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This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Monday, January 21, 2013
On MLK Day-The Truthteller-Malcolm X on Racist America
Markin comment:
Read the entries below. Does that first entry sound like a man who was on the same page politically as "DeLawd," Martin Luther King? To pose the question is to give the answer. As close as I was to the King-led movement in those days Malcolm X could still stir me in a way King with all his obvious eloquence could never do. Truth to power-no question.
Malcolm X on Racist America
The text of this telegram to Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party, was read aloud by Malcolm X at a public rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unitv in Harlem on January 24. 1965.
Public Notice to George Lincoln Rockwell
"This is to warn you that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad's separatist Black Muslim movement, and that if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not hand-cuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence, and who believe in asserting our right of self-defense—by any means necessary."
Discussion with American Ambassador in Africa
"He said, 'As long as I'm in Africa, I deal with people as human beings— For some strange reason color doesn't enter into it at all.'
"He said, 'But whenever I return to the United States and I'm talking to a non-white person, I'm conscious of it, I'm self-conscious, I'm aware of the color differences.'
"So I told him, 'What you're telling me, whether you realize it or not, is that it is not basic in you to be a racist, but that society there in America, which you all have created, makes you a racist.' This is true, this is the worst racist society on this earth. There is no country on earth in which you can live and racism be brought out in you— whether you're white or black—more so than this country that poses as a democracy. This is a country where the social, economic, political atmosphere creates a sort of psychological atmos¬phere that makes it almost impossible, if you're in your right mind, to walk down the street with a while person and not be self-concious, or he or she not be self-conscious— But it's the society itself."
*******
From Spartacist- May-June 1964
MALCOLM X
Of all the national Negro leaders in this country, the one who was known uniquely for his militancy, intransigence, and refusal to be the liberals' front-man has been shot down. This new political assassination is another indicator of the rising current of irrationality and individual terrorism which the decay of our society begets. Liberal reaction is predictable, and predictably disgusting. They are, of course, opposed to assassination, and some may even contribute to the fund for the education of Malcolm’s children, but their mourning at the death of the head of world imperialism had a considerably greater ring of sincerity than their regret at the murder of a black militant who wouldn't play their game.
Black Muslims?
The official story is that Black Muslims killed Malcolm. But we should not hasten to accept this to date unproved hypothesis. The New York Police, for example, had good cause to be afraid of Malcolm, and with the vast resources of blackmail and coercion which are at their disposal, they also had ample opportunity, and of course would have little reason to fear exposure were they involved. At the same time, the Muslim theory cannot be discounted out of hand because the Muslims are not a political group, and in substituting religion for science, and color mysticism for rational analysis, they have a world view which would encompass the efficacy and morality of assassination, a man who has a direct pipeline to God can justify anything.
No Program
The main point, however, is not who killed Malcolm, but why could he be killed? In the literal sense, of course, any man can be killed, but why was Malcolm particularly vulnerable? The answer to this question makes of Malcolm's death tragedy of the sharpest kind, and in the literal Greek sense. Liberals and Elijah have tried to make Malcolm a victim of his own (non-existent) doctrines of violence. This is totally wrong and totally hypocritical. Malcolm was the most dynamic national leader to have appeared in America in the last decade. Compared with him the famous Kennedy personality was a flimsy cardboard creation of money, publicity, makeup, and the media. Malcolm had none of these, but a righteous cause and iron character forged by white America in the fire of discrimination, addiction, prison, and incredible calumny. He had a difficult to define but almost tangible attribute called charisma. When you heard Malcolm speak, even when you heard him say things that were wrong and confusing, you wanted to believe. Malcolm could move men deeply. He was the stuff of which mass leaders are made. Commencing-his public life in the context of the apolitical, irrational religiosity and racial mysticism of the Muslim movement, his break toward politicalness and rationality was slow, painful, and terribly incomplete. It is useless to speculate on how far it would have gone had he lived. He had entered prison a burgler, an addict, and a victim. He emerged a Muslim and a free man forever. Elijah Muhammad and the Lost-Found Nation of Islam were thus inextricably bound up with his personal emancipation. In any event, at the time of his death he had not yet developed a clear, explicit, and rational social program. Nor had he led his followers in the kind of transitional struggle necessary, to the creation of a successful mass movement. Lacking such a program, he could not develop cadres based on program. What cadre he had was based on Malcolm X instead. Hated and feared by the power structure, and the focus of the paranoid feelings of his former colleagues, his charisma made him dangerous, and his lack of developed program and cadre made him vulnerable. His death by violence had a high order of probability, as he himself clearly felt.
