WHAT'S HAPPENED SINCE I LAST POSTED HERE: My most recent article for the Reason site is about the real trouble with ACORN, the infamous activist association that is closing its doors as a national organization this week. (My take: Contrary to the standard conservative narrative, the group wasn't Alinskyan enough.) I also did a column about the attempts to corral "lone wolf" violence for various political narratives. Meanwhile, the new print edition of Reason includes my review of Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell. Look for it at a newsstand near you.
Finally, I'd like to mention that, thanks to an article I wrote six years ago, I'm cited in a new book about Doctor Who. I think this may have been one of my career goals when I was 11.
CHRIS ALBERTSON'S SIDE OF THE STORY: I opened Rebels on the Air by remarking that "the more sources you have, the more they contradict one another. After a while, the parts of your book that seem the most solid are the ones you feel least confident about. Somewhere out there, you tell yourself, are all the witnesses to history that you couldn't find, and once your book appears, they'll write to tell you everything you got wrong." I then provided my email address so they could do precisely that.
One of them just wrote me. Chris Albertson is a well-known journalist, music historian, record producer, and broadcaster who has a cameo during my discussion of Chris Koch's mid-'60s reports from North Vietnam for New York's Pacifica outlet:
So now Koch was traveling illegally to Vietnam and making reports that were bound to anger the government. Several board members got mad, both at the programs themselves and at the fact that they had not been forewarned of (and, presumably, given a chance to veto) Koch's unlawful sojourn. Some wanted to edit out parts of Koch's programs. Louis Schweitzer -- the station's landlord as well as its former owner, and a major donor as well -- cast his lot with the censors. So did the station manager, a nervous Chris Albertson. Koch refused to soften his shows and eventually walked out, taking at least five more staffers with him. A lot of angry listeners cancelled their subcriptions, too. When the dust cleared, Albertson was out and most of the staff were back.
I tried to reach Albertson for an interview when I was researching Rebels but I came up short. I wish I'd kept trying, because he takes issue with several statements in that paragraph. According to Albertson,
• "None of the board members 'got mad' at the programs, only at the underhanded way in which Chris Koch made the trip (alleging to be vacationing in Paris) and at the jeopardy in which he put the station, not to mention Pacifica itself."
• No one suggested censoring the reports. The only change was a minor one made by Koch himself, "without any pressure or suggestion from me, Lou Schweitzer, or the board." Schweitzer, Albertson adds, was deeply opposed to censorship: "This was a Jew who rented a hall for George Lincoln Rockwell to hold a Nazi rally, when he read that no one would."
• "Chris Koch did resign, but no staffers left with him."
By Albertson's account, the subscription cancellations were "generated by the distortions Chris spread" about Albertson and Schweitzer. He also speculates that "some of your mis-information came from Steve Post," a freeform DJ who "wasted no time in taking advantage of the vacuum that arose in my wake."
In the interests of maximum transparency, here are the chief sources from which I drew the disputed points:
• The claim that board members were angry at the programs' content appears in Koch's 1968 essay "Pacifica" and in Post's book Playing in the FM Band.
• The claim that management wanted to censor the reports appears in Koch's essay, in Post's book, and in David Armstrong's history of alternative media, A Trumpet to Arms, which relied on a 1965 article in The National Guardian. (Since my book appeared, the assertion also surfaced in Matthew Lasar's Uneasy Listening, which says the board members "demanded over 100 changes in the narrative." His sources are Koch and a 1986 article in The Village Voice.) The allegations about Schweitzer appeared in Armstrong's book.
• All of the above sources state that several staffers resigned in protest when Koch left the station. Post claims that nearly half the staff departed. (I haven't been able to track down where I found the low-end estimate of five exits. If I come across it I'll post an update.)
At this point, without having done any additional reporting, I can't say which version of events is more accurate. But I should add that while putting this post together I came across a source that endorses some of Albertson's story. The Radio Waves Unnameable, Jay Sand's dissertation on the pioneer broadcaster Bob Fass, includes a short discussion of the Koch kerfuffle. Sand's chief source is Post, so his account mostly mirrors mine, but he also interviewed Koch's colleague Dale Minor, who offered a different point of view:
As Minor recalls, the debate centered on the fact that Koch had not informed the Board of Directors of his daring mission; the content of his reports, according to Minor, was irrelevant.
