Happy Father’s Day, Lyle! *Wherever You Are
I often think of my father, the late actor (and cofounder of the Screen Actors Guild) Lyle Talbot, so I don’t need a Hallmark Card day to remind me. I see flashes of his handsome face in my sons and in my nephew. I loved how Lyle came home late from work, after a long day at the studio, still wearing makeup and full of hot Hollywood gossip and fun stories. Sometimes, as I watched him rehearse for plays, he seemed like a kid to me, so eager to please the director. (I decided right then and there that I needed to have more power in my own life.) But more often, he seemed like a man to me, one of the few actors who managed to make enough money (more in some years than others) to support a family of six. And to stay warm and loving to his wife and children through all the ups and downs.
One of my favorite memories of my dad is in his theater dressing rooms in the minutes before he went on stage. During the 30 minutes before stage time, a theater manager would rap on his door and bark, “Thirty minutes to showtime, Mr. Talbot!… 15 minutes to showtime,…. five minutes to showtime!” With each announcement of his impending stage entrance, I would grow more and more nervous on his behalf, my palms growing moist (a family affliction) and my heart starting to thump. By the time he finally had to get up and head toward the stage, I was a nervous wreck. But throughout these ticking minutes to curtain, Lyle remained cool as a cucumber, asking us about our schoolwork, telling amusing stories about his fellow cast members. I was in awe of his professionalism, and his ability to focus on his family even at stressful times. Grace under pressure — that’s my memory of my father.
He was 50 by the time I was born. He had costarred with many leading ladies, and had been lovers with a number of them (including Loretta Young and Carole Lombard). His marriage to my much younger mother was number five for him, but it was the one that stuck. She kicked him out of the house when he couldn’t stop drinking and partying —even though she had three young kids at the time. But he came back, after committing himself to AA and getting sober. He always liked strong women, including his leading ladies like Barbara Stanwyck and Ann Dvorak. In fact, he was raised by one, his grandmother. And my mother, Paula, ran our show in her firm but loving way.
I was with him when he died, peacefully in his own bed — luck of the Irish. (Ironically, he outlived my mother — but her spirit had visited him in his new San Francisco apartment, a story I tell in my memoir, Between Heaven and Hell.) I scattered his ashes in a cove beyond the Golden Gate, where I had scattered my mother’s ashes a few years before. I think of him every time I cross the bridge. In my mind, he’s always looking elegant in a tuxedo, with silver lighting.
Lyle with Ann Dvorak, in Three on a Match
We All Shine On — John & Yoko and the Politics of Stardom
Celebrity activism is a tacky commodity these days. Movie stars and pop divas use causes to safely grab the spotlight and advance their careers. But once upon a time, radical politics was dangerous for those few celebrities who were brave enough to jump into these roiling waters. In By the Light of Burning Dreams, Margaret Talbot and I devote a chapter to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s years of living dangerously. Holed up in a modest Greenwich Village flat between October 1971 and February 1973, the former Beatle and his essential partner escalated their militant activism. They played benefit concerts on behalf of the jailed hippie radical John Sinclair and the families of Attica State prisoners slaughtered on the orders of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller; they aired their radical views about peace, feminism and racial justice on network TV; they hung out with Yippie leaders Jerry Rubin and Stew Albert, radical feminist literary critic Kate Millett and Black Panther leader Bobby Seale. Most important, Lennon and Ono tried to revive the fatigued Vietnam antiwar movement and defeat President Nixon’s bid for reelection in 1972. Nixon, the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover and their repressive machinery saw Lennon as a dire political threat — especially in the first presidential race to include 18-year-old voters — and they did everything in their power to “neutralize” him.
John and Yoko’s amazing political journey still hasn’t been fully understood or appreciated, but we tell their remarkable story in our book. When he was assassinated in 1980, Lennon was coming back into the public spotlight with Ono, and planning to become outspokenly active again — this time against the incoming Reagan administration. The Dream Was Over.
Craig Rodwell, Founder of Pride… and Other Unsung Heroes
Most of you have heard of many heroes in By the Light of Burning Dreams — like Bobby Seale, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. But Margaret Talbot and I took a special pleasure in spotlighting those whom history has largely forgotten — like Craig Rodwell, who founded New York’s Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, the first openly gay bookstore in the world. He then went on to organize what would become the first Pride March, in commemoration of the Stonewall uprising — helping to make internationally famous the “riot” that would become known as the opening salvo of the LGBTQ movement. Rodwell was also a lover of Harvey Milk when he was closeted businessman in NYC. With his freer and bolder attitude about his sexuality, Rodwell had a major impact on Milk’s eventual evolution into America’s most prominent gay political leader, before he was assassinated in 1978.
