Sunday, December 28, 2014

Paul Pronovost, Cape Cod Times


To Paul Pronovost, Ed., The Cape Cod Times:  Here's another letter you won't publish in your newspaper.  Why not?  Dangerous times?
G. Tod Slone, Ed.
The American Dissident

Dangerous Times:  Too Many Journalists Are PC-Ideologues
Sadly, your editorial, “Dangerous Times:  Journalism Remains a Perpetual Punching  Bag,” reflects the same one-sided victimization and self-congratulatory stance as the previous editorial you published  on 8/26, “Exposing the Truth: Media’s Pen Remains Far Mightier Than Any Sword.”  Well, unsurprisingly, you did not publish my letter with its regard.  Will you publish this letter?  In other parts of the world, journalism can indeed be dangerous (Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, ISIS) or, if not dangerous, tough.  But the “assaults on journalistic integrity,” as you term them, can also come from within.  It is odd that you do not even mention the huge assault, as underscored in Sharyl Attkinsson’s recently published book Stonewalled.  That assault has been by the Obama administration and newspaper editors themselves, in case you are unaware.  It is the assault of political correctness (left-wing ideology) on truth and transparency!  How did you manage not to include that in your editorial?  How not to question the integrity of journalists who do put PC above truth telling?  ”The truth is often far from pretty,” you note, “but it remains the truth, and someone has to tell it.”  But then why do you not follow your own advice here on Cape Cod?  Why do you continue to refuse to report on Sturgis Library’s permanent banning without due process of me, my ideas, and books I publish from its premises?  Why do you refuse to report that my civil rights are being denied under your editorial snout right here in Barnstable where I cannot attend any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library, you know, the one my taxes help support, the one that disdains free speech, vigorous debate, and due process, democracy’s very cornerstones?  You, dear editor, are one of those very hypocrites you decry in your editorial...

PS:  Journalists sometimes, perhaps many times, are not the victims at all, but rather the perpetrators, either by their silence or active participation, of status-quo bullshit, you know, like Obama's "the most transparent administration in history"...

 

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Passion for Freedom



Open Letter to the Anonymous Organizers
Of the Passion for Freedom Festival
Why the anonymity?  Why are you not even listed on your web page? How does one contact you, besides via the impersonal contact form?  How does one criticize you, if you are anonymous?  How does that jive with freedom?

Anyhow, art should be more than SEX— nudity, vaginal monologues, open fornication, menstrual fluids, and giant penis sculptures.  It should be more than self-promoting artist doggies beggaring for fame.  Your focus is commendable.  But why did you choose self-promoting artist doggies beggaring for fame as judges?  The web pages of Gary Hill, Sarah Maple, Lee Weinberg, and Deeyah Khan prove the point.  In fact, Khan even promotes herself as the “Muslim Madonna.”  You know, Madonna the multimillionaire celebrity air-head pop singer… unless, of course, she means the other Madonna.  Hmm. 

Perhaps one of the last bastions of non-freedom in the West for artists is for artists to criticize the art machine that feeds them… including the Passion for Freedom festival.  What do you think?  Might such a view be included in your statement:  Everybody has something to offer, something that may enrich or support FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION”?  Or might your other statement negate that inclusion:  “Every individual and every organization willing to take a part in our activities or support us is welcome.”  So, if I am not willing to support you, then I am not welcome.  That seems to be the modus operandi of just about every thin-skinned art curator (and poet) on the planet today. 

Not one of your prize winners created art critical of the art machine.  So, featured above is a satirical sketch I did on four of your art-machine judges and your festival.  Would you have considered it for your Exhibition?  Or would it have been too un-understandable (i.e., incomprehensible) and/or not large enough in size (anything huge in size tends to be acceptable as art today)?  If you are not impressed by the technique, which is certainly not my forte, what about the idea incorporated in the sketch? 

It is sad to see artists basking in the art limelight.  Ai Weiwei comes to mind, as Celebrity Dissident Incarnate, friend of politicians and the art machine that pays him so royally.  The light becomes so bright for some of them that it evidently blinds them to the intrinsic corruption in the art machine… which churns out the blinding light… and monetary rewards.  So many artists grovel for connections that might help lead the way to fame, even minor.   But what about the few artists who refuse to grovel… before the NEA, Guggenheim, MacArthur, etc.?  Why don’t you feature one or several of them?  The problem of course is simple:  how would you ever hear about them?  You wouldn’t!  Art festivals also grovel for fame!  What Faustian deals are concluded by artists and festival organizers! 

