The New York Times’ Endless Bloodlust
Thanks to independent journalists like Matt Taibbi (whose newsletter TK News is an indispensable daily read -- subscribe today), the mainstream media has been shamed (to the extent that corporate media HAS any shame) into acknowledging the military-industrial connections of their Afghanistan national security "experts." Not only did favorite New York Times and Washington Post quote machines and TV talking heads like Meghan O'Sullivan and Jeh Johnson keep the U.S. in the forever war -- they're also profiting from the endless bloodletting in the region by sitting on the boards of weapons manufacturers like Raytheon.
After helping pave the road to endless war with its false reporting on Saddam's nonexistent WMD (hell, let's go back to the 1950s, with its jingoistic reporting that helped the CIA overthrow democracy in Iran), does the New York Times have ANY conscience when it comes to the slaughterhouse of the Middle East? Um, the short answer is no. Just read the Times' daily drumbeat against President Biden for withdrawing AFTER 20 YEARS (!) from Afghanistan.
It must be said: the New York Times is one of America's most shrill warmongers. I'd say "Shame on them" -- but their executive leadership has no shame.
Matt Taibbi on a recent episode of Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti’s Breaking Points
Ed Asner Had Spunk
Ed Asner had spunk -- and I LOVE spunk. Asner died on Sunday at age 91 after a long career as an actor and political activist. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ed back in 1982 with fellow Mother Jones editor (and friend) Mark Dowie. Asner's TV show, Lou Grant, in which he played a hard-nosed newspaper editor, had just been canceled by CBS, obviously for political reasons during the Reagan era. And Ed was not going gently into the night. He had used the show -- and his platform as president of the Screen Actors Guild (a union my father Lyle had cofounded) -- to go after Reagan's savage war policies in Central America as well as the age of greed that his administration ushered in.
In the photo below, Asner had just turned the table on us, asking Dowie a tough question about Mother Jones (I forget what it was) and Mark wisely passed the buck to the junior editor -- me. That's why I have that deer-in-the-headlights look.
Years later, I saw Asner again at a Los Angeles fundraiser for Salon, the online progressive publication I founded in 1995. Ed would always show up for a good cause, speaking to crowds large and small with his trademark growl that hid a heart of gold. He was a true Hollywood hero -- and they're not many of those around.
Btw, speaking of Mark Dowie, he and I remain friends after 40 years, Mark and his wife -- painter Wendy Schwartz -- dropped by a houseboat on Tomales Bay that my wife, writer Camille Peri, and I are living and working in this week. (Better air here in smoky California.) We talked about our Mother Jones days (when we edited and went drinking, and drinking, with Christopher Hitchens), journalistic ethics, and why some journalists and pals (like Hitch) crossed the line and went to the dark side.
Ed Asner wasn't a real journalist. But he played the kind of one on TV that all of us ink-stained wretches should emulate.
Free Sirhan Sirhan
The backlash has already started against the recommendation by a California parole board panel to free Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968. But it's a long-overdue decision -- even if it was based largely on Sirhan's advanced age (77), instead of the fact that he is innocent of killing RFK. Yes, as Sirhan admitted to the parole panel, he is guilty of firing a gun in the crowded pantry of the Ambassador Hotel that night. But, as Sirhan repeated, he has no memory of the tragic events of that night. For good reason. Sirhan was a programmed decoy -- the true assassin fired the fatal bullet into the back of Kennedy's skull at point-blank range, while Sirhan was firing wildly several feet in front of the senator.
Eyewitnesses to the shooting of RFK, including those who wrestled Sirhan for his gun (two of whom I interviewed for my 2007 book Brothers), later stated there was no way that Sirhan was positioned to fire the fatal bullet. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles County coroner who performed the autopsy on Senator Kennedy, came to the same conclusion. Writing in his 1983 memoir, which was ignored by the media, Dr. Noguchi stated that the forensics (including ballistics evidence showing at least 12 shots were fired that night, while Sirhan's gun held only 8 bullets) "indicated there may have been a second gunman... Thus I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy."
My own research has led me to the conclusion that RFK's assassination was organized by CIA contractor Robert Maheu, who recruited Mafia hitmen to kill Fidel Castro, among other tasks for the spy agency. Maheu (whom I interviewed in his Las Vegas home near the end of his life) also conveniently owned a private security firm that I believe was detailed to the Ambassador Hotel that night. The man who fired the fatal shot into the back of RFK's head was posing as a security guard. Maheu's gunmen were positioned all over the hotel that night, following Kennedy's victory in the decisive California presidential primary. There was no way that RFK was going to survive that night.
