Cooper on Mumia

[Mattcapri at aol.com]

Looks like this thread petered out. Having been away for much of the weekend 
I had time to think about it, on the train and such.  Do folks recall Nat 
Hentoff's Mumia episode a few years back? The Voice, and Nat Hentoff 
sponsored a speaking engagement\"town meeting" at Cooper Union. The featured 
speaker was the then governor of Pennsylvania (memory fails me as far as his 
name is concerned, but it was the guy before Tom Ridge) the subject was "Why 
I am a pro-life liberal" (gag). A number of Mumia's supporters showed up and 
some permutation of them heckling combined with their being denied the 
opportunity to speak. The next week, (or was it the week after) Hentoff's 
article in the voice featured a file photo of brownshirts surrounding a pile 
of books they were about to burn. The accomplished jazz reviewer tore into 
the pro-mumia folks comparing them to the very nazis in the photo. the next 
week his column invoked the IWW, with a picture of striking early twentieth 
proles to go with it. He touted his one time membership in the IWW and his 
involvement in some kind of free speech struggle as a wobbly in his teen 
years. A response in the letters column from the leadership of the Free Mumia 
Coalition (a flawed outfit but c'mon) pointed out that Mumia's speech was 
less than free. Do you believe that in Hentoff's reply he had the acorns to 
say that he spoke with Mumia and that Mumia told him he dissaporoved of his 
supporters actions at the Cooper Union event?
Perhaps this is tangential but I think re-animating this thread in the 
interest of having an exchange on what it is that drives people across the 
Rubicon of self riteousness  could be useful. (or did we just do that?)
mcapri