that Petraeus is executing in Iraq — but the real situation seems clear. As Petraeus noted, “Iraq is going to have to learn…to live with…sensational attacks.” To the General, “living” is apparently a rather unsensational, “nuanced” thing.

The Pentagon and major media confirm the much desired “nuance” of the Petraeus account and efforts, and say Petraeus would know how to win Iraq if anyone does (which, off the record, sources deep in the Pentagon are said to doubt, utterly, actually), and that Petraeus is just the man for the job, having survived full frontal live-fire gunshot during training in 1991, before being operated on by former surgeon and current warhawk Senator Bill Frist. “Petraeus is the man” the Pentagon says — after all, here is a guy who survived a parachute malfunction a mere few years ago, suffering only a broken pelvis. If this guy doesn’t know how to survive disaster, who does? (Well, of course, there’s that plucky 78 year-old Texas lawyer who the (full of) Vice President Dick Cheney shot in the heart and face while drinking beer and hunting little fowl in Texas last year — but that’s another story.)

Former embedded reporters confirm, Petraeus is the man who repeatedly asked them before and after the 2003 thunder run into Baghdad, “Tell me where this ends.” At the moment, it seems clear, it ends where it all began with President Bush, Congress, the Military Industrial Complex, and now General Petraeus – all of whom claim to be directed by “the troops” who, it is said, keep asking for more funds than the current half a trillion US tax dollars so they can keep going on “Living the Dream!” — slaughtering and being slaughtered in balmy Iraq.

Meanwhile, reportedly, chants of “General Betraeus, General Betraeus” have been heard echoing from all across Iraq and the US, apparently by US soldiers and citizens alike who have yet to see the wisdom in the General’s “nuance.”

Military Families Against The War and other dissident groups, it is reported, have drawn a line in the sand. They claim, “Rearranging Generalships in Iraq is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic – after it sunk.” Anti-militancy groups have been heard to wonder, even while marching forth, “When in the hell is everyone going to get a grip and do what ought to be done? Out now. Reparations. Slash the military budget. Praise the sane and take a pass on the ‘nuance’.”

“‘Resign’ is not in my vocabulary,” General Petraeus has been heard to remark, categorically. Though in the future, ”book deal” may be. Whatever the future. If.

At last word, General Petraeus has not recently been shot in the chest, nor broken his hip, nor been blown into bloody little pieces by an IED, and, by all nuanced accounts, is still alive – as is the United States’ little ”Forever War” in Iraq, and elsewhere.

Noam Chomsky, from Counterpunch:

I was quite sceptical. Less so over the years. [The Bush Administration is] desperate. Everything they touch is in ruins. They’re even in danger of losing control over Middle Eastern oil — to China, the topic that’s rarely discussed but is on every planner or corporation exec’s mind, if they’re sane. Iran already has observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — from which the US was pointedly excluded. Chinese trade with Saudi Arabia, even military sales, is growing fast. With the Bush administration in danger of losing Shiite Iraq, where most of the oil is (and most Saudi oil in regions with a harshly oppressed Shiite population), they may be in real trouble.

Under these circumstances, they’re unpredictable. They might go for broke, and hope they can salvage something from the wreckage. If they do bomb, I suspect it will be accompanied by a ground assault in Khuzestan, near the Gulf, where the oil is (and an Arab population — there already is an Ahwazi liberation front, probably organized by the CIA, which the US can “defend” from the evil Persians), and then they can bomb the rest of the country to rubble. And show who’s boss.

First, Found al-Qaeda. Second, Bomb America. Third, Use the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan to recruit new members. Fourth, Trust the US invaders to guard the oil ministry but not the ammunition dumps during the invasion of Iraq. Fifth, Loot the ammunition dumps at will. Sixth, Trust the US invaders to destroy the security and civilian infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan. Seventh, Attack US forces “over there.” Eighth, In the meantime, train the many new recruits to attack the US “over here.” Ninth, Silently applaud the DemReps as their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan provides a steady stream of new recruits to “the cause.” Tenth, Marvel at the recruiters paradise provided by the DemReps.

 In the meantime, people all across America ask, Who is the US Administration and Congress actually working for – bin Laden or us? That laughter – it’s bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

___________________________________________________

[This “Plan to Abolish America” series of satires consists of slightly revised pieces posted in advance of the coming “Petraeus Report” on Iraq. The series began with The Petraeus Plan to Abolish America and Iraq, and will likely end with the same Plan.]