Most independent researchers who have closely studied the RFK case have concluded that despite the hypnotic actions of Sirhan that night, he is not the assassin of Robert Kennedy. These dogged authors and researchers who are still active (including Shane O'Sullivan, Lisa Pease and Paul Schrade, the UAW official who was struck in the head by a bullet during the wild fusillade but recovered) -- as well as two sons of RFK -- all support the release of Sirhan Sirhan.
The California parole panel's recommendation must be upheld by Governor Gavin Newsom, who has other things on his mind now. But as soon as Newsom withstands the loony Republican recall, he must do the right thing and free Sirhan Sirhan.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy declared victory in the 1968 California primary shortly before he was shot.
Music for Your Soul
It’s politics-free day here at The Show… because man or woman or none of the above cannot live by conflict alone. As my regular readers know, I’m a big music enthusiast — in fact, the sweet sound keeps me going through it all. I particularly love Celtic music and classic R&B and soul — like Aretha, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder etc. I enjoy some neo-soul too, like Dennis Lloyd’s “The Way.” And I’m always searching for new Irish music that infuses new life into that ancient wine jug. And so, my friends, I’m here to sing the praises of the new album by Northern Ireland’s Joshua Burnside, who pairs beautifully on his latest outing with Laura Quirke.
Listen to this ballad, “Far Away the Hills Are Green,” a simple tune with their voices accompanied only by banjo and fiddle. It gets more haunting with each listen. I told my son Nat that I want it played at my funeral. Because that’s the sentimental way that Irishmen like me think.
Politics will break your heart. But music gives you reason to live. It connects us to something ineffable deep inside us. It’s how I get in touch with myself, with all of humanity — and with the other side. (And, btw, rest in cool jazz heaven, Charlie Watts.)
Here’s some additional Joshua Burnside songs for your playlist, and a couple of other new masters of the Celtic sound for a bonus:
“Rana the Fortunate” — also from Half-light, the new EP by Burnside & Quirke
“A Man of High Renown”
“Tunnels, Pt. 2”
“Idle Mind” Anna Mieke
“The Place I Left Behind” The Deep Dark Woods
“Back Alley Blues” Ditto
Quirke & Burnside
Big Tech: Waymo… and Too Little
Take Big Tech, please. These new masters of the universe promised to bring us a brave new world. Well, it's new alright, but since the rise of the tech industry, the quality of life in America and around the planet has only declined. Here in San Francisco, where Mayor London Breed invites all sorts of tech disruption, the latest Silicon Valley invasion is the wave of Waymo robot cars that has now taken over our streets. For now, the autonomous vehicles are under the dual command of human drivers. But after the testing period is finished, the self-driving machines will displace thousands of flesh-and-blood drivers, with Waymo promising better safety records. Just in time, as gig drivers unionize and win court cases. Progress... or more dystopia for San Francisco and other cities colonized by Big Tech?
Meanwhile, whitey is on the moon... or rather tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are blasting off to outer space, as Earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable. (Except for those amazing self-driving cars!)
Big Tech is simply the highest level of a capitalist system that is running more and more amok. We desperately need the best minds in the world to be working on ways to mitigate climate calamities and viral scourges. Instead, the best and brightest are working on AI systems to replace Uber drivers.
If quick and big profits weren't the only driving force in Silicon Valley, our smartest engineers would be developing collection systems and long pipelines to deliver water from drenched Eastern states to drought and wildfire-ravaged Western states. Now THAT would be a major technological advance!
But instead we see tech billionaires behaving badly, like nerdy boys suddenly awash in far too much cash. They run off with bimbos half their age and get entangled in messy, expensive divorces. They build rocket ships and other lavish toys. They crush unions and turn their human workers into automatons.
Like the other fundamentals of life -- food, housing, medical care, education, and energy -- Big Tech is too essential and too powerful to be left in the hands of a few very lucky boy-men. The public needs to take over the tech industry, so the best minds are put to work on life and death urgencies -- instead of flooding our streets with more robot cars and our galaxy with vanity-plated spaceships.
JFK and de Gaulle: The TRUE Story
It took the New York Times over a week -- actually more than 20 years -- but the newspaper of record finally acknowledged that the fall of Afghanistan was an inevitable imperial defeat for the United States. Of course, the Times stuck the analysis of the "Unwinnable Conflict" on p. 6, filling up its front page with yet more hysterical articles about the woeful inner machinations of the Biden security team and the human tragedy of U.S. withdrawal, etc. etc. But score one for the Times for actually running such an honest assessment of doomed colonial power.
Unfortunately, the commentary by Adam Nossiter is marred by a predictably boneheaded mainstream media aside on JFK. Nossiter writes that wise old French President Charles de Gaulle warned young President Kennedy that Vietnam was a "bottomless military and political quagmire." But Kennedy "ignored him," according to Nossiter.
