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July 18, 2002
Suffragette City (Lee `Scratch' Perry Mix)
In the introductory paragraph to her review of Kenneth Timmerman's Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson, Patricia J. Williams writes:
There are perfectly respectable reasons to disagree with, dislike or distrust Jesse Jackson. His flaws as a human being are pretty well-known at this point. Some feel his politics are driven by ego. He certainly is prone to poetic puffery, as much disposed to allegorical tales in which he plays Good Shepherd as was Ronald Reagan. He's cheated on his wife. Most notoriously, Jesse Jackson's credibility as leader of anything like a rainbow coalition was profoundly shaken by his "Hymietown" remark. I am among those who distrust him as a result of that one statement, profuse apologies notwithstanding. But if I distrust him, I distrust him no more or less than the legions of other politicians who have made racist, sexist or anti-Semitic comments and then apologized as though they were children playing "words can never hurt you." I distrust Jesse Jackson no more than I distrust Jesse Helms or Robert Byrd or Pat Robertson. I distrust him no more than George Bush or John Ashcroft for being so cozy with the anti-miscegenist, anti-Catholic Bob Jones University (even as I also distrust the Catholic Church for its own history of anti-Semitism). I worry about him exactly to the same extent that I worry about those members of Congress who have spent their long, complacent lives as members of country clubs that discriminate against Jews and blacks and women.
She then proceeds to gleefully trash the book, pointing out that "[t]he distance between the real Jackson and Timmerman's gargoyle is inhabited by myth, stereotype, unsubstantiated accusation, illogic and careless innuendo," adding:
This is a paranoid book, an ignorant book, a book that posits aggressive disrespect for an immense spectrum of African-American concerns as some sort of brave moral stance. It is a book that takes us right back to the 1950s and argues, in effect, that the South was right about that Negro problem. Indeed, I suppose there's really no need to read this book at all--one could just go see Birth of a Nation and wallow in all that panic about insurrection and uppity, overdressed black politicians who, as D.W. Griffith put it, "know nothing of the incidents of power."
She's good. She's no Dorothy Parker,
"Daddy, what's an optimist?" said Pat to Mike while they were walking down the street together one day.
"One who thought that Margot Asquith wasn't going to write any more," replied the absent-minded professor, as he wound up the cat and put the clock out.
[. . .] I think it must be pleasanter to be Margot Asquith than to be any other living human being; and this is no matter of snap judgment on my part, for I have given long and envious thought to the desirability of being Charles A. Levine. But the lady seems to have even more self-assurance than has the argumentative birdman. Her perfect confidence in herself is a thing to which monuments should be erected; hers is a poise that ought to be on display in the British Museum. The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
but she's good.
Note: The Charles Levine gag worked when the review was published on October 22, 1927. Obscure pop culture references. I think I've absorbed some of her writing style, too. God help us all.
Update: I always forget.
In 1972 the Parker estate, including her literary rights, passed under her will to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
From the Publishers' Note, The Portable Dorothy Parker.
Want to know more? See Net4TV Voice: Surfari: Dorothy Parker and Other Tough, Old Broads.
Posted by Aaron at July 18, 2002 06:21 AM
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