Dear Friends and Foes of The American Dissident:
The latest issue of The American Dissident (#22) has just been mailed out to subscribers. Please note the new address: 217 Commerce Rd., Barnstable, MA 02630.
Besides the usual critical (i.e., offensive) poems, literary letters to and from the established order, and satirical cartoons, this issue contains a negative review of the journal, the editor’s rebuttal of it, a contributor’s negative poetry review, notes on gatekeepers, comments from a contributor on his having been censored by Huffington Post, an article by an activist against welfare fraud, and more notes on urination from a 93-year-old poet. To date, the editor has still not received any public funding, despite requests. To date, only one English professor in America has proven sufficiently open-minded to not only invite the editor, but also to actually use the journal in class. Below is the issue’s table of contents. Thanks again to those who dug deeply into their wallets to help the fragile cause.
The Editor
Editorial 4
New Poetry et al
Alan Garvey (Carlow, Ireland) 5-6
Doug Draime (Ashland, OR) 7-8
Notes from the Offended—Becky Tuch (Somerville, MA) 9-12
M. P. Powers (Boynton Beach, FL) 13-14
Gary Goude (Riverside, CA) 15
Notes from the Censored—By Rick Ferris (Akron, OH) 16-17
David Ochs (Santa Maria, CA) 18-19
Craig Shay (S. Setauket, NY) 20
Poetry Review—Leonard J. Cirino (Springfield, OR) 21-22
Daniel Senser (Cincinnatti, OH) 23
Kathryn Weinberg (Beverly, MA) 24-25
Notes on Gatekeepers—The Editor 26-28
Ted Stein (Bloomfield, NJ) 29-30
David Pointer (Murfreesboro, TN) 31
Notes from Activists—Russell Streur (Atlanta, GA) 32-33
Mather Schneider (Tucson, AZ) 34-35
Charles Portolano (Fountain Hills, AZ) 36
Notes from Students 37
John Cantey Knight (Metairie, LA) 38-39
Jody Azzouni (Brooklyn, NY) 40-41
Notes from the Golden Years—Ed Galing (Hatboro, PA) 43
The Editor (Barnstable, MA) 44-45
Literary Letters 46-56
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Cheryl Young
Per usual, the target of the satirical cartoon was informed of the blog entry. Will she respond? It is likely she will not. Most citizens hate unexpected and unauthorized criticism, cannot deal with it, reject it viscerally, refuse to deal with the possible truths therewithin, and do not favor vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. Sorry, that's been my experience.
Letter Sent (12/29/10) to Cheryl Young, Executive Director, MacDowell Colony:
It will be highly unlikely for you to fathom anything written in this email. In fact, the sad state of art, literature, and higher education in America today would make me believe that it would be equally unlikely for most college students of art and literature to fathom anything in it. In any case, I just read the NU magazine snippet on you… almost enough to make me vomit… almost. But your ilk—smiley-faced, moneyed artist or poet in tie and jacket—has become so banal in America today, I just couldn’t heave. It is people like you, former commodities traders turned CEO artists and poets, who have become the gatekeepers, permitting voice exclusively to bourgeois-friendly art and bourgeois-friendly literature. If only you could see the damage being done. Yes, “the marketplace,” as you stipulate. That says it all. But do we really need more ladder-climbing CEO “midwives” in the milieu or do we need more hardcore rude-truth tellers with balls? Well, I know your response… and you know mine. Women in power have proven no less corrupt then men in power. The old Sixties thought that if women ran things, things would be much better, turned out to be a pipedream load of horseshit. I’ve collided with your ilk frequently over the years. Just recently, the Cape Cod Cultural marm in power and director of Sturgis Library proved her dictatorial nature by refusing anything she deemed not to be “family friendly,” which of course is just another term for MacDowell-friendly or Chamber-of-Commerce friendly. You note that your Colony is a “starstruck place.” Yes, that too says it all. But I’d rather refer to it as a starblind place instead. That’s art today: icon worship. So, you’ve got a BA in Economics. Yes, I’m sure that’s helped you determine what art and literature to allow through the Chamber of Commerce gates and what art to prevent. Whoopee, your endowment has quintupled! That too says it all—MONEY as your artistic goal. How sad that you cannot see. How truly sad for you. So, your Colony received the highest award from the US government, which is really a reflection of the US Chamber of Commerce. When artists and poets shake the hands of businessmen, business women, and politicians, something has really gone awry in the milieu. These things said, how about inviting me to speak at your colony? I live in Massachusetts, so could easily make the trip to NH. Or how about subscribing to The American Dissident (only $20). Yes, you could leave the journal on a coffee table in an effort to expose your art fellows to an alternative point of view. SILENCE is golden, goes the old Chinese proverb. Well, I don’t agree with it. BTW, I’m class of ’72. Yes, I should do a cartoon on you. As you know, I’ve already done one on your Colony.