NO, NO. NO. Read some fucking history, New York Times pundits! De Gaulle didn't need to warn JFK about Vietnam because he already knew all too well what a "quagmire" it was. As a young Congressman, Kennedy had visited Vietnam during the French colonial war there, and he saw first-hand what a disaster it was. As President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, personally told me for my 2007 book "Brothers," JFK planned a complete withdrawal of U.S. military personnel after he won reelection in 1964 over hawkish Barry Goldwater. Kenny O'Donnell, Kennedy's top political aide in the White House, wrote the same thing in his memoir. And President Kennedy ordered a national security memorandum that spelled out his plans for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, whose number then only amounted to a few thousand.
The truth is that Kennedy and de Gaulle were both committed to drawing down their respective empires. When de Gaulle moved to end the savage French war in Algeria, he sparked a sharp reaction from military and far-right circles, including several assassination attempts and a coup. De Gaulle was convinced that the French military coup attempt against him in spring 1961 was instigated by the CIA. President Kennedy, already grappling with the CIA's Bay of Pigs disaster in Cuba, was forced to confess to the French ambassador that he was not in full control of his own intelligence agency.
When JFK was assassinated in Dallas, President de Gaulle confided to deputies that Kennedy was the victim of the same national security forces that had targeted him. De Gaulle's remarks on the Kennedy assassination were recorded by his former information minister Alain Peyrefitte for his memoir. Peyrefitte's memoir was published in France in 2002, but never translated into English nor published in the U.S.
Adam Nossiter and other American pundits are apparently blissfully unaware of de Gaulle's true convictions about Kennedy and the violent national security backlash that he suffered as result of his peace policies, including his plans to end the war in Vietnam. But I quote de Gaulle at length in my book The Devil's Chessboard. And for the record, I will do so again here:
“What happened to Kennedy is what nearly happened to me,” confided the French president. “His story is the same as mine. . . . It looks like a cowboy story, but it’s only an OAS [Secret Army Organization] story. The security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.”
“Do you think Oswald was a front?” Peyrefitte asked de Gaulle.
“Everything leads me to believe it,” he replied. “They got their hands on this communist who wasn’t one, while still being one. He had a sub par intellect and was an exalted fanatic—just the man they needed, the perfect one to be accused. . . . The guy ran away, because he probably became suspicious. They wanted to kill him on the spot before he could be grabbed by the judicial system. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen ex- actly the way they had probably planned it would. . . . But a trial, you realize, is just terrible. People would have talked. They would have dug up so much! They would have unearthed everything. Then the security forces went looking for [a clean-up man] they totally controlled, and who couldn’t refuse their offer, and that guy sacrificed himself to kill the fake assassin—supposedly in defense of Kennedy’s memory!
“Baloney! Security forces all over the world are the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare that the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder.
“America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.”
President Kennedy and the First Lady visited President de Gaulle in May 1961, soon after he survived a coup attempt.
President Biden’s Intelligence Problem
Now it turns out that no, the CIA and the rest of America's gold-plated intelligence complex did NOT warn the White House that the U.S.-trained Afghan army was just days away from crumbling. Of course just two days ago, in full butt-covering mode, Langley spooks were madly leaking to the New York Times's Mark Mazzetti and other national security stenographers that they HAD warned President Biden that the Taliban were rapidly taking over the entire country. President Biden obviously didn't want the buck to stop in the Oval Office. So yesterday National Intelligence Director Avril Haines and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley put the intelligence failure directly where it belongs -- on the CIA and its associated spy agencies. According to Haines and Milley, the CIA was utterly clueless about the imminent collapse of the U.S. puppet regime in Kabul.
Will the "loss" of Afghanistan prompt U.S. lawmakers to investigate the CIA's and the Pentagon's imperial ineptitude? Don't hold your breath. Washington still clings to its increasingly tattered image as "Leader of the Free World" -- a "free world" that includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Medieval states. Until America gets over its imperial delusions (hello, New York Times and MSNBC), we'll never be free.
How the CIA won hearts and minds in Afghanistan
Governor Newsom vs. the GOP Taliban
While the New York Times continues its hair-on-fire coverage of how the U.S. "lost" Afghanistan to, um, Afghanistan, what | worry about is California falling to the Republican Taliban. Governor Gavin Newsom is facing a recall campaign that might actually put right-wing nut-job radio host Larry Elder in the state Capitol. Elder, for those of you who have missed his frequent appearances on Fox, is against women's reproductive rights and even a rock-bottom minimum wage for workers. He also has dismissed the climate crisis as a "crock." (Tell it to the weary firefighters who are now battling SIX out-of-control, drought-caused wildfires in the state.) THIS is the Trump wacko who is the leading Republican candidate to replace Governor Newsom!
