New Ramparts Blurbs

The New Press alerted me to two new blurbs for the Ramparts book yesterday. One is from Douglas Brinkley, whose publications include edited volumes of Hunter Thompson's correspondence and a recent piece on Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone. Yep, that's Sean Penn in the background.

The other blurb is from Lowell Bergman. You've seen his work on Frontline, he teaches journalism at Berkeley, and he was played by Al Pacino in The Insider. For another look at The Speech from that film, click here.

***

"What an incredible story Peter Richardson has told! Ramparts magazine turned the Sixties on its head with a high-octane combination of avant-garde satire and gumshoe investigative reporting. A Bomb in Every Issue is an excellent history that shouldn't be ignored. I can't recommend it enough."

—Douglas Brinkley

“Peter Richardson has done a brilliant job bringing to life the incredible story of Ramparts, a publication that changed journalism and the world it reported on. This book will become required reading for all those concerned about the current crisis in the world of news. The legacy of Ramparts, as Richardson tells it, is that you can always lose money and produce dynamite journalism. In fact, reporting, editing and promoting a truly important story in the public interest may require it!

"A Bomb in Every Issue makes clear that Ramparts in its prime was a vortex of flamboyance and critical intelligence. Out of that maelstrom came reporting that truly changed America. It’s a story that, I trust, will soon be repeated. My bet is that when it happens, this now defunct child of the ‘60s as presented here will be a guiding light for its progeny.

"What makes this book even better is that it has not ignored or downplayed the foibles of Ramparts’ founders and chief architects. It is a cautionary tale told with economy that will be a touchstone for the new journalism, the new Ramparts of the 21st century.”

—Lowell Bergman

My Chronicle

When I was growing up, my family read the San Francisco Chronicle. We chuckled over Art Hoppe's column and breezed through Herb Caen's. My mom liked Stanton Delaplane, and Charles McCabe was like an honorary weird uncle. My brothers and I delivered the Oakland Tribune in the El Cerrito hills, but the Chronicle was our paper of record.

Bay Area residents like to complain about the Chronicle--this is our birthright. But when I returned to the Bay Area in 1999, I probably read the Contra Costa Times more often. I even picked up the Examiner for a while, since it was free and included the New York Times crossword puzzle.

But I knew the Chronicle was struggling, and I wanted vaguely to help, so when a guy outside Safeway offered me a trial subscription, I went for it. Three days a week for two months, $16. I paid cash.

The delivery was spotty--three times I plied my driveway in vain--but more important, I found little I wanted to read. I already get a lot of news from other sources, and I don't care to read about food, restaurants, cars, parties, or the opera. I glanced at the opinion, sports, and real estate sections, but I actively resented the scant attention to books. I realize most dailies don't even have a Sunday book review, but God almighty, give us something to read already.

The trial period elapsed, but the paper kept coming. I received a bill and ignored it; I was paid up, and I didn't want to renew at more than twice the introductory rate. More papers. I went online and learned that subscriptions continue until you cancel them. Naturally, it was impossible to do that online. Two more bills arrived, and I sent them back marked "cancel." More papers.

Finally I got a telephone call from a guy who wanted to sell me a subscription. I told him the whole story, and he offered to cancel the outstanding balance and set me up with a Sunday-only subscription. OK. Then he asked me: are you getting the paper now? Well, yeah. He couldn't sell me a subscription until I canceled my old one. He gave me an 800 number to call.

Which I did for some reason. I spoke to a helpful young woman with a Filipino accent. She told me that my subscription was canceled and offered to erase the outstanding balance. Wonderful. I asked if she was in the Philippines. Yes, Manila.

Have your irony flares fired yet? Maybe it's me, but it seems odd to call halfway around the world to help save your local newspaper.

May 2009 update: I got the paper today, about three months after my subscription expired. I look forward to reading it.

Louise Dyble on the Golden Gate Bridge

Don't take this title literally. Louise isn't on the Golden Gate Bridge, but she was on Jon Rowe's KWMR show last night talking about Paying the Toll, her history of the bridge. And, more specifically, the special district created to manage it.

