Stupid White Men and Other Excuses
When Michael Moore's publisher insisted he rewrite his new book to be
less critical of President Bush, it took an outraged librarian to get
it back in the stores.
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By Kera Bolonik
Jan. 7, 2002 | It was the kind of battle that provocateur journalist
Michael Moore would ordinarily consider red meat: a major media
corporation threatening a writer's freedom of speech. Moore's new
book, "Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the
Nation," which pointedly criticizes President George W. Bush and his
administration, was due in stores on Oct. 2. As with many books
scheduled for release in the weeks that immediately followed Sept.
11, plans to ship the title to stores were put on hold. According to
HarperCollins, "both Moore and [Judith Regan's HarperCollins imprint]
ReganBooks thought its publication would be insensitive, given the
events of September 11."
By mid-October, there were 50,000 finished books (out of an announced
first printing of 100,000) collecting a month's worth of dust in a
Scranton, Pa., warehouse, and ReganBooks had yet to schedule a new
release date for "Stupid White Men." It was holding off in hopes that
Moore would include new material to address the recent events, and
would change the title and cover art. Moore says he readily agreed to
these requests. But once HarperCollins had his consent, it asked
Moore to rewrite sections -- up to 50 percent of the book -- that it
deemed politically offensive given the current climate. In addition,
the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing house wanted Moore to help defray
half the cost of destroying the old copies and of producing the new
edition, by contributing $100,000 from his royalty account.
Moore was aghast. "They wanted me to censor myself and then pay for
the right to censor myself," he declared. "I'm not going to do that!"
After close to three months of relentless negotiations that
threatened to embarrass one of the country's leading publishing
houses, the potentially explosive drama was suddenly resolved when
HarperCollins announced on Dec. 18 its plans to publish "Stupid White
Men" as is, slating the title for early March 2002. "We have made the
decision to move it forward as it was. We're very happy about that,"
says Lisa Herling, HarperCollins' director of corporate
communications. What motivated the publisher's change of heart? Not,
as some might well expect, an ugly public fuss orchestrated by Moore.
Instead, the author remained uncharacteristically quiet, and the
protest over the holdup on "Stupid White Men" came from an unexpected
source.
In fact, the turnabout was a surprise to Moore, but then so were
HarperCollins' initial reservations about publishing "Stupid White
Men." After all, Moore observes, "They not only bought the book, but
they accepted the manuscript and printed it." But after Sept. 11, the
satirical bite of Moore's book was too sharp for his publisher. In
particular, HarperCollins flagged an open letter to George W. Bush,
in which Moore asks the president whether he's a functional
illiterate, whether he's a felon and whether he is getting the
necessary help for his drug and alcohol problem. "They said it would
be 'intellectually dishonest' not to admit that Bush has done a good
job, and that the other things in the book wouldn't be believable if
I didn't at least give Bush that much," says Moore. The author was
certain that HarperCollins would cancel and destroy the book if he
didn't concede to its demands. (The rights to publish the book would
subsequently revert to Moore after six months.)
HarperCollins also wanted him to take out the chapter "A Very
American Coup," about Dubya's dubious victory in Florida, and it
objected to the title of an essay about race in America, "Kill
Whitey." According to Moore, his editor at ReganBooks, Cal Morgan,
explained, "It's not the dissent we disagree with, it's the tone of
your dissent. You can't question the president about his past
felonies or alcohol problems right now." (Cal Morgan did not respond
to requests for comment.)
The publisher's request came at a chilling moment, on the heels of
presidential spokeman Ari Fleischer's Sept. 26 warning (later
retracted) that "all Americans ... need to watch what they say, watch
what they do." In the weeks that immediately followed Sept. 11,
television host Bill Maher and essayist Susan Sontag were excoriated
for presenting unconventional views on the hijackers, and newspaper
journalists at the Texas City Sun and the Daily Courier in Oregon
were fired for voicing unpopular opinions.
