Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
     Paul, do you dig this trend of leaderless movements?  Ed asked
who could fill the shoes Lenny, Ginsberg, et al.  I would guess there's
a girl in Cleveland who riffs for her friends but won't get up on a
stage and who is as funny as Lenny.  The Diggers called these people
Life Actors.    
  

    
In other words, we may be seeing the seeds of the the beginnings of
the Death of Celebrity in the counterculture.
  

    
I have a question: Does anyone know the name of the actor who got
busted for dope and then claimed he was researching a movie role?
  

    
Mikey--I do kind of like the leaderless aspect.  A most successful
commune, The Farm--which traveled from Haight-Ashbury to Tennessee--was
*founded* by Stephen Gaskin (who ran in the primaries for president on
the Green Party ticket, as did Jello Biafra), but it evolved in such a
way that even though he lives there, he is not their leader.
  

    
P.s. re famous countercultural icons--I realized  in thinking about
them that among the things they've had in common is an acute sense of
playfulness.
  

    

> an acute sense of playfulness

Which is sorely lacking in the rhetoric of the Left, such as it is, today. I
am surrounded at KPFK, for example, by far too many humorless, boring, nasty
revolutionaries. I dig their political goals, but they sure as fuck aren't
people whose company I enjoy.

I spend most of my professional day (as a high school English teacher in the
LA Unified School District) and can say, with pleasure, that a young
generation of politically aware and active kids is heading toward adulthood
with great promise, knowledge, willingness to spread the message, and a
determination to make the world a better place. I'm one of the few people I
know who has hope for a future America that I'd want to live in, one that
will have the admiration of the world rather than its disdain.

Now, on the current front of grown-up activists, I'm sorry to say that,
though we might be, in fact, witnessing the "death of celebrity in the
counterculture," the old-school charismatic leader types are, unfortunately,
being replaced more and more by "professional organizers," who offer their
skills, for a fee, to foundling movements and causes, with very little
actual attachment to the movement or cause itself. Although the term
"protest industry" is a disparaging term often used by conservatives to
dismiss the left, I'm sorry to say the "protest industry" does exist and is,
in fact, growing. They avoid the media because they don't want to be
associated with any one single movement.

That said, I can affirm what Simmons says about a wealth of young people
ready, willing, able, and ZEALOUS to bring about REAL change in American
culture and politics. I work with them everyday.
  

    
This guy maybe?

The Columbus Dispatch
(c) Copyright 2002 Columbus Dispatch. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, August 3, 2002

FEATURES - ACCENT & ARTS

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

'ED' CO-STAR SAYS DRUG BUST A MISTAKE

The police say he was catching a buzz. He says he was just catching a
bus.
Actor Josh Randall, who plays a clean-cut doctor and best friend of
the title
character on the NBC comedy Ed, Thursday denied charges that he had
been
smoking crack cocaine with a homeless man in the New York City borough
of
Brooklyn. Randall, 30, pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor drug
possession.
Asked what he was doing near the trash-strewn park across from the
Brooklyn
Navy Yard on Wednesday night, Randall replied: "Catching a bus." The
actor, a
California native who lives in Manhattan, said he was taking a stroll
in
Brooklyn when he got lost near three housing projects. "He realized he
was in
an unfamiliar place," Randall's lawyer, Kenneth Glassman, told the New
York
Daily News. "A homeless man walked up to him and asked him for money.
He asked
the homeless man for directions. . . . He wanted to get out of there,
and the
guy said, 'I'll take you to the bus.' He gave the homeless man $20,
and he was
arrested." Randall offered to take a polygraph or drug test but was
rebuffed,
Glassman said. Police said it is not standard procedure to test drug
suspects.
Undercover police said they saw Randall and the homeless man smoking
crack
together. Each faces up to a year in prison if convicted.

[more, but irrelevant]
  

    
     Shmo, I know all about "professional organizers".  As some of you
know, I've been covering the medical marijuana movement for six, going
on seven years, now.  Billionaire currency speculator George Soros,
and a handful of other very wealthy men, have bankrolled much of the
drug policy reform movement and medical marijuana initiatives.  There's
a tendency for these focus group freaks on the billionaire's payroll
to come into a state where grassroots reformers are active and start
telling activists on their own territory what to do. Sometimes they're
helpful, sometimes they are a disaster.  Either way, it's not bottom
up, anti-hierarchal organizing. 
  