Finally, I strongly urge you to provide a space on your website devoted to criticism of your Passion for Freedom festival.  Now, that would truly be a manifestation of such passion and reverence for democracy.  Last year, to the deaf ears of Passion for Freedom curator Agnieszka Kolek (is she still one of your organizers?), I essentially suggested the same thing with a different critical sketch (see  https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=239569862679528067#editor/target=post;postID=7541908710591132773;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=2;src=link).  Thus, I give it another whirl.  Rare—very, very rare—is the literary editor who will publish harsh criticism of his or her literary magazine.  Evidently, the same goes for the art festival organizer.  Thus, in accord with what you purportedly do, I “discuss subjects omitted in politically correct circles” (i.e., criticism of the academic/literary established order and art machine) in “open and uninhibited discussion,”  though clearly I do not fall into your gathering of “like-minded people.”  Am I “more than welcome”?  Out of 882 people who checked out the sketch on Kolek, only one commented, a friend, Timothy Bearly, who noted perspicaciously:  It's always frustrating to see safe and predictable artists pretending to be audacious, avant-garde and controversial. ‘Not afraid of regimes,’ but afraid to respond to a critical email.” 

Finally, the question remains: is your festival just another cocktail-party, celebrity art festival, or are you truly different?

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Michael Dirda

Notes on Dead Poets and Dead Poet Book Reviewers

To Michael Dirda, Washington Post Reviewer:
How not to conclude when reading your book reviews that you are a paladin of the literary-established order.  Is there no such thing as a bad book review in the Washington Post?  Your review of James Booth’s Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love serves as yet another example of blind positivity.  You seem unable to question the most basic of principles, including fame and what fame might imply in literature.  You state:  Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is as famous a poet as any…”  So, for me, that likely implies he played the game, kept his mouth shut, did not have the balls to question and challenge the literary establishment.  So, why should one revere a “famed” poet therefore?  You state in your hagiography of Larkin that he wrote “clear, accessible poetry that, once read, could never be forgotten,” and cite the following to support your odd contention:  “Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me). . . . What will survive of us is love. . . . Age, and then the only end of age. . . . Never such innocence again.”  Are there really others besides you, who will NEVER ever forget those seemingly banal lines?  And who gives a damn about Larkin’s purported “geek-chic” look?  Who cares about his sexual experiences and porn collections.  Who gives a damn if he enjoyed “washing dishes and doing laundry”?  What I care about is wisdom.  And your article did not present an iota of wisdom.  Why do you guys insist on inflating these dead, flaccid poets?  Let them stay buried. 

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Kathleen McCartney

.......................................................


From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: sophian@smith.edu
CC: wendykaminer@aol.com; kmccartney@smith.edu; has@harveysilverglate.com
Subject: Kaminer, McCartney and Sophian J. Houston lampooned in a new P. Maudit cartoon
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 11:12:50 -0500

To the Student Editors of The Sophian Censor, Smith College:
It would truly amaze me if you simply responded to this email.  It would actually knock me over, however, if you possessed the INDEPENDENCE you boast and the spirit of INCLUSIVITY to publish the cartoon sketched on one of your own, as well as Wendy Kaminer and President Kathleen McCartney, posted on the American Dissident blog site:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com.  Feel free to comment.  The American Dissident NEVER censors comments. 

[NO RESPONSE]

Friday, November 14, 2014

Michael Dirda


Notes on Michael Dirda's Review of Ted Kooser's Splitting an Order



You need to write a book on how to get so excited over such a banal poem, “Painting the Barn,” by established-order ex-insurance executive, former poet laureate of the USA Ted Kooser, “the most [apart from Billy Collins] accessible and enjoyable major poet in America,” according to you.  Have you ever wondered what “major poet” implies besides linguistically deft?  Clearly, it implies a poet who never makes waves, never goes against the grain of literary established order, and thus never bucks the ivory-tower system.  Is that good?  Methinks not at all! 


Perhaps Kooser is “enjoyable” to you, but why should he be enjoyable to me and other individual thinkers?  Sure, hordes of academics could likely write 350-page dissertations on that poem, but does that make it great… or even simply good?  And isn’t great subjective?  Yet you and so many other established-order cogs would have people believe it is an objective term.  Now, what I look for in a poem is obviously NOT what you look for:  unusual wisdom, as opposed to sentimentality, for example, over a dead dog.  What you and other literati of the established-order do is promote the innocuous, like Ted Kooser, because the innocuous does not upset established-order literati.  It is really quite that simple.

Few poems contain unusual wisdom like, for example, Villon’s “Estoit-il lors temps de moy taire?,” Jeffers’ “Finally I say let demagogues and world-redeemers babble/ their emptiness/ To empty ears; twice duped is too much./ Walk on gaunt shores and avoid the people” and Neruda’s “NacĂ­ para golpear las puertas, para empuñar los golpes,/ para encender las Ăşltimas y arrinconadas sombras/en donde se alimenta la araña venenosa./ Serán nombrados.”    

