Read All About It — Daily Journalism Makes a Comeback
Daily journalism, at least in many cities, seems to be enjoying a revival. Here in San Francisco, there are at least four dailies now challenging the hegemony of the Hearst-owned SF Chronicle. Two of them are scrappy, independent nonprofits -- 48 Hills and Mission Local. And two were launched by wealthy men -- the San Francisco Standard, bankrolled by billionaire investor Michael Moritz (who interviewed me about my memoir for the Bay Area Book Festival) and the San Francisco Examiner, which is owned by local media mogul and real estate player Clint Reilly.
I love that the tired, corporate-leaning Chronicle finally has some competition. It's suddenly like the "Front Page" days of city journalism, when multiple newspapers fought it out for readers and ad dollars. Will the Chronicle respond by suddenly livening up its pages? Don't bet on it. The leading daily seems content with its current dull, middle-of-the-road approach. Its only fire-breathing columnist is Heather Knight, who crusades for corporate power and conventional civic values. They must love her in the suburbs.
The Chron's competitors all have something better to offer. The Examiner has the colorful, locally informed editor and writer Al Saracevic and sharp editorialist Gil Duran (why don't I see his byline more often?) Mission Local has the very good reporter Joe Eskenazi. 48 Hills is run by my friend Tim Redmond, and it's not biased to say nobody has a better grasp of our city than he does.
The San Francisco Standard boasts a relatively big newsroom. It's loaded with solid local journalism. And it claims to be independent of its wealthy ownership. But it looks -- and too often reads -- like a corporate annual report. I'm rarely shocked or even surprised by anything I read in the Standard. (Though I was amused to hear Mayor-for-Life Willie Brown -- who helped impose the corrupt rules of Ed Lee and London Breed on us -- urge Chesa Boudin to run again for DA, even though the Breed machine loathes him.)
As I've argued on this page before, there is no secret to good daily journalism -- which I practiced for years at Salon and, yes, the Examiner and Chronicle. You need to break big stories (like the investigative reporting that Salon did on the Clinton impeachment machine, the Bush-Cheney "victory," Abu Ghraib etc) and to feature compelling writers (like fearless Salon Iraq War correspondent Phillip Robertson and columnists/reporters/critics as diverse as Camille Paglia, Rebecca Traister, Anne Lamott, Laura Miller, Joan Walsh, Jake Tapper, Glenn Greenwald, Gary Kamiya, Stanley Crouch, Arianna Huffington, Joe Conason, David Horowitz, Michelle Goldberg, James Poniewozik, Cintra Wilson, Dwight Garner, Christopher Hitchens etc.)
The Examiner obviously believes in distinctive writing, but still has a way to go before they boast a full stable of good writers. The nonprofits have feisty spirit and a commitment to covering life on the city streets and City Hall malfeasance. But where are the big exposés that get the whole city talking?
When I first started out in journalism, the "Who Rules" reports were the bread and butter of countless New Left pamphlets (Who Rules Columbia University, Who Rules Congress etc.) This would STILL be an eye-catching way to capture readers' attention. Here in SF, we have a vague sense of the corporate powers and special interests behind Mayor Breed's reign at City Hall, but we don't know for sure -- because the local media won't go there.
Don't expect the Chronicle or the Standard to expose Big Money in SF -- their overlords are too cozy with these powers. I'm sure that 48 Hills and Mission Local would do more investigative reporting if they had the resources.
This is the Catch-22 for the truly independent press in America. Philanthropic billionaires like Moritz generally have the best First Amendment intentions. They're genuinely concerned, as we all are, about the decline of democracy in the U.S. But their money always comes with strings attached -- even when they insist it doesn't. Their influence on these media startups begins right away -- when they start hiring the editorial staffs.
So if you believe in a truly free press -- right here in Bay City -- you'll subscribe to 48 Hills and Mission Local. A free press is NEVER free.
Inside Trump’s “Unhinged” Bunker
As I wrote in The Devil's Chessboard, democracy is as fragile as an "eggshell" in the tumult of history. This has been glaringly evident throughout the riveting January 6 hearings, especially during yesterday's session when the Congressional committee displayed testimony about the "unhinged" White House meeting, where for more than six hours the "crazies" -- like convicted General Michael Flynn and attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell -- ranted at cooler-headed White House staff and nearly convinced our stable genius of a president to order a military coup. (Trump finally opted instead to inflame a mob of armed followers to overrun the Capitol.)
Listen to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone's chilling testimony about the meeting.(He's pictured below.) His recollections of the frenzy in the bunker rank up there with Cassidy Hutchinson's. Here's a piece:
“I opened the door and I walked in. I saw General Flynn,” he said in a videotaped interview the committee played at the hearing on Tuesday. “I saw Sidney Powell sitting there. I was not happy to see the people who were in the Oval Office.”
Asked to explain why, Mr. Cipollone said, “First of all, the Overstock person, I’ve never met, I never knew who this guy was.” The first thing he did, Mr. Cipollone said, was say to Mr. Byrne, “Who are you?” “And he told me,” Mr. Cipollone said. “I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice.”
Then things got really weird...
The U.S. has a dismal record of holding high criminals accountable. Yes, as we keep getting reminded this Watergate anniversary season, Nixon fell. But no high official responsible for the bloody debacle of Vietnam was ever found guilty. The assassinations of the 1960s? No. Bush-Cheney's illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq? Ditto. The CIA's post-9/11 reign of torture and drone mayhem? Are you kidding?
The U.S. has such a strong aversion to ever being held accountable for its murderous actions that our government defies the war crimes and human rights tribunals that it set up! And we keep people like Julian Assange in black holes for the temerity of exposing the truth about our war crimes.
