Folks, I appreciate that this guy may have got something right.
And as a Jazz fan who can tell the diffence in three notes or less between Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, I don’t have any issue with his writing about music. I think that is great.
But, as the saying goes, a stopped clock is right twice a day. This guy was an avowed apologist for communism, and again, the fact that someone like I.F. Stone was his mentor and someone who he greatly admired speaks volumes about him.
I’m glad he stuck up for Terry Schavio. I’m heartened that he thought Palin was fine. I think it is great he stuck up for College students who were being oppressed.
The fact is, you cannot have it both ways. If he was doing thinking for himself, then he wasn’t doing a very good job of it if he thinks the rights of oppressed college students are important, but it is okay to overlook the faults of a bloodthirsty ideology responsible for tens of millions of deaths and hundreds of millions more living oppressed lives or imprisioned in Gulags. There is a severe cognitive dissonance in his “own thinking”.
At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, they say that Hitler liked his dogs and Stalin was fond of children. I am sure that this man had his redeeming virtues, but his support whether overt in his columns or through his contribution to the profitability of a despicable publication that is a shill for leftists and tyrants has disabled my inclination to overlook those faults.
The fact that for so many years he earned his daily bread from a publication like the Village Voice which is virulently opposed to any value we as conservatives and/or Americans hold high should highlight that fact.
I take umbrage at your implied criticism of someone critical of this person as indicative of a lack of being able to think for myself.
I take the time to think long and hard about these issues. My personal dedication to this cause of understanding the issues as a responsibility as a citizen took a serious hit when I realized all the months and years I have spent staying on top of the issues (so I could make an informed choice when voting) were ill spent along those lines because my vote was negated by a stupid idiot on television who thought that getting Obama into office would take care of her mortgage and gas money. But I am not giving up.
As I get older, I am less inclined to overlook the ideology of entertainers. I used to enjoy Roger Waters until I saw him in concert a while back, and ended up sitting there and steaming in silence because I didn’t want to ruin for anyone else I was with because of his overt politicization of his entertainment. I blame myself for not recognizing it in advance. But I am no longer willing to give people points for their cultural contributions they dole out on one when balanced against their support of political or ideological forces that are dedicated to destroying the fabric of our society.
These people hold a lot of power in our society, and I am not willing to grant that to them any longer. This guy falls in that category. Maybe he has had a change of heart as he gets older, but it doesn’t look that way to me.
So, in an effort to make sure we all get along, I will moderate my criticism of this man and call him a “Useful Idiot” which gives him some benefit of the doubt. Perhaps that is more generous than “POS”.
Once again, you don't know what you're talking about.
Some examples of Nat Hentoff "overlooking the faults of communism":
http://www.villagevoice.com/1999-11-23/news/china-s-brutal-police-state/
"Savage beatings against Christians [the ones not officially approved by the government] were on the rise at the end of last year. . . . On December 24, in Liangzhuang Village, Xushui county . . . a 12-year-old girl, who told interrogators she became a liturgy lector out of religious conviction, was beaten so badly she had to be hospitalized. In November, a Protestant woman in Henan suffered brain damage in beatings by security agents. "On May 9, 1998, Chinese police, in collaboration with the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, raided and bulldozed a Catholic Church in Luoyuan county of Fujian province while some of the congregation were assembled for worship. During the raid, the police, armed with guns and electric batons, kicked and beat anyone who resisted arrest. Three female parishioners were seriously injured. Within two hours, the 600-square-foot church was bulldozed." The parishioners will now have to go underground.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2000-05-02/news/eli-n-s-future-in-cuba/
"Are we really prepared to send these children back to their countries without an independent adjudication of whether they might face danger back home? To do so would set a dangerous precedent for other refugee children who need and deserve our protection."
Clinton and his shadow attorney general were in a rush to avoid a careful, independent adjudication of Elián's fate. Both Reno and Clinton should read the April 18 condemnation of Cuba by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. It cited that nation's "continued violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
And now, on May 11, thanks to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Elián may finally have his real day in court—and may yet live in freedom, unless sent back by Clinton, Reno, and public opinion.
(DW377:)No one is claiming Hentoff is a conservative; he’s not, he’s a liberal. Yes, he was befriended by I. F. Stone. I have known and liked and loved many liberals, and many of them have positively influenced my life. Should I have asked them to become conservatives before I associated with them? That sounds suspiciously like the childish DU crap. I associate with Americans, of all kinds of political persuasions. And yet I am anti-communist, pro-life, pro-free speech, anti-illegal immigration, etc. Hentoff is a great example of the independent thinking you claim to be so enamored of, while you slam him for publishing in a leftist newspaper, where he has pressed conservative positions on abortion and indeed communism to those who need to read them the most. Talking about prolife positions HERE doesn’t change any minds; talking about them THERE has. In the future, a lot of people should criticize Hentoff less and follow his example more, and let facts instead of comfortable kneejerk reactions inform their opinions, even if I don’t agree with many of them.
The Village Voice was one of the few publications writing seriously about Jazz at a certain point. That’s like blaming fiction writers for publishing in The New Yorker.
But this simply isn't true. Hentoff did not go deaf, dumb and blind with regard to Communist oppression.
Google Hentoff Cuba and you'll see he waged a vigorous multi-year campaign to expose Castro's jailing of dissident librarians and to pressure the castroite ass-kissers at the American Library Association to support freedom of speech and other basic human rights in Communist countries.
Google Hentoff Chinese prisons and you'll see him excoriating the Chinese Communists over their treatment of the Falun Gong as well as their suppression of the Catholic Church in China.
As a lover of freedom, Hentoff also broke with the Left over the need for the U.S. to oppose Jihadi Terror.
In February 2003, he signed a letter advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq on human rights grounds, citing reports detailing Hussein's disregard for fundamental liberties. In summer 2003, Hentoff wrote criticizing the Democratic Party for casting doubt on President Bush's pre-war assertions about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction in an election year, and deriding the idea that an international consensus was required before forceful action could be taken.
As he put it in the Village Voice, "...if you had been in a Hussein torture chamber, would you, even in a state of delirium, hope for rescue from the UN Security Council?”
Hentoff also attacked head-on the complicity of Middle Eastern leaders in the “cartoon jihad,” as a means of “criminalizing insults of Islam and its prophets.” He wrote, " The Organization of Islamic Conference’s goal is to inhibit criticism of Islamic jihadism by threats of violence."
He exposed the fact that the UN's Kofi Annan, working together with the Islamic Conference, was opening to door to "enforce censorship by U.N. members and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations there) against purported defamation of Muslims in print and other forms of speech."
He did a great deal MORE to oppose Communist and Islamist oppression than the great majority of us Keyboard Kommandos at Free Republic.
And why I'm I writing in the past tense? This is no obit. Hentoff is still writing, still speaking, and still defending freedom on a more consistent basis than almost anyone you can name in the journalistic profession.