I was in Point Reyes Station last night and heard a bit of the show. I also saw Jon, who mentioned some of the big stories Louise is sitting on.

One is that the bridge district killed the extension of BART into Marin County. I'd always thought that anti-growth forces were responsible for that.

What's ironic, of course, is that the bridge was constructed precisely to foster growth and development. That's why Ansel Adams and other Sierra Clubbers opposed it.

I see that Louise is blogging actively again, so I'm reposting that link on your starboard.

Green New Deal Redux

So we started our work last night in San Rafael. Norman Solomon and Lisa Maldonado, executive director of the North Bay Labor Council, co-chaired the first public hearing on the Green New Deal for the North Bay.

Harvey Smith kicked it off by discussing the connection between California's Living New Deal Project and our mission. Then we heard from local residents, small business people, and activists about a range of issues, especially the need to review Marin County's approach to waste, recycling, and water treatment.

IMHO, we're off to a good start.

Green New Deal for the North Bay

I start my career as a commissar--er, commissioner--this week. I agreed to serve on a grassroots initiative called the Green New Deal for the North Bay.

Norman Solomon describes the initiative in a Marin Independent-Journal piece today. One of the key goals is to integrate the labor and environmental agendas in Marin and Sonoma Counties.

Toward that end, we'll hold eight public hearings this month to hear from residents. The first hearing is in San Rafael on Friday.

In the fall, we'll hear from experts on water, housing, transportation, agriculture, and other areas. Then we'll write a report and launch a public dialogue on the findings.

L.A. Times Festival of Books

I'm trying to return from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. That's not as easy as it sounds. My Sunday night flight was delayed several hours, so I decided to bunk in Burbank last night.

But the festival is hard to leave for another reason. It's glorious to see so many readers and writers strolling the UCLA campus. Plus the panels are great, and the weather was gorgeous.

I also ran into a lot of friends: Malcolm Margolin, Sasha Abramsky, Frances Dinkelspiel, Cherilyn Parsons, Adrian Maher, etc. And I connected, in some cases for the first time, with some fellow authors. That includes Gustavo Arellano and Ernie Freeberg, whose Gene Debs bio I reviewed for the L.A. Times. That book, Democracy's Prisoner, was a finalist for the festival's book award in biography.

I also saw Randy Shaw, editor of Beyond Chron and author of Beyond the Fields, the UC Press book on the UFW organizers and their lasting influence. Randy and Ernie were on the same panel.

On Saturday night, Sasha and I attended a Truthdig panel and fundraiser. The featured guests were Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges, both of whom had plenty to say about American media and politics. Bob Scheer hosted the panel. Stanley Sheinbaum, Zuade Kaufman, and Peter Scheer were also there, and afterwards we repaired to Bob's digs for the post-panel wingding.

Unfortunately, I missed Frances's panel with Bill Deverell. I really wanted to make that--it also included D.J. Waldie, whom I've never met--but I ended up battling traffic to the Truthdig event downtown. It took me well over an hour (on Saturday afternoon) to get there. I arrived 30 minutes late, but I didn't miss anything, since Amy and Chris were caught in the same traffic. But I was riding good in my rented Mustang, so what the hell.

Silicon Valley--The Place

Silicon Valleys' staggering success, which depends on a new technological innovation every decade or so, fits a longstanding and powerful story about California that stretches back to gold rush. That story used to figure California as the Great Exception. Now it also seems more like the Great Template. What's happening here, we tell the rest of the world, will be happening near you soon.

But the Silicon Valley story tends to obscure at least as much as it reveals. Mostly it conceals the history (let's call it the people's history) and the everyday quality of life on the ground here. That part of the story is the focus of the California Studies Association conference I'm attending today at De Anza College.

I won't try to summarize the fine presentations I've heard here, but here's a little factoid for you. We usually talk about the San Francisco Bay Area. Makes sense, right? But the Census folks talk about the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland area. Yep, Santa Clara County is by far the most populous one in the nine-county Bay Area. It's also a huge economic engine. But I wouldn't dream of telling anyone I was from the San Jose area.