As Margaret and I write in the book’s introduction, we don’t believe in the “great man” theory of history, because epic change is wrestled forward by countless unsung individuals, like Rodwell — and like Ellen Broidy and Martha Shelley, two lesbian activists also profiled in our chapter on the making of Pride. But we do believe in the importance of leaders, both the famous and the forgotten.
Craig Rodwell at his Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in NYC in 1970.
Let’s Hear It for Dave Eggers — and for Indie Bookstores
Author (and old pal) Dave Eggers likes to push the publishing envelope. And god bless him, Dave is doing it again — announcing that his fall novel, The Every, will be sold only at independent bookstores in hardback. Fuck Amazon — which, like the giant corporate octopus in Eggers’s new novel, has wrapped up everything in is tentacles, including book commerce.
I wish I had thought of releasing my new book the same way, cutting out Amazon — which will NEVER be allowed to sell the hardback version of The Every. But, as Dave has explained, it’s very difficult to deep-six Amazon, even for McSweeney’s, the independent publishing company that Eggers started in 1998 (not long after he worked briefly for me at my online media startup, Salon.) Like all New York book companies, my publisher undoubtedly has an ironclad contract with Amazon that doesn’t allow an independent path.
But as a lowly author, I can — and do — encourage readers to buy my books from indie bookstores. In my hometown of San Francisco, my two favorite stores are legendary City Lights, which hosted my book launch event last week, and Green Arcade, which has thrown fun and wild book parties for me ever since the publication of Season of the Witch. I autographed stacks of my latests book, By the Light of Burning Dreams, for my good friend Patrick Marks, the effervescent proprietor of Green Arcade. And if you live in the Bay Area, you can buy one of those autographed copies at Green Arcade on Market Street (just a few doors away from Zuni Cafe), where Patrick is offering outdoor service.
Keep indie bookstores alive — coming out of the pandemic, they are more endangered than ever. Make an effort to purchase books from your favorite local stores. And if you don’t live near one, order online from one or from Bookshop.org — a consortium of indie bookstores.
Seriously — fuck Amazon.
Dave Eggers
Solidarity Forever… More Lessons From “Burning Dreams”
I like posting photos from By the Light of Burning Dreams, the new book by Margaret Talbot and me about the revolutionary leaders of the 1960s and ‘70s. Here’s antiwar leader Tom Hayden with David Hilliard (left), a Black Panther leader, at a Mayday 1970 protest in New Haven, CT, where Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins were being held in prison on trumped-up murder charges. (The photo was taken by Stephen Shames, who took some of the most memorable Black Panther pictures in the heat of action. ) The routine camaraderie between radical leaders and movements was a hallmark of the period. Today it goes by the clunky term “intersectionality” and is seen as a unique type of collaboration. But this solidarity between progressives should be commonplace.
Hayden negotiated with Yale University President Kingman Brewster Jr. to make sure that the protest, which drew 20,000 to the elite campus, did not turn violent. Anne Weills, Hayden’s lover at the time, marveled at the smooth way that Hayden — the product of a humble upbringing in suburban Detroit — could toggle between radicals and the power elite. But she came to resent his sense of male entitlement and she later organized his ouster — not only from their bedroom but from Berkeley’s radical nerve center, the Red Family commune.
We tell this story in By the Light of Burning Dreams — and how the deeply demoralized Hayden then reinvented himself in Los Angeles with Jane Fonda, reviving the antiwar movement and jumping into electoral politics. The debates about leadership that inflamed radical circles in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s are still very much alive today.