Heroic and Tragic Figure
The murder of Malcolm, and the disastrous consequences flowing from that murder for Malcolm's organization and black militancy in general, does not mean that the militant black movement can always be decapitated with a shotgun. True, there is an agonizing gap in black leadership today. On the one hand there are the respectable servants of the liberal establishment; men like James Farmer whose contemptible effort to blame Malcolm's murder on "Chinese Communists" will only hasten his eclipse as a leader, and on the other hand the ranks of the militants have yet to produce a man with the leadership potential of Malcolm. But such leadership will eventually be forthcoming. This is a statistical as well as a social certainty. This leadership, building on the experience of others such as Malcolm, and emancipated from his religiosity, will build a movement in which the black masses and their allies can lead the third great American revolution. Then Malcolm X will be remembered by black and white alike ad a heroic and tragic figure* in & dark period of our common history. •
From The American Left History Blog Archives (2002) - On American Political Discourse-
Markin comment:
In 2007-2008 I, in vain,
attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American
presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed
election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the
event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious,
in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really
believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama
presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world
politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially
the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois
commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things
to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies,
the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for
a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some
of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.
************
A CALL TO
ALL WORKING PEOPLE / ANTI-IMPERIALIST YOUTH: HAVE NO ILLUSIONS-----WAR WITH
IRAQ IS COMING!!!
BUILD A
WORKER/ANTI-IMPERIALIST YOUTH UNITED FRONT AGAINST UNITED STATES/ UNITED
NATIONS ATTACK ON IRAQ!
DEFEND IRAQ AGAINST U.S./UN ALLIED
IMPERIALIST ATTACK!
SUPPORT EFFORTS BY IRAQI WORKERS,
PEASANTS, RELIGIOUS AND ETHIC MINORITIES TO OVERTHROW THE HUSSEIN REGIME!
DOWN WITH THE UN STARVATION BLOCKADE!
The war-crazed Bush-led United States government is leading
the world to war. Tens of thousands of American and British troops are getting
positioned for a full-scale attack on Iraq, while other powers from Australia
to Turkey elbow each other for a role in the slaughter and share of the loot.
The White House has already revealed plans for a post-Saddam military
occupation of Iraq. Look at the war chest of nuclear weapons that the United
Sates has and threatens to use today and it is clear that the fate of life on
this planet is threatened by the continued existence of this American led world
disorder.
In this war against Iraq workers and students in the United
States and elsewhere clearly have a side: we must stand for the military
defense of Iraq without giving any political support to the Hussein regime.
Hussein is a bloody oppressor of Iraqi workers, leftists, Shiite Muslims, the
Kurdish people and others. As such he was in the past a close ally and client
of the American government for a full two decades before he made a grab for
Kuwait in 1990. Mow the American government wants a more pliant regime and
tighter control of the oil spigot, not the least to put economic rivals like
Japan and Germany, who are more dependent on Near East oil, on rations. With
the latest renewed saber rattling over North Korea, Washington has made it
clear that that country will be next on its hit list in the event of an easy win
in Iraq. Every victory for the American government and its allies in their
predatory wars encourages further military adventures, every setback serves to
assist the struggles of the working peoples and the oppressed of the world.
The tremendous military advantages of the United Sates
against neocolonial Iraq- a country that has already been bled white through 12
years of United Nations sanctions which have killed more than one and one half
million civilians- underscores the importance of class struggle in the imperialist
centers as the chief means to give content to the call to defend Iraq. Every strike,
every labor mobilization against war plans, every mass protest against attacks
on workers and minorities, and every struggle against domestic repression and
against attacks on civil liberties represents a dent in the imperialist war
drive. To put an end to war once and for all, the capitalist system that breeds
war must be swept away through a series of revolutions and the establishment of
a rational, planned, egalitarian socialist economy on a world scale.