What we need are poets with guts like Villon, who dared criticize the ruling Parisian theocrats during his time and risked death by hanging.  Where are those poets today in America who RISK in their poetry upsetting established-order apparatchiks, who promote coopted, innocuous poetry… and thus weaken literature, dulling its blade, rendering it palatable for the established order? 

Why not try being original and not push celebrity literati in your literati columns?  Why not seek out rare poets who really do RISK speaking rude truth in their verse—RISK not getting tenure, RISK not getting grants, RISK not getting invitations, RISK not getting awards, RISK not getting reviewed in your columns?  Nature and feelings are fine in poetry, BUT poetry should NOT be limited to those things.  Such imagery from a vanishing America further enforces the overall autumnal quality of these recent poems,” you write regarding Kooser’s new book.  Wow.  “Overall autumnal quality”!  Now, that’s a good one!  What about overall RISK and bold TRUTH TELLING? 

“But if you reflexively dismiss modern verse as dauntingly esoteric or embarrassingly corny or tediously singsong, you need to try Ted Kooser,” you conclude.  Rather than “dauntingly esoteric,” I find modern verse devoid of any criticism at all of the academic/literary established order machinery, professors, and favored icons diligently working to keep poetry castrated. 
 
 

 

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Breanne Fahs

 
 

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: breanne.fahs@asu.edu
CC: lmanderson@asu.edu; alesha.durfee@asu.edu; michelle.mcgibbney@asu.edu; yasmina.katsulis@asu.edu; kimberly.a.scott@asu.edu; sally.kitch@asu.edu; koblitz@asu.edu; heather.switzer@asu.edu; sujey.vega@asu.edu
Subject: Fahs lampooned in a new P. Maudit cartoon
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 09:52:02 -0500

To Prof. Breanne Fahs,
You are featured in a new P. Maudit cartoon this week on The American Dissident blog site:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com.  Nothing personal, since I don’t know you.  I’ve done 100s of cartoons on professors and other academics over the years.  Only two or three student editors have dared publish them.  I’ve forwarded the cartoon to the student editors of ASU News, who will likely not publish it… because student editors generally tend to be like their professors:  PC-indoctrinated, lacking in individuality and courage, and scornful of democracy’s cornerstones—freedom of speech and vigorous debate.  Hopefully (and there is always hope, no matter how dim that light may be), those student editors will prove to be somewhat unique and respond.  Hopefully, you too might respond.  Now, how about getting your university library to subscribe to The American Dissident, not for the sake of the faculty, but rather for that of students.  LOL, right?

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Cornel West

 
.............................................................................

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
Subject: Cornel West satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon...
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:22:58 -0400

  

To Anita Cole, Executive Assistant to Cornel West,

Please pass on the attached cartoon on CW to CW.  Also, please consider getting Union Theological Seminary to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20/year).  Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

 

 

G. Tod Slone, PhD (universite de Nantes, FR) aka P. Maudit,

Founding Editor (1998)

The American Dissident, a 501c3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence

 
 

From: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
To: todslone@hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:25:19 -0400
Subject: RE: Cornel West satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon...

Hello,
My name is Maria -- not Anita, and much like that mistake, your cartoon is further evidence that your ability to comprehend what you read and hear is quite limited. I won't be sending this on to Dr. West as I am personally insulted and will not spend anymore time on this.

Sincerely,

> Maria Cole
> Assistant to Professor Cornel West
> Union Theological Seminary
> 3041 Broadway, AD 522
> New York, NY 10027
> 212.280.1481
> mcole@uts.columbia.edu
> www.utsnyc.edu


From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
Subject: Fragile little egos...
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:45:35 -0400

Hi Maria,
Sorry for that little mistake.  But how does one get so uptight over a simple error like that?  Well, thanks much for the LOL!  Cornel's little discourse was as clear as it gets.  My cartoon riposte was as clear as it gets.  Perhaps you, as hyper-uppity executive assistant, misunderstood his discourse and my response to it?  Perhaps you should ask Cornel to help you out with that interesting term re-niggardization?  Now, why does he need to buffer his fragile ego and mindset with a gatekeeper like you.  That too seems like gross hypocrisy on his part.  Now, how many poor people does he know who have their own personal gatekeepers?  Hmm.  :)
G. Tod


[No response.]


From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: bjamesp519@gmail.com; cskpickles@earthlink.net
CC: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
Subject: Satire and democracy!
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:04:33 -0400

  

To Benjamin Perry and Carolyn Klaasen, Body Caucus, Union Theological Seminary

What your institution needs is a DEMOCRACY CAUCUS, where FREEDOM OF SPEECH and VIGOROUS DEBATE would be praised and studied.  You could begin with the attached cartoon I sketched on one of your instructors.  Sadly, his executive assistant refuses to forward the cartoon to him.  Perhaps you might do that?  She obviously does not believe in VIGOROUS DEBATE, cornerstone of democracy.  Do you?  Or have you become PC-indoctrinated like her?  If there is a student newspaper, please let me know.  I couldn't find it on the website.  Thanks for your attention.