Here’s a photo of Hayden and Weills in happier times taken by Richard Avedon during his famous shoot of the Chicago Seven.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men… and Women
As we all know, the corporate media overly celebrates the same limited number of prominent men and women. But my latest (and last) history book, By the Light of Burning Dreams (coauthored with my sister Margaret) shines a spotlight on several revolutionary leaders of the 1960s and ‘70s who have been forgotten by history — at least history as told by Ken Burns, Jon Meacham, Walter Isaacson, Malcolm Gladwell and the other mass-marketed gatekeepers of our past. Margaret and I are so delighted that our book events have drawn together a reunion of these Movement movers and shakers, including Heather Booth and Bill Zimmerman, who’ve joined us for some of our Zoom interviews. Heather and Bill were everywhere during this volcanic history. They both began their activist lives in the deep South during Freedom Summer in 1964. Heather then went on to organize the underground abortion collective known as Jane before Roe v. Wade and numerous other history-making groups. (Now 75, she’s currently organizing a campaign to support President Biden’s effort to tax billionaires.) Meanwhile Bill helped lead the 1971 Mayday antiwar protests to shut down Nixon’s Washington, founded Medical Aid for Indochina, led a relief squadron of small planes over Wounded Knee in 1973, and then ran Tom Hayden’s trail-blazing 1976 Senate campaign.
Sheila Smith, a member of the underground feminist collective Jane, was among those arrested by the Chicago police for performing abortions when they were illegal.
Lenny Foster — the courageous Navajo scout who led American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks through the militarized noose that encircled the Wounded Knee camp in 1973 — also phoned me to say he had received his copy of the book and he was “honored” to be in it. I told Lenny that I was honored to have interviewed him about his daring mission, which is the climax of our final chapter.
Lenny Foster holds the rifle (inside a beaded scabbard) he used to defend the beleaguered Wounded Knee camp.
I’m also delighted to read Peter Dale Scott’s remarks about our book on his Facebook page after he began reading By the Light of Burning Dreams, which he called my most “important” and “timely” book. I still think that my 2015 book, The Devil’s Chessboard — which examined the dark side of America during the Cold War, and how our country went gravely wrong — is equally if not more important. But the two books together — about power and the brave if flawed resistance to it — tell readers what they need to know about the “triumphs” and “tragedies” of the American epic story during our lifetimes.
PS Speaking of Peter, there’s a snapshot somewhere online of a memorable afternoon I spent with him at his Berkeley home, with his good friend Dan Ellsberg, and fellow independent historians Russ Baker and Jefferson Morley. (The picture was taken by my research partner Karen Croft, who is camera shy.) On this 50th anniversary of the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, let us now praise Ellsberg and other courageous whistleblowers!
Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg defends himself outside a courthouse .
A Rave Review on Publication Day
It's June 8 publication day! And Margaret Talbot and I received our first pub day review for our book, By the Light of Burning Dreams -- in the San Francisco Chronicle -- and it's a rave. I was especially gratified by these lines in the review: “If you’ve read either of the Talbot siblings, you know they don’t write anything dry. Simple saviors and canned profiles in courage are not for them. These essays bristle with energy and contention. They enjoy a good rivalry. They’re aware that just about anyone with the gumption to start a movement might not play well with others. But the contributions (of the radical leaders profiled in the book), more often than not, make them worth the frustration.”
Please join Margaret and me at 6 PM this evening for our free Zoom party, hosted by City Lights Books -- or for Zoom interviews with us hosted by 48 Hills on Thursday or the Praxis Peace Institute on Friday.
FYI, that's Black Panther leader Kathleen Cleaver, whom I interviewed for our chapter "Revolution Has Come, Time to Pick Up the Gun."
It’s Time to Fight Back: We Need Our Own January 6 Insurrection
Ever since Joe Biden was elected president, the Republicans have been on the assault, from the January 6 Capitol invasion, to the state-by-state attack on voting rights, to legislative rollbacks of reproductive rights, to censorship of disturbing historical truths about America. Now Senator Joe Manchin, the mouthpiece for West Virginia’s retrograde business class, has announced he will continue acting as a Republican fifth columnist, dooming the Biden agenda on everything from financing the modernization of America’s crumbling infrastructure to safeguarding democracy to protecting the world from rapidly increasing climate meltdowns. Republicans want to kill you, your children and grandchildren for short-term profit — or out of white nationalist/Christian zealotry. It’s that simple.
Up until last year’s elections, those of us who believe in life were also in a fighting mood. We wanted Trump gone, along with his racist and dictatorial ways. Well, Trump is gone (for now) — but Republican fanaticism is still alive and well. And, unfortunately, too many of us have taken a long lunch break, blithely assured that Biden is taking care of business. It’s true that Old Joe has turned out to be more “woke” than we imagined. He went big early on and got his Covid bailout passed over unanimous Republican opposition. But now the Republicans — with Manchin’s help — have stalled Biden’s progress and are swiftly completing the dismantling of democracy.
