Political Humor from 1915

Hat Tip: Meg at Cognitive Dissonance.

Blues on a Saturday: Otis Rush "Gamblers Blues"

Having Governments Declare Hate Groups as Hate Groups is a Bad Idea

Liberals and progressives, just like right wingers, neo-confederates, and gun nuts, have been promoting dubious ideas on the White House petition site.  More than 800,000  reacted to President Obama's re-election in multiple petitions for their states to secede from the United States. After the Sandy Hook tragedy, nearly fifty thousand have petitioned for CNN talk show host Piers Morgan to be deported back to England because of his support for gun control.

Not to outdone, over 300,000 have petitioned for the hateful Westboro Baptist Church to be officially declared a hate group. It is said to be the most signatures on an individual petition in the history of the White House petition site.

Here is the text of the petition

This group has been recognized as a hate group by organizations, such as The Southern Poverty Law Center, and has repeatedly displayed the actions typical of hate groups.

Their actions have been directed at many groups, including homosexuals, military, Jewish people and even other Christians. They pose a threat to the welfare and treatment of others and will not improve without some form of imposed regulation.

Another petition , with close to 100.00 signers, references the White House petition and urges the FBI

to officially designate the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group, urging the IRS to revoke the organization's tax-exempt status and increasing law enforcement's ability to block them from disrupting private funerals.

Not only is this is a really noxious proposal, it is also misguided. I've been asked to sign it several times on both Facebook and Twitter. I'm sure many signed it just to let off steam at the reprehensible behavior and disgusting ideas of Fred Phelps and family, which have made Westboro the symbol of anti-gay bigotry, even though it is tiny, marginal, and counterproductive group.  Its raw, unfiltered hatred is probably a net plus for gay rights, discrediting the antigay cause. The petitions makes its signers feel good, but it diverts attention from the really powerful groups which support antigay bigotry and legislation in the United States and internationally. The petitions make the statement that anti-bigotry is wrong --and the statement that we should abandon the first amendment in favor of having government agencies, whether the President or the FBI, declare some speech to be banned.

There is simply no process today in the United States to legally recognize  an organization as a "hate group."  And that's a good thing.  We don't proscribe groups because we don't like their views.  It is even allowed for individuals and groups to advocate the overthrow of the government as long as they don't advocate imminent action.

And, why, would we trust the FBI,  which in its internal documents has labelled the Occupy movement as a domestic terrorist organization, to make public judgments on whether this or that organization should be labelled a "hate group?"

As Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued

the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. To permit the continued building of our politics and culture, and to assure self-fulfillment for each individual, our people are guaranteed the right to express any thought, free from government censorship. The essence of this forbidden censorship is content control. Any restriction on expressive activity because of its content would completely undercut the 'profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.

The anti-Westboro petition confuses speech and actions.  It says that Westboro "displayed the actions that are typical of hate groups."  And that their "actions" "pose a threat to the welfare and treatment of others...." But there differences in what hate groups do.  The SPLC states that inclusion on the list "does not imply a group advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity."  So far as I know Westboro has never incited attacks on gay people.  Their placards say "God Hates Fags" not "Kill Gays." They have, again so far as I know, obeyed ordinances and requirements that mandate that they conduct their protests a certain distance from funerals. 

The best way to oppose the hatred of Westboro is to either ignore them or to arrange counter-protests., not to have the government but them on a proscribed list.

In the past, the American government has put groups on proscribed lists. During the first red scare at the end of WWI, laws forbade the admission into the United States of immigrants who belonged to groups 'which advocated the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force or violence." Many states passed "criminal syndicalism" laws which in effect  made membership in radical  union organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World illegal. More than twenty states, including Kansas, made it illegal to display red flags. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer listed 12 organizations, membership in which would automatically lead to exclusion or deportation for alien members. However, the deportation proceedings aroused such a public clamor that the list,  was withdrawn. In 1947, Attorney General Tom Clark issued a list of 11 subversive organization including Communist fronts, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Nazi Party.  Within a decade, the list had grown to more than 100 organizations, even though many groups were defunct.

