from: http://www.softskull.com/# Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.softskull.com/#">S O F T S K U L L P R E S S</A> ----- Why I Published Fortunate Son by Sander Hicks ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I sweep and mop floors once a week. The work leaves me time to think. I have a routine, and I want to be a good super. Part of my own crazy New York schedule is going up the five flights into the hallways of my two buildings, usually on Sunday, after a pot of coffee, peanut butter toast and the New York Times national section, in the quiet part of my life here in the Lower East Side. On a good day, I hit a rhythm. It�s good for the soul. In October 1999, I came across an article in the paper. St. Martin�s Press was noisily slamming down the brakes on one of their own titles: Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President. They dropped a hammer on their author J.H. Hatfield, the biographer of the presidential front-runner. Hatfield, it turned out, had a colorful and felonious past working for slumlords in Dallas in the 80�s. When I sweep and mop, I hit my rhythm, and the mind hits a groove thinking about politics. There are certain assumptions I have, things I think are commonly accepted in the USA these days: Politics are dominated by money. The slick and the cagey promise-makers put status and power ahead of values, meaning and change. This game hurts the majority by neglecting our interests. This last weekend in October I was scouring the dusty tenements with industrial detergent when the black coffee kicked in and I began to wonder: What in this book is so threatening that its publisher would want to smash it apart in public, like a parent enraged enough to smack a child in front of the neighbors? And would the author be willing to consider an offer from the miniature corporation I ran in the basement? For several years since my capitalist apprenticeship inside middle management at Kinko�s, I had been running an subchapter (S) corporation, down underneath the tenements. Soft Skull Press, Inc. made a name for itself by publishing books by alternarock-stars. But I had begun to sharpen the editorial vision lately with what I call the politics of the �Next New Left.� We�re working on it still, but it�s an aggressive aggregate of my ideas of class struggle in the new millenium, punk rock�s discipline of independence, and the high certainty of Marxian historical analysis. OK, look the present moment is part of the history of a larger struggle: the people against big business, part of the even bigger history of america against tyranny. I mean the real america, the people, not the advertising and the wars. No one is true to the original spirit of america in our corporate-controlled political environment. Which is why I publish people like William Upski Wimsatt and Zack Exley. ===== page 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The agent for the Fortunate Son had never heard of a thing called Soft Skull Press. But I poured on the charm, got into a meeting, and made a promise to raise a wad of cash to pay an advance. The discredited Bush biography was ours for a smile and a handshake, because the super with the book company in the basement was the only one willing to touch the thing with a pole. People began to stop by the office to chat and say the phone was tapped, to warn me, �watch your back, they just whacked JFK Jr. right? They got Lady Di, right?� I grind my teeth at night, mulling over things said in passing by conspiracy theorists. I�ve been wearing an old football player mouthpiece, trying to preserve my teeth. You�re in way over your head. Up til now, your main accomplishment was being called affectionately patronized in the press as one of the �punks of publishing.� Can a publishing punk come out of presidential politics alive? The author had crumpled, mortified, in self-imposed seclusion. 60 Minutes wanted to get a television exclusive on his past, if he was willing to come out of hiding. Could an appearance on 60 Minutes make the book, the author and me serious and credible? Or just another couple of clowns in the circus? Author J.H. Hatfield received death threats from prominent Republicans and feared for the life of his family. Panicked for the life of his wife and newborn child, he tried to kill our deal. He told the New York Times he�d never do the book with us, and wouldn�t go on 60 Minutes. There were reasons he was skittish. St. Martin�s sold him out as soon as sparks started to fly. The Bush campaign threatened that the media outlets covering Hatfield�s book would not be given press passes in a Bush White House if they took Fortunate Son seriously. Can�t handle a book? Destroy the man who wrote it and you don�t have to address the harder, clear, logical questions raised in the text. I advised Hatfield to do 60 Minutes, with my child-like trust in the flagship news magazine. 60 Minutes was the show my mom and dad watched, a part of their own late Sunday ritual, with a little time to think, on a Sunday in the 70�s. New York media is often a cool kids club, with the sophistication and intellectual independence of a clique. If you�re an outsider, it�s hard to break the haughty, cold veneer of those self-styled guardians of �truth� and �objectivity.� Brill�s Content launched a new branding campaign appropriating hip Gen-X typographic style to preach �skepticism is a virtue.� In the new issue, Jennifer Greenstein published a list of character-assassinating, unsubstantiated allegations against the already beaten-down J.H. Hatfield. ===== page 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Her piece was fueled by some vitriolic mix of rancor and nerves, the kind that can only come from an inferiority complex. She used the subject as a platform to take broad swipes at the book publishing business as a whole, and despite her proclamations of the �virtue� of magazine publishing, she sacrificed accuracy to make the point. I say this bluntly because Greenstein hurt us. With clear malice, her Brill�s Content piece came out just as a lot of people were about to reconsider Fortunate Son. Despite her self-righteousness and touting of her own accuracy, and despite her exclusive feed for new information from us, Greenstein simply repeated the list of accusations already leveled against Hatfield and Fortunate Son. Several times in the piece, Greenstein claimed that St. Martin�s had gotten �burned� because instead of fact-checking the book, they relied on �trust,� making the lack of fact-checking in Fortunate Son �an aberration in the publishing industry.