And we’re still napping.
Well, goodbye to all that. We need to feel the rage again. We need to get into the streets. We need to put the fear of our own righteous God in the hearts of the white supremacists, women-haters, End-of-Days wack jobs, and corporate toadies who are blocking our chance for national redemption. Remember — they are the minority. We have might and right on our side.
If you need some inspiration, pick up a copy of my new book, By the Light of Burning Dreams, the intimate story of the leading icons of the “second American Revolution.” Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Anne Weills, Bill Zimmerman, Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale, Kathleen Cleaver, Heather Booth, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Craig Rodwell, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Madonna Thunder Hawk. Like all of us, they were flawed human beings. But they were warriors for peace and justice, and they never gave up. They radically changed America — but not enough.
Now it’s up to us, and to the next generation. Don’t let the Republicans steal America, my friends. Fight back — fight to win.
Book Party! You’re All Invited (You Can Even Come in Your Pajamas)
On Tuesday June 8 at 6 p.m. Pacific time, City Lights Books will be hosting a Zoom party for me and sister/coauthor Margaret Talbot — and you’re all invited. Come as you are and bring your own beverage. You can register for the party — which will feature a candid conversation between Margaret and me — here.
By the Light of Burning Dreams is my last history book — and I couldn’t have finished this one without Margaret’s help, as well as her husband, author Arthur Allen. It was a family affair, at first made necessary by my stroke in November 2017 as I was preparing to write the book. But as I healed, the collaboration became a source of great joy to me. Writing is a lonely grind, so it was wonderful to work for the first time with Margaret and Art. The delay in the book’s publication also made the book even more timely, as a new generation of protest has come powerfully alive.
By the Light of Burning Dreams has already received a lot of enthusiastic advance reviews. But I look forward to a dialogue with readers — including those of you who joined with a younger version of me in making this radical history, and with younger activists who will hopefully learn from our mistakes as well as our achievements. We moved America forward in many ways; my only regret, to paraphrase the late great novelist Robert Stone, is that we did not triumph completely.
But I trust that the warts-and-all stories of the revolutionary leaders we profile in the book will both inspire and enlighten, including Bobby Seale and Huey Newton of the Black Panthers; Dennis Banks, Russell Means and Madonna Thunder Hawk of the American Indian Movement; Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda of the Vietnam peace movement; and Heather Booth and the women of the underground feminist abortion collective known as Jane.
See you at the party.
The World 2, Apocalypse 0
Wednesday was a good day for the health of the planet. Exxon Mobil shareholders revolted against the drill-baby-drill management of CEO Darren Woods and elected at least two (probably three) climate activists to the energy giant’s board of directors. It was a big victory for the planet — and for the Wall Street investment firms and pension funds that have figured out it is bad for business to destroy our environment. The regimes of Big Oil tycoons like Woods, who has staunchly resisted even the moderate steps toward a green future taken by European energy companies, are now clearly coming to an end. As I’ve long argued, these fossil fuel executives are guilty of crimes against nature and humanity and should end their careers behind bars.
In other news… President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to determine the origins of the coronavirus epidemic within 90 days. Biden is responding not only to political pressure, but to a growing consensus within the scientific community that the deadly virus might have been engineered in the Wuhan Virology Laboratory, where three researchers reportedly fell seriously ill in the fall of 2019, on the eve of the pandemic which then raged around the globe. I’ve been suspicious of a viral leak from the Wuhan lab ever since reading Nicholson Baker’s lengthy investigative report in New York magazine in January. As Baker emphasized, this is not about China bashing. The Wuhan lab’s dangerous work was financially supported by the U.S. government and by leading virology scientists in this country. It’s about imposing tighter restrictions on dangerous “gain of function” research that turns viruses into hugely lethal threats. This strict oversight must be imposed on labs throughout the world, not just in China, for the good of humanity. And we must know the true origins of the Covid-19 inferno so we can prevent future pandemics.
Suspicions about the Wuhan lab have been dismissed for months as conspiracy thinking. But it’s the knee-jerk efforts by authorities to snuff out legitimate public concerns that have led to the erosion of popular belief in the “official stories.” President Biden’s directive to U.S. intelligence agencies is a big step forward.
Is It Sunrise in America, or Twilight?