I drew on Sand's thesis a little later in the book, while discussing Fass' work with the Yippies. If I'd been on the ball I would have remembered what he had to say about Koch, and followed up on it. Mea culpa.
Bullock then questioned the other award she "won" earlier Saturday evening -- for "worst couple."
"If you had seen the film, seen it, with your eyes, it's pretty much a film about a woman stalking a man," she said. "That doesn't really set up the premise for a loving couple. So to give us the worst couple award is kind of a 'duh.'"
Good for Bullock. While I haven't seen All About Steve either, I did sit through the trailer, and on that basis I'm willing to believe that it's as terrible as everyone says. But does anyone doubt that it collected its awards because it was a flop with a bad reputation, and not because a majority of the voters actually saw and disliked it themselves?
The Razzies are prizes for the sort of people who really think Ishtar is one of the worst movies ever made, as opposed to an uneven but not particularly lousy comedy that got a lot of bad press because the director went over budget. Sure enough, Ishtar's Elaine May -- a genuinely talented filmmaker -- took the Worst Director prize for 1987, managing to beat the auteurs behind Jaws: The Revenge and Leonard: Part 6. As with All About Steve, it's an open question how many of the voters bothered to watch the movie before casting their ballots. Another effort infamous for going over budget, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, earned a Worst Director Razzie for 1981, though the Worst Picture prize that year went to the camp classic Mommie Dearest. (I'd rather watch either of those than several Oscar winners.) If the over-budget Titanic had failed to make back its expenses, you can be sure it would have been up for a Razzie. Instead it was a hit and won a Best Picture Oscar, and no one involved with it -- not even Celine Dion -- got a single Razzie nomination.
The Razzies' boosters sometimes seem to be not just aware but proud of the conformity at the heart of the ceremony. When a commenter on the awards' website complained that he was "sure there were worse movies than some of the bad ones they chose," he earned a quick retort: "There may have been worse, but were they NOTORIOUS enough? Infamy is the name of the game and that is usually what determines if a film goes home with a basket of Razzies." The forum's moderator endorsed this as "a fine and stirring defense," though in a sane world it would be seen as a critique. (Incidentally, if there were a Golden Raspberry Award for worst Web design, the Razzies would have to be frontrunners. Their site combines the sleek look of a GeoCities page circa 1996 with the navigational ease of a Mumbai shantytown.)
Look: Even Avatar's defenders will usually concede that the movie's dialogue left a lot to be desired. You'd think it would get at least a nomination for Worst Screenplay. Instead the Shadow Academy went for a bunch of easy targets, with the prize eventually going to Transformers 2 (or Trannies, Too, as the Razzmeisters have witlessly dubbed it). Transformers took Worst Picture too. I suppose you should give the voters credit for being willing to knock a film that was a financial success. In Razzie circles, that's what passes for bravery.
Bossier Sheriff Larry Deen has unveiled a new emergency operations plan that will be a continuation of public safety in Bossier Parish should disaster ever strike here at home.
The plan, known as Operation Exodus, will provide for self-sufficiency in the event of a manmade or natural disaster or a terrorist attack. Exodus will take local volunteers, train them and use them in response to a catastrophic disaster in the area. These volunteers will work in conjunction with the Bossier Sheriff’s Office to secure and protect viable resources in such an event.
Exodus makes provisions for disasters so that Bossier Parish can be self-sufficient if necessary. "If an event were to happen nationally or locally, we want to make sure that we could take care of the people of Bossier, no matter what," said Bossier Sheriff Larry Deen. "Being prepared is the key." Within Exodus, local resources such as food, water, oil, gas, and medical facilities will be protected by teams consisting of highly-trained volunteers and BSO deputies. The plan also has use for church facilities and people with all sorts of backgrounds and talents.