Membership, past or present, in these subversive groups  was a bar to federal employment. Many state and local government employees were required to sign a loyalty oath that they were not members of a subversive group, including but not limited to those on the AG's list.  Teachers were also required to sign loyalty oaths.  The Federal government required defense contractors and ports to clear their employees. Courts, at the time, held that other employers could fire employees who were members of "subversive" organizations.  In 1952 Congress passed a law "which provided that "no housing unit constructed under the United States Housing Act of 1937, as amended, shall be occupied by a person who is a member of an organization designated as subversive by the Attorney General."

Moreover, the subversive list had no real process for organizations to appeal their classification or to see the evidence against them. It took more than a decade for the Independent Socialist League an anti-Stalinist, left-wing group to get removed from the AG's list.  Lewis Coser wrote in an early 1954 issue  of Dissent:

For six years now a conspicuously powerless group called the Independent Socialist League, in political complexion Marxist and premature antiStalinist, has been on the Attorney General’s “Subversive List.” This disgraceful amalgam with Stalinist organizations has done the members of the ISL considerable harm. Yet hardly a voice has been raised in the official circles of liberalism to fight against this injustice. For what does it matter? Everyone knows that in difficult times minor injustices are unavoidable, and besides it is such an insignificant group. . . .

Now, finally, the Attorney General has filed a “bill of particulars” against the ISL. The group is not even accused of favoring “the violent overthrow” of the government; in substance and apart from the gross ignorance of the Attorney General’s charges, the ISL is accused of nothing more than being Marxist and desiring the abolition of capitalism. This, the Attorney General implies, is enough to make it “subversive.”

 (See also the July 1955 issue of the ISL's newspaper Labor Action and pages 5-8 of the  January 27, 1958 issue)

The Industrial Workers of the World was also, quite unjustly, included on the AG's list.

Let's not go down the road of governmental  proscription of organizations for being  "subversive" or "hate groups."

Wichita Martin Luther King Parade

I took some photos in Saturday's Martin Luther King Jr. parade. We marched from a South Broadway church to the Chester Lewis Reflection Square which comemmorates the 1958 Dockum Sit-In, one of the first actions to integrate lunch counters and restaurants in the modern civil rights ear. It was billed as the 34th annual, though I am told that there have been a few missed years. I remember one year when it was just too cold and rainy. 

Organizers of Saturday's events expressed a commitment to build a larger parade next year. Let's hope so. It was a good event, but it could be better. Still, we should not underestimate the importance of MLK events happening in cities and towns all across the country.

Blues on a Saturday: Jerry Hahn "Now's the Time"

I just came across this excellent performance of Charlie Parker's blues tune "Now's the Time" by guitarist Jerry Hahn. The video mixes a couple of Hahn performances with cute cat photos and pictures from throughout Hahn's long career. I heard Hahn live in 1970 with the jazz-rock fusion group Jerry Hahn Brotherhood with Wichita legend Mike Finnegan. And, before that on Country Roads and Other Places by the Gary Burton Quartet.

For those, who don't know the full story, "Now's the Time," recorded by Parker in 1945 was redone by Paul Williams four years later and became a massive best seller and a dance craze. Here the Williams version here on Youtube. It has been recorded myriad times by some very surprising artists and was a top 10 hit for Chubby Checker in the 1960s.

Blues on a Saturday: Lowell Fulson "Sinner's Prayer"

Lowell Fulson wrote and recorded "Sinner's Prayer" in 1950, although the most famous version was recorded by former Fulson sideman Ray Charles in 1957. Until preparing this post, I didn't realize that "sinners prayer" has a specific--and controversial-- meaning for Baptists, evangelicals, fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and charismatics. It is not a term used by Catholics and mainline Protestants.

Here is what wikipedia says

any prayer of repentance, spoken or read by individuals who feel convicted of the presence of sin in their life and desire to form or renew a personal relationship with God through his son Jesus Christ. It is not intended as liturgical like a creed or a confiteor. It is intended to be an act of initial conversion to Christianity, and a way to receive salvation. It also may be prayed as an act of re-commitment for those who are already believers in the faith. Often, at the end of a worship service, an evangelist will invite those desiring to receive Christ (thus becoming Christians) to repeat with him the words of some form of a sinner's prayer. It also is frequently found on printed gospel tracts, urging people to “repeat these words from the bottom of your heart”

Regardless of whether Fulson had church experiences that lead to writing this tune, it is a classic.