� In a snooty attempt to place the clique of magazine publishers above the dirty commercial gang of book publishers she intoned, �Book publishers aren�t investigative reporters�they don�t think like them, and they don�t act like them.� No, I don�t act like you. Inferring that St. Martin�s Press didn�t fact-check a book on the most powerful and wealthy presidential candidate today is utterly laughable, a howler. I just re-read a generous email that Hatfield sent you, Greenstein, answering twenty questions about what happened at St. Martin�s. You got a huge scoop here, you alone were able to talk to the reclusive Hatfield, because he and his attorney were considering suing St. Martin�s, and wanted to �show their cards.� Jennifer Greenstein committed a deliberate distortion. She had the following facts before her on December 20, 1999: Hatfield and St. Martin�s attorneys spent 4 days (July 6 through July 9) vetting the manuscript. Counsel for St. Martin�s often suggested word changes to prevent libel, and called Hatfield a "dream author" for his meticulous notes and sure-footed habit of corroboration. Editor Thomas Dunne referred to the biography as "scrupulously corroborated," and claimed that Fortunate Son was "carefully fact-checked and scrutinized by lawyers." (John Murphy later told the Washington Post that they didn�t actually re-report the piece, (i.e. call all Hatfield's sources to check the facts with them, obtain copies of written records, etc.) but that the piece was vetted and checked to protect against libel or defamations actions against the publisher.) The truth about fact-checking lies somewhere in the middle, and neither Greenstein nor I will get anywhere by exaggerating for effect. I exaggerate myself. When we went on Court TV later in the month, I issued a press release that claimed julilantly we had �reached millions� not the 157,000 viewers of the Crier Today show. But Greenstein�s real crime was parroting the assumptions of the hour, such as what has become the most-often cited reason to discredit the cocaine-arrest fix in the Afterword. She said that �the book� claimed that Bush�s arrest was fixed through a favor with a Republican judge. The Bush Campaign and hacks like Greenstein have trotted out experts and facts that denounce the allegation because there were no Republican judges in Harris County, Texas in 1972. ===== page 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ But Hatfield never claimed the judge was Republican. One of three sources did. The other two sources just simply told the same story, without mentioning the judge�s party affiliation. Greenstein attended my press conference at nightclub S.O.B.�s on December 22, where I announced political highlights from Fortunate Son�s new introduction, authored by Nick Mamatas and Toby Rogers. At the bar, my first impression was that she was rather uptight, or maybe just not comfortable at a press conference that was also a massive book party for hip-hop activist author William Upski Wimsatt (No More Prisons.) Upon reflection, her article could be interpreted to be a part of an uptown version of class struggle: Greenstein and the magazine industry hold themselves superior to the commercial market, they take the time to check facts while book publishers are just into making money. But unfortunately, Greenstein doesn�t check facts, either. She relies on the previously published opinions and the judgements made earlier in other tony media vehicles. �Skepticism is a virtue� is nothing but the new million-dollar ad campaign designed from start to finish by Madison Avenue. Ann Marie Kerwin�s report in Advertising Age (January 10, 2000: Can O&M Overhaul Put 'Brill's Content' Back on Media Map?) pointed out that after a splashy debut, Brill's Content is increasingly �criticized as being dull and tedious,� and that critics find it "self-righteous and humorless." Combined with slow newstand sales, and a flight of key talent to greener pastures, Steven Brill hired advertising Avenue giants Ogilvy & Mather for a cool one million dollars, to redesign the mag and purchase a capital amount of billboard and print ads. "Skepticism is a virtue" was the message. But skepticism without principle is cynicism. Greenstein�s piece in the face-lifted Brill�s Content was just prelude to 60 Minutes, the high witchtrial. After a grinding decision-making period, Hatfield gambled that 60 Minutes would proceed fairly and calmly, and not ambush him. He wanted to address the crimes he�d done time for, to get the subject back on Bush, the sour, spoiled dauphin. Hatfield had the flu when he was flown to NYC to tape the show. 60 Minutes producer Jay Kernis was highly anxious, almost tearful. In conversations with me Kernis was agitated, and to Hatfield�s attorney, Kernis complained that his career was on the line. Competition among producers was fierce and shark-like and he needed to get this segment aired to guarantee his position at the network. He had pursued this television exclusive for four months and wouldn�t be daunted by Hatfield�s crippling flu. A doctor was called for and serious antibiotics were prescribed at the hotel. (Hatfield later received a hefty bill, but convinced 60 Minutes to pick it up.) ===== page 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ When the show was broadcast, we were fish in a barrel. 