ANTI-IMPERILALISM ABROAD
MEANS CLASS STRUGGLE AT HOME! DEFEND IRAQ AGAINST AMERICAN ATTACK!
The extent to which Washington’s allies in the United
Nations, especially Germany, have openly criticized the Bush administration’s
rabid provocations in the Near East is a measure of the growth of tensions
among the capitalist powers in recent years. But, while objecting to the
rudeness of an American cowboy boot on their necks all of the subordinate
capitalist states will acquiesce to the dictates of the master of the
capitalist ruling classes, the United States, and they want to be rewarded with
at least a share of the spoils. As an official of a French oil company stated,
“We want the oil and we want to be in the game of rebuilding the country. If
there were a new regime and we have not been with the Americans, where will we
be?”
War: THE CONTINUATION OF
POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS
The American ruling class manipulated the grief and horror
felt by millions at the criminal and demented attack on the World Trade Center
to wage war on Afghanistan. But the patriotic consensus in the United Sates is
wearing thin and elsewhere there is massive opposition to a war against Iraq.
War demands civil peace and from Los Angeles to London the imperialist war makers
are revealed as vicious union-busters and strikebreakers. Declaring that a
strike could “threaten national security,” the Bush administration has brought
down the force of the capitalist state to coerce the powerful American dockers
union, the ILWU, to work under the dictates of the union-busting employers association.
Across the seas, British firefighters are threatened with strikebreaking by the
army. Plunging stock markets rob millions of workers of their pensions while
public scandals expose insatiable corporate greed. Tens of thousands of working
people, including the entire workforce at a number of Fiat plants in Italy.
Face a future of being unemployed by owners seeking to protect their own profit
margins amid the capitalist economic crisis. Civil liberties have been shredded
and the capitalists have intensified their assault on social welfare and other
gains wrested through decades of workers struggles.
Everywhere the anti-immigrant witch-hunt has been whipped up
to fever pitch in an effort by the capitalist rulers to deflect working-class
struggle with racism and xenophobia. The anti-immigrant hysteria provokes a
tide of blood as thousands of disparate refugees die trying to cross the U.S.
border from Mexico or to land a rickety boat in Australia or Europe. Now as the
mass of immigrants is not needed the capitalist system shows that it is the
biggest threat to workers everywhere. A decade ago the rulers crowed about the
supposed “death of communism.” But capitalism has once again brought the world
to an impasse which the Iraq war illuminates with the terrifying glare of missiles
streaking across the night sky. A workers student united front against these
imperialist acts is the only way forward.
In the United States, not even the dizzying flag-waving or
the heavy fist of state repression has induced the masses to embrace war with
Iraq. In Europe, hundreds of thousands of workers and anti-imperialist youth
have demonstrated their opposition to this war. The problem is that the
anti-war protests in Europe have all been channeled into a national-chauvinist
direction of getting one’s “own” rulers to stand up to the Americans. In
America, antiwar liberals and leftists bleat, “Money for jobs, not for war” and
so fuel the lie that fundamental priorities of the capitalist rulers can be
altered to serve the interests of working people.
The truth is that this whole capitalist system is based on
the extraction of profit for the owners of the means of production through the
exploitation and subjugations of the workers who produce the wealth of society.
War is a concentrated expression of this, as competing capitalist ruling
classes scramble to steal natural resources and to carve out new markets for
export of capital and fresh sources of cheap labor. The leader of the Russian
Revolution of 1917, Lenin, emphasized the difference between bourgeois
pacifism, which lulls the masses into passivity and embellishes capitalist
democracy, and the yearning for peace of the masses
In wars between the imperialist predators and plunderers
and their colonial and semi colonial victims. The proletariat has a side. As
Lenin stressed in his 1915 pamphlet SOCIALISM AND WAR: “If tomorrow, Morocco were to declare war on
France, or India on Britain, or Persia or China on Tsarist Russia, and so on,
these would be ‘just,,’ and ‘defensive’ wars irrespective of who would be the
first to attack; any socialist would wish the oppressed, dependent and unequal
states victory over the oppressor, slave-holding and predatory ‘Great Powers.”
