Jackson West’s Obsessive Compulsion

So it’s late, I should be sleeping, but instead I’m reading a working manuscript of Susie Bright’s collection of short stories that are a lightly fictionalized account of her time in the Red Tide, an activist organization in a number of American high schools, and the International Socialists in the 1970s. Her second story leads off with an introduction to George Putnam, who I was too young to be familiar with (though his type is ageless):

He had a gift for articulating the fears of his paranoid “John Bircher” tribe that was a radical’s propaganda dream come true. I wanted everything Georgie prophesied to come to pass. I wanted to be: Overrun by communists! Pot heads! Homosexuals! But the tsunami never arrived. He let us all down.

Of course, I had to look Mr. Putnam up on YouTube. And of course, it’s all so hilariously true. Here’s a special on Perversion for Profit. Did you know that 75 to 90% of perverted material ends up in the hands of the children?

Funny, his rhetoric sounds vaguely familiar. And if you don’t think George Putnam and the kind of outraged John Bircher’s who’d watch his newsreels at stag parties were into this kind of thing, check out what a little editing does for the place. “Come join the fun” indeed!

As cynical as I may be, I recognize that the majority is unknowable. Hence:

http://tinyurl.com/22ajoy

The presentation of the schism in terms of wave versus particle duality pretty much defines the core conflict. Or non-conflict. If you accept the fundamental duality. Or whatevs.

It took me a while, but I figured “why fight hastily composed vitriol with more hastily composed vitriol?” Rather, I wanted to douse a big bucket of reasoned discourse and careful research on the simmering racial tension ignited by Loren Feldman over the last two weeks. Andrew Krucoff, who was the first person I found raising the alarm, was kind enough to publish my thoughts in a follow-up to his post.

HOW TO: Race Bait for Fun and Profit

And lest critics scorn me for having an opinion three thousand miles away from any possibility of fisticuffs, I will be arriving in New York for a four month stay on August 29th. If you’re in the Big Apple, please do drop me a line.