Posted on 01/08/2009 5:36:18 PM PST by nickcarraway
I've borrowed Woody Guthrie's 1942 song to report that this is my last column for the Voice. I'm not retiring; I've never forgotten my exchange on that decision with Duke Ellington. In those years, he and the band played over 200 one-nighters a year, with jumps from, say, Toronto to Dallas. On one of his rare nights off, Duke looked very beat, and I presumptuously said: "You don't have to keep going through this. With the standards you've written, you could retire on your ASCAP income."
Duke looked at me as if I'd lost all my marbles.
"Retire!" he crescendoed. "Retire to what?!"
I'm still writing. In 2009, the University Press of California will publish my I>At the Jazz Band Ball: 60 Years on the Jazz Scene, and, later in the year, a sequel to The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance will be out on Seven Stories Press with the title Is This America? And I'll be breaking categories elsewhere, including in my weekly syndicated United Media column, which reaches 250 papers, and my jazz and country music pieces in The Wall Street Journal.
I came here in 1958 because I wanted a place where I could write freely on anything I cared about. There was no pay at first, but the Voice turned out to be a hell of a resounding forum. My wife, Margot—later an editor here and a columnist far more controversial than I've been—called what this paper was creating "a community of consciousness." Though a small Village "alternative" newspaper, we were reaching many around the country who were turned off by almost any establishment you could think of.
Being here early on, I felt I'd finally been able to connect with what had first startled and excited me as I was reading my journalism mentor, George Seldes, the first press critic. When I was 15, I saw his four-page newsletter, "In Fact: An Antidote to Falsehoods in the Daily Press." He broke stories I'd never seen in any other paper, including The New York Times, stories that gave scientific data on how cigarette smoking caused cancer.
Seldes was also a labor man. You could find "In Fact" in some union halls, and for years, his name was blacked out of The New York Times because, in 1934, he testified about journalists' wages before the National Labor Relations Board just as the Newspaper Guild was trying to organize the Times.
"In Fact" reached a circulation of 176,000 and included newspaper reporters around the country who fed Seldes news that they couldn't get into their own papers.
Seldes was, to say the least, not an admirer of J. Edgar Hoover, and when "In Fact" died in 1950, one of the reasons was that FBI agents had gone into post offices around the nation and copied down the names of subscribers—and let them know they were known.
Seldes was also my hero when, after Senator Joseph McCarthy called him into a closed-door session to admit to his Bolshevism, the Great Red Hunter eventually came out of the room, looking unprecedentedly subdued as he told the waiting press that Seldes had been "cleared." George had intimidated Tailgunner Joe.
As a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, Seldes, because of his stories, was kicked out of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Stalin's Russia. Years later, he and I corresponded for a while, and then I finally met him in 1985 when he was in New York promoting his book, The Great Thoughts, about a gallery of freethinkers through the centuries. Some of his other books include Never Tire of Protesting and Lords of the Press.
At 94, Seldes was no longer in the news business, but as I came into his hotel room around nine one morning, he was doing what I do every morning: tearing pages out of stacks of newspapers. Instead of saying, "Hello," he grabbed a handful of clips, gave them to me, and said, "You ought to look into these stories!" Then, smiling, he said, "I'm getting old, yes, but to hell with being mellow."
In 1995, he died at the age of 104 in Hartland Four Corners, Vermont.
My other main mentor, I.F. "Izzy" Stone, was inspired by "In Fact" to start "I.F. Stone's Weekly," where mainstream newspaper reporters also sent stories that they couldn't get into their own papers.
One of the lessons I learned from Izzy was to avoid press conferences: "You're not going to get the real story there," he'd say. Instead, I learned from him to find mid-level workers in bureaucracies whom reporters seldom thought to interview. That's how, years ago, I reported for the Voice on the accurate drop-out rate in the city's schools.
Because of the "Seldes and Stone Journalism School" (I've never been in one that actually grants degrees), I got to do at the Voice something that led the late Meg Greenfield, The Washington Post's editorial page editor—for whom I wrote a weekly "Sweet Land of Liberty" column for some 15 years—to say on my receiving the 1995 National Press Foundations Award for lifetime distinguished contributions to journalism: "Nat Hentoff is never chic. Never has been, as those of us who have known him over the centuries can attest. Never will be. Count on it. He is not tribal in his views and is terribly stubborn. He challenges icons and ideas that are treasured in the community he lives in. He puts on his skunk suit and heads off to the garden party, week after week, again and again."
It was here that I was able to practice, since 1958, what I learned from my non-chic mentors. And I'll be putting on my skunk suit at other garden parties, now that I've been excessed from the Voice.
I was in my twenties when I learned my most important lesson from Izzy Stone: "If you're in this business because you want to change the world, get another day job. If you are able to make a difference, it will come incrementally, and you might not even know about it. You have to get the story and keep on it because it has to be told."