President Bush announced today that he expects to find a congressional sponsor for a bill that would abolish Congress as it is currently known. The Old Congress would be replaced by the New Congress which would consist of two and only two Senators, one from the North and one from the South, and three and only three Representatives — one from the North and one from the South and one from the Middle of the country, to break ties. In the Senate, per tradition, the (full of) Vice President would continue to break any tie between the two new Senators.

The President feels sure that such a duly elected and duly simplified Congress will be able to vastly reduce unseemly partisanship while greatly increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. “The people are tired of PR,” the President said. “They are sick and tired of political races and Congressional bickering. Let’s end this failed experiment in democracy now. Let’s give them what is good for the country.”

The Administration’s Press Secretary denied that the Bush Plan, as the proposal has come to be known, has anything to do with the persistent rock bottom approval ratings of either the President or Congress. “No matter how popular the President may be or may not be he still wants to get rid of Congress,” said the Press Secretary, in what is widely seen as a rare moment of candor.

Republican legislators, in the name of cutting government spending, seem to be generally for the plan. In any event, there are rumors that each Congressional seat will be privatized, transformed into independent lobbying corporations. Democrats have said they are inclined to go along with the plan so as not to appear partisan. “Plus,” one leading congressional Democrat concluded, “if the plan fails and the country turns into a total right-wing fascist dictatorship, we will all know who is to blame.”

There have been some murmurs in corporate circles that such a plan may be seen as unconstitutional by some, but there is every expectation that the newest Supreme Court justices Alito and Roberts will decide in the President’s favor. “Besides,” one of the old Supreme Court justices has been overheard to say, “we brought the Good Ol’ Boy King into power, and we can damn well keep him there.”

At this point, the rest of the country has not been heard from.

Stocks are way up on word of the potential congressional realignment, and President Bush was photographed at his ranch in Texas, giving his by now customary thumbs up to visitors Rumsfeld, Rice, and Cheney — and all the regular Cabinet gang. Meanwhile, a few miles down the road Cindy Sheehan was being told where to go by a Presidential security detail as Sheehan and supporters were setting up camp again to protest the President’s war and to honor her son Casey, killed in action in Iraq. At last word, Sheehan and the camp appeared to be driving in tent poles and otherwise digging in for the night.

___________________________

[This “Plan to Abolish America” series of satires consists of slightly revised pieces posted in advance of the coming “Petraeus Report” on Iraq. The series began with The Petraeus Plan to Abolish America and Iraq, and will likely end with the same Plan.]

The national “newspaper of record,” The New York Times – trailing in circulation only USA Today and The Wall Street Journal among US dailies – has today announced a change for the first time in 110 years to its official slogan, which will no longer be “All The News That’s Fit To Print” but instead the more fitting “All The News That’s Unfit To Print.” Does it matter that they are using invisible ink? Oh, well.

Of course they don’t mean it, except in how they do.

The Times has at last recognized the reality that media watch groups and others have been pointing out for years:

“…by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict – in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.”

In other words, The Times lies. They falsify. They spin.

But now, either in long overdue recognition of its own sordid reality, or to protect themselves from being tried for constant contributions to countless Crimes Against Humanity, The Times has decided to change their venerable slogan by the addition of a single pronoun to use the glorious word: Unfit.

By this brilliant stratagem, to the best we are able to determine, The Times hopes to be able to claim that any deceitful accounts it may be brought to trial for can be recontextualized in the eyes of a criminal tribunal as being ironic. Or nuanced. The Times hopes to argue that not only are they the national paper of record but that they are also the national paper of irony, and satiric artifice – and thus truthful by way of literal inversion, and other ironic forms of play.

Iraq wasn’t really armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq wasn’t really any great threat to the US, as the paper reported in relentless detail, thus helping lead the US into its criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Times was only joking – or so it hopes to be able to argue should the legal need arise. The Times was only poking fun at the ludicrous claims coming from the US administration and Congress and every major corporate media outlet. The Times was being satiric, or simply ironic at least – printing all the news that’s unfit to print – which the Times is now helpfully clarifying by changing its slogan for the first time in over a century.  