No response was recieved.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Denis Dutton
Professor Denis Dutton created “Arts & Letters Daily” on The Chronicle of Higher Education website and died recently. "I think that he has been an incredibly passionate advocate for ideas and truth,” noted his son. Yet Dutton refused to permit the ideas and truth of The American Dissident on that website, despite my requests. Dutton was a little-caesar gatekeeper, keeping the doors closed to ideas and truths that he did not like. Should we mourn his death? Not in the least.
Does the following, on the Arts & Letters Daily website, represent passionate advocate for ideas and truth... or business-as-usual in the established-order literary milieu? "Allen Ginsberg had a serene air about him, like Yoda, but with bigger ears. At least that’s what Tyler Stoddard Smith remembers about him. Oh, and that Ginsberg peed on his shoes..."
The cartoon above is a satire of Dutton's book.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Censored! If Henry Could See THEM Now!
The following comment, “Pipe Dream,” was written in response to Ithaca College professor Michael Smith’s Inside Higher Ed article, “If Henry Could See Us Now” (see http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/11/02/smith). Sadly and unsurprisingly censored by Inside Higher Ed, which exists to propagate PC and the academic established order. Mention of the censorship incident was sent to History/Ecology professor Michael Smith of Ithaca College. Smith, as good academic, chose to accept the censorship incident and remain silent. Mention was also sent to Ithaca College’s student newspaper and members of Smith’s history department, as well as college president. It is particularly reprehensible that my comment was censored because my comment simply sought to present another side of Thoreau, a side that was not happy-face PC-friendly. Was the truth in my comment rude? Well, isn’t truth always rude when spoken to power?
Pipe DreamThe project to build a replica Thoreau shack on Ithaca College’s campus, as noted in Professor Michael Smith’s article, “If Henry Could See Us Now,” is diversionary. In fact, would Henry really be happy to see college students working with professors to build a replica of his shack? Thoreau was mostly a loner, not a team player. “The gregariousness of men is their most contemptible & discouraging aspect,” he stated. “See how they follow each other like sheep not knowing why.” Individualism is hardly a valued trait on college campuses today.
The president of Ithaca College selected Walden as required reading because the book is entirely “safe” from his perspective. Any number of quotes from Thoreau’s journal entries would have proven far more provocative and thus apt to instigate vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, though evidently not of academe. How about this quote, for example: “It suggests that the one great rule of composition — and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this — is to speak the truth.” Imagine if an English professor at Ithaca College, or better yet the president himself, actually encouraged that on campus! It would set the PC myrmidons aflame! It would free the student newspaper!
Emerson noted, regarding Thoreau: “Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that his admirers, called him ‘that terrible Thoreau’.” Clearly, Thoreau was not the kind of fellow apt to get tenure today. After all, imagine such frankness before the ruling tenured professors and administrators. Thoreau had written: “A cross man, a coarse man, an eccentric man, a silent, a man who does not drill well,—of him there is some hope. Your gentlemen, they are all alike. They utter their opinions as if it was not a man that uttered them.”
That quote evokes the civility mantra suffocating free speech at so many institutions of purported higher learning today.
Imagine, instead of another replica shack—Yes, there’s one at Walden Pond too. I was threatened by a state trooper for leaving my free-speech flyers in it.—, if professors like Michael Smith actually stepped out from the comfortable academic herd to actively test the waters of democracy on their particular campuses by performing experiments in free speech, that is, by daring to speak what in their hearts they damn well know will get them not more carrots, but rather the ire of the reigning academic established order. Imagine, if we could get them to heed Thoreau’s famous dictum: “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” The result would surely be not continued academic censorship and corporatization of higher education, but rather fortified democracy and true appreciation for the First Amendment. Then one might truly and proudly ask: “if Henry could see us now.”
Pipe DreamThe project to build a replica Thoreau shack on Ithaca College’s campus, as noted in Professor Michael Smith’s article, “If Henry Could See Us Now,” is diversionary. In fact, would Henry really be happy to see college students working with professors to build a replica of his shack? Thoreau was mostly a loner, not a team player. “The gregariousness of men is their most contemptible & discouraging aspect,” he stated. “See how they follow each other like sheep not knowing why.” Individualism is hardly a valued trait on college campuses today.