Blues on a Saturday: Jimmy McCracklin "The Walk"

Jimmy McCracklin, West Coast bluesman, died on December 20, 2012 after a career that spanned seven decades, having recorded over 30 albums with four gold records and written hundreds of songs including classics like "Tramp" "Think," and "Every Night, Every Day."

Tom Mazzolini of the San Francisco Blues Festival said of him, "He was probably the most important musician to come out of the Bay Area in the post-World War II years." But Kub Coda notes on allmusic.com "McCracklin has always been one of those artists whose currency always ran higher in the black blues community than it has in the subsequent years of white historical revision." On a NPR roundup of musicians who died in 2012, I didn't hear McCracklin's name,so its appropriate to feature this clip."

This is a 1991 recording of McCracklin's 1958 hit "The Walk" with Ry Cooder at the Village Music Anniversary Party. It features Wayne Bennett, long-time guitarist for Bobby "Blue" Bland.

Here are a few other McCracklin songs on Youtube "Georgia Slop," "Get Back," "Get Together."

Israel's election

From what I read there is an almost universal consensus that Benjamin Netanyahu is headed to an overwhelming victory in Israel's January 22 parliamentary  election.  Look a little closer and you will see that what is really meant is that the merger of Netanyahu's Likud Party and Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu will give the new party the largest share of seats in the new Knesset.

But in Israel's parliamentary system that is not the same as forming a new government.

About two weeks ago, Eric Lee wrote a provocative post " "Is this Netanyahu’s final month in office?" looking at the trend in polling results over the last year or more. Lee points out that the right wing parties of Netanyahu and Lieberman have declined in the polls from 45 seats in late 2011 to 36 seats in Dec 2012. [And, in a poll after Lee wrote his post, even lower to 33  seats!]It might be possible, Lee observes, that the left and center parties might be able to form a government with the support of the religious Shas party.  And, in a more optimistic projection, with the left, center and Arab parties getting about 10 percent more current projections, they might be able to cobble together a government without Shas.  Lee concludes "the most likely scenario is that Netanyahu pulls together a coalition, but it’s not inevitable."

Then, on December 29, I read this in the Times of Israel

The three leading center-left parties — Shelly Yachimovich’s Labor, Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid — are exploring possibilities to work together after the January 22 elections to try to prevent Likud-Beytenu head Benjamin Netanyahu from retaining the prime ministership, or at least to wield the strongest possible hand in coalition negotiations with him.

Efforts to merge at least some of the center-left parties foundered in the weeks before the deadline for submitting party lists for the elections earlier this month. A bid for a Labor-Hatnua alliance made some headway, but collapsed because both Yachimovich and Livni wanted to lead any such merged slate.

But opinion polls showing a gradual fall in support for Netanyahu’s Likud-Beytenu — and a first vague indication that some votes might be moving across the political spectrum from right to left — have energized talk of post-election possibilities on the center-left.

At this stage, surveys give no ammunition to the notion that the center-left might prevail in the elections, but activists see Netanyahu sliding, and believe the center-left may yet have more leverage than had been anticipated just a few weeks ago.

Livni said Friday that, after the elections, she would “attempt to create a front with other partners with the same worldview… with the imperative to replace Netanyahu.”

And, here is another reason not be overly pessimistic about the elections. Adiv Sterman reports

A broad majority of the Israeli public would vote in favor of a peace agreement with the Palestinians, if the government brought a plan that offered security guarantees to a referendum, polls published Sunday by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace found.

Roughly two-thirds of respondents (67 percent) expressed support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with land swaps; a demilitarized Palestine; and Jerusalem’s Old City administered jointly by the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, with Israel maintaining control of the Western Wall.

Journalist Larry Derfner praises Meretz's peace program 

the Meretz peace plan, which the party presented in its election campaign this week, an oasis in the desert.