But this shouldn't prevent you from watching the January 6 hearings, where smart, progressive legislators like Jamie Raskin -- and, yes, Republican Liz Cheney, the loving daughter of a war criminal -- have distinguished themselves. In the end, Trump and his co-conspirators who tried to overthrow democracy will probably remain free. That's sadly the American Way. But we still must bear witness. And most of us can still vote in November.
CIA Agonistes
The last time the USA tried to make sense of the CIA -- and even rein in its more violent and tyrannical urges -- were the Congressional hearings of the 1970s. The Senate bleated again -- briefly -- when Dianne Feinstein's torture-probing committee discovered it was being spied on by the CIA. But since 9/11 the CIA --- and the entire metastasizing national security complex -- has pretty much had its way, from drone assassinations to black sites. Just ask Julian Assange.
And so it's left to the dream factory to deal with our recurrent national nightmares. Most recently, FX (and Hulu) offer us The Old Man, starring the wonderful Jeff Bridges as an ex-CIA agent on the run and the equally superb John Lithgow as his FBI nemesis.
And from British TV (available on AMC), we have a remake of The Ipcress File, starring Joe Roth, instead of Michael Caine, who unfortunately sleepwalks through his role as a working-class hustler caught up in a maze of Cold War intrigue.
Both TV shows shed a weird light on the clandestine exertions of the spy world. In The Old Man, the CIA's machinations during the Soviet war in Afghanistan seem to backfire and Bridges is pitted against his former national security colleagues. So we're supposed to root for him against the current CIA and FBI overlords, I guess. (Only five of seven episodes in Season One have been shown so far.)
In the one-and-done Ipcress File series, which is set in 1963, the bad guys are a far-right, fundamentalist U.S. general and his military clique, who inveigle a patriotic CIA official into their plot to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of a U.S.- beguiled British espionage official. So it's on the right track. Sort of.
The best part about the entertainment industry telling us dark stories about our official history is that at least it's TRYING to get at the truth. But the plots of these two shows are both twisted and simplistic. They succeed in disturbing us, but they also confuse us.
The truth is STILL out there.
The Top Ten Liars
I made this list quickly and honestly. These are the biggest disseminators of bullshit about "exceptional" America (and its discontents). Most are bestselling writers (alive and dead) -- though Steven Spielberg stands for decades of Hollywood propaganda about the "greatness" of our leaders and how (with swelling music) the arc of history bends inevitably toward justice blah, blah blah. All lies.
These hacks are often beloved by liberals and progressives. They gather plaudits in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times -- proof of their conventional (establishment) "wisdom" and mendacity. (Ken Auletta stands for all the limited hangout, half truths and pabulum about corporate media.)
What happened to the angry truth-tellers of yesteryear? The searing prophets like Gore Vidal, William Appleman Williams , Gabriel Kolko, C. Wright Mills, Frantz Fanon, etc. Noam Chomsky is still around and mostly, unnervingly right. But they are blacklisted from the mainstream media in our "free" country, so all most Americans see and hear are the following prevaricators. God help us all.
Top Ten Liars (in no special order):
1. Ken Burns
2. Walter Isaacson
3. Doris Kearns Goodwin
4. Michael Beschloss
5. Jon Meacham
6. Christopher Hitchens
7. Joan Didion
8. Robert Caro
9. Steven Spielberg
10. Ken Auletta
Run, Gavin, run
As readers of this page know, I've had mixed feelings about Gavin Newsom ever since the beginning of his political career here in San Francisco. But the California governor has emerged as the only serious Democratic presidential contender to aggressively confront the reactionary Republican machine. "Stop playing defense," Newsom has scolded fellow Democrats. He has taken out ads in red states like Florida and Texas and on Trump's social media network, attacking the Supreme Court's disastrous decisions on abortion rights and environmental regulation, and championing the Golden State as a bastion of civility. While he was busy beating back a Republican recall campaign last year, the governor told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had "sub-zero" interest in the 2024 presidential race. He also said that he would defer to his fellow SF-bred politician Kamala Harris if she ran. But that was then.
The truth is Joe Biden has proven to be a feckless leader -- old and doddering and deferential when we desperately need a fire-breather. Kamala is little better. She failed to develop a big following during her last presidential bid. And instead of emerging as President Biden's essential partner, she has managed to fade away as a political player during her 18 months in the vice president's office.
Meanwhile, the country has gone from bad to worse. While Biden has failed miserably to enact his Build Back Better New Deal-type agenda, the Supreme Court majority and other far-right fanatics are on the march. The Democrats seem disorganized and headless by comparison. We desperately need a leader who has the courage of his convictions. (Note I say "his" -- unfortunately, the U.S. is still too misogynistic to elect a female president.)
Gavin Newsom is no Bobby Kennedy -- not yet, maybe not ever. But he's the best we have. Bernie will be too old, AOC has become too much of a target to play outside NYC. But imagine a Newsom paired on the 2024 Democratic ticket with another member of the progressive Squad. That might be the only way to beat scary thugs like Trump or Ron DeSantis. Biden or Harris will take us over the cliff in 2024. It's time to change horses.
Newsom (l) and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
Go Boom!
America is a great country. Still. You can shoot loud stuff off -- even here in Left Coast San Francisco. ESPECIALLY here in Frisco, where the cops let you shoot off loud stuff even on July 1, July 2, July 3, July 4... you name it. And I mean LOUD shit. Rockets red glare that explode with cannon-like volume and rattle your windows at 2 in the morning! Wake up, San Francisco! Except the SFPD -- you can keep on dozing through all the mayhem. Or go shoot another unarmed homeless guy or black teenager. That's what you're good at.