[No response.]


Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Peter Schjeldahl

...................................................... 
Text on the bottom of the picture:   
Schjeldahl:  “Like it or not, Christopher Wool, now 58, is probably the most important American painter of his generation.  His works ace the crude test that passes for critical judgment in the art market:  They look impeccable on walls…"
PM:  “Impeccable on walls?  Well, how about these two I just finished? 

NB:  Believe it or not, the pictures on the cartoon wall are exact copies of the art praised by Schjeldahl.


Friday, October 24, 2014

Suzanne Nossel and Frank Bidart


Issue #28  Fall/Winter 2014-15
EDITORIAL 
Entartete Kunst et al
This issue’s front cover features a handful of established-order cogs and is the fifth in a series, Entartete Kunst.  From the established-order point of view, clearly the cover would be dismissed as “depraved art.”  Would PEN America:  Journal for Writers & Readers, Agni, Ploughshares, Poetry magazine, Poets & Writers, Rattle, American Poet Magazine, etc. have published the cover somewhere in their pages?  Of course not!  Why not?  Fear of inconvenient truths!  Criticism against The American Dissident is published in each issue.  What’s the big deal?  In fact, I encourage it!  But not the editors of those magazines!       
     
Featured are Academy of American Poets former chancellor Frank Bidart (center) receiving PEN’s literary award for established-order poetry, Chair of PEN’s Literary Awards (Poetry Society of America’s queen bee) Alice Quinn (left), PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel, Poesy Judge Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Poesy Judge Peg Boyers, Poesy Judge Toi Derrricotte, and Poesy Idolater Hollywood starlet James Franco.  I’d written a long email to Nossel, who remained silent.  Then I wrote another long email to her.  She responded though rather vacuously and very briefly.  Then I wrote several more emails to her, posing questions.  She did not respond to them.  Why is PEN so un-responsive and so apathetic to the concerns of an unconnected citizen?  For the correspondence, see below.  For my two-part essay critical of PEN, see http://www.globalfreepress.org/contributors/usa/g-tod-slone?start=18 and http://www.globalfreepress.org/contributors/usa/g-tod-slone/3825-pen-an-ethical-consideration-part-ii.
  
.......................................

From: todslone@hotmail.com

To: snossel@pen.org
CC: journal@pen.org; dmoran@pen.org; arielle@pen.org; deji@pen.org; kglennbass@pen.org; editor.camelsaloon@gmail.com; sturgislibrary@comcast.net

Subject: Free Expression... or rather Expression Innocuous to the Party

Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2014 10:20:07 -0400

To Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director, PEN America:  Please allow me to pose a few questions pertinent to free expression in America: 
1. Is there a reason why PEN America is indifferent to the fact that I, a poet, was permanently banned from commenting on the Academy of American Poets website in 2007?  Is it not somewhat hypocritical to state on your website, “PEN America/ Free Expression, Literature,” while simultaneously awarding a poet, Frank Bidart, who proved entirely indifferent to my complaint of the censorship (removal!) of my free expression by the Academy of American Poets when he was one of its active chancellors?  For the transcript of my censored comments, see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets_
transcript.html. 
2. Is there a reason why PEN America is indifferent to the fact that I, a poet, was permanently banned without warning or possibility of due process from my very neighborhood library, Sturgis Library, one of the very oldest in the country?  My speech crime was one of simple written criticism regarding the library’s own written policy that “libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view”.  The permanent banning of my point of view and that of those published in The American Dissident prove that hypocrisy.  In fact, is there a reason why PEN New England will not even respond to my correspondence with that regard?  Does it consider me, like Sturgis Library and the Academy,  a persona non grata in America because I dare express my points of view, as opposed to some party-line, pre-approved points of view?  Could the answer to these questions simply be that some “free expression,” although protected by the First Amendment, is simply not condoned or defended by PEN America?  That of course is something for you to contemplate.  It is evident that the academic/literary established order does not approve of “free expression” that criticizes it, its icons (Bidart et al), and its firm control over literature in America.  It is also oddly evident that PEN America seems to favor awarding prizes to those attached to that anti-free-expression established-order.  Again, this is something for you to contemplate.  
Finally, why is criticism like that included in this very letter, for example, kept out, amongst others, of PEN America Journal, Poetry Magazine, and the American Library Association’s American Libraries Magazine?  [No response]

.......................................................................................