There are palpable opportunities to organize class-struggle
opposition to imperialist war and to break the narrow nationalist and economist
limits of strikes contained by the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class.
During the 1999 U.S./NATO war against Serbia, Italian COBAS unions organized a
one-million-strong political general strike against that war. Fiat workers, who
today battle plant closings in Italy, organized a campaign of material aid- a
campaign supported by all partisans of the international working class- for the
workers of the Yugoslav Zastava auto plant, which had been bombed by the
imperialists. In 2001, Japanese dock workers at Sasebo pointed the way forward
by “hot-cargoing” (refusing to handle) Japanese military goods for the war in
Afghanistan.
What is essential is to draw the class line and unshackle
the working people and anti-imperialist youth from capitalist politicians,
their agents in the trade unions and others who channel their justified hatred
of war into illusory calls for parliamentary reforms of the profit-driven
system that breeds war and, in West Europe, into support for their own ruling
classes against the Americans. Here, in the heart of the beast the workers and
anti-imperialist youth united front can point the way forward building an
internationalist perspective in the antiwar protests. Our demands should be:
Struggle against the bosses at home- the main enemy is at home Defend Iraq
against imperialist attack Down with the United Nations starvation blockade.
All U.S./ UN and allied troops out of the Persian Gulf and Near East
Sunday, January 20, 2013
***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘60s Song Night- The Tune Weavers’ “Happy, Happy Birthday Baby”
THE TUNE WEAVERS
"Happy, Happy Birthday Baby"
Happy, happy birthday, baby
Although you're with somebody new
Thought I'd drop a line to say
That I wish this happy day
Would find me beside you
Happy, happy birthday, baby
No I can't call you my baby
Seems like years ago we met
On a day I can't forget
'Cause that's when we fell in love
Do you remember the names we had for each other
I was your pretty, you were my baby
How could we say goodbye
Hope I didn't spoil your birthday
I'm not acting like a lady
So I'll close this note to you
With good luck and wishes too
Happy, happy birthday, baby
**********
Damn he never should have sent that note, that short, silly, puffed-up cry baby note trying to worm his way back into Lucy’s arms with memory thoughts about this kiss, or that embrace. And bringing up old seawall sugar shack beach nights holding hands against the splashed tides, against full moons, against tomorrow coming too soon; double date drive-in movies, speakers on low, deep-breathing car fog-ups on cold October nights, embarrassed, way embarrassed, when they surfaced for intermission's stale popcorn or reheated hot dogs; and, that last dance school dance holding tight, tight as hell, to each other as the DJ, pretending to be radio jockey Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg, played Could This Be Magic? on that creaky record player used at North Adamsville high school dances since his mother’s time, ancient Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday times.
Damn, a scratchy, scribbly note, a note written on serious stationary and with a real fountain pen to show his sincerity, and not the usual half- lined sheet, pulled out a three-ring subject notebook, and passed to Lucy during their common study class. Notes the passing of which sometimes got them severe looks from the study monitor, Miss Green, and giggles and taunts, usually some lewd or luscious remarks fraught with sexual innuendo from their fellow students, boys and girls alike, about fogged-up cars and trash talk like that who also tried to intercept those precious notes without success. Yah, “the note heard round the world” that would expose him to all kinds of ridicule, endless be-bop jive patter, and snide questions about his manhood from guys, and probably girls too, around the school, hell, all around North Adamsville and maybe already had if Lucy decided to cut his heart out and tell one and all what a square he, Luke Jackson, was when all was said and done.