What a great time to celebrate American Freedom. Women are no longer free to control their bodies. Black people are no longer free to vote. And corporations are free to trash the environment as much as they want. Burn, baby, burn.
All the loud boom and bang kind of reminds me of Ukraine. Or maybe it's somewhere else where Russian and American rockets do their thing. Afghanistan? Syria? Somewhere far away we don't have to worry about.
But here at home, we can celebrate American Firepower all year long. Fourth of July? Sure. But we boom and bang here in SF all the time, all through the days, all through the nights. And like I say, the mayor and SFPD do NOTHING about it.
Isn't America great?
Watch This New Documentary — The Truth Will Set You Free
I just had the chance to view Max Good's new documentary, The Assassination & Mrs. Paine, and I highly recommend it to anyone who cares about the tragic trajectory of this country over the past six decades. No one did more to implicate Lee Harvey Oswald in the murder of President Kennedy than Ruth Paine, supposedly a good friend of Oswald's wife, Marina. But Ruth and her husband Michael -- both of whom I interviewed for The Devil's Chessboard -- had strong family ties to the U.S. national security world. And both Paines were the type of naive, liberal do-gooders whom CIA spymaster Allen Dulles was in the habit of cynically manipulating.
I found Michael, in old age (he died in 2018), to be wooly-headed and passive, an eccentric observer of his own life. I found Ruth to be more calculated -- arrogant in her own ignorance. CIA-friendly authors like Max Holland, Thomas Mallon and Gerald Posner find the Paines to be truthful because they seemed so ingenuous. But the Paines were useful idiots, who allowed themselves to become agents of dark history.
At first I thought Max Good's documentary was going to be another maddening "we'll never know" whodunnit. It's far far too late for that kind of "on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand" bullshit. The country is going down in flames. Where are our truth-tellers? But fortunately, Good's documentary -- which includes the deeply knowledgable Peter Dale Scott, JimDiEugenio, Bill Simpich and Gary Aguilar (as well as disinformation artist Holland -- is much more definitive than that.
Good, whom I met several years ago when he was first setting out on his project as an MFA student at Stanford, had the courage to seek answers. Good's unsettling line of questions, that he poses to Ruth near the end of his film, shed a harsh light on this self-righteous Quaker woman.
Watch The Assassination & Mrs. Paine -- now available on Amazon and iTunes. Dare to know.
Hooray for Hollywood (sort of)
I was raised in Hollywood, on Hollywood. The Dream Factory is in my blood -- literally. My father Lyle was a Warner Bros. star in the Golden Age of Hollywood (that's him below, with Loretta Young). My son Joe is a movie director. Moviemaking is in the family. And yet it's poison. The myths created in Hollywood -- from Top Gun on down -- are the lies that run the country, the world. I should want to burn down the "entertainment" industry. But instead I want to turn it around.
I always have. After we graduated from college in the 1970s, my girlfriend Barbara Zheutlin and I headed back to Los Angeles, where we tried to subvert Tinsel Town, organizing a group of radical entertainment workers called the Socialist Media Group. We held our meetings in cinematographer Haskell Wexler's loft, and one member of our group -- indie film producer Sarah Pillsbury -- even wore our group's button ("Everybody Is a Star," with a red star) onstage when she won an Academy Award.
Barbara and I also interviewed lefties unhappily burrowed into Hollywood for our book, Creative Differences.
Spoiler alert: we failed to overthrow Hollywood. Our group dispersed to the far corners of the country. But as a writer -- and yes, as someone still infected with its dreams -- I kept coming back to Hollywood. There's a chapter in my recent memoir, Between Heaven and Hell, about my distressing experiences in the film capital, called "Hollywood Gave Me a Stroke." And it's true -- working for the dream machine was a nightmare for me.
BUT... I just wrote my first screenplay. It took over nine months and I had to learn the specialized craft as I went scene by scene (I had a great teacher). And I must confess --as painstaking as it sometimes felt, it was nonetheless a deeply pleasureful process. Go figure. Maybe the movie will actually get made.
Now I want to write a treatment for a limited TV series based on my book, Season of the Witch. We live in such gloomy times. Before I shuffle offstage, I want to remind people how we once liberated this country -- city by city. The war for America's soul has never been easy. This is a deeply cruel, violent, greedy country. The only thing "exceptional" about it is its bloodthirsty ruthlessness. But, like Hollywood, the USA is still worth fighting for.
That's why we fight. That's why I write. I never forget.
Our Bodies, Ourselves: Time to Fight Back Again
Today the Supreme Court really did it, banned the right of women to control their bodies and the rights of women and men to determine their reproductive futures. The authoritarian right (read GOP) has now fully invaded our bedrooms. Are we going to finally fight back?
The Supreme Court is fully weaponized against us, with a rapist, a doll-eyed cultist, and a zealot who's married to a woman who tried to overthrow our democracy in the wake of Trump's electoral defeat joining with the three other right-wing extremists to overturn Roe v. Wade. And yet President Biden and other clueless Democratic leaders cation us against venting our outrage outside the Supreme Court or the justices' homes. Why shouldn't we invade their sanctuaries if they use their power to invade ours?
While we the people -- the American majority -- organize to overthrow these fanatics, we need to resist in the states that are now free to completely outlaw abortion (about half of the country). The Jane Collective -- which was founded by Heather Booth in Chicago in the late 1960s before Roe v. Wade -- demonstrated how to perform abortions for desperate women safely, if illegally.
For inspiration, you can read all about the Jane Collective in By the Light of Burning Dreams --- the book written by my sister Margaret and me, which is now in paperback. (There's also a timely HBO documentary about Jane.)