Now I'm not a huge fan of Gavin, as my readers know. He's too enamored of Big Tech and his wealthy friends, for my taste. But the Republican clown car that's trying to replace him would make the biggest state in the nation a laughingstock. Newsom is a force for sanity when it comes to environmental regulation, gun control, ending the death penalty and boosting resources for public education.
But the surging delta variant of Covid-19 has spooked the citizenry. Who knows how many Californians -- who lean heavily Democratic -- will bother to cast ballots, which have already begun showing up in people's mail.
Look, my fellow Californians, we have enough problems as it is. Letting a Republican extremist sneak into the governor's office through the side door of off-year recall politics would be another big nail in our coffin.
Vote NO on the Republican recall of Governor Newsom -- and then close up and mail your ballot. DON'T pick Elder or any of the other wingnuts on the ballot. Just vote NO on the recall. Stop the Taliban takeover of the Golden State.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has better things to do.
The White Lotus and the American Zeitgeist
No TV show has seemed to catch our national malaise as well as HBO’s The White Lotus. Set in a five-star resort in Hawaii, catering to families and honeymooners who don’t have to sweat the steep bills, the White Lotus is a seeming paradise. But it’s soon revealed as a hellhole of class, sexual, racial and generational bitterness and conflict. The ability of the shows’s creator, Mike White, to extract twisted entertainment from this is a testament to his talent, and that of the stellar cast. There are very few characters who emerge in a good light — Quinn, the teenage boy disaffected from his materialistic family and increasingly drawn into the world of indigenous outriggers, is a favorite of mine. But a poisonous miasma hangs over the entire White Lotus gallery of humanity. Is this America at the end of its reign? It sure feels that way. Or maybe it’s watching the explosive climax of the six-episode series as Kabul falls to the Taliban.
Kaboom in Kabul
There has been wailing and finger-pointing about the overnight collapse of the Afghan "Security Force" (and I use that term loosely). And there should be. The United States spent countless billions of dollars on the puppet Afghan army. President Biden estimated there were some 300,000 Afghan soldiers -- equipped with the latest weapons -- arrayed against some 75,000 Taliban fighters. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently predicted the Afghan army would stand and fight for at least months. But it only took hours for the mighty security force to dissolve, in many cases without firing a single shot. But here's the bigger question: why did U.S. military intelligence get Afghanistan so wrong? ("Military intelligence" -- a classic oxymoron.)
The CIA has been at the heart of the U.S. operation in Afghanistan for 20 years. When the agency wasn't droning wedding parties and other wrong targets (and creating more Taliban supporters), what the hell were its spooks doing with the billions that U.S. taxpayers shower on them every year? The Pentagon spent billions more on "intelligence" in the permanent war zone. And yet top generals -- like Milley -- were also shocked by the instant disintegration of their expensive puppet fighting force.
The American Empire has become a big, stupid, ineffectual beast. And we are paying a fortune for it -- you, me and millions of other U.S. taxpayers. Even if you believed in imperialism (and most Americans, when forced to think about it, don't), you would have to conclude that you're no longer getting the bang for your buck. The empire can't shoot straight. Hell, it can't even think straight.
We all know why the American Empire still lumbers on in the Middle East. It has to do with fossil fuel deposits and our strategic relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel. But the endless wars in this region have only created more failed states and pushed the world closer to the nuclear apocalypse and climate collapse.
After the gruesome murder of George Floyd, "defund the police" became the battle cry of millions of Americans enraged and frustrated by the systemic official violence directed at citizens of color. After "losing" Afghanistan, "defund the empire" must become a new battle cry. The treasure we spend each year on the Pentagon and CIA is taxpayer money down the drain. Let's direct a big slice of that "security" budget to urgent programs that will truly make us safer -- like global warming reduction, disaster preparedness, public health, gun control, clean drinking water, tuition-free education, etc.
Martin Luther King Jr. understood this decades ago. Massive spending on the instruments of death is killing our national soul. America can't be both Empire and Democracy. If we didn't learn that lesson from ancient Athens -- or from Vietnam -- we need to finally learn it now.
General Mark Milley
The Empires Strike Back
Don't you just love how today’s front-page story by Steven "Keep the Bullets Flying -- But Not Near Me" Erlanger of the New York Times features handwringing quotes from French and British diplomats about U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan? President Biden's decision will only worsen the U.S. "credibility problem," according to these foreign affairs "experts." Now let me get this straight. These are spokesmen from former empires that long ago were forced to abandon their colonies, including Vietnam, Algeria, India, Egypt and, yes, Afghanistan. And now they're scolding us for finally waking up to the futility of our 20-year war in Afghanistan? It takes Erlanger more than 20 grafs to finally find a European official willing to support Biden's pragmatism. But mostly his wise men of Europe are shocked and dismayed by the U.S. empire doing what their countries did decades ago.