The proposal doesn’t screw around. It calls for Israel’s immediate recognition of Palestine, followed by a settlement freeze, release of prisoners, lifting of roadblacks, and negotiations based on the Arab peace plan with the sponsorship of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – a “Regional Quartet” to accompany the old Quartet of the U.S., EU, UN and Russia. It also calls for scrapping the Oslo Accord – which ex-peace negotiator Dov Weisglass has held up as Israel’s instrument for turning the West Bank into “the only prison in the world where the prisoners have to provide for themselves” – and replacing it with an agreed-upon program for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to negotiate on a “fair, equal, government-to government basis.”

Bloggers Round-up

Corey Robin presents his top 5 posts of the year and a little extra

David Kaib  Top Five Posts No One Read

My Books of 2012

It's the time of the year for "best" and "top" lists.  As in 2011, 2010, and 2007, I've looked back over the books I've read this year to come up with  my top book list. I'm considering only books I read for the first time this year and ones published fairly recently, basically in 2010-2012 and for the most part I am excluding books on economics and unions which deserve separate list. That will help keep the total to just over ten. This is not a rank listing.

1. Sam Farber, Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment.

I really enjoyed reading Farber's book. One of the most well-informed and astute analysts of Castro's Cuba,  Farber writes from what he describes as "the classical Marxist tradition that preceded Stalinism in the USSR."  In the intro, Faber says he will concentrate on "those questions that I believe have been subject to a great deal of mythmaking, fallacies, and misunderstandings..." So there is a polemical quality to this books which makes it delightful reading.

Farber's book has won endorsements from leading academics such as Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Jorge Dominguez, and Adolfo Gilly.  It has also received in-depth coverage from Havana Times, and has been favorably  reviewed by Pablo Velasco and Sacha Ismail at Workers' Liberty and Charles Post at New Politics.

2. Sean Wilentz, Bob Dylan in America.

This is must reading for all serious Bob Dylan fans. Wilentz is a Professor at Princeton University and author of such works as The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (W.W. Norton, 2005) won the Bancroft Prize.  He also has an interest in American popular culture, having teamed with rock historian Greil Marcus to edit Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad.

Wilentz knows his Dylan and he knows American popular culture and links them in enlightening ways.  There are occasions when I think Wilentz lets his aesthetic judgment be outweighed by his appreciation of Dylans ties to earlier American culture.  For example, I don't understand Wilentz's praise of Dylan's Christmas CD, which I thought was horrible.

3. Stewart Acuff Playing Bigger Than You Are - A Life in Organizing


A fascinating memoir/autobiography by Stewart Acuff, former organizing director for the AFL-CIO.  It is essential reading for every youngish labor organizer and social justice and activists and for those who are not so youngish.

4. Thomas Frank, Pity the Billionaire: the Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right.


Frank is great, as usual. And, for this one, he not only gave a reading at Wichita's Watermark Books, but went out for pizza afterwards with a number of  local activists.  Cool.

5. Chuck Collins, 99 to 1

This is a concise (124 pages, plus 14 pages of notes) examination of how wealth inequality is wrecking the economy.  It is well-organized with lots of tables and graphics.  If you want to know how the 99/1 economic divide means in the real world and the damages that it does, this is a great place to start.

One limitation, Collins analysis doesn't really discuss the central role of the attacks of unions and limits on the ability of workers to organize in the dramatic rise of inequality.  Or the necessity to increase the power of workers in turning the situation around.

6. Michael Kazin, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.

Kazin, co-editor of Dissent and professor of history at Georgetown has written a new history of the American left, a sort of companion to John Nichols, The S Word, which made my 2011 list.

The publisher describes it this way:

Kazin tells a new history of the left: one in which many of these movements, although they did not fully succeed on their own terms, nonetheless made lasting contributions to American society that led to equal opportunity for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals; the celebration of sexual pleasure; multiculturalism in the media and the schools; and the popularity of books and films with altruistic and antiauthoritarian messages.

7. Manning Marable, Malcom X: A Life of Reinvention

Michael Glitz has a good review on Huffington Post.