The president of Ithaca College selected Walden as required reading because the book is entirely “safe” from his perspective. Any number of quotes from Thoreau’s journal entries would have proven far more provocative and thus apt to instigate vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, though evidently not of academe. How about this quote, for example: “It suggests that the one great rule of composition — and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this — is to speak the truth.” Imagine if an English professor at Ithaca College, or better yet the president himself, actually encouraged that on campus! It would set the PC myrmidons aflame! It would free the student newspaper!
Emerson noted, regarding Thoreau: “Such dangerous frankness was in his dealing that his admirers, called him ‘that terrible Thoreau’.” Clearly, Thoreau was not the kind of fellow apt to get tenure today. After all, imagine such frankness before the ruling tenured professors and administrators. Thoreau had written: “A cross man, a coarse man, an eccentric man, a silent, a man who does not drill well,—of him there is some hope. Your gentlemen, they are all alike. They utter their opinions as if it was not a man that uttered them.”
That quote evokes the civility mantra suffocating free speech at so many institutions of purported higher learning today.
Imagine, instead of another replica shack—Yes, there’s one at Walden Pond too. I was threatened by a state trooper for leaving my free-speech flyers in it.—, if professors like Michael Smith actually stepped out from the comfortable academic herd to actively test the waters of democracy on their particular campuses by performing experiments in free speech, that is, by daring to speak what in their hearts they damn well know will get them not more carrots, but rather the ire of the reigning academic established order. Imagine, if we could get them to heed Thoreau’s famous dictum: “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” The result would surely be not continued academic censorship and corporatization of higher education, but rather fortified democracy and true appreciation for the First Amendment. Then one might truly and proudly ask: “if Henry could see us now.”
Monday, November 1, 2010
Scott McLemee
The following is the comment I attempted to post. It was, however, censored by Scott McLemee and/or his boss Doug Lederman, editor of Inside Higher Education. The comment pertained to McLemee's article, oddly enough called "Rude Democracy" (see http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee311). Note that McLemee boasts of not even holding a college degree. Yet, somehow, he's become a board member and regular columnist at Inside Higher Ed, an online newspaper devoted to matters of higher education. Only the Left could encourage a debate on the topic "Rude Democracy," while simultaneously censoring opinions it doesn't like. Should organs of purported higher education be in the censoring business? It is my humble opinion, as editor of The American Dissident and long-time professor, that they should not be. It is, however, the opinion of the president of the Association of American University Professors, Cary Nelson, that they should be. The Left clamors ad nauseum for civility. But is censorship civil?
..................................
Scott McLemee finally comes out of the PC-socialist closet. Bravo! He admits, though only indirectly, that he is not at all an independent journalist, but rather a doctrinaire socialist journalist who marches with the “Socialist Contingent.” “Full disclosure: I was part of this, and joined in chanting ‘We're gonna make Glen Beck cry!’,” he notes. Demonization of the likes of Beck or O’Reilly or Obama, for that matter, is a form of ad hominem which tends to be the way of the indoctrinated—left or right wing. The battle is clear today in America: free speech vs. PC civility (and accompanying censorship). Fox, at least, reports on that battle. And, yes, I tend to watch Fox more than CNN because CNN oozes PC.
These things said, just like McLemee, I’m definitely for “higher taxes for the rich and an end to the wars,” but unlike him I’m also for an end to facile demonization of those who are not for those things, for the creation of work programs for those getting free government housing and money (welfare), including Obama’s African aunt in Boston, and an end to PC tenure in the Humanities.
The problem with CIVILIY that is not mentioned in this article is its fundamental SUBJECTIVITY. Civil for you, McLemee, Herbst, and Lederman, might not be civil for me… and vice versa. That is why democracy demands a First Amendment and why perhaps Inside Higher Ed (IHE), though a private money-making organization, ought to embrace it. Sadly, it does not… or if it does, that embrace is highly superficial.
Susan Herbst is quite right, whereas IHE wrong: “Creating a culture of argument, and the thick skin that goes along with it, are long-term projects that will serve democracy well.” Her stats are of course quite frightening, though not at all surprising to me as a long-time professor: “72 percent of students agreed that it was very important for them always to feel comfortable in class.”
The thought I had the other day would be deemed sexist and thus dismissed… and probably censored. But I’ll evoke it here anyhow in the name of the FIRST Amendment: Have the soccer-mom tenured professors in power today in the Humanities, those women in purple, succeeded over the past several decades to coddle and otherwise cocoon student adults with their Safe Zones et al? Where are they hiding when right-wing student newspapers are burned and speakers heckled off the stage at college campuses across the nation? “Feeling comfortable and unthreatened intellectually is a value many students share,” notes Herbst. But is that really a value? What it does is foster cliquishness and lack of outside opinion and input. It fosters the knee-jerk, anti-Fox mentality.