From: todslone@hotmail.com

To: snossel@pen.org
CC: journal@pen.org; dmoran@pen.org; arielle@pen.org; deji@pen.org; kglennbass@pen.org; editor.camelsaloon@gmail.com; sturgislibrary@comcast.net

Subject: RE: Free Expression... or rather Expression Innocuous to the Party

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 11:33:28 -0400

To Suzanne Nossel:  Well, I doubt you’ll respond.  After all, what could you possibly write in your defense… of apathy and bourgeois elitism?  Hopefully, you’ve not become so high and mighty that you won’t even be able to focus on anything this lowly plebe has to write here… hopefully.  Thus, I simply continue this dialogue de sourds.  Currently, I’m sketching the next front cover of The American Dissident, #28, which will feature Frank Bidart, you, and other literary elitists (Quinn et al) involved in your Literary Awards (the images of you on Google portray a NY West Side Vanity Fair cocktail-party socialite… how odd for the head of PEN America!)  Regarding the awards, you state:   “The PEN Literary Awards bring together writers, editors, and members of the literary community to celebrate the ultimate fruit of free expression: great literature.”  But what about those writers and editors NOT of the “literary community,” as you term the closed community of mostly established-order academics and their poet/writer acolytes.  How to become a member of that community?  Well, the response is obvious:  play the game of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil PC-expression-only. The “ultimate fruit of free expression,” as you term it, is certainly not academically-approved, promoted, and designated “great literature.”  The “ultimate fruit” is rather literature scorned by the elites because it dares criticize the elites.   Far more often than not, “great literature” as you term it, is a subjective—not an objective—term.  Far more often than not, that so-called “great literature” is innocuous, hardly at all threatening to the power structure, which designates it “great.”  You seem quite confused pairing “free expression” with so-called “great literature.”  Have you read The Oak and the Calf?  If you haven’t, do so!  But one would certainly expect that you have read it, considering your position.  In any case, if you recall, Solzhenitsyn’s book depicts the literary scene under the Stalinist dictatorship.  Sadly, that scene is a mirror of today’s literary scene in America.  Of course, Americans are rarely arrested for writing (three cops showed up to escort me out of the library one week after my published writing, but I was not arrested).  Instead, they are ostracized into oblivion, that is, if the established order feels offended by the writing.  Why does PEN America not focus on that?  Why does it not support the few American writers who dare criticize the academics and writers who control the literary scene in America, including the pompous chancellors of the Academy of American Poets (Bidart et al) and the one-percenters of the Poetry Foundation?  The answer of course is that PEN has become an integral part of that scene.  In essence, the scorners of free expression (academics and literati) have infiltrated and taken control of PEN America… unless, of course, it was always thus.  In essence, if that were not true, why would your publication, PEN America Journal, not even respond to, let alone publish, the highly caustic article I wrote on PEN and submitted to it (See http://www.globalfreepress.org/sections/free-speech/3415-pen-an-ethical-consideration). The following is a pertinent quote from The Oak and the Calf to back the above contention:  
The shrill, vainglorious literature of the establishment—with its dozen fat magazines, its two literary newspapers, its innumerable anthologies, its novels between hard covers, its collected works, its annual prizes, its adaptations for radio of impossibly tedious originals—I had once and for all recognized as unreal, and I did not waste my time or exasperate myself by trying to keep up with it.  I knew without looking that there could be nothing of merit in all this.  Not because no talent could emerge there—no doubt it sometimes did, but there it perished too.  For it was a barren field, that which they sowed.  I knew that in such a field nothing could grow to maturity.  When they first came to literature they had, all of them—the social novelists, the bombastic playwrights, the civic poets, and needless to say the journalists and critics—joined in an undertaking never, whatever the subject, whatever the issue, to mention the essential truth, the truth that leaps to the eye within no help from literature.  This solemn pledge to abstain from truth was called socialist realism.  Even writers of love poems, even those lyric poets who had sought sanctuary in nature or in elegant romanticism, were all fatally flawed because they dared not touch the important truths. 
Finally, unlike your journal, The American Dissident will publish the harshest criticism received because it really does believe in free expression… and vigorous debate, democracy‘s cornerstones.  
......................................................


From: snossel@PEN.org

To: todslone@hotmail.com
CC: Journal@Pen.org; dmoran@PEN.org; Arielle@PEN.org; Deji@PEN.org; kglennbass@PEN.org; editor.camelsaloon@gmail.com; sturgislibrary@comcast.net

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 17:19:16 -0400

Subject: Re: Free Expression... or rather Expression Innocuous to the Party

George—I am on vacation right now. We are happy to read and absorb your comments, no matter how critical. I am sorry to hear you have found your voice stifled in certain settings and glad to know you've created your own outlet. Best wishes, Suzanne  
...............................