Some observers have suggested that the Times would do better to keep the old slogan and, instead, change the bulk of its news reporting. The Times dismissed this notion out of hand as “Unthinkable. We are in no way set up for that.”

Which is in fact accurate. As with other corporate media, the majority of the New York Times funding comes not from subscribers or viewers but from corporate advertisers, who would flee in an instant if the Times changed anything but their slogan.

Thus, all in all, the Times’ decision to change its slogan to “All The News That’s Unfit To Print” is irreproachable. The Times’ decision is being hailed in numerous circles of wealth and power as “the latest indicator of what a highly advanced society we are.”

Good thing then that we invaded Iraq, after all. Soon – if those incredibly stubborn Iraqis would just stop setting off those pesky car bombs – they will come to think and act in an ever more civil manner, like us. 

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[This “Plan to Abolish America” series of satires consists of slightly revised pieces posted in advance of the coming “Petraeus Report” on Iraq. The series began with The Petraeus Plan to Abolish Iraq, and will likely end with the same Plan.]

reviewed by Michiko Kakutani

In “Brother, I’m Dying,” Ms. Danticat brings the lyric language and emotional clarity of her remarkable 2004 novel “The Dew Breaker” to bear on the story of her own family, a story which, like so much of her fiction, embodies the painful legacy of Haiti’s violent history, demonstrating the myriad ways in which the public and the private, the political and the personal, intersect in the lives of that country’s citizens and exiles.

Comprehensive overview by Paul Garon of the Radical Novel in the first half of the twentieth century, based on Walter B. Rideout’s book, The Radical Novel in the United States:

[Rideout] defined the radical novel as “one which demonstrates, either explicitly or implicitly, that its author objects to the human suffering imposed by some socioeconomic system and advocates that the system be fundamentally changed.” The final clause is the most important, for many novelists sympathized with the victims of the system without advocating fundamental changes to the system itself.

First, Lie through gold-plated teeth that US policy in Iraq is derived by the needs of “the troops,” which, if true, means that the Senate has abdicated its power to foot soldiers. Thus the US has technically overthrown itself – an auto coup d’état – totally phony, in fact criminal. Second, Abdicate whatever power has not been abdicated to the mythical notion of “the troops” to the new War Czar. He will rule with a Czar-like fist. Third, Continue to insulate the American Green Zone, that is the US Senate, et al, from the rest of the country. Fourth, Continue to seek cover in platitudes to Patriotism and Religion, Family and Nationalism that have long since become the first and last refuge of the scoundrels. Fifth, Just lie.

In his great novel of the people, Les Misérables, Victor Hugo may as well have been speaking of the US Administration and Congress during the invasion and occupation of Iraq: 

“To dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition…to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites, to force the past on the present – this seems strange. Still, there are theorists who hold such theories. These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about shouting, ‘Look! take this, honest people.’ This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers practice it. They rubbed a black heifer over with chalk, and said, ‘She is white, Bos Cretatus‘.” [Chalked white cow.]  Hugo added that the “persistence” of these “institutions in striving to perpetuate themselves is like…the tenderness of corpses which return to embrace the living.”

The US Senate itself is a chalked white cow: giving equal weight to the votes of a few hundred thousand people in Wyoming as it gives to tens of millions of people in California. Thus, in its very structure, and in many other ways, the US Senate is an anti-democracy institution. While claiming the exact opposite. The US Senate is a club of mainly rich white men who are primarily the hand puppets of wealth, and wealth themselves. They are very much in the spirit of the Senate’s very structure. Chalk white that cow – the US Senate.    

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[This “Plan to Abolish America” series of satires consists of slightly revised pieces posted in advance of the coming “Petraeus Report” on Iraq. The series began with The Petraeus Plan to Abolish Iraq, and will likely end with the same Plan.]

Festival Info: 

You are invited to our nation’s capital for a festival that celebrates our great tradition of poetry of witness and resistance.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions on poetry and social change, youth programming, films, parties, walking tours, and activism—a unique opportunity to hone our activist skills while we assess and debate the public role of the poet and the poem in this time of crisis.

As citizens and artists, our obligation has never been greater. We call on poets of conscience to move to the center of public life as we forge a visionary new arts movement for peace and justice.