We were having this glass half empty or half full discussion the other night in my living room. One dinner guest took the darker view (shared by Paul Krugman, among many others, in his recent column). Democracy in America is on the wane, she argued, the victim of a ruthless oligarchy and its Republican goons, a party increasingly divorced from basic reality. It’s true, the GOP is still dangerously enthralled by its extremist Trump base, argued my more optimistic friend — but this is a good thing. Republicans are a shrinking percentage of the American electorate, he asserted, and they will be decisively defeated in the midterm elections and the next presidential race. This will further embolden the surprisingly progressive Biden administration and allow it to push through its ambitious legislation.
I lean more toward the optimistic political scenario, but then I was raised in Hollywood and can’t help believing in happy endings. (My own life has had many of them.)
Speaking of dawns in America, the young climate activists known as the Sunrise Movement and other save-the-planet militants continue to have an impact. Here in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced he will double the state’s firefighting resources, from $1 to $2 billion, as a new particularly ominous wildfire season begins. Newsom is also vastly expanding the state’s investments in wind power and other sources of renewable energy. Meanwhile, an activist hedge fund known as Engine No. 1 is spearheading a campaign to replace four business-as-usual Exxon Mobil board members with climate experts at today’s shareholders meeting. Exxon is the odious energy giant that for decades covered up its own dire scientific predictions about global warming.
These moves — and the multiple climate action measures being undertaken by the Biden presidency — are welcome steps in the right direction. But the climate action movement must go further if this global crisis is truly to be mitigated. Climate havoc through continued fossil fuel extraction and burning must be criminalized. In France, there is a new bill that would do just this, levying criminal penalties on energy executives and other polluters for “ecocide.”
Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods should not just have to worry about a shareholders revolt. He should fret about having his ass thrown in prison.
The Sunrise Movement in the streets
Live from My Living Room: The Joys of Reopening Your World
My wife Camille and I had a few (vaccinated) friends over for dinner on Saturday night. The deal was that they had to sing — and play — for their supper. Luckily for us, they’re talented musicians — fellow writers who moonlight as The Deadliners. And even more lucky for us, Zoe Fitzgerald Carter just released her own album, Waterlines, which I’ve exulted over on these pages — and she treated us to a couple of songs from her new LP, as well a new tune and some classics like John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery.”
One of the greatest losses I felt during the Covid lockdown was the disappearance of live music. So to hear talented musicians play in our own living room was a magical experience. One of our bedazzled guests, Cheryl Nardi, compared it to Christmas as a child.
Zoe was backed on guitar by my longtime friend Gary Kamiya, and his finger-picking — mostly by ear — astounded me. The group was rounded out by Mark Schapiro on harmonica and Mark Hertsgaard on rhythm guitar.
If Zoe comes to a saloon near you in the future, you should buy a ticket. In the meantime, treat yourself to her new album. Here’s one of my favorite songs on it.
And, oh yes, what did I serve for dinner? I’ve been doing a lot of master chef Ottolenghi during the pandemic and this recipe is especially yummy. Chicken marinated in Pernod, olive oil, fresh orange and lemon juice, brown sugar, thyme and garlic — and dotted with slices of tangerines and fennel (which caramelize beautifully after the dish is popped into the oven). I served it with rice pilaf and a green salad.
The musicians obviously were deeply inspired by the feast.
Live from my living room: Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, backed by Gary Kamiya. (Photo by Louise Rubacky)
The Great Escape: How Nixon and Brando Prevented Another Wounded Knee Massacre
Here’s an exclusive peek at By the Light of Burning Dreams, my new history book about “the second American Revolution” — to be published by HarperCollins on June 8. This story was told to me by Dennis Banks, the heroic cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM) shortly before he died. I wrote the article for Air Mail, the new online magazine launched by Graydon Carter, of Vanity Fair and Spy magazine fame. As I write, the story about President Nixon, the FBI and the Native American militants who seized the forlorn Wounded Knee outpost on the snowy plains of South Dakota in the winter of 1973 demonstrates how history is a surprising series of locked doors that lead to other closed doors. Read on!
Dennis Banks and Marlon Brando
Chesa Boudin Celebrates Big Krasner Win in Philly
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin just issued this statement in reaction to fellow progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner’s landslide victory in Philadelphia:
"Larry Krasner was a trailblazer when he was first elected and with this resounding win, he is showing the way once again. Voters support long-overdue criminal justice reform. Scare tactics and misinformation didn't work in Philadelphia and they won't work in San Francisco."