60 Minutes took the beaten path: grilling the author on his colorful but irrelevant past. Yes, Hatfield worked for some shady characters, and played a supporting role in a plot thick with adultery and embezzlement by his boss in 1988, and yes, he played a role in the subsequent blackmail and attempted contract killing of his boss�s mistress (NOTE: The target of this fiasco was never his �boss� as so many reporters, including Greenstein, stated and quoted each other as stating.) Hatfield showed 60 Minutes that he was in National Honor Society, and Who's Who of American High School Students, but they profiled him as a troubled youth. He gave them photos of himself coaching and mentoring Dallas minority kids, but they only showed the footage from the crime scene. A crew flew to Arkansas and shot footage of Hatfield with his wife and newborn, but no "human interest" angle found its way into the break-neck attitude of 60 Minutes. They chose the footage of Hatfield walking alone over barren farmland roads. Hatfield documented 16 deliberate distortions in the piece and angrily asked �Where was the balance, Jay?� in an open letter to producer Jay Kernis later published on www.softskull.com. I had trusted 60 Minutes would finally see what is important about Fortunate Son: it shows a dominant pattern in American politics. George W. Bush, like any rich kid, thrived on back room deals, special favors and social connections. Bush is symbolic of the modern ruling class, who, without achievement or merit, can go right up the ladder with just a well-known last name. I began an e-mail correspondence with Kernis. I was pleased with parts of the show. They trashed New York publishing as the crass, fly-by-night business it so often is. (They did it right, Brill�s, without positioning themselves as the superior product.) It could have been a lot worse. Certain right wing watch dogs were enraged that Fortunate Son got any publicity at all. What�s really amusing is that they blamed 60 Minutes for not �exposing the links the publisher has to certain liberal groups that seek to damage the candidate.� Liberal groups? I�m firmly a member of the Next New Left, you sniveling jerks. I asked the ever-responsive and diplomatic Jay Kernis about his approach, about why 60 Minutes chose to portray Hatfield as an ex-con, a loner, at the expense of talking about the fine biography he had written despite the odds. Kernis said that the controversial allegations about Bush�s 1972 cocaine arrest were unsubstantiated. They asked a couple of reporters and no one found anything, and that was that. The piece was supposed to be about the burning of a campaign year biography. In the cutting room, the producers turned into just another witch trial of the author. I came back at Jay by talking about my own process, the mix of faith and logic that brought me here, similar to the contemplative rhythm I use to mop floors. There's a dark side to Bush no one will expose. What is real? We let Bush have a free ride with ridiculous assertions and subterfuge: his drug past, his white collar crimes, the same old right-wing intolerance that makes up the core of his plastic, mercenary politics. What's wrong with us? Why will no one shoot from the hip? Bush is a slick chameleon. He won South Carolina, pandering to the racist, anti-Catholic, �Christians� at Bob Jones University. Bush is a straw man. He�d speak in front of the Klan if they were a voting block he didn�t already have. He�ll do whatever it takes to be elected. ===== page 6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Meanwhile, we�re getting these glimmers of evidence that the cocaine arrest in 1972 happened. Why did Bush get a new driver�s license ID number in March of 1995? He claims it was for �National Security� reasons, but his father, the ex-President, never took this precaution. Was it to erase an incident from the past? Using the Freedom of Information Act, I wrote the Defense Department and was sent a thick file on George W. Bush�s records in the Texas Air National Guard. Everything was exemplary for the hot-shot fighter pilot trainee. He got high marks for character and performance, until 1972. The kid fell apart in 1972. The star pilot suspended from flying fighter planes for missing an annual medical exam. Bush was written up on the same report as James Bath, the man Bush would later get in trouble with again when Bath brought Saudi Arabian investors and the BCCI into Bush�s oil start-up. What was Bush�s official reason for being written up for failure to take the medical exam on time in 1972? He wanted to take the physical with �his doctor� but was out-of-state working for politician Winton �Red� Blount. I called retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Lou Kaposta down in Texas, who told me, �According to my background of many years as a pilot in the Air Force, you have to take the annual physical as scheduled. You do not have a choice about when, where or how. You�re in the military, the individual�s desires don�t count. Everybody knows that.� Veteran of the Texas Air National Guard, former Staff Sergeant Mark Wilson, told me there is �something fishy� about Bush�s explanation of the suspension in 1972. Wilson knows that Bush was very near Maxwell Air Force Base at the time of the Alabama campaign for Red Blount, and could have easily travelled there. What were the special circumstances that caused George W. Bush to want to take the physical only with �his doctor� in 1972? What were the extenuating circumstances that prevented Bush from travelling back to Texas in that fateful year? New evidence is beginning to sprout, but hasn�t yet flowered. If we can hold on, we�ll soon vindicate J.H. Hatfield, and the long limb that I have put Soft Skull Press out on won�t snap. Meanwhile, the cowards in the mainstream media and the bitter little right-wing media groups like Accuracy In Media can print their condemnation of us for associating ourselves with Hatfield and Fortunate Son. Let them. Who are they trying to protect? Bush�s cocaine habit and his 1972 coke arrest are metaphors for his grander political hollowness. Who will stand up? thanks to Nick Mamatas, who edited this piece. Thanks (I think) to Ken Kurson, of Green Magazine, for commissioning this piece, and then killing it 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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