Featured poets: Chris August, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Melissa Best (aka Princess of Controversy), Kenneth Carroll, Grace Cavalieri, Lucille Clifton, Joel Dias Porter (aka DJ Renegade), Mark Doty, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Brian Gilmore, Sam Hamill, Joy Harjo, Galway Kinnell, Stephen Kuusisto, Semezhdin Mehmedinovic, E. Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alix Olson, Alicia Ostriker, Ishle Yi Park, Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith, Susan Tichy, Pamela Uschuk, and Belle Waring.

A Cycle
by Mickey Z

white cop
from the suburbs
busts
black men
from the city

prison population surges

black men inside
invent new slang
new styles
Gangs inside and out
adopt it all
designers
co-opt it all

white son
of white cop
in the suburbs
ends up talking
and dressing
and play-acting
like the black men
his father
sends away

Mickey Z — http://www.mickeyz.net

by John Esther

Do you think Shooter goes far enough in how sinister some plans are executed in and from this country? 

It goes far enough within the framework of the film. It’s not a documentary. If we just focus on the sensationalism for a moment and the action, which is determined by the sensationalism, then it’s a good roller coaster movie. But it’s much more than that. It’s not that simple. We shy away from understanding the complexities that happen. This happens on several levels at the same time. If you think, “One moment registered with me” or “I feel something inside of me other than just a movie and maybe I better go and look up and read other material.” The movie is relevant in some parts because there are a lot of issues right now around the Horn of Africa. 

Over the years how have roles changed for actors of color? 

Movies have changed over the years. That affects roles that are offered to actors of color. In terms of roles available, black women are still at the bottom when comparing men and women. It also seems that when we talk of an actor of color, we’re describing him or her as a “crossover actor.” One of the problems with the whole process is that we’re 300 million people in the world yet we export our culture across the planet. Often what it does is undermine the development of other cultures and other national identities. 

Potentially there are more people of color in audiences than there are of people who are not of color. They’re not demeaning roles for the most part, but if we’re still asking the question, then we’re still dealing with the other problems. We still have to deal with racism; certainly anytime it manifests itself within the industry. What happens in the industry is not inseparable from what happens in the general society. What stories are being told? Who decides what stories are being told, should be told, and are acceptable to be told? In some sense, that dictates our careers.  

Is that something your company, Louverture Films, is  addressing? 

We’re trying to realize a vision of storytelling. How do we now envision ourselves? Where is the balance shift? Where is the paradigm shift? What is the story about? Who are the primary characters? For the most part that is what we attempt to do. Another part is that we try to see ourselves as a part of world cinema. 

What do you think about interviews where you talk about your work? Do you think it serves the film? Or do think the work should speak for itself? 

It depends on how you want to look at the film. How you want to look at the work itself. If you ask what is my process, my work methodology, then it’s all right. If you’re going to ask me what’s the relevance of the film in today’s world, that is fine, too. I would love to believe that a great deal of the work that we need to do is relevant to what’s happening in the world. It can’t simply be just entertainment. If you look at the great work, the great writers of the past like Shakespeare. His work is not just entertainment. He was commenting on society. Shakespeare was deconstructing power and human frailty. He was making some sort of analysis of his world. If we look at art from the vantage point of that, there’s always a place to comment.

… 

Maybe we should just run through the America and world conquering slogans on this one:

CNN:

from “The Most Trusted Name in News” to “The Most Busted Name in News”

from “The CNN effect” to “The CNN defect”

from “The Situation Room” to “The Capitulation Room” (capitulation to big money, that is)

from “This is CNN” to “We’ve got ADD”

Updated CNN Slogans and Program Titles:

“We Outfox Fox!”

“Half the Size of the BBC But an Empire Just the Same”

“If Our Advertisers Can’t Live with It, Neither Can We”

“Wolf Blitzer! Even the Name is Absurd”

“Anderson Cooper – I Owe My Job to My Oft Endeering Dear in the Headlights Views of News”

“Nobody Stomps Immigrants Like Lou Dobbs Tonight” (Maybe Not Even the Fox News corporation’s “O’Thuggery Factor”)

“‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’ – That Foul-Mouthed Imus Has Nothing on Me”

“‘This Week at War’ – What We Are Programmed For”

“‘American Morning’ – Corporate Dawn”

“‘Paula Zahn Now’ – Eviscerating Vacuity”