He could hear it now, and could hear the words ringing in his ears. What a soft guy Luke Jackson really was, a guy known to be a love ‘em and leave ‘em guy before Lucy. A guy, a used to be sharp guy who shrugged off more things that you could shake a stick at and came back swinging but who was getting all misty-eyed and cry baby just because some dame, a good looking dame in all the right places, yes, a dame all the guys were ready to pursue once he was out of the picture, but still a dame, a young high school dame, when all was said and done, got under his skin, like they were married or something. Hell, he thought, thought now too late, to himself, that he would have been better off, much better off, leaving it at calling Lucy on the telephone every few hours and either hanging up before she answered or when she did answer freezing up. But that was costing money, serious add up money, since he had to use a public pay telephone up the street from his house because the telephone service had been turned off for non-payment as his family could not afford to pay the bill the past few months.
Besides it was getting kind of creepy going in and out of the house at all hours, midnight by the telephone waiting like some lonely, awkward girl, walking up the street like a zombie, half mope, half dope, then hesitating before deciding to make the call, making it, or not, and then scurrying like a rat from the public glare of the booth. Christ, one time the cops looked at him funny, real funny, when he was calling at about midnight. And he had to admit that he might have called the police station a few times too after he looked at himself in the mirror upon returning home.
That note, sent the day before and probably in Lucy’s plotting hands right now, was a minute, a quick minute, brain-storm that he had thought up when he was just plain miserable, just plain midnight telephone tired too, and anyone could make such a rash decision under love’s duress, teenage love’s duress. Right then though all he could think of was all the notes, the cutesy, lined-sheet paper school-boyish notes, that he had sent her when love was in full blossom, full blossom before Jamie Lee Johnson came on the scene, came on the scene with his big old ’59 Chevy Impala, his money in his pocket, and his line of patter and stole his “sweet pea” Lucy away from her “sugar plum” Luke. And that picture sent him back to thoughts of when he and Lucy first met, when their eyes first met.
“Let’s see,” Luke said to himself it was probably at Chrissie McNamara’s sweet sixteen birthday party that he first laid eyes on her. Hell, who was he kidding, he knew that it was exactly at 8:32PM on the night of April 25, 1962 that he first laid eyes on her, big almost star-struck staring eyes. Or maybe it was a few seconds before because, to break the ice, he had gone up to her and asked her for the time, asked in his then bolder manner if she had time for him, asked her to dance, she said yes, and that was that. Oh, yah, there was more to it than that but both of them knew at that moment, knew somewhere deep down in their teenage hearts, they were going to be an “item,” for a while. And they were indeed sweet pea and sugar plum, for a while. Although Luke would get mad sometimes, fighting mad, fighting break-up mad, when Lucy teased, no, more than teased, him about his not having a car so that they could go “parking” by themselves and not always be on some clowny double-date down at the seashore on Saturday night (or any night in the summer). And Luke would reply that he was saving money for college, and besides sitting on the seawall (and sometimes in love’s heat down beneath its height), their usual habit, was okay, wasn’t it.
That simmer, that somehow inarticulated simmer, went on for a while, a long while. But Luke had noticed a few months back, or rather Lucy had made her sugar plum notice, that now that they were high school seniors sitting on the seawall was nothing but nowhere kids’ stuff and why did he want to go to college anyway, and wasn’t going to work down at the shipyard where he could earn some real dough and get a car a better idea. The real clincher though, the one that telegraphed to him that the heavens were frowning on him, was the night she, no bones, stated that she had no plans for college and was going right to work after graduation, and maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t be able to wait for him. And that’s where things started to really break down between them.
Enter one Jamie Lee Johnson, a friend of Lucy’s older brother Kenny, already graduated from North Adamsville two years before and working, working steady with advancement possibilities according to the talk, as a junior welder down at the shipyard making good dough. Making drive-in movies and even drive-n restaurant good time dough, and driving that souped-up, retro-fitted, dual-carbed, ’59 Chevy, jet black and hung to the gills with chrome to make a girl breathless. And before Luke knew it Lucy’s mother was answering the phone calls for Lucy from Luke saying that she wasn’t in, wasn’t expected in, and that she, Lucy’s mother, would tell Lucy that he had called. The runaround, the classic runaround since boy meets girl time began, except not always done over the telephone. And while Lucy never said word one about breaking it off between them, not even a “so long we had fun,” Luke, although not smart enough to not write that sappy note, knew she was gone, and gone for good. But see she had gotten under his skin, way under, and well, and that was that.