The scholar and author Manning Marable died just on the eve of publication of his magnum opus, this sober, detailed, engrossing biography of Malcolm X. One trusts he is resting easy, knowing that the early reviews were rapturous and that the book did justice both to his lifelong work as an educator and champion of progressive causes and to Malcolm X's ever-growing importance as a figure both in the black community and impassioned fighters for freedom and justice around the world.

I'm not sure about the "ever-growing importance" of Malcolm X.

Emahunn Campbell wrote, just before the publication of Marable's biography, on the Activist blog of the Young Democratic Socialists.

I hope that Marable’s book will uncover and develop Malcolm’s relationship to socialists and socialism. Although one cannot refer to Malcolm as a socialist–he did not have a chance to fully develop or move towards a socialist position–he did have strong opinions about the depredations of capitalism, especially after his split with the Nation of Islam (NOI). To be sure, he went from being a proponent of black capitalism, which was an ideological residue from his time as the national spokesman for the NOI, to becoming anti-capitalist due to his engagement with socialist and Marxist literature as well as his travels to Cuba and a number of decolonizing nations in Africa and the Middle East that claimed to be developing their respective national paths to socialism. ...

While no socialist organization can claim Malcolm, one can definitely imagine how profoundly developed his thought would have been if he was around long enough for it to manifest itself in his organizational pursuits.

Lawrence Gulotta describes the relationship between Malcolm X and democratic socialists A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and James Farmer here. Gulutta notes

No church wanted to receive Malcolm X’s body, after the assassination, for fear of retribution by the NOI. Finally, after a week of calling Harlem churches, the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ was willing to arrange the funeral and made its auditorium available. A thousand people came to pay respects to Malcolm X and his family. The national civil rights leaders, and Harlem civic leaders, including Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, stayed away from the funeral. It was a small group of democratic socialists, including Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, James Furman, and John Louis, that were present at the funeral. Dick Gregory, not a socialist, was present. King, Whitney Young and Kwame Nkrumah sent condolences. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee presided over the program. Marable doesn’t mention Clifton DeBarry or George Breitman attending the funeral.

8. Cornelius L. Bynum, A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights. 

I've written on the importance of A. Philip Randolph before here on the NAR, so I looked forward to this book. And I was not dissapointed. Bynum, Associate Professor of History and Associate Director, African American Studies and Research Center, Purdue University, has written a very valuable intellectual history of A. Philip Randolph through the post-WWII campaigns to end Jim Crow in the military and to establish a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. It does not explicitly discuss Randolph's key role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s. the 1963 March on Washington, or the 1965 Freedom Budget for All Americans. 
 
Bynum's books discusses the evolution of Randolph's thought and action as he dealt with the dual problems of class exploitation and racial repression.

9. Michael G. Long (editor) I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life In Letters

A fascinating and educational collection of 150 letters by Rustin, the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and trainer of generations of activists in non-violent social change.

Sociologist William Julius Wilson writes

"I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters provides fascinating insights into Bayard Rustin’s activist life. It includes hundreds of letters in Rustin's own words that reveal his tireless and brave efforts to promote American civil rights, as well as his personal tragedies. All aspects of Rustin’s experiences are captured in these letters, including his struggles with opponents dedicated to silencing him as an international symbol of nonviolent protests against racial injustice. This remarkable and deeply moving publication is a must-read."

10-11  Van Jones Rebuild the Dream and Robert Kuttner, A Presidency in Peril

Two leading progressives examine frustrations with the Obama administration and what the left should do.

12.  William Cunningham, The Green Corn Rebellion

A reprint of the 1935 novel by William Cunningham about  the 1917 rebellion by Oklahoma farmers against the draft and World War I. There is a fine, informative introduction by historian Nigel Sellars, author of  Oil, Wheat, and Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World in Oklahoma.  I half-expected this to be mainly of historic and regional interest.  But, I was pleasantly surprised. It was a really good read and stands alongside Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Upton Sinclair's better works.

Here's a nice review by Elizabeth Breau.  
 

