-Caveat Lector- .............................................................. >From the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed]: Note: We archive similar "assassination posts" at: http://www.msen.com/~lloyd/oldprojects/recentmail.html From: "Lloyd Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "New Paradigms Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [prj] Author of Fortunate Son Suicide or Arkancide? Date: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 2:53 AM Rare Book Searches - Ruling Class/Conspiracy Experts: http://a-albionic.com/search.html ***** Conspiracy Shopping Cart: http://a-albionic.com/shopping.html ***** Misc Shopping On-Line http://a-albionic.com/ads/srch.html ****** Soft Skull's press statement. David Cogswell remembers Jim Hatfield. Information about the Haley Hatfield Trust. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Dear Friends and Members of the Press, We have been reeling from the news since Friday. Jim Hatfield is gone. In a country where not enough reporters and talking heads have the courage to speak truth to power, Hatfield, the President's most controversial biographer, ended his own life in solitude in an Arkansas motel last week. I knew Jim. He could be tempestuous, moody and unpredictable. He was also intensely driven, articulate and full of Southern charm. When I spoke with his widow Nancy on Friday, we agreed, "He was a good writer." He was a hell of a fighter and you wanted him on your side. Just last month we spent a weekend together in Chicago on the trade show floor of Book Expo America. He signed books, shook hands, worked the crowd, spoke out, strategized with me and revealed sources. We went non-stop together to promote his Bush biography Fortunate Son. He was fond of quoting Langston Hughes, "I've been insulted, eliminated, locked in, locked out, and left holding the bag. But I am still here." Like Hughes, Hatfield will live on through his books. Jim's life will not be soon forgotten. The story of Fortunate Son is gravely important. Jim was on the verge of collapse due to financial difficulties, and part of this was due to the failure of this book. The American media followed the trail laid for them: the piercing inquiries into Bush's drug history were diverted into ironic stories about Jim Hatfield's own checkered past. After Hatfield was fed information and then discredited, he faced financial ruin and obscurity. He lost two other book contracts. His death was by his own hand but the causes go deeper. October of 1999 was glorious for him: he celebrated the initial publication of Fortunate Son and the birth of his daughter. But October was shattered by a book burning, a two-year long media carnival, and the character assassination of Jim Hatfield, an ex convict turned author who had paid his debt to society. Jim Hatfield's death is in part on the hands of an imperious American media establishment that reserves the softest touch money can buy for George W. Bush and all sons of privilege. Jim Hatfield, a working class journalist unannointed by the media elite, was viciously made into an example. He had a fearlessness that will be missed. -Soft Skull Press July 23, 2001 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- I went through a lot of old e-mail from Jim today. An epigraph he often used that caught my attention was from Langston Hughes. "I've been insulted, eliminated, locked in, locked out, and left holding the bag. But I am still here." There is cruel irony in that statement now. Thinking a lot about Jim. Certainly he made some big mistakes that could be considered fatal errors in their totality. Someone called him reckless, and he did have that aspect to his personality. People talk about Clinton having a "character flaw," and it rings with some truth. Bush is so flawed it was hard for me to find anything good about him, but Jim did that. Reading Jim's book was the only time in my life I ever felt sympathy for the Bushes. For always and ever he deserves credit for that. Since all the media coverage about "Fortunate Son" focused on Bush's alleged cocaine bust in 1972, I was surprised when I read it to find that the book was not a slam. It was not mean-spirited or a witch hunt, as I was expecting. It was in fact a rather even-handed portrait that brought out the human aspects of its characters. I felt sympathy for the Bush family when George W.'s sister died. I was impressed that the kids he worked with when he did his community service loved him. His famous "personality" had never appealed to me, but I was impressed that the inner city kids had taken to him. I was impressed by his adroitness as a politician, even back when he was only acting as an operative for his father. There is a tragic irony in the fact that the damning drug bust scandal was only added to "Fortunate Son" as an afterword at the insistence of St. Martin's, who wanted to make the most of the story that had already been broken by Salon. Hatfield was not a character assassin, but only wanted to write a good biography. The case could certainly be made that Jim had a character flaw. Perhaps we all do. It certainly does not disqualify the work, and in the end that fact will probably rise to the surface of all this. There were errors in judgment, timing. He should not have denied that he was the same Hatfield with a criminal record to both Pete Slover, the reporter of the Dallas Morning News who broke the story, and to his publisher. He could have bought time with a "no comment" to Slover and then confided in his publisher before deciding how to proceed. He was not prepared to deal with what should have been an obvious ploy from the side that perfected "the politics of personal destruction." His biggest errors, of course, were in the conduct that led to his conviction. It wasn't one lone error that put him in such bad straits, it was a pattern. But the errors or crimes of the past still don't extend to the value and credibility of the book. He was a damn good writer, even when he was writing about the creepy things he did to get himself put in jail. When he said he couldn't get any contracts for biographies, I told him, write about yourself. I'd love to hear your prison experiences and other stories in your life. You're a writer, you're not running for president. It's a different standard. I could name hundreds of great artists, writers, musicians, even politicians with prison records. It's funny, we think of Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela as saints, and they certainly deserve the highest adulation, but it must still be remembered that at one time they were locked up like dogs. I'm not trying to compare Jim with them, only making a comment on the relativity of those kinds of values. The Jim Hatfield I knew was a gentle and kind person. I have a hard time imagining him doing harm to someone. But I believe we are all capable of the gravest transgressions. Much of it is water under the bridge now. But I still believe in that book, and I still believe in Jim the writer. I do believe those who were threatened by him destroyed him, but he gave them a lot of help. And he did, in the end, make that decision. He sure had a lot more in him to give the world though. -David Cogswell July 22, 2001 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- A trust has been put in place for Jim's daughter, Haley. 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