“‘The Capitol Gang’ – We Satirize Ourselves”

“‘Crossfire’ – Caught in Our Own”

“CNN – Corporate America at Its Brightest Best”

“CNN – The Triumph of PR”

“CNN – Crucifying the News 24/7″

“CNN – Willful Ignorance Incorporated”

“CNN – Willful Distortion and Deceit Daily”

“CNN – Carefully Neutered News”

“CNN – Craven News Network”

“CNN – Crap Nicely Nuanced”

“CNN – Crucified News Network”

“This Is CNN”

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[This “Plan to Abolish America” series of satires consists of slightly revised pieces posted in advance of the coming “Petraeus Report” on Iraq. The series began with The Petraeus Plan to Abolish Iraq, and will likely end with the same Plan.]

Andrew O’Hehir, Salon:

“The anti-globalization movement may not quite have found its Dante or its Homer in British writer Robert Newman, but it’s found something, all right — maybe its Theodore Dreiser. Newman, the author of two previous novels published in the United Kingdom, makes a splashy, messy American debut with “The Fountain at the Center of the World,” an ambitious and occasionally thrilling book that takes you from a NAFTA-impoverished Mexican village to the sleek corporate hallways of the City of London to the now-legendary street demonstrations at the World Trade Organization’s 1999 Seattle meeting. Newman is himself a veteran street-level activist, having worked with such groups as Reclaim the Streets, Indymedia, Earth First! and the longshoremen of Liverpool. He writes about the decentralized, ragtag fringes of the contemporary left with affection and a wry eye for detail…”

Other reviews:

The American Prospect
Independent
Guardian
New York Times
Tacoma Tribune
Diverse Books
Texas Observer

 

Tony Christini
(1992)

Contemporary writers of culturally critical fiction who depict troubled conventional lives in largely dead end realms of culture undertake a necessary but not sufficient task for encouraging and contributing to social change through fiction. The social impact of these fictions, having recounted the hopelessness and despair systemic of modern culture without attempting to explore crucial causal factors may even be largely regressive, discouraging action or deeper thought. Certainly the impact, the insight and the art could be greater if in addition to degradation, more fiction focused on regenerative aspects at the fringes of culture—more hospitable activities, environments, institutions, beliefs, mindsets and operating principles of culture.

Contemporary novels that have cultural critique as a main focus often plausibly show that an apocalypse of sorts comes every day, that we are living in a sustained and possibly sustainable apocalypse. People are abused. They face social and personal pressures that leave them frequently hopeless, helpless, confused, afraid, hurt, and not infrequently dead. While such works satirize, ironically note, and otherwise record this difficult daunting reality, they often seem themselves to be part of an implicit and overt cultural hopelessness, given the very limited exploration of both progressive social change and other personal-insight-as-it-relates-to-the-public (and vice-versa), that is, psycho-social insight.

On the upbeat side, the novels typically communicate something relatively worthy like, the world is terrible, but if we get “tight” enough with each other, it can still be a special place. Yet little or no movement toward institutional social change is touched on that might aid and protect such hospitable personal (let alone public) life. The books seem to propose that we come together in this socio-cultural wasteland, this technological tundra, and . . . just be. “Cruise cool and alert” (Pynchon). Just don’t get zapped. Be cool. Don’t let it get to you, ’cause no way are you going to get to it. It ain’t gonna change. In Don DeLillo’s renowned novel, White Noise, the narrative reads, “There was nothing to do but wait for the next sunset, when the sky would ring like bronze” (321). Nothing to do. And sure enough, that is all the characters seem to plan on doing. The sunset was bronzed by a corporate, technological disaster, a toxic chemical spill. That we need better industrial and environmental regulations seems a plausible thought, but DeLillo’s characters give it only passing attention, if that, and base no action upon such an idea—something readers might learn a lot from and be wonderfully enthralled by, personally and otherwise—nor does the narrative counterpoint very much with characters or perspectives more insightful, and yet White Noise, especially representative of a current dominant ethos in fiction, is one of the most praised contemporary novels. That White Noise and other novels here discussed are highly accomplished I take as a given. What I discuss are the, at least, equally striking, and unnecessary, limitations of such novels and such fiction. Continue reading Fiction and Social Change