In other news, Europe is on fire -- from Turkey to Greece to Italy. The highest heat in European history was just recorded in a blistering Sicilian town, where citizens baked in nearly 120 degree Fahrenheit weather and the farmed snails that are the delicacy of the region burned alive in their shells. "Europe is dying," a local farmer tells the Times elsewhere.
And guess what? More war -- especially fossil fuel wars in the Middle East -- will only make the climate hotter and make Europe and the rest of the world die faster.
So fuck the European diplomats who scold America for ending a 20-year imperial war. And fuck Steven Erlanger. And fuck the New York Times.
The Forever War They Just Can’t Quit
President Joe Biden is getting increasing flak for his bold decision to finally withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan after two bloody, costly decades. But it's not from Republicans, whose voters seem just as weary of endless war as the rest of America. The daily pro-war barrage is coming from the New York Times, the voice of corporate liberalism. Today's newspaper features two more hand-wringing articles about U.S. withdrawal from the "graveyard of empires," including one by Michael Crowley ominously warning that his departure "Could Backfire on Biden."
Yes, the Taliban is quickly retaking Afghanistan. Yes, that is a tragedy for its secular citizens, especially women who don't want to succumb to hardline Islamic rule. I wish the Afghan Army -- which the U.S. trained and heavily armed for 20 years -- was capable of resisting Taliban offensives without the U.S. military. But apparently Taliban rule is the fate of this benighted country.
Here's a news flash for the New York Times and other cheerleaders for endless imperial intervention. U.S. invasion -- from Vietnam to Latin America to the Middle East -- NEVER ends well for the foreign countries that become battlegrounds. The U.S. military ALWAYS showers puppet armies and regimes with endless resources -- only to see these propped-up forces quickly disintegrate as soon as American firepower is withdrawn.
When will the U.S. ever learn the grim lessons of empires? When will the fucking NEW YORK TIMES?!
The Silver Lining in the Cloud of Doom
The United Nations report on climate doom is “a code red for humanity.” But will the scientific report on the spiraling catastrophe now enfolding the globe actually push the world’s top polluters — the United States, China and the European bloc — to finally take the necessary drastic action? Don’t hold your breath. Or rather DO hold your breath, or else your lungs will get scarred from the wildfire smoke that is now plaguing the entire planet.
The world’s wealthiest nations have issued reassuring declarations in response to the jaw-dropping UN report. But, of course, they’re still unwilling to move against the biggest fossil fuel polluters — like Exxon, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, all of which maintained a wall of silence after the release of the climate bombshell.
So what’s the silver lining in this otherwise apocalyptic news? The UN report will make it easier for environmental groups to sue the energy giants, as Greenpeace did successfully last month against Shell in a Dutch court. The UN report will also reportedly lead to a new wave of demonstrations in world finance capitals like London. Those battling human extinction — because the UN report makes clear that is what’s at stake — must take their epic battle directly at the men (and they’re all male) who are responsible for the climate killing of countless people around the Earth. As I’ve long been arguing, these executives and politicians are guilty of mass murder and should be treated as world-class criminals.
Will humanity move aggressively to save itself? At this point, it doesn’t look that way. Even a progressive state like California can’t muster the political will to take over the outrageously mismanaged public utility Pacific Gas & Electric, the folks who brought us (among a string of disasters) the Dixie Fire, sparked by a downed PG&E power line. The Dixie blaze, which is still burning out of control after a month, has become the second biggest fire in the state’s history and has fouled the air as far away as New York City.
The energy system must be brought under public control and the men who prioritize greed over human survival must be stopped and brought to justice. When the CEOs of Exxon, Chevron, PG&E etc. — and their political puppets — are finally perp-walked into courtrooms, we can all breathe a little easier.
What IS San Francisco?
What IS San Francisco? I've lived here for 40 years, and suddenly I've lost its thread. I wrote a book about the city's tumultuous history -- Season of the Witch -- when it underwent a bloody civil war to define its "San Francisco values." More recently, my son Joe Talbot and my "honorary" son Jimmie Fails (the honor is all mine) collaborated on the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which took a more tragic view of how they lost the city they grew up in. But still, none of us can quit SF. Jimmie still lives here, and just made a heartfelt video about the city for the San Francisco Giants that evoked the beautiful melancholy of the film. Joe resides mostly in LA these days but dreams of returning to a Victorian castle, like the one in his movie. Our youngest son Nat still lives in our basement, where he cooks up cool street fashion ideas while pursuing a college degree. A longtime friend of his quit his boring tech sales job and is about to move in with us so he can pursue his promising rap career with more diligence. And my wife Camille Peri is completing a book about the suffering -- but loving and creative -- marriage of bohemians Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson, a subject she knows something about.