Social justice reformers Larry Krasner (left) and Chesa Boudin
Stop Funding the Carnage
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez acts to block President Biden’s transfer of sophisticated weaponry to the Netanyahu killing machine:
“For decades, the U.S. has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights," Ocasio-Cortez, the conscience of Congress, said in a statement. "In so doing, we have directly contributed to the death, displacement, and disenfranchisement of millions.
"At a time when so many, including President [Joe] Biden, support a cease-fire, we should not be sending 'direct attack' weaponry to Prime Minister Netanyahu to prolong this violence."
Who Will Stop Israel’s War Crimes?
They crowd them into densely packed ghettos like animals in urban cages. They control their economic destiny and keep them trapped in poverty. They evict them from their homes when it suits them. They invade their mosques at will. They brutalize peaceful demonstrators. And then they are shocked, shocked when these abject people finally erupt — and they respond with a fury of bombardment on densely populated urban targets.
The U.S. mainstream press and other Israel apologists want to call the current bloodbath in Gaza a “conflict” between Israel and Hamas. But that’s not what it is. Few Palestinian rockets have reached their targets because of the protective Israeli “dome” while the Israeli air force has destroyed civilian targets in Gaza with impunity. Over 200 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, and only about a dozen Israelis. This is asymmetrical carnage against a largely defenseless civilian population. In other words, the government of Israel’s repulsive leader-for-life Benjamin Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes.
Will Israel finally be restrained? Will the Netanyahu regime at last be held accountable? The rising left wing of the Democratic Party finally forced President Biden to call for a ceasefire, And a new generation of activists — including many young American Jews — is making the links between the apartheid policies of Israel and the systematic injustice that afflicts racial minorities in the U.S.
Hopefully, the slaughter in Gaza is a turning point. Israel must get rid of Netanyahu and his legacy of swagger and belligerence. The Palestinians have been demanding dignity and human rights for far too long. It’s time that Washington finally hears their cries.
Media Merger Creates More of Same - But Here Are MY Hidden Gems
The press is all atwitter about the announced merger between Discovery and AT&T’s WarnerMedia division. Discovery’s Daniel Zaslav is up! WarnerMedia’s Jason Kilar is down! And who knew that wily old John “Cable Cowboy” Malone was still pulling the media industry’s strings from Colorado? In fact, who knew that he was still alive? Despite the media’s frenzy about the latest media shift, the proper response to all this sound and fury is a big yawn. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Like a lot of you, I’ve been watching too much cable network product during the pandemic lockdown. As I began tuning in more, I assumed that all the new streaming services had not only added volume to our entertainment menu, but elevated the quality of movies and TV shows. Wrong. My overall impression of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max and all the rest is how utterly formulaic that entertainment programming has become. If anything, the age of streaming has made creativity even MORE cookie-cutter. There are precious few shows and films that challenge viewers intellectually, artistically or politically. It seems that entertainment executives are all consulting the same apps to determine potential audience and market size. The seat-of-the-pants instincts and quirks that characterized some Old Hollywood barons have been replaced by stats-driven analysis. The result is a predictable stream of programming that hits the same shock-fear-desire nerve buttons in the audience.
As my regular readers know, to avoid boredom, I go spelunking deep and wide in the entertainment vaults to find the gems from yesterday, today and tomorrow that dazzle me. Here are a few of the shining artifacts that I’ve enjoyed recently.
The Talk of the Town. This 1942 movie directed by George Stevens and written by the great Irwin Shaw whipsaws you back and forth between comedy, romance and drama. It stars Cary Grant as an anarchist on the run from the law (yes, you read that right) and Ronald Coleman as the stuffy law professor with whom he forms an unusual bond. Caught between the two argumentative but increasingly close male buddies is the wonderful Jean Arthur. And you don’t know which man she’s going to pick until the final scene of this pleasingly long, weird movie (a scene which takes place in the dignified lobby of the Supreme Court building of all places).
That Damn Michael Che. Who knew that the co-anchor of Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update feature was capable of producing a show of vignettes and commentary so bitingly funny that it puts you in mind of other great black comedies that Che himself references (to mock his own efforts) — like In Living Color and The Chapelle Show. Yes, the six episodes of Che’s show are on HBO Max — but they’re the only fresh, laugh-out-loud pleasures I’ve had during the Covid era. And yes, Che is a lot funnier here than he is on SNL. In fact, the six episodes of That Damn Michael Che are a lot funnier than any SNL show during the past season.