Blues on a Saturday: Fontella Bass

Fontella Bass, most famous for her 1965 hit "Rescue Me" died this week on December 26 at age 72. ht: Mick Hartley

The song has been described in Allmusic as "the greatest record Aretha never made." It was certainly an immense hit. It went "pop." I heard it on the radio in small town Kansas and a few years later found it in the bins at a little operation that stocked jukeboxes in the area.

.

Bass got her start on the blues scene in St. Louis where she played piano in Little Milton's band and met her husband trumpet player Lester Bowie. After unpleasant experiences, to put it mildly, with Chess Records where she had recorded "Rescue Me" she performed with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and recorded the acclaimed The Art Ensemble of Chicago with Fontella Bass. Here is a AEC song featuring Fontella Bass from a movie soundtrack.

I'm putting the AEC with FB album on my "listen to" list, but for now it seems right to close with Rescue Me."

Holiday MusticThat Doesn't Suck #9 (2012 edition)

The Modern Jazz Quartet - England's Carol or God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.

Holiday Music That Doesn't Such #8 (2012 edition)

I think that the best version of "Baby It's Cold Outside" is 1961 hit by Ray Charles and Betty Carter, which I remember hearing as a youth. In recent years, many have criticized it as a date rape anthem , but it has become an even more popular recording vehicle. I can't claim to have listened to all of the performances listed in the wikipedia article, but if you want something different from the Charles-Carter duet, I recommend Blossom Dearie and Bob Dorough.

Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck #7 (2012 edition)

Sonny Boy Williamson II "Santa Claus"

Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck #6 (2012 edition)

With Elvin Jones on drums, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and McCoy Tyner on piano,John Coltrane performs "Greensleeves/What Child Is This?" a popular Christmas carol written in 1865. At the age of twenty-nine, English writer William Chatterton Dix was struck with a sudden near-fatal illness and confined to bedrest for several months, during which he went into a deep depression. Yet out of his near-death experience, Dix wrote many hymns, including "What Child is This?", later set to the traditional English tune "Greensleeves."

This version is from the classic 1961 album Africa/Brass. With a little searching, you can find several life versions.

Holiday Music that Doesn't Suck #5 (2012 edition)

Ms. Jody "It's Christmas. Baby". A contemporary Southern soul singer. I really like this gem that I discovered quite by chance.

Support Eric Looms

I have added my name to this statement. I urge other bloggers and academics to do the same. 

Statement on Erik Loomis

by Erik Loomis Statement on December 19, 2012

Erik Loomis is no stranger to this blog. A gifted young scholar of US labor and environmental history, Loomis is also a blogger at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Many of us have tussled and tangled with him, most recently over whether leftists should vote for Obama. We have often disagreed with Loomis, not always pleasantly or politely, and he has certainly given as good as he has got.
But now we must stand by Loomis’s side and speak up and out on his behalf, for he has become the target of a witch hunt, and as an untenured professor at the University of Rhode Island, he is vulnerable. Loomis needs our solidarity and support, and we must give it to him.
This past Friday, in the wake of the tremendous grief and outrage millions of people felt over the Newtown mass shooting, Loomis tweeted the following:

I was heartbroken in the first 20 mass murders. Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.

Wayne LaPierre is the head of the National Rifle Association. It seems obvious to us that when Loomis called for LaPierre’s head on a stick, he had in mind something like this from the Urban Dictionary:

A metaphor describing retaliation or punishment for another’s wrongdoing, or public outrage against an individual or group for the same reason. After the BP Oil Spill; many Americans would like to see Tony Hayward’s head on a stick, myself included.

