Class Memory...was Michael Moore

[Katha Pollitt]

I think Carrol Cox makes a very good point about the CP and race. I grew
up in a CP milieu in the fifties and sixties, and  today I am struck by
how racially integrated it was. My parents' circle of  political
comrades and friends had many blacks and Asians; they sent me to a 
fellow-travelling summer camp (Woodland, in Phoenicia NY) that was a
real racial (and class)  mix. Of course, the big difference between
those CPers and gitlin,alterman and co is that the CP, for better or
worse, was doing actual politics.  But Gitlin and Alterman are just
pontificators. They don't belong to any social movement, or  even know
much about them. What they are basically all about is book contracts,
and panels, and grants. Which is hardly a crime --- I'm a writer too--
but they shouldn't speak as if they represent a wing of an actually
existing "left." I've yet to meet a leftist, of any stripe, who takes
them seriously. 

Katha Pollitt