    
      While -- to quote Abbie -- I'm not an -ist, the hippest
activists are the young, anti-hierarchal anarchists (and I don't mean
necessarily the media image of black-clad, masked 'Black Bloc' street
fighters, although some of them are pretty astute).
      
  

    
much cooler than the old, pro-heirarchal anarchists, even those
sometimes seen wearing colors, yes.
  

    
<206.>: "far too many humorless, boring, nasty
               revolutionaries. I dig their political goals, but they
sure as fuck aren't
               people whose company I enjoy."

And there, friends, is the explanation of the failure of the American
Left. If <schmo>, whom I presume is predisposed to tolerate these
people, can't tolerate them, how are they ever going to win converts? 
  

    
Speaking of names... Paul, was Marvin Garson related to Barbara, author of 
'MacBird'?
  

    

MacBird!

Good question!
  

    
Paul,  
have you read _Into The Buzzsaw_?  (a collection of 18 essays)

4 of the contributors (among others): 
Greg Palast, April Oliver, Mike Levine, Gary Webb
Do you know any of them? 
any comments on them? their work? the book?   
 
INTO THE BUZZSAW
Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
Edited by Kristina Borjesson
Foreword by Gore Vidal
 
 http://www.intothebuzzsaw.com/

  from the website:
"For the first time in the history of American journalism, almost two
dozen award-winning print and TV journalists with virtually centuries
of experience among them have collaborated to produce this book of
devastating essays about the dangerous state of American journalism
today. Writing in riveting, often gut-wrenching detail about their
personal experiences with the “buzzsaw” — concerted corporate and/or
government efforts to kill their controversial stories and their
careers—the contributors reveal the awesome depth and breadth of
censorship in America today. Their essays portray a press corps that
regularly engages in self-censorship and attacks reporters who come
under fire for not doing so. They describe a Fourth Estate that has
largely relinquished its watchdog role and that has been co-opted by
corporate and government powers. The bigger picture is that of a press
actively contributing to the demise of democracy in America."
  

    
I think shmo would be one of the names to drop of contemporary unsung
heroes.
  

    
Marvin Garson is Barbara' s ex-hubby.
  

    
Haven't read the Buzzsaw book, and though I know of those
contributors, I'v never met 'em.
  

    
P.S. I have had communication with Gore Vidal, though, and have a
great deal of respect for  his wit and his uncompromising attitude,
even when he's wrong.
  

    
Personal question: Did your wife live for a time in Woodstock NY, and
have you been married to her less than 15 years? (Trying to see if
she's someone I knew with the same name.)
  

    

> I think shmo would be one of the names to drop of contemporary unsung
> heroes.

wow. thanks.
  

    
Marcy, yes, it's Nancy Cain and she remembers you, says you're a great
poet, and recalls the Velvet Trigger on Woodstock cable that she
produced with Linda.
  

    
      I second Krass' nomination of Shmo in the Unsung Heroes
category.  Those dogmatics at KPFK can drone on about politics, but in
his decency, superb taste, true egalitarian spirit, sense of humor,
etc., Shmo IS what the Stalinists think they are.
  

    
Tomorrow (Monday, Dec. 16) I'll be performing at the Beverly Hills
Library at 7 p.m.  I'll check the Well before Ieave in the morning and
after I return on Tuesday.  Have fun, y'all.
  

    
      Krass, can you post the address and phone number of the Beverly
Hills Library for those of us in the L.A. area before you split?  The
address so we can find it, the phone number so we can call them and
find out where to park; a situation unique to L.A., the auto capitol of
the planet.  Where many drive half a block to mail a letter.  
      Break a leg.  And I'll see ya there.
  

    
Email from Don:

what do you think these days of the 'Boy Guru' who you parodied and
confronted in Houston in 1973. He was then called Guru Maharaji Ji and is
now called Maharaji and has a foundation in USA called The Prem Rawat
Foundation.  I would appreciate your comments please as there has been a
lot of hoo-hah on the net with former followers who have set up a site
called www.ex-premie.org. I am intrigued and wondered also if you knew what
happened to Rennie Davis?

all the best

Don