Ever since putting someone’s head on a stick ceased to be a routine form of public punishment—indeed, the last instance of it we can think of is fictional (Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, though it references an actual event from the French Revolution)—calling for someone’s head has been a fairly conventional way to express one’s outrage or criticism. Two months ago, for example, right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds voiced his anger over the State Department’s lax provision of security in Benghazi by demanding, “Can we see some heads roll?” Yet that very same Glenn Reynolds is now accusing Loomis of using “eliminationist rhetoric.”
Other conservative voices have joined in. The Daily Caller says Loomis “unleashed a flurry of profanity-ridden tweets demanding death for National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre.” Townhall put Loomis’s tweets in the context of NRA members and leaders getting death threats. And just this morning, Michelle Malkin wrote at National Review Online:

What’s most disturbing is that the incitements are coming from purportedly respectable, prominent, and influential public figures. Consider the rhetoric of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis….
Unfortunately, Loomis is not alone….
So, it’s come to this: Advocating beheadings, beatings, and the mass murder of peaceful Americans to pay for the sins of a soulless madman. But because the advocates of violence fashion themselves champions of nonviolence and because they inhabit the hallowed worlds of Hollywood, academia, and the Democratic party, it’s acceptable?
Blood-lusting hate speech must not get a pass just because it comes out of the mouths of the protected anti-gun class.

This campaign has now brought Loomis into the crosshairs of the state and his employer. Loomis has already been questioned by the Rhode Island State Police, who told him that someone had informed the FBI that Loomis had threatened LaPierre’s life. Loomis also has been hauled into a meeting with his dean.  And now the president of the University of Rhode Island, where Loomis teaches, has issued the following statement:

The University of Rhode Island does not condone acts or threats of violence. These remarks do not reflect the views of the institution and Erik Loomis does not speak on behalf of the University. The University is committed to fostering a safe, inclusive and equitable culture that aspires to promote positive change.

We do not expect any better of the orchestrators of this campaign—this is what they have done for many years, and doubtless will be doing for years to come. We do expect better of university administrators. Rather than standing behind a member of their faculty, the administration has sought to distance the university from Loomis. Even to suggest that Loomis’s tweet constitutes a “threat of violence” is an offense against the English language. We are dismayed that the university president completely fails to acknowledge the importance of academic freedom and of scholars’ freedom independently to express views (even intemperate ones) on topics of public importance.  This statement—unless it is swiftly corrected— should give alarm to scholars at the University of Rhode Island, to scholars who might one day consider associating themselves with this institution, and to academic and professional associations that value academic freedom.
However, this is not merely a question of academic freedom. It also speaks to a broader set of rights to speak freely without the fear of being fired for controversial views that many of us have been flagging for years. Everyone should be clear what is going on. As a blogger at Atrios has pointed out, what the witch hunters want is for Loomis to be fired. Indeed, the calls have already begun (see comment thread here). Though Loomis has a union, his lack of tenure makes him vulnerable.
We insist that the University of Rhode Island take a strong stand for the values of academic freedom and freedom of speech, that it not be intimidated by an artificially whipped-up media frenzy, that it affirm that the protections of the First Amendment require our collective enforcement, and that all employers—particularly, in this kind of case, university employers—have a special obligation to see that freedom of speech become a reality of everyday life.
We urge all of you to contact the following three administrators at the University of Rhode Island:

Dean Winnie Brownell: winnie@mail.uri.edu
Provost Donald DeHays: ddehayes@uri.edu
President David Dooley: davedooley@mail.uri.edu

Be polite, be civil, be firm.

We also call upon all academic and other bloggers to stand in support of Loomis. We invite others who wish to associate themselves with this statement to say so in the comments section to this post, and to republish this statement elsewhere.

Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck #4 (2012 edition)

Tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon performing Mel Torme's "Christmas Song." I like the way that Gordon's improvises around the melody and that he improvises in the spirit, mood, and tempo of the song. Very nice.

Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck #3 (2012 edition)

"Hey Santa Claus" by The Moonglows (1953), a doo-wop and r-and-b group from Cleveland, who recorded for Chess and discovered Marvin Gaye.

Holiday Music That Doesn't SucK #2 (2012 edition)

Ella Fitzgerald is widely considered to one the great female jazz vocalist. My Uncle Lloyd rated her the best by far. Nothing would sour him on a new singer more quickly than a reviewer who compared her to Ella.

I included Fitzgerald's Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas in my 2009 post on Best Jazz Christmas CDs. A Swinging Christmas was recorded in 1960. Scott Yarnow describes it as "a lightweight but enjoyable set of Christmas cheer." A Verve 2002 reissue has some bonus tracks.