Mr. Wilder and Me. This new novel by British author Jonathan Coe (Middle England) is not easily available yet in the U.S. But it’s worth the extra effort to get your hands on it. I can’t imagine a better summer read. Told from the perspective of a young Greek woman on her first tour of America in the mid-’70s, the novel dips you into the bittersweet final filmmaking days of Billy Wilder and his screenwriter Iz Diamond. Once the king of Hollywood, Wilder is now fighting to keep making movies — and in the process he and Diamond inspire young Calista Frangopoulou to pursue her own creative ambitions. As light and breezy as a day at the beach, but with a wistful and melancholy feeling as well. Utterly delightful — and it will make you go scrambling for Wilder movies you might have missed. For instance, I discovered Ace in the Hole, a scathing 1951 movie about the depravity of the media (and American culture) starring Kirk Douglas.
That’s all, folks!
The Republican Sabotage Machine vs Chesa Boudin: Where’s the Progressive Outrage?
The Republicans. They tell us they’re real Americans. They believe in truth, justice and the American way. Except they don’t really. They don’t truly believe in any of those values. All they really care about are power and self-interest. And the only way they can enforce their dominion over democracy is to sabotage it. Which they are doing in nearly every state – and even in so-called progressive capitals like San Francisco.
Here we see a sinister cabal of moderate Democrats (Republicans in any other city) and billionaire bullies targeting progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin, launching TWO recall campaigns against him before he even got his seat warm at the Hall of Justice. This hit operation is right out of the Trump playbook – rig the system to get far-right fanatics elected, and if progressives slip into office, tie them up with endless disinformation barrages and even recall campaigns.
Who’s funding the Boudin recall campaigns? A rogue’s gallery of fat cats including Chicago investor David O’Keefe as well as Silicon Valley venture capitalists David O. Sacks and Cyan Banister. (It’s driven locally by figures like real estate lobbyist Mary Jung and police-affiliated attorney Harry Stern.) Who are these people and why are they targeting Boudin, who has emerged as a nationally prominent advocate of justice reform? Let’s look at Sacks, for example. He was a conservative wingman of notorious Trump ally Peter Thiel when they were Stanford students, later coauthoring a book with him titled The Diversity Myth, a Koch brother-published attack on “political correctness” which stated that racism in America is largely imaginary and that date rape is nothing more than “belated regret.” Besides funding the recall effort against Boudin, Sacks has also given wads of money to Republican candidates – including former Senator David Perdue, in a desperate attempt to keep Georgia (and the U.S.) in the red column.
The billionaire Republican attack on Boudin is being aided at the local level by Mayor London Breed’s political machine. Mayor Breed, who strongly backed Boudin’s opponent Suzy Loftus in the DA race, wants to eliminate a visionary future rival on her left. And Breed would much rather focus public attention on Boudin’s alleged mismanagement of the prosecutor’s office than her all-too-real leadership failures. Breed has benefited from Covid fatigue and a weak local press, but in any robust metro arena, she would have been on the ropes by now for her personal and political affiliations with disgraced Public Woks czar Mohammed Nuru and her rank inability to combat San Francisco’s homeless and housing crisis, urban blight and tech industry domination.
Boudin, by contrast, has offered a powerful example of what a public official can do to advance real justice in one city. But during his 17 months in office, he’s been forced to fight off a stream of fake news from his opponents and their useful tools in the media, like TV reporter Dion Lim of ABC7-KGO and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight. Boudin is charged with overseeing a rise in SF crime – it’s actually down overall by some 30 precent. Under his watch, violent crimes like rape and assault have significantly decreased. Homicide has ticked up, as it has in cities across the nation during the pandemic, but much less than other cities in the region. Boudin is also charged with taking a soft-on-crime approach, but while emphasizing alternatives to incarceration for non-serious offenses, Boudin has also increased the rates of prosecution for offenders with prior arrests.
The question that keeps nagging me is not why Republican billionaires and the Breed machine are targeting Boudin, but why San Francisco progressives have not rallied around him more aggressively. If his opponents succeed in knocking off a nationally prominent progressive prosecutor like Chesa Boudin, it will not only be a blow against the rising social justice movement – it will further disempower the San Francisco Left and embolden the forces of greed that have taken over the city.