From: todslone@hotmail.com

To: snossel@pen.org

Subject: RE: Free Expression... or rather Expression Innocuous to the Party

Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 19:10:43 -0400


Hi Suzanne,

Well, your response is really a non-response.  After all, you did not respond to one point made in those two emails I sent.  What might "read and absorb" really mean?  Perhaps when you return from your vacation (how not to think of Obama), you'll respond to the various points and questions I made in those two emails.  BUT I certainly will not be holding my breath.  I've been "dealing" with PEN's deaf ears for well over a decade now, which is why it will be highlighted in the next front cover of The American Dissident.  It is likely PEN personnel are simply far too busy with their cocktail parties with rich and famous writers to be bothered contemplating any criticism regarding PEN.  Bonnes vacances a toue (accent aigu)!

Sincerely,

G. Tod

From: todslone@hotmail.com

To: snossel@pen.org
CC: fbidart@wellesley.edu; pboyers@skidmore.edu; writecen@pitt.edu; rowan.phillips@stonybrook.edu; journal@pen.org; dmoran@pen.org; arielle@pen.org; deji@pen.org; kglennbass@pen.org; pen-newengland@mit.edu; kwulf@mit.edu

Subject: Suzanne Nossel et al satirized by P. Maudit

Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 16:32:21 -0400
  
To Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN:  
Well, I expect you’re back from vacation now.  In any case, you, Frank Bidart, Peg Boyers, Toi Derricotte, Alice Quinn, James Franco, and Rowan Ricardo Phillips in the context of the PEN Literary Awards have been satirized as elitist literati on the front cover of issue #28 of The American Dissident, A Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence, which was just published and distributed.  You can examine the cover on the AD blog site here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com.  

The journal is a 501 c3 nonprofit and is unable to obtain any public funding whatsoever from the NEA, Massachusetts Cultural Council, etc., etc.  The journal incarnates an enemy of the people… in the Soviet sense.  The front-cover aquarelle is #6 in my Entartete Kunst series.  As you hopefully know, “entartete kunst” was art deemed depraved by the Nazis and thus removed from the public eye and/or destroyed.  For PC-America today, entartete kunst include any art critical of the academic/literary established order (PEN et al) and its diverse cogs, apparatchiks, and icons.  Get my drift?  

Question:  Why won’t PEN America Journal publish any criticism of PEN?  Is that not oddly perverted?  After all, isn’t PEN supposed to be devoted to FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?  
Answer:  

Question:  Why won’t PEN New England respond to my efforts to re-obtain my civil rights and Freedom of Expression with impunity in New England?  What is wrong with Karen Wulf?   Usually, cronyism and inability to brook criticism explain such silence.  
Answer:  


Thank you for your attention and hopeful input and feedback.

...................................
From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: snossel@pen.org
CC: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com; kwulf@mit.edu; fmarchant@suffolk.edu; editor.camelsaloon@gmail.com
Subject: PEN... not at all like Charlie Hebdo
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2015 20:10:47 -0400

To Susan Nossel, Exec. Dir., PEN America:  
Unlike Deborah Eisenberg and other PEN dignitaries, who seem appallingly blind to the Islamic threat to freedom of speech and democracy in general, I applaud your decision to award Charlie Hebdo the Freedom of Expression Courage award.  Perhaps as someone who promotes that award, however, you should have put down your cocktail for a moment and manifested the courage to respond to the aquarelle satire (see attached) I created on PEN and sent to you.  In fact, you should have distributed it to other PEN elites.  As you know, it became the front cover of issue #28 of The American Dissident.  Was that depiction over the PEN red line of acceptable satire?  Perhaps you ought to have also asked PEN New England’s Karen Wulf why she refuses to this day to respond to my requests for help to regain my civil rights here in Barnstable County on Cape Cod.  Am I simply insufficiently PC for Wulf?  "Defending freedom of expression" is supposed to be her and your mantra!  You should have also distributed to PEN elites, rather than completely ignore, my caustic essay, “PEN:  An Ethical Consideration” (see http://www.globalfreepress.org/sections/free-speech/3415-pen-an-ethical-consideration.  And how to explain Professor Emeritus Fred Marchant on PEN New England's board of directors, who essentially banned The American Dissident from his Suffolk University Poetry Center?  Is he afraid his students might notice my satirical work on him and PEN?  What has professor emeritus come to mean today in America, if not professor conventionality and conformity, hardly at all professor temerity and individuality?  Finally, is PEN really so high and mighty as to be above criticism?  Well, uh, you actually did respond to all of my concerns back in August:  

George - I am on vacation right now. We are happy to read and absorb your comments, no matter how critical. I am sorry to hear you have found your voice stifled in certain settings and glad to know you've created your own outlet. Best wishes, Suzanne  


Yes, so sorry...