Given the tenor of the times, Moore had reason to assume that his
publisher would follow suit. After two months of uncharacteristic
silence ("I spoke to no one in the media. I didn't want to upset
anyone at News Corps [HarperCollins' parent company] and tip the
scales toward the decision of pulping my book."), the author
discussed his struggle with a crowd of 100 during a keynote speech at
a New Jersey Citizen's Action private event on Dec. 1. He even read
passages from the book: "It may be the only time it's ever heard by
anybody," he explained at the time. "As far as I knew, there wasn't
any press there, so I told people what had happened. They
asked, 'What do you want us to do?' I said, 'Don't call the
publisher, don't call the press. Let me deal with it.'"
But one person in the crowd refused to heed Moore's request. Ann
Sparanese, a librarian at Englewood Library in New Jersey and a board
member of the American Library Association (ALA), returned to work
that Monday and posted a message on several ALA listserves -- among
them, Library Juice -- detailing Moore's predicament. According to
the ALA, libraries represent big money to publishers, spending over
$2 billion a year for books and electronic information, and because
of it, librarians have publishers' ears.
"I thought these particular librarians would be especially
concerned," explains Sparanese. "The ALA has this big conference
coming up in midwinter, and all of the publishers have booths there.
At the very least, I thought some of us would've gone over to the
Harper booth and said, 'What gives?'"
In her posting, Sparanese explained, "This is NOT a question of the
CIA or the government demanding that a publisher stop publication for
national security or some other well-known reason. The publisher just
decided to walk away from the money -- the book's ALREADY printed and
sitting in a warehouse -- because of the current war-inspired, anti-
dissent atmosphere. Even satire is biting the dust, by the
publisher's own hand."
Publishing insiders caught wind of Sparanese's message when Pat Holt,
a former book review editor and critic for the San Francisco
Chronicle, included it in her twice-weekly publishing industry
newsletter. Within days of the posting, a HarperCollins editor told
Moore that they were receiving a lot of e-mail from angry librarians
about "Stupid White Men." Moore hadn't realized Sparanese had
attended the Citizen's Action event (the two never met), but he
partly attributes the publisher's shift in stance to her mobilization
of other librarians. "Librarians see themselves as the guardians of
the First Amendment," says Moore. "You got a thousand Mother Joneses
at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for
them!"
Lisa Herling, who says she was not familiar with the librarians' e-
mail campaign, could neither confirm nor deny their impact. "From our
perspective, I don't know if it has anything to do with our
decision."
Throughout it all, Moore insists he has kept his relations with
HarperCollins friendly and intact. "I have complete empathy and
understanding with HarperCollins and what they were going through --
and what everybody's been going through -- since Sept. 11. We've
never been through any of this, and everybody is reacting in various
ways and some people are behaving inappropriately.
"But I think we have to cut everybody a lot of slack because nobody
has a playbook here. They went with their first instincts, which
were 'Don't offend the president.' They said to me, 'We're publishing
four Sept. 11 books, and we don't want to put this out and create
confusion in people's minds.'
"This is a fascinating story because it shows what a free society
does when confronted with a crisis. Do we maintain our sense of
freedom and liberty and dissent and open discussion of the issues? Or
do we start putting the clamp down? I waited it out to see. And
HarperCollins eventually did the right thing. I'm really proud of
this book, and I'm dying for it to get out there."
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About the writer
Kera Bolonik is a freelance writer. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
*****
The Day Ashcroft Censored Freedom Of Information
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle
1-6-2
The President didn't ask the networks for television time. The
attorney general didn't hold a press conference. The media didn't
report any dramatic change in governmental policy. As a result, most
Americans had no idea that one of their most precious freedoms
disappeared on Oct. 12.
Yet it happened. In a memo that slipped beneath the political radar,
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft vigorously urged federal agencies
to resist most Freedom of Information Act requests made by American
citizens.
Passed in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Freedom of
Information Act has been hailed as one of our greatest democratic
reforms. It allows ordinary citizens to hold the government
accountable by requesting and scrutinizing public documents and
records. Without it, journalists, newspapers,
historians and watchdog groups would never be able to keep the
government honest. It was our post-Watergate reward, the act that
allows us to know what our elected officials do, rather than what
they say. It is our national sunshine law, legislation that forces
agencies to disclose their public records and documents.
