Table Of ContentThirty
The
Years'Wars
Dispatches and Diversions
···· of a Radical Journalist
1 9 6 5 - 1 9 9 4
Andrew Kopkind
The
Years'Wars
Dispatches and Diversions
of a Radical Journalist
1 9 6 5 - 1 9 9 4
•
Andrew Kopkind
Edited by JoAnn Wypijewski
VERSO
LONDON • NEW YORK
First published by Verso 1995
© Estate of Andrew Kopkind 1995
All rights reserved
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London WlV 3HR
USA: 180 Varick Street, New York, New York 10014
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN: 1-85984 902 4
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Printed and bound in the United States of America
This book is dedicated with deep love and respect to
John Scagliotti.
It was made possible only through the invaluable
work of a superb editor, JoAnn Wypijewski, and the
timely support of many who jumped in when the going
got rough for me; they include Katrina vanden Heuvel,
Maria Margaronis and Tom Gogola.
For this project, both in conception and execution, the
importance of my dear friend Alexander Cockburn
was incalculable.
EDITOR'S NOTE
"Life
is not an unbroken narrative," Andy Kopkind said to me one day
early in our discussions about this book. I had finished reading
through tall stacks of his writing, and was intent that the final collection
reproduce the incandescent journey I had just made through lived history.
But perhaps because of the breadth of that journey, plotted out through
more than a thousand articles, I felt oddly suspended in time and overly
sensitive to gaps. Where was Sirhan Sirhan? I wondered, or Watergate? or
the reunification of Germany?
Andy had rich tales about each of the moments I'd noted, but as for a
written record, he'd been doing something else (travelling to Hanoi, mak
ing political commentaries and documentaries for WBCN radio in Boston,
fighting off cancer for the first time). Remembering the conversation now, I
think how finally ridiculous were my worries that something might be left
out. This book represents maybe 10 percent of Andy's life work (not count
ing the radio scripts). It is his walk, quickening sometimes to a trot,
through the history of the late twentieth century. In life-as-it-happens,
unlike calculated reconstructions of the past, something is always missed
out. Indeed, it is not an unbroken narrative. But how fresh are the scenes
as they unfold!
Andy began his career as a political journalist in 1965, at Gil Harrison's
New Republic. He concluded it at The Nation, where he wrote until he
died, in October of 1994. In between, his work appeared in the New
Statesman, where he was US correspondent in the late sixties; in Mayday,
later Hard Times, the newsletter he founded with James Ridgeway and
Robert Sherrill towards the close of that same decade; and in varied publi
cations, from The New York Review of Books to Ramparts to The Boston
Phoenix and The Village Voice to Il Manifesto. Here some pieces are titled
differently from the original. Some have been cut to avoid repetition and to
dispense with detail that, while highly relevant at the moment of writing,
is obscure in its specificity today. Some have been shortened for space. All
have been copy-edited for style. But there has been no attempt to trim the
sails of exuberant idealism or to readjust analysis in light of later events.
Andy was a sense-maker, never a revisionist. Nor have conformities of
style been imposed where style itself is a political expression. Thus, with
time, "Negro" transmutes into "black" transmutes into "African-American"
and back again to "black." Thus, too, "'the movement'" as a concept in
inverted commas evolves into "the Movement" and thence "the movement"
as its fortunes rise and fade.
The book is arranged chronologically, with a Prologue-drawn from
interviews conducted in early 1994 by Tom Gogola and Jean Stein-that
captures Andy's character, evokes the world before his political coming-of
age and opens a window onto the history that it anticipates. Occasionally
in the last two parts of the book the rules of temporal sequence are sus
pended for the sake of the narrative's thematic arc. Also, some of the later
pieces from The Nation are assigned their publication date rather than
their much later issue date in cases where the proximity of analysis to
events under discussion is meaningful.
Throughout his years at The Nation, Andy had a special affection for the
magazine's interns, and I am most grateful to Theo Emery, Jennifer
Ferrara, Kyra Holland and Lawrence Levi for their assistance to Andy and
to me. I want to thank Richard Lingeman and Katrina vanden Heuvel for
their generosity when work on the book limited my participation at the
magazine. Also Peter Meyer, Jeffrey Blankfort, Tom Gogola, Christine
Haggerty, Bob Lescher, Yuri Shutovsky and Kio Stark, who were helpful
and kind in times of need.
This book was produced under fierce pressures, eased greatly by the
spirit and talent of Deborah Thomas, who did the design and production,
Sandy McCroskey, who did the typing, Beth Stroud and Emily Gordon,
who proofread, and Marty Jezer and Shoshona Rihn, who did the index.
Lists such as this have a flatness that drains the most deserving of credits.
For John Scagliotti, Andy's tender comrade, these lines must contain the
whole of my gratitude.