The women of Jane were willing to sacrifice their own comfortable lives and even go to prison for long stretches so that the rest of us could control our own bodies, not the state. If you're not willing to fight for that basic right, what are willing to fight for?
The Inside Story of the SECOND American Revolution
Speaking of summer reading... The paperback version of my (final) book, By the Light of Burning Dreams (co-written with my sister Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker magazine), is now on sale. It's a wonderful read... buy a copy!
The book is a compelling, colorful account of America's "second revolution" -- in the 1960's and '70s. Based on interviews with many of those who led the revolution -- including Bobby Seale, Tom Hayden, Heather Booth and Dennis Banks (pictured below with American Indian Movement supporter Marlon Brando) -- By the Light contains all the most important stories and wisdom I've accumulated during my life about radical change in the U.S.
Here's how the book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle put it:
“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. . . . Whether covering the labor organizing of Cesar Chavez, the gay pride of Craig Rodwell or the celebrity activism of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Talbots are guided by dogged reporting and an instinct for finding and telling a story. Even if you know these revolutionaries, you’ll find details here to surprise you. They might even make you want to go out and make a difference yourself.”
Summer Reading
I'm fond of memoirs these days. Maybe it's because I'm near the end of my own life and I want to know about the lives of others -- those who've accomplished something and have some wisdom (and good stories) to impart. Not another story of addiction or abuse by a 26-year-old (no longer interested). But something deeper and more eventful.
Of course, I wrote a memoir that I highly recommend (especially if you're coming back from a medical trauma) -- "Between Heaven and Hell" (shameless plug, but quite readable, even for humid summer nights).
In recent months, I also thoroughly enjoyed "Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage," Pauli Murray's account of her Zelig-like trek through the joys and tribulations of the African American experience in the 20th century U.S.; Oliver Stone's "Chasing the Light," a fascinating personal journey through the shark-infested waters of Hollywood up to the time he won an Academy Award for "Platoon" (I wonder why this book was disappeared?); and Richard Thompson's memoir of life with Fairport Convention and beyond -- he can tell a story as well as he can play guitar.
I admit that I'm partial to memoirs by men and women who were at the center of the music world in the 1960s to '80s -- when musical giants walked the earth. So I rushed to get a copy of Chris Blackwell's new memoir, "The Islander." I'm only on page 200 of his 320-page story, but I'm deeply hooked. Blackwell was raised in Jamaica and England. His mother was romantically involved with Ian Fleming, who based a couple of his sexy Bond women on her, including Pussy Galore. Blackwell's deep love of Caribbean roots music, American soul music, and the emerging British invasion sound made his independent London label --- Island Records -- the hot center of the music world for two decades.
As Blackwell makes clear, the secret of his success was giving the musicians on his roster the freedom and time and state-of-the-art recording studios to find their voices. They responded by giving Island Records one hit after the next -- but even more important, brilliant careers that evolved at their own speed over time. (I thought about my own Salon, and how we invented dotcom journalism, allowing the inmates to run the asylum.)
Here are some of the musical artists whom Blackwell and his company signed, recorded and broke big: Steve Winwood (with the Spencer Davis Group AND Traffic), Fairport Convention and later Richard and Linda Thompson, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens, Procul Harum, Mott the Hoople, Roxy Music, Tom Waits, Grace Jones, U2... the list goes on and on.
But no artist was more important to Blackwell than Bob Marley. It was Blackwell who recruited Marley and the Wailers after years of relative obscurity in Jamaica and had the vision to turn them into a global act. Here is Blackwell's moving account of Marley's recording of "Redemption Song," his final testament as he succumbed to cancer:
"Bob and I didn't talk much in the studio -- or I should say, we mostly talked about the music, acknowledging our personal lives and interests very rarely. There was an open flow of ideas between us; Bob sometimes stood his ground but was warmly receptive to suggestions that he saw had potential, and he never once protested that he was being told what to do by the guy running the record company.
"A great example of the way we worked together was 'Redemption Song' from 'Uprising,' the final album released in his lifetime. That's one of Bob's songs that I can say I really produced, rather than just being responsible for the mix.
"He was terribly ill with cancer at the time of its recording and not sleeping much, cognizant that his time was coming to an end. His writing and thinking were taking on an intensely contemplative tone.
"He had been working on 'Redemption Song' for months, trying it out in various styles, touching on all the varieties of Jamaican music he had been part of, from upbeat ska to hypnotic reggae. He'd taken some of the song's lyrics from a speech delivered in 1934 by Marcus Garvey, one of the major influences on the Rastafari movement: 'We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.'
"Bob really wanted to get the song right. When he played the various versions for me, I liked them but didn't really love them. Something was missing. Then it hit me. Because the lyrics were so obviously important and deep, the song would work best presented as simply as possible, with just Bob and an acoustic guitar. Bob took some persuading to try it this way, but he listened patiently to my reasoning and then agreed to record an acoustic take.
"Eyes shut, lost in the words, he sang a spare version to me as an audience of one. It sounded hymnal and hypnotic. The understatement of his performance made the song seem so much more dramatic. I thought it would be amazing if everyone heard 'Redemption Song' the same way, as if it were sung directly to them, just you and Bob in the room.
"In its simplicity, the song transcended genre, so that it wasn't reggae, folk, pop or rock. It was Bob Marley."
PRIDE Cometh before a Fall
Pride MONTH (it does drag on, doesn't it?)... Juneteenth.... these celebrations once had a radical agenda (human freedom). But now they're hopelessly corporatized, commercialized, fetishized -- to the point where they have next to no meaning....DISCUSS among yourselves. OK, I'll start, since this is such a loaded subject.