Yet without fanfare, the attorney general simply quashed the FOIA.
The Department of Justice did not respond to numerous calls from The
Chronicle to comment on the memo.
So, rather than asking federal officials to pay special attention
when the public's right to know might collide with the government's
need to safeguard our security, Ashcroft instead asked them to
consider whether "institutional, commercial and personal privacy
interests could be implicated by disclosure of the information." Even
more disturbing, he wrote:
"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold
records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department
of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal
basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability
of other agencies to protect other important records."
Somehow, this memo never surfaced. When coupled with President Bush's
Nov. 1 executive order that allows him to seal all presidential
records since 1980, the effect is positively chilling.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, we have witnessed a flurry of federal
orders designed to beef up the nation's security. Many anti-terrorist
measures have carefully balanced the public's right to know with the
government's responsibility to protect its citizens.
Who, for example, would argue against taking detailed plans of
nuclear reactors, oil refineries or reservoirs off the Web?
No one. Almost all Americans agree that the nation's security is our
highest priority.
Yet half the country is also worried that the government might use
the fear of terrorism as a pretext for protecting officials from
public scrutiny.
Now we know that they have good reason to worry. For more than a
quarter of a century, the Freedom of Information Act has ratified the
public's right to know what the government, its agencies and its
officials have done. It has substituted transparency for secrecy and
we, as a democracy, have benefited from the truths that been
extracted from public records.
Consider, for example, just a few of the recent revelations --
obtained through FOIA requests -- that newspapers and nonprofit
watchdog groups have been able to publicize during the last few
months:
-- The Washington-based Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit
organization, has been able to publish lists of recipients who have
received billions of dollars in federal farm subsidies. Their Web
site, www.ewg.org, has not only embarrassed the agricultural
industry, but also allowed the public to realize that federal money --
intended to support small family farmers -- has mostly enhanced the
profits of large agricultural corporations.
-- The Charlotte Observer has been able to reveal how the Duke Power
Co., an electric utility, cooked its books so that it avoided
exceeding its profit limits. This creative accounting scheme
prevented the utility from giving lower rates to 2 million customers
in North Carolina and South Carolina.
-- USA Today was able to uncover and publicize a widespread pattern
of misconduct among the National Guard's upper echelon that has
continued for more than a decade. Among the abuses documented in
public records are the inflation of troop strength, the misuse of
taxpayer money, incidents of sexual harassment and the theft of life-
insurance payments intended for the widows and children of Guardsmen.
-- The National Security Archive, a private Washington-based research
group,
has been able to obtain records that document an unpublicized event
in our history. It turns out that in 1975, President Gerald Ford and
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave Indonesian strongman Suharto
the green light to invade East Timor, an incursion that left 200,000
people dead.
-- By examining tens of thousands of public records, the Associated
Press has been able to substantiate the long-held African American
allegation that white people -- through threats of violence, even
murder -- cheated them out of their land. In many cases, government
officials simply approved the transfer of property deeds. Valued at
tens of million of dollars, some 24,000 acres of farm and timber
lands, once the property of 406 black families, are now owned by
whites or corporations.
These are but a sample of the revelations made possible by recent
FOIA requests. None of them endanger the national security. It is
important to remember that all classified documents are protected
from FOIA requests and unavailable to the public.
Yet these secrets have exposed all kinds of official skullduggery,
some of which even violated the law. True, such revelations may
disgrace public officials or even result in criminal charges, but
that is the consequence -- or shall we say, the punishment -- for
violating the public trust.
No one disputes that we must safeguard our national security. All of
us want to protect our nation from further acts of terrorism. But we
must never allow the public's right to know, enshrined in the Freedom
of Information Act, to be suppressed for the sake of official
convenience.
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle
Page D - 4
http://www.sfgate.com/
*****
Enron Scandal Shapes Us As 'Big, Big Trouble For Bush'
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent - London
1-7-2
It may not yet quite be the "cancer on the presidency" of which John
Dean warned Richard Nixon in the early days of Watergate. But the
collapse of the energy conglomerate Enron is suddenly shaping up as
big, big trouble for George Bush.