......................................
From: George Slone
Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2016 11:58 AM
To: snossel@pen.org
Cc: antonio@pen.org; arielle@pen.org; shreya@pen.org; kdkarlekar@pen.org; mmark@pen.org; laura@pen.org
Subject: PEN HYPOCRISY
 
To Susan Nossel, Exec. Dir., PEN:  
You never did get back to me after that vacation of yours almost two years ago!  Again, my question is quite simple:  how do you manage to thrive in hypocrisy?  How do organizations like PEN simultaneously boast to be free-speech advocates, while viscerally rejecting free-speech criticism with their regard?  Why will you NOT post negative criticism of PEN on PEN’s website like this email and that of the front cover of The American Dissident featuring you, PEN, and that hypocrisy?  Did you even bother to look at the cover I sent?
PEN of course is not at all alone.  NCAC, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, ACLUM, and American Library Association, for example, share in that egregious hypocrisy.  How do the first two justify ignoring the Garland, TX near-massacre of free speech?  Well, they do not even attempt to do so!  After all, silence is the most effective weapon of hypocrites!  How does the NCAC manage to include Islamophobia hysteria, but not Islam in its “15 Threats to Free Speech 2015”?  See the essay I published with that regard here http://www.globalfreepress.org/contributors/usa/g-tod-slone/3936-15-threats-to-free-speech-2015-an-egregious-and-purposeful-omission .  Go on, check it out, or do you only do that when it’s a question of rich and famous establishment writers like Rushdie or writers in foreign jails or writer murderers and rapists in American jails?  
How do you manage to ignore HR 569, a bill that seeks to be the first anti-blasphemy law regarding Islam in America?  Over 82 Democrat congressmen are co-sponsors of it.  The front cover of the current issue of The American Dissident features the main sponsor next to three members of CAIR.  Would PEN America Journal like to publish a picture of that front cover?  Of course not!  How does PEN manage to ignore Loretta Lynch’s anti-free-speech declaration that she’d look into the possibility of prosecuting blasphemers against Islam?  Yes, that was her mind-boggling reaction to the San Bernardino Islamic massacre, as you might recall.  
Is part of PEN Free Expression Coordinator Shreya Balhara’s job to free-expression coordinate all criticism of PEN into the garbage bucket, unless of course lodged by approved PEN members?  Is part of Editor M Mark’s job to assure the absence of hardcore criticism vis-a-vis PEN in each issue of 
PEN America Journal?  Why the fear of such criticism?  In every issue of The American Dissident, the harshest criticism lodged against me and the journal is not only published, but encouraged.  What’s the big deal?  I just cannot fathom your perspective.  
Finally, I note that out of the 24 staff members listed on your site (http://www.pen.org/pen-staff-directory), only four are men.  One or two are black.  Is that called PEN diversity and inclusion or rather PEN sexism?  [No response]



Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Anne Speyer


The only thing an unconnected citizen can do to get his opinion into the arena of debate is the Internet.  Long live the Internet!  One day, however, the censors (i.e., the civility gatekeepers) will sadly gain full control over it.  Now here's a great quote by UCLA Professor Michael Meranze that I just came across.  It's perfect for librarian gatekeepers like Ann Speyer and Lucy Loomis, as well as for journalist gatekeepers like Paul Pronovost (Cape Cod Times) and Noah Hoffenberg (Barnstable Patriot)...

"The demand for civility effectively outlaws a range of intellectual, literary, and political forms: satire is not civil, caricature is not civil, hyperbole and aesthetic mockery are not civil nor is polemic. Ultimately the call for civility is a demand that you not express anger; and if it was enforced it would suggest that there is nothing to be angry about in the world.  The call for civility in discourse confuses the enforcement of administrative time, place, and manner restrictions with the genuine need to defend people from personal threat.  The result is that the administrative desire trumps all else." 

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Barnstable Village Cultural District

The following is an American Dissident broadside, which I handed out in front of Sturgis Library on October 10th during its Celebration of Kurt Vonnegut.  90% or more of those arriving refused to take one.  The cartoon on Vonnegut below was part of the broadside. 

What is the point of confronting ambulating brick walls like the 90%?  That question I have to ask myself every time I stand alone protesting against local corrupt pillars of the community.  Sure, I know it is 99% unlikely that I’ll meet anyone even remotely interested in the free speech issues I evoke.  No matter.  During the protests, I often have interesting thoughts and obtain grist for my mill of creativity. 

At the library, the arrived like dignitaries to a gala.  But dignitaries of what?  Bourgeois conformity and propriety?   How sad it all was.  Nobody was willing to focus on the facts I presented.  Nobody gave a shit.  The common reaction is to scorn and mock the rare person who dares question and challenge  such people. 