Just as Luke was thinking about that last thought, that heart-tearing thought, he decided, wait a minute, maybe she didn’t get the note, maybe he had forgotten to put a stamp on it and as a result of those maybes he fished around his pocket to see if he had some coins, some telephone coins, and started out of the house prison to make that late night pilgrimage creep, that midnight waiting by the telephone creep. Walking up the street, walking up the now familiar night street-lighted against the deathless shadows Hancock Street he noticed a jet black ’59 Impala coming his way, coming his way with Jamie Lee and Lucy sitting so close together that they could not be pried apart with a crowbar. Luke thought about that scene for a minute, steeled himself with new-found resolve against the love hurts like in the old love 'em and leave ‘em days, threw the coins on the ground without anger but rather with relief, turned back to his house wondering, seriously wondering like the fate of the world depended on it, what pet names they Jimmy and Lucy had for each other.
***When Literature Talked Politics- The Role of Literature In Revolutionary Politics-17th Century Style
Book Review
Politics Of Discourse; The Literature and History Of Seventeenth-Century England, edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zucker, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987
No question these days in modern European democratic societies literature, high literature anyway, and politics do not mix, except by accident. This however has not always been true, and as the academic book under review here, Politics of Discourse, testifies to in the early modern democratic period the fit between the two was far tighter than the modern mind could imagine. And nowhere was this combination more prevalent that in 17th century England, from the immediate pre-revolutionary period through to the late restoration period. The specialized essays that make up this volume give a pretty clear impression that, at least at the level of “high culture” and courtier/bourgeois society, one could not be knowledgeable about the affairs of the day without reading the polemics, parables, and panegyrics of such luminaries as Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Carew, and John Dryden.
Of course the 17th century in England was the high point, or rather one of the high points, in the struggle over the role of religion in public life from such questions as toleration, an established state church, the nature of worship and liturgy, religious qualifications for public office, and the great internal and foreign policy struggles between international Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. So public men, literary sorts or not, had be aware of the stakes involved when they went about the business of polemicizing for their views. No question that given the very undemocratic nature of monarchical society under James I and Charles I (and the later Charles II and James II) that one had to couch their polemics for their positions in oblique terms. This is, after all, the great age of the parable, the masque, and the ethereal epic poem. Moreover, democratic stirrings or not, religious sentiment in public and private life at both the patrician and plebeian cultural levels drove all literary and political conversation, especially the manic drive to prove one’s point by reference to Scripture. Still this period produced some of the masterworks of English literature, none better than John Milton’s defense of Republican England under Cromwell, in Paradise Lost.
That said this book is not for those who are not at least somewhat familiar with the history of 17th century English, especially some knowledge of the issues around the titanic struggles in mid-century in the revolutionary period, the Puritan Revolution proper. With that in mind there are a few outstanding essay here worthy of taking the time to read: a great exposition on the Scottish historical sources that Shakespeare may, or may not, have been familiar with when creating his saga on monarchical legitimacy in Macbeth; an interesting study of a literary patroness, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, to detail the audience that any literary figure needed to address their works to; a generally overlooked subject during this period, that of a courtier literary figure and his defense of the monarchy, Thomas Carew; the trials, tribulations and twists of a literary politician trying to read which way the wind was blowing in creating his works, Andrew Marvell; the usages of the fable in the Restoration period to telegraph dissent (a literary devise still necessarily in use today, unfortunately); and, lastly, a couple of great essays on the great defender of the English revolution and of its republican virtues, John Milton.