The U.S. left -- the engine of political and social change -- has allowed itself to be divided and conquered, put in happy identity silos where we celebrate ourselves and take snarky potshots at whatever leader or artist dare takes a prominent role. These identity silos threaten nobody in power -- just ourselves. So of course Pride Month and Juneteenth and all the rest get corporate sponsorships and lavish media attention.
While we're busy celebrating ourselves, we're alienating our natural political allies (working-class families) and allowing the far right to set the national agenda -- whether it's packing the courts, terminating Roe v. Wade, or overturning decades of hard-won voter rights.
We need to stop partying and pay serious attention to what the left has just accomplished in France. A variety of left-wing parties, which had heretofore hung separately in the political wilderness, formed a coalition that denied corporatist President Macron a majority in Sunday's National Assembly elections, giving the organized left clout for the first time in years.
We on the left ARE the American majority. On one issue after the next -- from a decent minimum wage to reproductive rights to climate action --- a solid majority of our fellow citizens are behind us. But still we flail in the political wilderness.
We must crawl out of our safe silos and talk to each other, to come together. If we can form a national coalition like the French left did, then we'll have something REAL to celebrate.
Why JFK Still Matters
For all those who couldn't be there... my Saturday speech:
Why JFK Still Matters
Speech at Sonoma Community Center, June 4, 2022, sponsored by the Praxis Peace Institute
We live in dreary times. Joe Biden has become a war and oil president, just when we desperately need the Democrats to fight like hell for their failing domestic agenda – the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, the end of student aid bondage, criminal justice reform, reproductive rights, gun control.
We’re now facing the real prospect of a Republican resurgence in the midterm elections --- and a Trump restoration in two years. In other words, an American nightmare. My prediction? Phony GOP populism will trump failing corporate liberalism.
And if Trump and his Republican confederates steal the next presidential election, will we loyal Americans have the nerve to take back our democracy?
Our only hope – and it’s a slim one – is that the Democrats stop listening to Senators Manchin and Sinema and the party’s billionaire benefactors and follow the lead of the militant labor activists and political leaders who are breathing fire into American life.
Democrats need look no farther than their own past.
Once upon a time, we had a Democratic president who engaged directly with the most burning issues in America. That’s not how the presidency of John F. Kennedy gets taught in school rooms or on TV shows. But JFK was the type of brave, principled leader we desperately need today. I’ve written two books that examine the Kennedy presidency and its violent termination – “Brothers” and “The Devil’s Chessboard.” And I could talk all day about why JFK was a unique leader – and why he was killed.
But today I will just focus on the final months of his 1,000-day presidency. Perhaps someday the eternal flame that burns next to his Arlington resting place will light our way forward.
In early June 1963, while President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and several of their aides closely monitored the crisis, Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the admissions building on the University of Alabama campus and blocked Deputy Attorney General Nick Katzenbach and two African American students – Vivian Malone and James Hood – from desegregating the all-white university. Wallace finally stood aside, after President Kennedy federalized Alabama’s National Guard, with Wallace denouncing the federal government’s “military dictatorship.”
But it’s important to note that President Kennedy was willing to shed blood to integrate the university. People had died just months before during a segregationist riot at Ole Miss that JFK had quelled only when Army troops finally showed up on his orders. The night before Malone and Hood were to integrate the University of Alabama with federal support, there was a big Ku Klux Klan cross burning near the campus. Federal marshals were issued a shoot to kill order by President Kennedy if anybody attacked the black students.
Kennedy was also willing to split his own party -- shedding the Dixie Democrats, who had been a key part of the party coalition since the days of FDR, to advance the cause of civil rights. After losing the showdown with Kennedy at the university, Wallace told the press: “I say the South next year will decide who the new president’s gonna be. Because you can’t win without the white South. And you’re going to see the South is going to be against some folks.”
Wallace’s grim view of Kennedy was widely held throughout the white South, nearly all of which JFK expected to lose in the ’64 presidential election. That’s why Kennedy was leaning toward keeping Lyndon Johnson on his ticket, despite his growing political baggage – and that why’s he felt compelled to visit Texas in November of that year.
On the same sweltering day in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that President Kennedy and his men stood down Governor Wallace and his segregationist followers, JFK decided to go on TV and deliver the most powerful civil rights speech of his presidency. His top aides – including Ted Sorensen, Larry O‘Brien and Kenny O’Donnell – were all against him givng the speech, arguing that it would further isolate him politically. But JFK was for it – and the speech he gave in the White House that night, written by wordsmith Sorensen and partly ad-libbed by the president himself – should be viewed on YouTube by every citizen in our still racially divided nation.
Here is some of what President Kennedy said that night:
“This is not a partisan issue. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.
“The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?
“One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”
Kennedy, “vowing that the time has come for the nation to fulfill its promise,” announced his intention of introducing in Congress what became the historic civil rights bill of 1964. LBJ get credit for it – but it was Kennedy who took the bold political step of introducing the bill and who gave it its most passionate endorsement.
In fact, after Kennedy’s White House address, Martin Luther King Jr, hailed it as “one of the most eloquent, profound and unequivocal pleas for justice and freedom for all people ever made by a president.”
What makes this even more of a milestone in the Kennedy presidency is that only the day before – on June 10, 1963 – JFK also delivered what became known as the Peace Speech at American University. These twin speeches – on the most controversial issues of the day, civil rights and the Cold War – demonstrate that Kennedy was willing to plunge into the burning house to lead the country in the right direction.
In this remarkable speech, which Kennedy’s defense secretary Robert McNamara told me years later should also be viewed by every American, JFK did something that no American president had done before or has done since. He called on his fellow Americans to change their consciousness about war and peace – and to empathize with the Communist enemy, the enemy we had been taught to fear and hate.