I'm all for smart, volunteer-driven emergency preparedness, but there's a number of potential problems here. The focus on physically securing necessities suggests that the sheriff is expecting riots, of the kind being reported in post-quake Chile, even though such events are the exception rather than the rule during a disaster. A later passage in the press release proclaims the need to contain "fear and panic," even though, again, panic in a crisis is very rare. This exaggerated fear of rioting and public panic has often prompted officials to adopt a centralized, militarized, and paranoid approach to disaster response. And sure enough, Talking Points Memo has posted a video of the volunteers in Bossier training for combat, with a deputy discussing the need to present "an overwhelming show of force prior to any incident taking place."
Add in the weaponry at the Bossier unit's disposal -- the Shreveport Times reports that the arsenal includes "a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on something the sheriff's office calls 'the war wagon'" -- and this looks like the intersection of two ugly trends: the militarization of disaster response and the militarization of police work. Worse yet, the news release is filled with overwrought language about "homegrown terrorists...in our midst" (aided by -- horrors! -- "the easy accessibility of the internet"). According to a follow-up report in Talking Points Memo, the sheriff's department claims that "there have been cells and people operating even within our parish that have been trained as terrorists or went overseas to be trained as terrorists." I associate this sort of countersubversive rhetoric with a red squad, not the Red Cross.
Operation Exodus has come in for some criticism since the story hit the national press this week. But rather than taking a civil libertarian angle, many of the critics have engaged in countersubversive rhetoric of their own. From last night's Rachel Maddow show, for example, here's Crazy for God author Frank Schaeffer:
MADDOW: Operation Exodus draws its name from the Book of Exodus in the Bible. The sheriff explains that in his press release. What do you make of linking an effort like this to the Old Testament?
SCHAEFFER: Well, it's kind of symbolic, because the story of Exodus is the Jews, the people of God, fleeing an unjust ruler. So obviously it's a backhanded comment about the United States government, Barack Obama, what have you.
You have to love that obviously. For the record, the sheriff's press release had this to say about the Biblical allusion: "In the book of Exodus, the Israelites were totally on their own, learning to be self-sufficient and handle everything alone, just as the plan provides."
More from Schaeffer:
In my mind it links up with these sheriffs who at the CPAC meeting a couple of weeks ago took an oath to break the law and not follow orders if they don't like being told. Really what this is is just another evidence of the fact that there's a right-wing fringe in this country, sometimes tied to militia movements, sometimes tied to the religious right that I write about in my book Crazy for God, sometimes just loonies, who essentially have just given up on the United States government.
I gather that the sheriffs that Schaeffer is alluding to are the Oath Keepers, a group of current and former military, law enforcement, and other government personnel who have pledged to disobey unconstitutional orders. Not any old policies that "they don't like being told," but 10 specific commands. Sixth on the list is "any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps." Since the Oath Keepers' founder has written angrily about violations of civil liberties in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I suspect that this was inspired by the infamous incident in which people fleeing New Orleans were blocked by armed agents of the Gretna police department. The police chief there defended his decision with language that echoes the fears in fellow Bayou State cop Larry Deen's press release: "There was no food, water or shelter in Gretna City. We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people. If we had opened the bridge our city would have looked like New Orleans does now -- looted, burned and pillaged."
In other words, the Oath Keepers are promising to do the exact opposite of what Deen seems to be doing. The concern in Bossier Parish is that the sheriff could use his civilian auxiliary (largely consisting of former policemen, according to the Shreveport Times) in ways that violate the Bill of Rights. The cops and ex-cops in the Oath Keepers have sworn to refuse orders that violate the Bill of Rights. It makes no sense to conflate the two. When Schaeffer tries to tie them together, he is engaged not in analysis but in a foggy sort of fearmongering.
Throughout the Maddow clip, the words "Homegrown Terrorists Are In Our Midst" appear in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. It's a quote from Deen's press release, and I assume it was selected to mock the sheriff as a hysteric. If you tuned in midway through the interview, though, you'd probably think it was a straightforward summary of the segment's message.