Barnstable is a town dominated by an elite of stepford wives and husbands, a representative microcosm of the nation.  They are why I do not love America...  


Vonnegut’s Clapboard Tomb…
And Its Gravediggers of Liberty

—An Open Letter to the Apathetic, Easily Offended, and Ignorant Citizens of Barnstable—
It really is a sorry kind of person who makes it to the top.
        —Kurt Vonnegut

     Kurt Vonnegut called Sturgis Library a “clapboard tomb,” upon quitting his job as library trustee.  A tomb, of course, is a place for the dead.  Has Sturgis gotten any better since Vonnegut’s time in Barnstable?  Experience tells me it’s actually gotten a lot worse.  Lucy Loomis, its director, is totally unaccountable and totally autocratic.  Upset her fiefdom with a dash of freedom of expression and be prepared for permanent punishment, which is precisely what happened to me in June 2012. 

     My speech crime consisted of an open letter published on my blog site and sent to the directors of the Clams Library System of Cape Cod, not one of whom responded.  Not even director Ann Speyer, who lectures on censorship and book banning, gave a damn.  Only Sturgis Library trustee and Loomis boyfriend Dan Santos responded, though indirectly, dismissing as “intellectual masturbation” my argument that Loomis was a hypocrite regarding her written collection development statement that ”libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view.”  Loomis and not one other library director in the system would subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20), published in Barnstable and presenting a viewpoint at antipodes to that of Poetry Magazine to which Sturgis subscribes.  I’d even offered a free subscription, but Loomis rejected it, thus proscribing the points of view of all those published in it… permanently. 

     Less than one week after that open letter was disseminated, Loomis and three cops approached me while I was peacefully sitting alone in a room at Sturgis, as I’d been doing almost daily for about two years.  There, Loomis said she was permanently banning me.  No warning had ever been issued.  Off I went… a tad angry!  Loomis and later trustee Ted Lowry refused to provide me with a written statement regarding the action and reason for it.  Nine months later the State Secretary of Records forced them to open their records to public scrutiny, so that finally I could read what had been written about me.  Democracy in action! 

     Due process?  We no need no stinkin’ due process!  That is Sturgis Library’s true motto.  Would Vonnegut have embraced it?  Did he embrace it?  Imagine no possibility of due process was offered!  Imagine Loomis having the audacity to deem me a public danger, arguing:  Because of his behavior when the police were here they almost arrested him—he can go from calm to extremely agitated in a matter of seconds.  So l believe this is the correct decision for the safety of the staff and public.”  That was the only damning thing written in the documents made public.  Notice it is an aberrant after-the-fact rationale and, why two years later, has not one staff member been threatened or harmed by me, if indeed I were such a potential danger?  Of course, I have no history at all of violence or of making threats.  How many others like Loomis protect their fragile selves in layers of self-serving deceit and ignorance of democracy, including the Supreme Court (Tinker v. Des Moines Sch. Dist.) argument that “in our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.”  Trustees Ted Lowry, Sue Angus, John Ehret, Colin Campbell, and Mike Downs, and others who’ve made it to the top, seem unable to comprehend that America’s greatness lies in her unique FIRST AMENDMENT, not in political correctness!  Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble,” noted the Court, “any variation from the majority's opinion may inspire fear.” Thus, my speech crime inspired fear and caused Loomis emotional trouble. 

     The Barnstable Patriot (Noah Hoffenberg) and Cape Cod Times (Paul Pronovost), to this day, refuse to publish anything regarding the above.  Clearly those papers are not independent!  My very civil rights today are being denied in Barnstable because I have been permanently barred from attending any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library, you know, that “clapboard tomb.”  Imagine that I was not permitted to attend Speyer’s lecture on Banned Books Week! Imagine not one community pillar gives a damn, not Town Manager Tom Lynch, nor Town Attorney Ruth Weil, town councilor Ann Canedy, state reps Cleon Turner and Brian Mannal, who’d proclaimed the matter a civil rights issue, was going to help, then didn’t (yes, vote for Mannal!), not local human rights commissar John Reed, nor artists and poets of Robert M. Nash’s Cultural Council of Cape Cod, not the Barnstable Village Civic Association, the writers of Nancy Rubin Stuart’s Cape Cod Writers Center, the instructors at CCCC, including Dan McCullough, John French, and Sarah Polito, not PEN New England, the ACLUM, etc., etc.    

     Now, would Vonnegut have been on their side too?  Surely, none of his living family members and friends give a damn.  “I don’t buy it!” snapped one Sturgis loyalist a few weeks ago.  And how shamefully easy it is for her willfully ignorant ilk to dismiss incontrovertible facts, like those presented above, and the very principles of democracy