“In short, both the United States and the Soviet Union have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the nuclear arms race. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
The Peace Speech paved the way for the limited nuclear test ban treaty, which banned the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons – the first nuclear treaty of the Cold War. President Kennedy was alarmed by reports that traces of radioactive poisoning were showing up in children’s bones and teeth and in the breast milk of nursing mothers. Ted Sorensen later told me that JFK decided to run for president in 1960 because as a student of history he feared a nuclear Armageddon could break out despite world leaders’ best intentions. Kennedy already prevented one such nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. And he was committed to deescalating Cold War tensions with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Khrushchev and JFK’s wily negotiator Averell Harriman had hammered out the test ban treaty over the summer months in Moscow. But Kennedy feared that he’d be unable to gather the 67 votes in the Senate he needed to ratify the treaty. Indeed, Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen and anti-Communist nuclear scientist Edward Teller were leading a successful resistance on Capitol Hill – aided by the Pentagon and CIA. (At one point during the anti-treaty campaign, as I revealed in “Brothers,” the Air Force under the belligerent leadership of Gen. Curtis LeMay -- pictured below -- even hid an Air Force officer who could prove if the Russians were abiding by the treaty.)
To win the critical battle over the test ban treaty, the Kennedy brothers decided to play Washington hardball – a tough game that today’s Democrats seem to have no skill at playing. Finding out that Dwight Eisenhower – the former president who ironically had warned the nation about the growing power of “the military-industrial complex” as he left the White House – was the power behind the opposition to the treaty, the Kennedys put the squeeze on him. Eisenhower had let it be known that if the Kennedy brothers’ Justice Department dropped its corruption case against his White House chief of staff Sherman Adams, they “would have a blank check with me.” The Kennedys let Ike know they wanted more than his gratitude – they wanted him to drop his opposition to the treaty. The old general reluctantly agreed. And with Senator Dirksen suddenly singing the treaty’s praises, it was easily ratified by the Senate on September 24, 1963.
These landmark political battles – over civil rights and national security – demonstrate the true courage of the Kennedy presidency. They also help explain why President Kennedy was a marked man when he flew to Dallas on November 22 of that year. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who was a passionate critic of the Cold War mass death cult, sagely remarked on the fragility of the Kennedy presidency while JFK still occupied the White House. Only by a “miracle,” he predicted, would Kennedy “break through” the nuclear hysteria of the era. “But such people,” Merton wrote, “are before long marked out for assassination.”
Allen Dulles, the deeply sinister CIA spymaster fired by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961, snarled to a journalist years after JFK’s assassination: “That little Kennedy… he thought he was a god.” In fact, Kennedy – who at 6’ 1” was not “little” by the way -- had no such divine delusions. He knew he was a deeply flawed man. But as president he had the courage of his convictions. And if he had been allowed to live – and if leaders like Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been allowed to live – our country would have gone in a very different historical direction.
But John F. Kennedy and the others were killed for a reason. Their enemies triumphed. It’s our duty, our responsibility, as American citizens to grapple with this this fraught history. Because the past is never past. As Orwell taught us, he “who controls the past controls the future.”
Thank you. I’ll take your questions now.
Guns and the Great Replacement
I don't own a gun, but I understand why for millions of Americans happiness is a warm gun. Guns make them feel powerful; they make them feel safe. As a white man, I don't fear being "replaced" (I feel more at home in cities where everyone doesn't look like me), but I know I'm being marginalized, exploited, turned into a number or "thing." In a society where the super rich get richer and they increasingly dominate the political overclass, the rest of us are indeed increasingly irrelevant.
So we go out and buy military-grade guns, we flock to movies that weaponize our fears of being losers, we vote for demagogues who blame our anxieties on immigrants and people with darker skin colors. and the craziest among us turn our guns on the defenseless.
Then our political leaders rush to express outrage and prayers, families grieve... and we repeat the cycle soon after. Nothing changes despite all the media fulminations. Because the periodic bloodbaths not only reinforce the power of the gun lobbies -- they reinforce the fear and division that serves our billionaire overlords. Divide and conquer -- that's been the cynical game of rulers throughout history. Same as it ever was...
It's true -- you're being replaced. But not by some immigrant from El Salvador. You didn't want her underpaid, off-the-books, backbreaking cleaning job. You've been replaced by Silicon Valley and Wall Street -- by human-replacing technologies and the elites that benefit from them. You've been replaced by tech giants that care only about mining your data, not about your souls.
Way back in the 1960s, the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley rose up against this looming dehumanization, telling university administrators not to "bend, fold, spindle or mutilate " our lives -- to treat students with as much respect as computer cards. Those protests against the "thingifying" of people now seem quaint.
But mass movements for radical change are the only experiences that can restore our humanity. Movements that bring together black, brown, yellow, red and white people against a common enemy -- the billionaire elite and the robot world they've ushered in for power and profit. Rise up, replaced people of all colors -- you have only to lose your computer chips.
Hail to the Commander- in-Chief
It's official -- Joe Biden has become a War President. As the United States plunges deep into white nationalist violence, inflation, economic uncertainty, climate meltdowns, the destruction of reproductive rights and voting rights, billionaire colonization of social media (and outer space) -- in other words, one democracy-ending crisis after the next -- President Biden finally finds his swagger by flooding Ukraine with weaponry and talking tough about Putin.
Yes, Putin is a warmonger. Yes, he's a despot. Yes, he's an assassin. (So, by the way, is every U.S. president since at least Eisenhower -- with the notable exception of Kennedy, who btw was, uh.... assassinated. Even cool, level-headed Barack Obama met every Tuesday with his CIA director, the very Catholic John Brennan, to decide whom to kill that week by drone.) Meanwhile, back in America, we're on a serious downward spiral.