All the ingredients of a classic Washington scandal are there: the
biggest corporate failure in history, a chief executive on such good
terms with George Bush that the President refers to him as "Kenny
Boy" and a history of massive contributions by the Houston-based
Enron to the White House campaigns of Bush the father and Bush the
son.
The final element fell into place last week with the announcement of
a full-scale Senate investigation, complete with subpoenas for top
Enron executives including Kenneth Lay (aka "Kenny Boy"),
representatives of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm which
singularly failed to spot the impending disaster, and perhaps senior
figures in the Bush administration as well.
Even the cast of characters is comfortingly familiar. Enron's lead
attorney, for instance, is Robert Bennett, the $500-an-hour DC
superlawyer who featured in Washington's most recent presidential
scandal when he represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones sexual
harassment suit. That led directly to the Monica Lewinsky saga.
By any yardstick, Enron is a massive financial scandal, a tale of
concealed debt and shell companies, incompetent auditing and scanty
regulatory oversight - not to mention the sudden impoverishment of
thousands of employees obliged to hold their pension savings in now
worthless Enron shares, even as senior executives cashed in stock and
stock options for up to $1bn (£700m) during 2000 and 2001.
Until now, however, Enron has been the dog which failed to bark - or,
more exactly, was ignored as the media concentrated on Afghanistan
and barely dared mention such goings-on as the presidential approval
ratings hovered around the 90 per cent mark. Enron unravelled in
November, but not until 28 December was Mr Bush first asked about the
debacle. All that is about to change as the news focus starts to
shift from the anti-terror campaign to domestic politics. Not only is
this a mid-term election year in which the Democrats need just half-a-
dozen seats to recapture the House of Representatives, but thoughts
are already turning to the 2004 White House race. In all these
calculations, Enron could prove a factor.
Already, at least three Congressional committees have been sniffing
around the affair. But the main investigation will be conducted by
the Senate's governmental affairs committee, headed by the Democrat
Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Mr Lieberman, it will not be forgotten,
was Al Gore's vice-presidential running mate last time and is is
widely believed to have ambitions for the top job in 2004.
Thus far, Mr Lieberman has followed the Washington scandal script to
a T. Echoing investigators of Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater
before him, he promises solemnly that his probe will be even-
handed, "a search for the truth, not a witchhunt". But, he
warns, "we're going to go wherever the search takes us". If so, it
could be a most interesting journey.
Enron has been a fountain of money for politicians of every hue.
Since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which
monitors such donations, it has made campaign contributions of $5.8m
(£4m), three-quarters of it to Republicans. The biggest single
beneficiaries, unsurprisingly, have been the two Texas senators, Kay
Bailey Hutchinson and Phil Gramm, whose wife Wendy sits on the Enron
board.
Like most big corporate donors, it has hedged its bets. On Capitol
Hill, 71 of the 100 current senators and nearly half the 435
congressmen have received contributions. The investment paid off with
a vengeance, when Enron secured exemption for its energy derivatives
business under a 2000 Act regulating commodity futures trading. But
the Bush family has been a special object of its attentions. Mr Lay
was listed by the Bush-Cheney campaign as one of the "Pioneers" who
raised at least $100,000 (£70,000) for the election, while Enron gave
$100,000 to the inauguration gala, a contribution matched by "Kenny
Boy" and his wife.
Potentially most damaging is its possible backstage role in the
formulation of Mr Bush's energy policy. At least four Enron
consultants and executives have done work for the administration. A
champion of the deregulation favoured by the White House, Mr Lay was
a frequent informal adviser to the panel under the Vice-President,
Dick Cheney, which drew up a national energy strategy.
"We've got to ask whether the advice tendered was self-serving," Mr
Lieberman says. Or, to put it more bluntly, were the Texan oilman in
the White House and the Texan energy baron in Houston running a
mutual benefit society? These questions can no longer escape an
answer.
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