Those last essays were my reason for reading this volume, especially the essay on the politics of Paradise Lost by Mary Ann Radzinowicz, featuring some ideas that the great British Marxist historian and Milton devotee Christopher Hill alerted us to in an earlier time, but the others mentioned deserve a reading as well.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground –With Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel” In Mind
…she, June Miller, wanted to make sure, after she was gone, whenever that was, and her attorney went to her private safety deposit book and retrieved her notes, that everybody got the story, the story of her, Eric, and that tramp Stella, right, got it right far away from the way Pop over at his two-bit dinner where Stella worked before the fall had told it,told it so that it entered the common town wisdom just that way he talked it up. Pop, the old goat, who was half in love with Stella himself. Got it right too away from the way the newspapers had blared it out every which way like there was nothing but a sex sin city running in old beat down ocean front Bayside City. Got it right too against Eric who almost took the fall for that damn tramp’s murder. And got it right against Judd, Judd the hick ex-cop from New York City who did take the fall, took the big step for Stella’s murder. And she, June Miller, should know, know all the details, after all she had been the other woman, the mistreated, abused left behind other woman, the angel sticking by her man when the deal when down, according to the newspapers and to old Pop. But let her tell the story, tell it true, although it will never make any newspaper, never be the subject of endless morning breakfast hams and eggs, over easy, with a cup of joe, twenty-five cents please, at Pop’s, or be the subject of pillow talk between she and Eric.
She knew Stella was a tramp, knew like every woman knows, every woman who keeps tabbed up on such things, from the first day she sashayed off that heading north Pacific coastal highway bus that stopped once a day at what passed for downtown Bayside City. She had every guy looking, looking with that Saturday night bed room look, even guys with their woman beside them, all of a sudden bending down to tie their mother taught double-tied shoes to catch a glance of her, and not catch hell. She was a looker all right, tall, long legs and not afraid to show them (hell, glad to show them), big brown hair all wavy to one side, the fashion then, brown eyes, dark silky complexion, big ruby red lips that spoke of sex, sex and more sex. Her clothes though, strictly off the cheap rack, and that bus ride, showed she was from hunger, like a lot of west coast pretty girls were back then, looking to move on from wherever they hailed from, looking for some little ring and respectability, or at least a good time.
Later, after Stella got a job serving them off the arm at Pop’s bringing extra business just by being there, dating every guy who had two dimes to rub together for a dance, quarters for some cheap low- shelf scotch, and dollars for some Woolworth’s faux jewelry, she told everybody her story about being from nowhere San Diego, and how she had to split, after some unexplained hard time with an ex-boyfriend. June though then with those dark features she probably had a little mex in her, a little brown world mex whore all ready to show any man with the dinero some mex love, maybe taught to her early, like a lot of them, from some tio taco, and then on to the streets, on to the streets early. An old tramp story, as old as Adam and Eve, maybe older
Maybe though all women are tramps, or at least a lot of guys go for those who give that appearance and Stella was a step up, just some whore who didn’t have sense enough to cash in big on her looks and her come hither appeal. Maybe working her way up to some Hollywood producer’s concubine. June knew in her own case that if people around town had known what she had done when she went away to college, keeping a married man as a lover, keeping that married man just because he was married and no strings attached, and about what really happened when she took those three day trips every once in a while to North Beach up in Frisco town they would be calling her a tramp too, maybe worst. But she passed, passed easily for the town librarian (which she was) living with a man-scorned older sister in gentile circumstances.
And then he, Eric, blew into town, blew into town like the four winds, blew into town by happenstance, just another guy running away from the east coast after the war, maybe had done some time in battle –torn Europe, or some desolate Pacific atoll and New York, Chi town, Omaha, Denver were too small for him, he had to head to land’s end and try his luck, or fail trying. He, Eric, fresh out of dough, fresh out of luck, and fresh out of ideas, like Stella had some magic magnet wound up at Pop’s for some coffee and cakes. And there she was, any man’s girl, waiting for his line and waiting to see if he was the next best thing. Yah, she got her hooks into him, got her hooks into that smooth- talking guy good, and threw him for a loop. Got him thinking big idea thoughts again, got him all tied up. (He said later, later when it was all over and they, June and he, talked about it one night in bed, that it was probably that jasmine or cactus perfume she wore that drove him over the edge, that and that mex whore way she had about her that promised sweaty nights and cool showers afterward that got him all tangled up).