Camille and I will live in SF until the day we die. And we will continue to preside over the ramshackle, chipped-paint Bernal Heights bungalow that has been a creative hothouse for the making of books, music and movies for many years. In fact, our family has even bigger plans. Last week, ten of my extended family (all vaxxed) crowded into our Bernal digs for a kind of vacation/summit meeting. We decided to find a big pile somewhere in the city and collectively buy it (no small task). This future bastion will be our family studio, where two generations of family members, friends and lovers will take our communal creativity to new heights.
My sister Margaret Talbot and I, and her husband Arthur Allen, just collaborated on By the Light of Burning Dreams -- a Season of the Witch-type history about the revolutionary heroes of the 1960s and '70s who tried to liberate America. Now Margaret (who has a day job as a New Yorker magazine writer) and I are mulling over working together on a novel -- our first foray into fiction -- based on a true story from our father Lyle Talbot's wild life in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
So my family has a stake in this lost paradise by the Bay.
Our San Francisco creative factory would also be a haven from a city that has grown increasingly cold and soulless. This gets us back to my opening question. What IS San Francisco these days?
In recent years, the "city of love" seemed to be overrun by tech robots and billionaires -- and by the homeless people they pushed onto the streets and stepped over while talking loudly on their Bluetooths. Then the pandemic hit and SF became a ghost town, with many techies fleeing to the suburbs or wherever else they felt safer. And now? We seem to hover in a twilight mist, somewhere between Covid catastrophe and boomtown 3.0. The odd bubble effect seems reinforced by the climate-crazy weather. Here we are, shivering in the wind and fog while the rest of our Golden State is ablaze. At least the skies aren't fiery orange like last wildfire season. Like I said, strange times.
Still, there is no better time for San Francisco to redefine itself. To reclaim its soul.
Once upon a time, SF grew its identity from city leaders, activists, rock musicians and impresarios, poets, eccentrics, newspaper columnists and community crusaders. There are no giants anymore on the city scene. So it's up to all of us to begin having the conversations about our civic future. What kind of city do we want to live in?
Let's start that public conversation here. I'm especially interested in hearing from public school teachers (the ones who haven't abandoned the SFUSD), healthcare workers, restaurant and bar employees, small retailers and all those "frontline" people who put their lives on the line for the city.
Let's take back our city. It begins by talking amongst ourselves.
An Oasis From the Plague
The Zuni Cafe in San Francisco has been one of my havens from the heartless world ever since it was opened by the irrepressible Billy West in 1979. Even after Billy succumbed to AIDS, and the restaurant was taken over by my friend Vincent Calcagno, and then by Gilbert Pilgram — who runs it today — Zuni continued to attract the city’s best and brightest. Back in the day, you’d bump into Mick Jagger and Rudolf Nureyev — along with fellow ink-stained wretches spending their last dollars on a gourmet hamburger and glass of nice French red. After my unforgettable book party for Season of the Witch in 2012 at the McRoskey Mattress Factory, a group of us straggled across Market Street for a late dinner at Zuni, including my friend Oliver Stone. As we sat in the balcony section, hunched over Zuni’s famous roast chicken, a troupe of half-naked new-generation Cockettes followed us into the restaurant from the party and performed one of their bawdy drag numbers. The restaurant staff didn’t flinch during the impromptu performance, going about their business with typical professional aplomb. Later, waiting for an empty bathroom, a gentleman from Texas marveled at the spontaneous floor show and wondered aloud if it happened every night there.
Well, not every night. But the Zuni has been my magic place for over four decades. And it has recently reopened, after surviving the lockdown. One of the restaurant’s long-time waiters (there are still a good number of them) told me that he burst into tears on the day when the heavy wooden boards were finally taken off the restaurant’s iconic plate-glass windows.
But doing business as Covid-19 again surges in the form of the Delta variant is not easy. Even for durable city institutions like the Zuni Cafe. Certainly you have your own such sacred places in your city. If they disappear, your city will be tangibly diminished. The Zuni, City Lights Books, Green Arcade Books (just down the street from Zuni), the Castro Theatre, Swan’s Oyster Depot, Yank Sing’s dim sum heaven… if these businesses ever fold, I want to also disappear. To me, they are San Francisco.
Now, for survival, Zuni is asking patrons to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination, in order to sit inside. (Those who can’t provide proof of vaccination are seated outside.) Zuni hosts are also seating people inside at every other table, and their waiters are masked, giving diners further sense of security.