Fox News is known by a lot of great slogans it includes in daily TV broadcasts, as well as by the meaning of those slogans made bare:

from “America’s Newsroom” to “America’s Spewroom”

from “The Most Powerful Name in News” to “The Most Pungent Name in Lying”

from “Fox Means Business” to “Fox Means Big Business ”

from “Fair and Balanced” to “UnFair and UnBalanced”

from “Fox is Where the News Is” to “Fox is Where The Lies Are”

from “We Report, You Decide” to “We Distort, You Jeer”

and most recently

from “We Put the World in Context” to “We Put the Odious in the News”

Despite recent losses in viewers, Fox News, the BBC reports, has seen its profits double during the Iraq War, of which Fox is the main official co-sponsor – while CNN, the three traditional networks and right wing talk radio, among others, do their cheerleading best to compete for that distinguished honor.

War profits have reportedly encouraged Fox creator, funder, and media king Rupert Murdoch and Fox CEO, Chairman, and President Roger Ailes to consider further advocating (if not outright orchestrating) subsequent wars, such as a possible WMD obliteration of Iran, perhaps coupled with a new African holocaust, to go along with the current holocaust imposed by Fox-friendly pharmaceutical companies who refuse to give up patent “rights” that prevent that continent and the world from affording to fully treat for AIDS and other diseases.

In addition, Fox News is reportedly investigating whether or not tiny countries and regions like China, India, Venezuela and most of the rest of Latin America (with the exception of the Cuban expatriate section of south Florida) would be susceptible to a cleansing Biblical plague of locusts that might be hatched in Rupert Murdoch’s deep pockets. Popular British geopolitical novelist John le Carré thought he might write a novel based on such inside information but finally gave up the effort as being “too hopelessly factual and depressingly non-novel-like.” Word has it though that pop CEO novelist Michael Crichton is determined to pen “a big story” about “an evil United Nations cabal” that tries to force Murdoch, Ailes, and Fox News to pay taxes directly to the UN, the global organization that represents the countries Crichton believes Murdoch, Ailes, and Fox News have every right to own and dispense with however they and their financial advisors see fit.

Meanwhile, the media analysts at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) ask – “How are Murdoch, Ailes, and Fox News different from Jean Valjean, the ‘wretched’ character in Victor Hugo’s great novel of the people, Les Misérables? Answer: In every possible way. Jean Valjean was forced to flee by the establishment into the sewers to survive and got out as quick as he could; whereas, Fox News is the sewer – competing successfully with a number of other sewers for sufficient toxic sludge to spew each day – those sewers of course being the corporate media – CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS (not to mention right wing radio and the rest) — who prove day in and day out what studies reveal and what the title of journalist Danny Schechter’s media book make clear, ‘The More You Watch the Less You Know’.”

Fox News – The Great Corporate Nightmare.

(With much close competition.)

“Fox News: We Do Goebbels Proud”

“Who Says Lying Doesn’t Pay?”

“Leading Mouthpiece of the Establishment”

“Those Nazis Got Nothin’ On Us”

“Those Who Own the News Control the News”

“The Official Version of Reality”

“Fox News: The First Refuge of the Scoundrels”

“All the Crap You Need Each and Every Day”

“Fox News: Your Source for Sewage”

“Raising Stench to an Art Form”

“Fox News: We Announce – The Supreme Court Obeys”

“Fox News: We Announce – Congress Sings Along”

“Fox News: We Announce – The President Confirms”

“Fox News: We Lead – CNN Follows”

“Fox News: In Praise of The Status Quo”

“Fox News: Rich Views”

“Fox News: The Bright Shiny Face of Big Money”

“Fox News: Establishment Culture, Official Culture”

“Fox News: Brought to You By Corporate America”

“Fox News: We Make a Killing for a Living” 

“Fox News: The Pride of the Establishment”

“Fox News: Ghenghis Views”

“Fox News: Corporate to the Hilt”

“Fox News: Democracy Who, What, Where?”

“Fox News: Eat the Poor, Feed the Rich”

“Fox News: Pro-War and Proud”

“Fox News: To Hell With The World – America Too”

___________________________
[This “Plan to Abolish America” series of satires consists of slightly revised pieces posted in advance of the coming “Petraeus Report” on Iraq. The series began with The Petraeus Plan to Abolish Iraq, and will likely end with the same Plan.]