Stay tuned to this space, as I campaign one more time for Chesa Boudin. It might be my last hurrah as a citizen advocate (more on that later).
For the People: San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin
“Exhilarating, inspiring”… The Advance Reviews Continue to Shine for Our New Book
A starred review in Booklist… a rave review in Publishers Weekly. (That’s where the “exhilarating” blurb comes from.) By the Light of Burning Dreams, the new book by my sister Margaret Talbot (of The New Yorker magazine) and I, is off to a wonderful start, in advance of its June 8 publication by HarperCollins.
The book chronicles dramatic turning points in the lives of revolutionary heroes from the 1960s and ‘70s — including Bobby Seale and Huey Newton of the Black Panthers; Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda of the Vietnam antiwar movement; Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta if the United Farm Workers crusade; John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their anti-Nixon peace campaign; Heather Booth and the women of Jane, the underground feminist abortion clinic; and Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk and Russell Means of the American Indian Movement.
We interviewed many of these iconic radical leaders. (Dennis Banks died shortly after I spoke with him — look for my forthcoming article about that interview and Banks’s startling revelation about how President Nixon and Marlon Brando saved him and his fellow Native warriors from a second Wounded Knee massacre). In telling these men and women’s dramatic stories, we did not shy from evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as leaders. But, in the end, I came to feel the same way as novelist Robert Stone — another veteran of these wild times. The only thing he regretted, Stone wrote near the end of his life, was his movement’s failure to win.
Yes, these heroes of the “Second American Revolution,” as we call it, moved the country forward socially and culturally. But we failed to take political power. Our radical generation must fully understand our triumphs and tragedies and pass along this wisdom to the next generation of activists.
I think By the Light of Burning Dreams is a well-timed history lesson. It’s also a damn good read. The Talbots know how to write. Just saying…
You can pre-order the book from an independent bookstore here.
Big Pharma: Greed Is God
I’ve been reading Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe’s remarkable book about the Sackler dynasty and their pharmaceutical wasteland — including the opioid scourge. (What a writer and researcher! I had to leap into his latest book after just finishing his haunting book about the Irish Troubles, Say Nothing.) As I descend with Keefe into his page-turning book about the Sacklers, I’ve also been following the harrowing news from India and Latin America about the Covid killing fields in those tragic countries. Once again, the pharmaceutical giants are profiteering from pain, favoring the wealthy imperialist nations and blocking growing campaigns to transfer their vaccination technology to suffering nations. Drug giants like Pfizer and Moderna would rather get charity points, dispensing some additional shots to India — where more than 3,000 people a day are dying from Covid — than break their trade patents and share their life-saving secrets with foreign drug manufacturers.
Tulsa University was the first institution to strip the Sackler name from its buildings, in 2019.
To his credit, Dr. Anthony Fauci — the nation’s point man on the Covid crisis — has urged President Biden to break the international trade pact favoring Big Pharma. After all, Moderna developed its highly effective Covid vaccine with a huge assist from U.S. taxpayers. And the global coronavirus crisis has already ensured that vaccine makers will reap staggering profits this year. “I always respect the needs of the (drug) companies to protect their interests to keep them in business,” recently said Fauci, who as a long-term U.S. health official knows he must appease the all-powerful pharmaceutical industry. “But we can’t do it completely at the expense of not allowing vaccine that’s life-saving to get to the people who need it.”
Women in India mourn their dead loved ones, as hospitals there run out of oxygen supplies.
As Biden himself has noted, the U.S. is not a walled island. The virus respects no borders. So the suffering of people in India and Brazil and South Africa will soon be OUR suffering. Already medical workers in India’s Covid wards who have been fully inoculated are starting to be sickened with Covid variants. The more we allow Big Pharma greed to block the global distribution of vaccines, the more we risk new waves of infection, even among those who have been immunized in the West. We’re all in this together.
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel
During earlier global health emergencies, like the AIDS crisis, foreign governments finally moved to break Big Pharma patents and manufacture life-saving drugs. In the 1980s, an Indian drug manufacturer broke a lock on hepatitis B vaccine held tightly by Merck and Glaxo-Smith-Kline, after the World Health Organization urgently recommended the vaccine for children. Big Pharma was charging $23 per shot; the Indian manufacturer offered it for $1 a dose.
It’s time for President Biden and other Western leaders to pick life over greed. If they read one book this month, it should be Empire of Pain.