This new health policy relies on a compliant customer base. My friend and I were only too happy to show proof of vaccination on our phones when we arrived at Zuni yesterday. We then enjoyed a lunch of gourmet (tuna) fish sticks and a buttery pasta dish with fresh summer corn niblets and filigreed spinach leaves. (The post-lockdown food is better than ever at Zuni.)
But all it takes is one angry, vaccine-resistant customer to cause an unpleasant scene at the restaurant door. All restaurants and stores that implement new vax rules are girding themselves for customer explosions.
It would greatly relieve the pressure on frontline workers like restaurant hosts if city governments would mandate in-door vaccination policies. Then the proprietors of Zuni and other establishments could simply inform customers that showing proof of vaccination is the law, and not simply wise restaurant policy.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has already issued such an edict. It’s time for Mayor London Breed and city supervisors to implement a similar law in San Francisco. Let’s protect our frontline workers — and ourselves. And let’s keep open the urban sanctuaries that make our cities worth living in.
The magical Zuni Cafe
The Coup Plot That Was
There's an interesting essay (for a change) in the Review section of the Sunday New York Times. In the column, conservative (but anti-Trump) opinion writer Christopher Caldwell argues that Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Mark Milley overstepped his duties during the nerve-wracking post-election period when he prepared his top command to stand fast against a Trump coup attempt. "They might try" to engineer a coup, Gen. Milley reportedly told his aides at the time, but they would fail. "You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns." Caldwell accuses the top general of overreacting -- of embracing "a grandiose conception of his place in government."
But was Milley being overly dramatic? After all, a deeply aggrieved and aggressive Trump whipped up an armed mob who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6. He pressured his own attorney general and Republican officials across the country to overturn the results of the election. His former national security advisor called for the military to intervene on his side and reinstate him -- which he himself vowed to do by August. He regularly encouraged armed militias and militant white nationalists throughout his tumultuous presidency. He still rules the Republican Party as well as the loyalty of countless millions of America, even after his neofascist reign.
I sympathize with Caldwell's nervousness about military intervention in our democracy. But it doesn't help to simply whistle past the graveyard.
General Milley's grim statement of fact -- "We're the guys with the guns" -- and his resolve to use those guns if necessary should make us all anxious about the precarious state of our democracy.
Caldwell's conservative ideology won't allow him to say this, but I will. The answer to Trumpian despotism is not deep state intervention. It's a woke and vigilant populace, willing to defend democracy by any means necessary.
General Milley and his then commander-in-chief
The Revolution That Was
Here's the first serious review from the academic left of By the Light of Burning Dreams -- the new book by Margaret Talbot and me. The New Republic review is by Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University historian with roots (like me) in the Bay Area New Left. Let me just engage with Michael on one of his critical points. He disputes our contention that the upheavals of the 1960s and '70s amounted to a "second American Revolution," pointing out the New Left's neglect of class oppression (except on the sectarian fringes and the doomed United Farm Workers).
It's true that the radical movements of this era failed to take control of "the means of production." As Michael himself admits, he's a traditional social democrat, with Marxist inclinations (he served on the board of the Berkeley journal Socialist Review -- formerly Socialist Revolution -- in his youth). But my sister and I have a much broader view of "revolution." That's why, as Michael acknowledges, we tell a wide array of stories -- including those of gay leader Craig Rodwell, feminist activist Heather Booth, Black power militants Bobby Seale, Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, and Native American warriors Dennis Banks, Madonna Thunder Hawk and Russell Means. What these courageous -- if sometimes deeply flawed -- leaders accomplished was nothing short of revolutionary. They spearheaded movements that radically transformed America, even if we didn't seize control of Wall Street and Washington.
I'm old enough to remember America in the late 1950s. That country was a different planet than the one we live on today -- largely because of the radical activists of the '60s and '70s.
But I agree with Michael on another major point. As he concludes his review, we need another American revolution to compel the country to live up to its shining founding ideals, for working people of all descriptions.
The Young Lords on the march in 1971
Buy This Banned Book
By the Light of Burning Dreams continues to pile up glowing reviews -- this one in the National Book Review (an online journal founded by former New York Times editorial board member Adam Cohen and former National Book Critics Circle president Elizabeth Taylor) calls the book by my sister Margaret and me "an inspiring chronicle." The review then adds: "No hagiographers here; the Talbots point to the failures and imperfections in their characters, making their legacies human and real."
Our book also just received enthusiastic reviews (A+, 5 stars) in Berkeleyside, the leading online journal in SF's East Bay, and the Seattle Book Review. The San Francisco Chronicle and all the primary book industry trade publications also gushed over the book.
But still no reviews in the leading East Coast publications.
What is going on with the New York Times? I understand the blackout of my book The Devil's Chessboard, which had the temerity to name the Times as a key part of the U.S. propaganda machine during the Cold War. Am I still being punished for crossing acceptable ideological lines?