Still, there was one time when I was stunned at meeting a reader changed by what I'd written. One of my sons, Tom, is a partner at Williams & Connolly, a highly prestigious Washington law firm founded by one of my idols in the law, Edward Bennett Williams. Tom, a specialist in intellectual property and defamation, among other areas of law, once invited me to a large gathering in New York of lawyers from around the country who are also experts in those fields. Several lawyers in their thirties, it seemed to me, came to our table, and one, speaking for the others, said to me: "We're here because of you. We were in high school when we started reading you in the Voice, and you made the law so exciting. That, as I've said, is why we're here."
Other Voice writers have had that effect on readers—the late Jack Newfield, for one—and some are still being skunks at garden parties: Tom Robbins and Wayne Barrett. Their calls get returned quickly.
Around the country, a lot of reporters are being excessed, and print newspapers may soon become collectors' items. But over the years, my advice to new and aspiring reporters is to remember what Tom Wicker, a first-class professional spelunker, then at The New York Times, said in a tribute to Izzy Stone: "He never lost his sense of rage."
Neither have I. See you somewhere else. Finally, I'm grateful for the comments on the phone and the Web. It's like hearing my obituaries while I'm still here.
Well said.
One of my favorite recordings is an album titled “Masterpieces by Ellington,” which I discovered in 1960 at a radio station. I aired selections from it whenever I could.
The length of the arrangements was such that the LP contained only four selections.
In addition to some classics was a major new work, “The Tattooed Bride.” The disc having been released in 1950, I think this classifies as a late-period composition.
It was from this album that I became an Ellington fan. I got to shake his hand a year or so later after a concert and complemented him particularly on his work on this album.
He said, of course, “Love you Madly!”
The CD of this album is hard to find, but I finally did locate one about fifteen years ago.
Yep, like I said, it's "a very rare thing".
I suppose what I meant by "honest liberal" is that Hentoff doesn't come off to me as the typical, knee-jerk goofball kind of liberal. Also, he tends to take the US Constitution seriously which, again, is a very rare thing for a liberal.
FRegards,
LH
Ellington was a monster! One of my fave LPs of his is a radio concert from the end of WWII - the 6 minute romp through “Body and Soul” is one of the most sublime things I’ve ever heard. We miss you, Duke!
Absolutely, you have said a mouthful
Thank you for an informed, thoughtful and balanced comment in marked contrast to the predictable and tiresome reactionary knee jerking spew that has become the norm on this board.
Actually, a very good strategy.
Major dittoes. A great journalist. Glad he's found a new home.
Hentoff gave major, early, in-depth coverage for Terri Schiavo and other victims of the Deathocracy you probably never even heard of.
Hentoff initially mounted a one-man campaign to support Sarah Palin, practically introduced her to the hapless, feckless McCain.
Hentoff publicized and wrote liner notes almost 50 years ago for Doc Watson, the greatest flat-picking acoustic guitar artist ever was, here in my beloved Southern Appalachia. For that alone, Nat owns my heart.
And he does a high percentage of his own thinking.
Something I'd like to see more of, here on Free Republic.
And, I've heard tell that he also conducted the early interview of Bob Dylan for Playboy. (I've heard tell that). Course, the usual suspects get a-twitching at a Dylan mention. There's another one who does his own thinking!
Some well-meaning people will go to their graves insisting the Terri Schiavo case was about the right to life. But, it wasn't. Nor was it about the right to die. It was all about who speaks for a person when she is unable to speak for herself.
And, as I see it, the court had little if any choice in that regard because, when she married, she left her parents to join her spouse. As was probably said in their marriage ceremony, "What God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
Just my opinion, of course.
I don't believe it would be stretching it to expand that to " ...let not man put asunder, nor six feet under." Which is, of course, what her husband did.
Hentoff’s point and mine is that since her wishes were unclear the decision shouldn’t have been made to kill her. Criminals whose guilt is unclear aren’t executed; an innocent person whose wishes are unclear shouldn’t be killed, and that’s what happened in this case, since definite actions were taken that shortened her life.
Only if he's the one who caused her incapacitation. Apparently, the court did not find him guilty of that.
And my point has always been that her wishes were made clear when she voluntarily married him.
When my wife and I married, we became one. Therefore, if I am unable to communicate my wishes, my wife speaks on my behalf. Anyone who intends to put asunder what God joined together will need to have overwhelming evidence to have any hope of doing so.
Since when is marriage a license to kill?
I've never heard anything resembling what you assert, but you aren't even getting the point. The Schiavo case is indeed a life issue because it was about when a person gets the right to decide to kill a living person. If it were just about a person with no chance to live being disconnected from machines, there wouldn't be an argument. That's not what this is about; it's about euthenasia. It's a much bigger issue than your personal views of marriage.
Yeah, Ellington's late period begins in 1950, so "Masterpieces" was the first. Whoa, you got to see the maestro in concert, shake his hand, and get a "Love you Madly" out of him to top it off?! Doesn't get better than that, musically. I became a fan in the early '80s (in my early 20s), about 10 years after his death.
Hentoff is an expert in jazz, but he is almost always wrong when he talks about the “Constitution”. (For example, where is his denunciation of the Warren Court for all their made-up-out-of-whole-cloth Constitutional rights???)
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