In the aftermath of Andy's death, the raw material of this book, through
all of its refinements, has been for me like a glorious conversation. It is
with some sadness, amid the joy in Andy's legacy, that I now let it go.
-J.W.
CONTENTS
Introduction by Alexander Cockburn xiii
Prologue xix
PART ONE
Chapter I. DREADFUL OPrIMISM
A Walk in Alabama 3
New Radicals in Dixie 5
Of, By and For the Poor 8
Not So Great Society 14
Bureaucracy's Long Arm 16
The First Falling Domino 23
Call Me Ma'am 24
Radicals on the March: But Where to, and by What Route? 26
Dreadful Optimism 31
Chapter II. WAITING FORD-DAY
The Outlook for Bosch 34
Watts-Waiting for D-Day 41
Mini-Star for Governor 45
Average American Boy 47
The Lair of the Black Panther 48
Far-Out Kids Strike a Blow 54
The Birth of Black Power 57
Chapter Ill. ALL SYSTEMS FAIL!
In Wartime 61
Waiting for Lefty 64
Doctor's Plot 72
Battle of Newark 82
All Systems Fail! 84
Soul Power 87
The Defense of Hue 95
The Liberal's Progress 96
The Trial of Captain Levy: II 104
All Fools' Eve 112
Chapter IV. A CORD SNAPS
A Cord Snaps 113
The American Nightmare 118
From Hanoi With Love 121
No Hope From Miami Beach 130
Prague Under Red Guns 133
Blue Collars and White Racism 140
Sabotage: 'This Is Number One and the Fun Has Just Begun' 146
Are We in the Middle ofa Revolution? 148
Chapter V. BAD MOON RISING
Blacks v. Jews 155
The Year of the Heroic Convict 157
Football, American Rules 159
The Real SDS Stands Up 161
We Aim at the Stars (But Hit Quang Tri) 169
Coming of Age in Aquarius 171
Going Down in Chicago 176
To the Comfort Station 181
Bad Moon Rising 187
To Off a Panther 191
The Trial 198
PART TWO
Chapter VI. REFUGEES
A Sense of Crisis 209
Bringing It All Back Home 214
Andy Weil and the Search Beyond Reason 221
Lady Sings Dem Kozmic Blues 224
Which Way the Wind Blew 228
Refugees From the New Left 230
Chapter VII. SPECTACLE
See Dick Run: Politics-into-Spectacle 241
Munich: Terror on the $30 Million Stage 242
Are Two Sexes Too Many? 245
Us and Them: A Death March for the Sixties 249
HowtheWarWonMe 252
Only in America 256
Chapter VIII. ADAMANT MEMORIES
Lowndes County, Alabama: The Great Fear Is Gone 259
The Boys in the Barracks 267
America's IBtimate Strategic Hamlet 278
The Adamant Memory of Vietnam 285
Boston's Bitter Bicentennial 287
Chapter IX. CULTURE CLASH
Kitsch for the Rich 293
Culture Clash: America's New Right 298
The Dialectic of Disco 308
The Rise and Decline of Cocaine Culture 319
Gay Life: Present at the Creation 324
Chapter X. COLD WAR II
Cold Warll 333
Jamaica: Trouble in Paradise 338
One-and-a-Half(Strangled) Cheers for the USSR 348
Lennon Without Tears 354
Slow Bay of Pigs 357
The Return of Cold War Liberalism 358
PART THREE
Chapter XI. NEGLECT OF THE LEFT
Neglect of the Left: Allard Lowenstein 375
Movin' On Up 383
Prayer Power 384
The Left, the Democrats and the Future 385
'Our Parents Are a Little Weird' 391
The Changelings 393
Handwriting on the Wall 395
Chapter XII. A SEASON FOR REPENTANCE
War and Memory 398
Rambo: Metamachismo Carries the Day 399
Are You Game? 401
Heroes Are Made . . . 405
The Revenge of Ahab 407
Chickens Come Home to Roost 407
Suffering Succotash 410
Cold War Camp: Amerika-lt Can't Happen Here 411
Subways Are for Shooting 414
A Season for Repentance 415
Chapter XIII. LIGHT AND SHADOW
A Populist Message Hits Home 429
Flo Don't Know 435
Light and Shadow: Where Do Jesse's People Go? 437
The Old Gringos 439
Race, Class and Murder in Boston 440
Cycle of Madness 443
Blood, Oil and Politics 444
The Dish on Nancy 446
Pee-Wee's Bad Trip 447
Chapter XIV: GRINCH CAPITALISM
Clinton Already?: The Manufactured Candidate 448
Grinch Capitalism: No Miracle in Lowell 453
Necromania 460
LA Lawless 461
Anybody But ... Who? 465
Back Off, Jack 472
Chapter XV: STARTING OVER
From Russia With Love and Squalor 4 74
Whited Out 500
The Gay Moment 501
Opening Shots 510
Starting Over 512
After Stonewall 513
Index 517