All balled up (even knowing she was seeing other guys on his dime, even knowing that guys were lined up at her door, even knowing guys were getting cramps from bending down to tie their silly shoes) Eric proposed marriage to Stella when she told him straight, straight through the heart, that was the deal or no deal (although that did not stop her later, after he had gotten his hooks in June, from taking him down the beach one night, down by secluded Seal Rock, to twist him around her finger by rocking him all night long just to make sure. June knew because she had followed then there and watched them for a while, furious).That’s when he headed to June’s door. See his big idea revolved around getting at some serious dough, and the only freed-upserious dough in town was at June’s (and her sister, Clara’s) residence. His bright idea was to con June out of her dough by fast-talking (he did that all right) her out of her virtue and then razzle-dazzlegrabbing the dough. Then he and Stella would blow town, maybe Frisco town, maybe east.
So June played along with him for a while, played the virtuous unworldly maiden ready to be swept off her feet by a fast-talking man who wanted to show her real life. One night he took her down to that same secluded Seal Rock where Stella had taken him and “seduced” her after feeding her with liquor (she would have preferred some reefer that got her hotter, more in the mood) and assumed the deal was done. Assumed he was now on easy street. She, playing ravaged virtuous maiden, insisted they get married, or else. Facing that prospect, and seeing where there might be some sense to that move in order to get some Stella money under the new circumstances, he went along with the deal. (Clara, knowing a two-bit hustler at best or just a fast-talking con man freaked out when she heard they were married but held her tongue.) That done, that marriage deed done (after a night of torrid love-making leaving him exhausted and sleepy since she had been able to score some reefer from a connection from her old school and got him to try some for the first time), they were to head to Frisco for their “honeymoon” and his dough payout.
Then the world fell in, Eric’s world. Stella was found murdered that next morning in her apartment by a neighbor who had earlier heard muffled sounds and someone, man or woman, she was not sure then, running away from Stella’s flat. She, when the police began their investigation, their all-out investigation because murder, murder most foul, in Bayside City was unheard of, claimed that someone was Eric. And so the investigation began to center on Eric, his motives and his opportunity. All the while he insisted that he did not do it, couldn’t have done it despite that witness. June insisted they flee, flee to Frisco, grab the dough she had stashed in a safety deposit box and head, head somewhere. He, shocked at Stella’s death, and then fearful when the frame came forming around his head, finally faced up to the idea that he was the fall guy for the big step-off bought her idea with both hands. They fled. To no avail though. The ex-cop, Judd, working as a special investigator, who was putting the heat on to solve the crime alerted the San Francisco police and they were there that morning at the bank to pick the pair up.
Eric was going to step off, take the big step, unless June did something, and quick before all the accumulating circumstantial evidence became a mountain (Eric’s con artist marriage to June, his being seen watching several times at Stella’s apartment late at night by some undisclosed witness, a bracelet found on the ground outside her apartment which he had given her after that night down at Seal Rock as a reward for her night’s work, and so on). And she found the perfect way to save her man, find the real killer. And she did. Just figured out who beside Eric had been inflamed by Stella. The list was a little long, including a travelling salesman who knew her when he was from hunger down in San Diego, but as it turned out the ex-cop, Judd, who had tried to frame Eric, a guy who had spent plenty of time at Pop’s drinking coffee and drinking Stella in, did it. June had traced the watch that Stella had on her wrist to him, bought at a local jewelry store when she started putting out her net. Judd had hit her too hard after he went up to her apartment to propose marriage and she laughed him out of the room. He didn’t like that, no man, no cop likes that. Case solved.
Well, almost case solved, see June knew, knew all along that Eric had not done it. He had been so reefer-stoned that first married night that he just zonked out after she took him around the world. She wasn’t sleepy thought, reefer made her stay wide awake. So after she took a shower to wash their love off, and got her street clothes on, she started walking toward the beach, toward Stella’s. She saw a man, who turned out to be Judd, fleeing that open door apartment. She went up the stairs, stepped into the apartment, and saw Stella silently stretched out on the floor, although still breathing. She impulsively grabbed a pillow and put it over Stella’s head snuffing the last bit of life out of her. Yah, June, an angel flying too close to the ground, a fallen angel.
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