You'd think that the corporate liberal press would embrace By the Light of Burning Dreams, with its unflinching assessment of radical leaders of the 1960s and '70s. But the book also endorses their revolutionary mission, while probing their flaws.
Perhaps most disturbing to the cultural gatekeepers, By the Light of Burning Dreams advances the notion that we need another American Revolution to pick up the fallen flag of the last one.
Dare to be inspired. Dare to be provoked. Make By the Light of Burning Dreams a New York Times bestseller (like the banned Devil's Chessboard) -- even if the Times won't acknowledge the book's existence.
The Viral War on the Vaccinated
The civil war in America is now also raging on the Covid front. With the delta variant flaring throughout the country, everyone is now again at risk — even the fully immunized. And who is to blame for this new surge? The unvaccinated, many of them politically motivated and medically ignorant, who account for over 90 percent of new coronavirus infections — and virtually all of the recent hospitalizations.
Today’s San Francisco Chronicle reflects the growing rage and confusion about the plague’s comeback. “Should restaurants become vaccine cops?” asks the headline of one front-page story. At the same time, another lead story insists, “Affixing blame won’t fix the surge.” But people forced to work with the public on the frontlines, like restaurant workers, know that the unvaccinated are threatening reopenings of their businesses — and their livelihoods. Whom exactly are they to blame, if not the selfish men and women who are putting us all at risk, especially children, the aged and immunocompromised?
Some Bay Area restaurant owners quoted in the Chronicle are seriously considering vaccination proof before they seat customers. But others worry about losing business — or even about explosive reactions from the unvaccinated. Oakland restaurateur Matt Reagan compared the ominous vibe to March 2020: “You can see the storm is coming and no one has the courage to sound the alarm.”
I feel the fear and isolation returning — but this time there is also anger and bitterness. And it’s not just among restaurant workers. The owner of a bookstore and I recently agreed to cancel a party for my new book because of the variant breakthrough. Like all small retail businesses, independent bookstores were just getting back on their feet when the delta strain exploded.
Then there are the fatigued healthcare workers who are again being forced to work round the clock to save lives — this time of the willfully stupid.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is right to let his temper flare about the new coronavirus resurgence — and those who are responsible for it, like the safely vaccinated Donald Trump and cynical right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson. “With all due respect,” stated Governor Newsom yesterday, “you don’t have a choice to go out and drink and drive and put everyone else’s lives at risk. That’s the equivalent of this moment with the deadliness and efficiency of the delta virus. You’re putting other people’s, innocent people’s, lives at risk.”
There is no other way to put it. If you’re an adult who has decided not to get immunized, you’re a public enemy.
The Death of a Quiet Civil Rights Hero
Bob Moses — “the Martin Luther King Jr. of Mississippi” — has died at age 86. Nobody did more, or risked more, to register Black Americans to vote in the Deep South in the early 1960s. Moses was shot at, assaulted and jailed numerous times, but he kept his eyes on the prize “with an aura of almost saintly calm,” in the words of my sister Margaret Talbot.
Margaret wrote about Moses — the bespectacled son of a Harlem janitor who became a philosophy graduate student at Harvard before joining the civil rights struggle — in our new book, By the Light of Burning Dreams. After the traumatic murders in rural Mississippi of civil rights workers of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in June 1964, many leaders of Freedom Summer expected other young volunteers from Northern college campuses to cancel their plans to go South. As Margaret writes, Moses — one of the architects of the movement to galvanize civil rights action by placing middle-class students in harm’s way — addressed one such group (including future legendary organizer Heather Booth) with a heavy heart. Allow me to quote from this chapter in our book:
Bob Moses spoke to Heather’s group of Freedom Summer volunteers before they departed for Mississippi. He invoked the need to counter corrupt power with an unflagging commitment to advancing the good. He referred to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings -- in 1964, more of a cultish obscurity, but one that resonated with some of the students -- to describe how a hero “gains a means of ultimate power he does not want,” but can’t give up. Dressed, as he habitually was, in denim overalls, Moses looked down at his feet, and spoke in a voice so quiet the group had to listen intently to hear it. He told the students he felt terrible asking them to go. “Looking at us sitting in the same room where the 3 missing men had been last week,” one volunteer wrote to his father, “Moses seemed almost to be wanting all of us to go home.” Indeed, Moses stressed, anyone who wanted to should feel free to leave, and not be ashamed. They should know, though, that he wasn’t asking them to risk anything he himself wasn’t risking.
From the back of the room, a young woman began to sing: “They say that freedom is a constant sorrow.” And gradually, voice after voice joined in until everyone in the room was singing, their arms wrapped around one another. No one left.
Rest in peace, Bob Moses.
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