Joe Biden has enthusiastically become a U.S. war president (like all of our "great" presidents) just as we desperately need him to lead the Democrats into the midterm elections. We urgently need a chief executive to rally us on multiple DOMESTIC battlefronts. Instead we have a president who is largely missing in action on all the issues where the far right is on the attack.
Where have you gone, Joe Biden? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
The Seductive Joys of Pre-Code Movies
And now for something completely different... I'm enjoying "Conversations with Friends," the TV adaptation of the Sally Rooney novel. I particularly like the young actress Alison Oliver, whom I've never seen before. But Jemima Kirke (whom I liked in "Girls") is also strong. My sister Margaret, with whom I've been watching the show, passed along this Harpers Bazaar interview with Kirke, in which she gives a shout-out to pre-Code moves like Warner Bros.' "Three on a Match," starring our father Lyle Talbot, Humphrey Bogart, and Ann Dvorak (see below) — also a young Bette Davis. Great movie, featuring adultery, cocaine addiction, suicide -- all those wonderful pre-Code themes.
Here's Kirke: "My absolute favorite pre-code movies are 'Three on a Match' and 'Blonde Venus,'” she says, an American Spirit cigarette in her hand, a half-drunk smoothie on the table. “They’re my movies. I invented them.”
Because Our Fathers Lied
That's the title of a new memoir by Craig McNamara, son of the late Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who helped President Kennedy save the world from nuclear destruction, became a Vietnam War criminal under President Johnson, and much later wrestled with his guilt as a vocal advocate of the nuclear freeze movement during President Reagan's tenure. The senior McNamara was a fascinating man -- a welter of conflicting opinions and feelings, as I discovered back in 1984, when I profiled him and two other retired national security officials with blood on their hands who also became nuclear doves -- former National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and former CIA Director William Colby.
Two decades after my article appeared in Mother Jones magazine, I wrote again about Robert McNamara's profound schizophrenia in my 2007 book, "Brothers." Despite the glaring light I shined on McNamara -- and his deeply troubling transition from JFK to LBJ -- he phoned me after the book was published to tell me I "got it right."
I interviewed his son, Craig, when I first wrote about McNamara in Mother Jones. Craig, an organic farmer in Northern California, was a sensitive man -- torn between his love and loyalty to his father, and his anger about the Vietnam War and his father's role as one of its principal architects.
Craig's memoir, which just came out, is searing and beautifully written. In it, he writes the following about his experience with me, the Mother Jones article and his father:
In the spring of 1984, David Talbot wrote an article for Mother Jones, “And Now They Are Doves.” The article covered my father’s attempts to rehabilitate his image and step into the role of elder statesman. At the time, I was 34, farming my heart out. I had a wife and child.
Over the years, I had thought about Dad every day with a mixture of love and rage. Whenever we spoke and I asked him about Vietnam, he deflected. There was never a big confrontation between us. I remember my life at that time as being defined by an absence of truth and honesty in our relationship, and I remember how I had defended Dad’s integrity when I was a boy –- and the letters from his supporters too.
David Talbot called and suggested an interview, and it felt like an opportunity I needed to take. I didn’t want the media attention. I just wanted the chance to speak honestly, to be heard. David came to visit the farm in Winters, and we spoke for an afternoon. Earlier that day, I’d been on the phone with Dad, updating him on the progress of our orchards.
The published article in Mother Jones included a lengthy quote from me. I had never criticized my father so publicly:
“There had to be a lot of guilt and depression inside my father about Vietnam. But he will not allow me into the personal side of his career. My father has a strong sense of what he will and won’t talk about with me. I would ask him things, like why he left the Pentagon in ’68. I felt I could learn a tremendous amount of history from him. And I felt I could teach him about the peace movement. But he just gives these quick 30-second responses, and then deflects the conversation by asking, ‘So how many tons did you produce on your farm last year?’ Still seeking refuge in statistics.”
I didn’t know if Dad would read the article. One of the many mysteries that remained was the extent to which he followed his own publicity. If I had taken the time to think about it carefully, I probably would have concluded that he did. After all, I knew of his ego and his need to be right, to win.
He called me up almost immediately after the piece ran.
“Is that what you said?” he asked. “Was the quote correct?”
I was a little surprised by the quick timing, but I wasn’t surprised by his response. If anything, it confirmed my disappointment in him. It showed that he cared about his own narrative, when he should have just driven himself hard to the unspun truth.
“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “The quote was correct.”
He was silent. This was always the way he reacted to being hurt. I knew I had hit him in a tender place. I felt sad, but I didn’t feel sorry. It was the first time I had offered my version of the truth and the first time he had heard it.
After a little time had passed, my stance softened. I reread the Mother Jones article several times and convinced myself that it was full of errors and omissions, and I started to believe that David Talbot had neglected important truths about my relationship with my Dad –- especially the fact, unavoidable, that we loved each other deeply.
I wanted Dad to know what I was feeling. In a follow-up letter to him, I wrote, “They failed to say that we have a relationship based on understanding.”
I really believed that, but it wasn’t the truth. Our relationship was, in fact, based on joy and affection when it came to the things we shared, and deliberate silence and absence relating to the issues of war and peace that divided us. If we really had a relationship based on understanding, there’s no way I would have given that quote about his 30-second responses.
