Article: 633 of alt.etext Path: news.cic.net!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!uknet!demon!news2.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!redstone.interpath.net!mercury.interpath.net!not-for-mail From: ctporter@mercury.interpath.net (Personal Account) Newsgroups: alt.zines,rec.arts.books,alt.etext Subject: (news)letter 1:13 Date: 5 May 1994 07:36:31 -0400 Organization: Interpath -- Public Access UNIX for North Carolina Lines: 234 Message-ID: <2qalnv$jr3@mercury.interpath.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.interpath.net Xref: news.cic.net alt.zines:3594 rec.arts.books:93921 alt.etext:633 (news)letter "Say the thing with which you labor." Thoreau from the porter micro.press Volume 1, Number 13 April 27, 1994 _________________________________________________________________ Please send suggestions and submissions. To get on the mailing list, send your name and address to: CTPorter 117-A S. Mendenhall St. Greensboro, NC 27403 or e-mail ctporter@mercury.interpath.net Your input is appreciated. Richard Nixon's funeral is going on while I write this, and I think back to the question that was asked so often this past week: "What do you remember about Richard Nixon?" I, for one, immediately think of Watergate. The proper attitude is to forgive the man, focus on his foreign policy achievements and his political mettle, tell the folks how large a figure Nixon was, despite the pettiness of that Watergate affair. But I spent some fairly formative moments in my political growth watching Richard Nixon give, and take, a beating. I vaguely remember the 1968 Presidential elections because of the bumper stickers: the Nixon sticker I liked best because it was so prevalent in my grade-school parking lot. All the parents of my private school classmates had that sticker. The next-door neighbor had a Humphrey bumper sticker, so I liked it, too. As for Wallace, I don't know that my young life took me far enough afield to let me see one of those bumper stickers, though in Richmond, VA, I'm sure there were several. In 1972, when Nixon stomped McGovern, I was in a decidedly different environment. Rabid Democrats surrounded me and I embraced a suspicion of the President. I remember the Democratic poster in the smoking trailer at our school (and yes, I was a little young to be in there) that featured a Nixon quote from the 1968 election: "if a man can't end a war in four years he doesn't deserve to be President." The feeling among the Hippie-Too-Late wannabes I shadowed was that Richard Nixon had kept the war going so he could run on an "end the war" platform in '72. He was so close to ending the Vietnam War, the propaganda went, that it would be anti-Peace to vote against him. To learn at such an age how politicians might operate surely contributed to my current, overly-cynical mind set. I don't really remember what I was thinking during that long summer when the Watergate hearings were on the television every day, but I was against the man. I thought it was neat to watch a powerful man fall so publicly. I was too young to make up my own mind, so it wasn't personal, I just wanted to see the authority fall. When Nixon resigned, in August of 1974, I felt some triumph but the end was so disappointing. I've written before of watching the first moon walk because it was "history." I wouldn't have missed Nixon's resignation speech for the world because I was certain that this was "historic." I must have expected fireworks or guillotines to follow. That feeling might account for why I so long ignored his foreign policy achievements: they weren't as I imagined "the historic" should appear, i.e., short television soundbites. When I finally gained a more holistic idea of "the historic," I hope I began to gain some appreciation of Richard Nixon. I was reminded of the importance of his achievements recently while reading the short essay, "Nixon Without Knives," by Gore Vidal in Esquire magazine's Fifty Who Made the Difference. In this essay Vidal proposes that Nixon is a metaphor for all Americans: "We are Nixon; he is us" (29). Vidal will bash him, of course, but he does not neglect the lasting legacy, the meetings that opened China and Russia. Nixon was the first President who acted upon the not exactly arcane notion that the United States is just one country among many countries and that the communism is an economic and political system without much to recommend it at the moment and with few voluntary adherents. ... With one stroke, Nixon brought the world's three great powers (all nuclear) into the same plane of communication. There was no precedent for what he had done. (30) It's sad that he's gone, and I must say that I'm glad that we're hearing only passing mention of the Watergate affair in the Nixon eulogies so prevalent. As Vidal concludes, as we are all of us Nixon and he is us, the fact that he went to Peking and Moscow in order to demonstrate to all the world the absolute necessity of coexistence proves that there is not only good in him but in us as well -- hope, too. (32) "Call Me Rutherford ..." Charles Johnson's Middle Passage is a wonderful book, and I don't mean to scare readers off by comparing it to Moby Dick. This is the story of Rutherford Calhoun, a young black man in the 1830s, an ex-slave sowing his oats in New Orleans. Finding himself in some trouble, he stows away on a ship bound for Africa to pick up an elite cargo of slaves, members of the ancient Allmuseri tribe. The journey quickly becomes more than an adventure, but a modern treatment of the very old quest theme. The differences between the narrators jumps out most obviously. In contrast to Melville's work, Johnson's presents a more modern view of the quest theme. Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, always struck me as too selfless, ever ready to follow despite what he might personally want. Ishmael always seemed too much in awe of the whaling industry, and while it serves Moby Dick well, I don't know that I've ever met an Ishmael in real life. Rutherford Calhoun, on the other hand, is out for number one. He's a brazen thief and coward who can turn from one dastardly plot to another with ease, just because it benefits him to do so. Like Ishmael, Rutherford leads a charmed existence -- luck rides on his shoulder -- but in contrast we see plenty of growth in Calhoun. We understand what this voyage from hell has done to him. The counterpart to Ishmael's best friend, Queequeg, is a member of the Allmuseri tribe, Ngonyama. Again, has anyone who has read Moby Dick known a Queequeg, the epitome of the Rousseavian 'noble savage'? Ngonyama is embroiled in tribal politics but his wisdom provides a balance to the selfishness of the Westerners. The Allmuseri tribe believe that everything in the world is interrelated, but that doesn't mean that Ngonyama wants any part of the Westerner's life, a contrast to Queequeg who embraced some Western ways. Calhoun writes of the Allmuseri's outlook that In their mythology Europeans had once been a member of their tribe -- rulers, even, for a time -- but fell into what was for these people the blackest of sins. The failure to experience the unity of Being everywhere was the Allmuseri vision of Hell. And that was where [Westerners] lived: purgatory. (65) Ripped from their homeland, none of the slaves are ready to go to their captivity meekly. Finally there is the counterpart to Ahab, Captain Falcon. This captain's monomania comes not from a deepseated hate or want of revenge, as Ahab wants in his showdown with the white whale, but from a need for glory. Falcon wants money and fame, and in a crate in the hold of the ship he carries the Allmuseri holy of holies, something sure to command a pretty penny from an antiquities collector. "[W]e've captured an African god" (100), Falcon brags to Rutherford. Unlike the Pequod, Ahab's ship, the 'Republic,' on its return to America has everything on board, God, the Devils, happiness and grief, and needs search for nothing. How this microcosm works itself into its fate is quite a story. Sign of the Times Immediately after the last issue appeared on the internet, I received this response. Writing about the picture of a man stoning another in a South African riot, I asked what happened after the picture: did the photographer help out at all? Here is what I learned: Concerning how the photographer was able to photograph the people dying, here goes ... I am a photojournalist myself, and as you can probably judge from my address I live in South Africa. I think, and here I'd like to stress that this is only my opinion and as un-PC as it is I believe this, that photojournalists are there to hold up to the world's gaze all that they are ashamed of and are trying to hide. If you don't show the people, who by this stage are desensitized to the horrors of reality, the full horror, the blood, the guts, the tears, then they just think that it is another Stallone movie. You have to bring the reality of people who are dying and suffering right into the cushy living rooms of those who don't want to see it. Believe me, people in South Africa are living in terror - elections are on the 27th of this month and as sure as I am that Nelson Mandela will come to power, I am also sure that there will be a bloodbath which will shock the world. If there were no photojournalists, only texts, the real horror of the situation wouldn't hit those in the States. You won't understand what it is like to stand helplessly and watch people dying all around you. I am sorry about the rant but two days ago, a close friend of mine, Ken Ooseterberg, the photojournalist, was shot in Tkosa, trying to show the world the outrages that are going on there. Photojournalists are here to make sure that you - I am not attacking you personally, I am just trying to raise a point - smell the stench of injustice. Poetic? Not really: have you ever smelled the stench of a body after it had been necklaced? (Necklacing, for those who are not enlightened as to this rather excruciating form of death, is a process whereby a person has a tire put around his neck and it is set on fire). I'll take it that you haven't. A photo of an ANC person smashing the head of an Inkatha supporter is probably the closest you'll come. I'm glad it made you feel uncomfortable enough to write about it, it means that the photojournalist was doing his job, showing you the horror and leaving you to deal with the emotions. Thanks, Dror Eyal What to say about that? I was on my soapbox and promptly got shown the other side of the story. I think he showed admirable restraint: were I in his shoes I would have been quite steamed. And I was saddened, later in the week, to read Ken Oosterbroek's obituary in the May 2 Newsweek. Quote of the Day In an article in the April 25 Newsweek, "Don't Blame the Fighter Jocks" (27), David H. Hackworth wrote of the tragedy in Iraq, when American fighter jets shot down American helicopters and killed twenty-six people. He wondered, as we all did, why it happened. But never to fear, he assures us, the Pentagon is pulling out all steps to investigate this, so we shouldn't make wild guesses: For those of us who were not there aboard a fighter flying 600 knots with a possible bogey behind every cloud, on a chopper skimming across the nap of the earth or in an AWACS plane talking to dozens of aircraft, it is better to defer judgement on what happened until the Pentagon's high-powered investigation is over. Like the American public can really trust what the Pentagon says! I might have grown to appreciate Richard Nixon, but the Pentagon?