McLemee has it right here and this is why he despises Beck: “Hence pursuing an argument is taken as very nearly an act of aggression.” BTW, I’m an out-of-the-closet atheist and even watch Beck now and then. Well, uh, I do tend to turn the channel to CNN when he starts spouting his god inanity. Oops, that’s an un-PC statement that might OFFEND and get this comment censored into oblivion in our so-called democracy.
McLemee notes: “The attitude that it's better to stay cool and amused than to risk making arguments or expressing too much ardor—this is not civility. It’s timidity.” But is he not being a grand hypocrite when those like me do express ardor, then are censored by his boss, while he remains silent with regards that censorship?
Finally, my comment regarding Herbst’s IHE essay on civility was censored by IHE. I brought that to Herbst’s attention in an email. Herbst, unsurprisingly or rather hypocritically, did not respond. Since it is perhaps likely that this comment will be censored to spare Herbst the embarrassment, it will be posted on my weblog. Thank you for your attention.
..................................
Scott McLemee finally comes out of the PC-socialist closet. Bravo! He admits, though only indirectly, that he is not at all an independent journalist, but rather a doctrinaire socialist journalist who marches with the “Socialist Contingent.” “Full disclosure: I was part of this, and joined in chanting ‘We're gonna make Glen Beck cry!’,” he notes. Demonization of the likes of Beck or O’Reilly or Obama, for that matter, is a form of ad hominem which tends to be the way of the indoctrinated—left or right wing. The battle is clear today in America: free speech vs. PC civility (and accompanying censorship). Fox, at least, reports on that battle. And, yes, I tend to watch Fox more than CNN because CNN oozes PC.
These things said, just like McLemee, I’m definitely for “higher taxes for the rich and an end to the wars,” but unlike him I’m also for an end to facile demonization of those who are not for those things, for the creation of work programs for those getting free government housing and money (welfare), including Obama’s African aunt in Boston, and an end to PC tenure in the Humanities.
The problem with CIVILIY that is not mentioned in this article is its fundamental SUBJECTIVITY. Civil for you, McLemee, Herbst, and Lederman, might not be civil for me… and vice versa. That is why democracy demands a First Amendment and why perhaps Inside Higher Ed (IHE), though a private money-making organization, ought to embrace it. Sadly, it does not… or if it does, that embrace is highly superficial.
Susan Herbst is quite right, whereas IHE wrong: “Creating a culture of argument, and the thick skin that goes along with it, are long-term projects that will serve democracy well.” Her stats are of course quite frightening, though not at all surprising to me as a long-time professor: “72 percent of students agreed that it was very important for them always to feel comfortable in class.”
The thought I had the other day would be deemed sexist and thus dismissed… and probably censored. But I’ll evoke it here anyhow in the name of the FIRST Amendment: Have the soccer-mom tenured professors in power today in the Humanities, those women in purple, succeeded over the past several decades to coddle and otherwise cocoon student adults with their Safe Zones et al? Where are they hiding when right-wing student newspapers are burned and speakers heckled off the stage at college campuses across the nation? “Feeling comfortable and unthreatened intellectually is a value many students share,” notes Herbst. But is that really a value? What it does is foster cliquishness and lack of outside opinion and input. It fosters the knee-jerk, anti-Fox mentality.
McLemee has it right here and this is why he despises Beck: “Hence pursuing an argument is taken as very nearly an act of aggression.” BTW, I’m an out-of-the-closet atheist and even watch Beck now and then. Well, uh, I do tend to turn the channel to CNN when he starts spouting his god inanity. Oops, that’s an un-PC statement that might OFFEND and get this comment censored into oblivion in our so-called democracy.
McLemee notes: “The attitude that it's better to stay cool and amused than to risk making arguments or expressing too much ardor—this is not civility. It’s timidity.” But is he not being a grand hypocrite when those like me do express ardor, then are censored by his boss, while he remains silent with regards that censorship?
Finally, my comment regarding Herbst’s IHE essay on civility was censored by IHE. I brought that to Herbst’s attention in an email. Herbst, unsurprisingly or rather hypocritically, did not respond. Since it is perhaps likely that this comment will be censored to spare Herbst the embarrassment, it will be posted on my weblog. Thank you for your attention.
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