As I reread the article today, I see that there were no errors. David Talbot didn’t misquote me or misrepresent my views. I was serious when I told him that I believed the power brokers in Washington, including my father, had made decisions based solely on the military interests of America. So why did I reverse course in private? I think I was reenacting the pattern Dad had established, the one I had learned to follow. I thought I could hold two truths in my head at once, in separate cages, without working through the dialectic. I love you, Dad, and I want you to love me. I’m angry at you, Dad, and I need you to hear me…
Robert McNamara (far right), with President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk
Deep State Journalism
Even though you've probably never heard of him, Aaron Good is a national treasure. For the past few years, Aaron -- an independent scholar in Pennsylvania (the academic establishment doesn't like his free-thinking sort) -- has been conducting deep interviews with the grand masters of power studies, like Peter Dale Scott -- and me! Aaron and popular podcaster Brace Belden recently did a smart, in-depth interview with me about Allen Dulles, JFK and the national security state. It's behind a paywall, because Aaron must make a living, but it's well worth the price of admission. Aaron also has written a book on America's subterranean, permanent government that Skyhorse will soon publish (more on that later).
Nearly 60 years after his assassination, John F. Kennedy and his embattled presidency loom ever larger as the path not taken by America. Establishment historians like Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin refuse to acknowledge the awful truth about the Kennedy presidency -- that it was violently terminated by former CIA director Dulles and his national security cabal because JFK was trying to end their racket, i.e., the Cold War. (Goodwin's late husband, Dick Goodwin, who served in the Kennedy administration, knew the truth -- and told it to me for my book "Brothers," while his minder-wife was out of the room.)
This is a photo of President Kennedy taken by White House photographer Jacques Lowe at the moment JFK was told about the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba -- a man Kennedy had supported as the hope of a newly liberated Africa. Kennedy was told of Lumumba's violent death by his UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson -- NOT by Dulles's CIA, which knew about his torture and death for weeks but kept it from Kennedy, because the spy agency feared that Kennedy would save him. The CIA knew about the brutalization of Lumumba because it was responsible for it.
The anguish on President Kennedy's face represents all the sorrow to come -- for the Kennedy family and for America.
Money Don’t Get Everything, It’s True — But…
And now a word from our sponsor...
Ron Conway, billionaire philanthropist, here. David Talbot has once again generously agreed to let me address you -- the embittered Old Left -- today. Because, as Mr. Talbot understands, EVERYTHING is for sale in this great city of ours, San Francisco.
As you know, I felt a strong need to step in a few years ago when San Francisco was in danger of being taken over by the radical left. Fortunately, by jacking up the cost of housing and the eviction rate, we were able to rid the city of most of its losers -- teachers, nurses, social workers, waiters, artists, journalists, cab drivers (when we still had some) etc. People, frankly, like YOU. The tech bro's we stuffed into the city in their place have voted reliably our way -- and we took back the city!
I no longer feel a need to throw my own weight around -- there's so much Big Money in this city, it washes everywhere.
It even soaks once "progressive" city leaders like Matt Haney. Once upon a time, Matt beat our YIMBY candidate when he ran for the Board of Supervisors. But this week Matt swamped the dangerously radical David Campos (who even wants a single-payer heath plan in California!) by becoming a YIMBY himself and soaking up thousands of dollars from corporate developers and realtors.
You've got to hand it to those YIMBY folks -- what would've been dismissed as crackpot, trickle-down Reaganomics has become "housing for everybody!" My wealthy developer friends are now seen as folk heroes -- even though plain folks will never afford their overpriced condos and apartments.
So here's my message to you Old Leftists. You've had your day. Everybody once believed in San Francisco Values. But that was yesterday. Our NEW values? Money don't get everything, it's true -- but what it don’t get, I can't use. If you're not down with these new values you have no place in the new San Francisco -- so you might as well get the hell out. We can cram one more Zoom marketer into your apartment.
Oh, I know what you're thinking -- Conway is a caveman, he's a reactionary, greedy pig.... I've heard it from you types for years now. But I'm as cultured as you.
Just the other night, I was watching Phil Kaufman's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Great '70s remake of a 1950s sci fi classic. Donald Sutherland plays this conscientious public health worker. One by one, all of his friends and fellow citizens in San Francisco become soulless aliens... until he, too, in the final horrible scene, is turned into one!
Now when I first saw that film, like you, I was scared to death. But now it strikes me as the stark truth. Yes, we're all becoming robots in San Francisco. But that's not such a bad thing. People seem more serene, less troubled and complicated. And in the end, isn't that we all want for San Francisco?
In the movie, a Chinese-American laundry owner furtively worries that his wife, too, has been body snatched by the aliens. But the next time Sutherland inquires about his wife, the man says robotically, "She's much better now."
"Much Better Now." That should be the slogan of the new, placid San Francisco.
And now back to your regular programming....
Let Us Now Praise Eric Boehlert
Eric Boehlert was one of my good hires at Salon. A media critic who never pulled his punches, never kissed the asses of the powerful -- even those who could offer him better jobs in the media industry. He was a tough, taciturn, no-bullshit kind of guy. Just the kind I wanted in the Salon trenches with me, where it seemed we were always under fire. He was also a tall guy with a winning smile -- which I liked.
I'll always remember another young Salon reporter who unapologetically refused a story assignment one day -- at a meeting in front of the entire Salon editorial staff. She blurted out that she didn't want to take the assignment -- a critical look at Vogue magazine -- because she might want to get work there some day. It was so brazen a statement of self-interest that my staff was momentarily silenced. I looked directly at her and told her, "Don't embarrass yourself. Do the job."
Eric was never like that. He was a true journalist, following the story wherever it took him, even if it meant biting the rump of the gray lady -- aka the newspaper of record. It's fitting that he ended his career reporting and writing his own media blog -- nobody could tell him what to do, unless he felt it was right.
Eric died in a bicycling accident at age 57 earlier this week. It's been a hard time for ex-Salon people of late. But I remember all of them -- many are still my heroes
