[This article appeared in the old series of New Politics, Fall 1970.]

 

Sexual Politics by Kate Millet
Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y. 1970, 393 pp. $7.95

Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics has elicited awe, praise and sober criticism, but proof of its effectiveness is the appearance of a variety of articles and reviews marked by utterly unselfconscious vulgarity, philistinism and venomous hostility.

Phil Ochs was, until his untimely death in 1976, one of the great American folksingers and songwriters, whose powerful lyrics — political and poetic — helped to inspire a generation. His sister Sonny Ochs has worked to keep Phil’s memory and his message alive by organizing concerts bringing together current-day folk singers, offering a mix of their own material and Phil’s.

Five friends, none of them teachers, have called to tell me they heard about Diane Ravitch’s new book and her change of heart about the school reforms she advocated for a decade. “Lo! She’s saying what you’ve been telling us!”
The publicity for Ravitch’s book has certainly put her incisive critique of the reforms (privatizing education; using standardized tests to measure everything; looking to “choice” and charter schools drive improvement) in the news.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again

How much can a citizen expect of his state?

Before we rush into the breach with solutions that only create more problems, solutions like more welfare, more job-retraining programs, more touchy-feely therapy, in short, more middle class boondoggling in a mind-boggling bureaucracy, let us try to find out what caused the problem.

In 1960, as a graduate student in history, I decided to pick up some work as a census-taker on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At the training session (at the Henry George School), the instructor said, "you're paid by the head, and [smirk], nobody's going to make any trouble if you find a couple of two-headed people." (At that time I was still a Good Boy, and didn't find any such.)

     Since George Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001 — the unjust, illegal, and unnecessary attack on Afghanistan — there have been constant US and NATO strikes on Afghan civilians, along with constant denials that such strikes have taken place.

The Nation joins a great tradition (Alien and Sedition Acts, Palmer Raids, Smith Act) by invoking "sedition" against Teabaggers.

 If you believe Glenn Beck, the Tea Party lunatics, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk, Frances Fox Piven is the Marxist Machiavelli whose 1966 article in The Nation (written with Richard Cloward) still serves as the blueprint for a radical takeover of American society, including Barack Obama's "socialist" administration.

[This article appeared in New Politics no. 13, Summer 1992.]

The fire burning in South-Central Los Angeles illuminated the rage, anguish and despair of African-Americans consigned to bleak lives of poverty and hopelessness by the most "advanced" country in the world. But as history attests, once the rage subsides, the images, which should be unforgettable, are all too soon forgotten. The ghetto and those trapped inside it are once more invisible.

You can hear Diane Ravitch’s revised version of what’s needed for school reform, as well as a very different perspective (my own), in a panel this Friday, March 26, 6:00 PM, at NYU, Silver Room 207.

Kathryn Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker, claims that many men in Iraq and Afghanistan are addicted to war. If this is true, could it have something to do with the fact that GIs today do not face the endless bombardment from airplanes, field artillery, and tanks that World War II soldiers did?

I served in the 88th Infantry Division in Italy and I never met anyone so addicted. Had we met someone like that we would have considered him “Section 8,” that is, seriously disturbed.

Does that mean that many gung-ho GIs now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are Section 8?

[This article was published in New Politics No. 23, Summer 1997]

Review of HELLMAN AND HAMMETT, by Joan Mellen (HarperCollins, New York, 1996. 572pp. $30.00 HB, $13.00 PB)