Hemingway on Lee, Part II

Mark Hemingway replied yesterday on National Review Online to the Barbara Lee post. I really do want to let the Ramparts book do the talking on this point, because the context is important. But he's probably right that my main beef, at least in this instance, is with Barbara Lee's comment on the death of Betty Van Patter.

Did I make too big a deal out of the mistake in Hemingway's review? Probably. After all, the piece was a book review, and the mistake was in Lee's book. In fact, I tried to correct that error last year, when I saw the book in galleys at Book Expo America. I pointed it out to the fellow in the publisher's booth, and he took down the info, etc. Then the book appeared with the same mistake.

After I saw the galleys, I mentioned this passage to Tamara Baltar, Betty's daughter, who also worked for Ramparts (and later, Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting). It was a difficult conversation for me; I can't imagine what it was like for Tamara. That made it easier for me to assign a lot of significance to the mistake--both in Lee's book and in Hemingway's review.

The more important point is what Lee writes about the Panthers and Betty. Lee implies that the government may have committed the murder and then blamed it on the Panthers: "This kind of tactic had been seen before and was known to have been used by the government’s anti-Panther COINTELPRO group." I'm not convinced that's what happened here, and neither are Betty's former colleagues at Ramparts. But COINTELPRO's legacy makes that kind of comment more or less predictable.

And it wasn't just the FBI. The CIA was also keeping an eye on domestic groups, including Ramparts after the magazine exposed some of the agency's covert operations in Vietnam. When a CIA agent briefed his boss on his plans for screwing up the magazine, the boss reportedly replied, "Eddie, you have a spot of blood on your pinafore." Much of this illegality was exposed later by former Ramparts contributor Sy Hersh in the New York Times.

I don't think either end of the ideological spectrum has a monopoly on virtue here, but in the meantime, I'd like to do my small part to keep the facts straight. Sometimes that's hard enough, and I appreciate Hemingway's prompt correction to his review.

National Review on Barbara Lee

Mark Hemingway of National Review Online posted a book review of Barbara Lee's Renegade for Peace & Justice with predictable results. Hemingway asks: "What exactly is wrong with her?"

Certainly Lee's recent visit to Cuba and her erstwhile connection to the Black Panthers are perfect grist for the right-wing mill. The review's title, "Comrade Barbara," is drawn from Bobby Seale's moniker for Lee after she became involved with the Black Students Union at Mills College.

Lee's book also figures in my Ramparts research, and on one of the points that Hemingway raises: her halfhearted defense of the Black Panthers in the murder of Betty Van Patter, the magazine's former bookkeeper. I won't rehearse the details here--that's what the book is for--but I don't think Lee's cursory discussion enhances her honor.

But let's not get too carried with Hemingway's argument, either. For one thing, he gets Betty's name wrong. He calls her Betty Van Tanner, thereby repeating Lee's mistake in the book. This despite the fact that Hemingway mentions David Horowitz's account of this brutal episode in Radical Son, which at least gets the names right.

I don't think I can credit anyone, left or right, whose control of the facts is that loose.

Speaking of National Review and its founder, William F. Buckley, some of us recall his television program, Firing Line. But did you know that Robert Scheer appeared on it? The title of that episode was "Is Ramparts Magazine Un-American?" If you know anything about the participants, you can imagine the tone of the exchange.

The Firing Line tapes are hard to find now--I had to visit the Hoover Institution to watch the Scheer episode--but I discuss that exchange in the book, whose publication date is September 8.

Secondhand Sounds Redux

Fanatical readers of this blog will recall that Secondhand Sounds, which airs on KCSB, is pushing back the frontiers of indie, R&B, and roots music broadcasting. What's less well known, perhaps, is that the show has moved to a new time slot: Wednesday from 6 to 8 a.m.

I know what you're thinking. Will this move dilute the fierce independence that helped the program dominate the airwaves every other Saturday between 4 and 6 a.m.? All I can say is, tune in and find out. You can catch the webcast at the KCSB link above. For those of you who are still fumbling around, trying to find out where the real action is, check the other link to see what you've missed. Just do it. Now.