On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
> But this use of "the Israeli lobby," without any mention of Israel's
> relevance to U.S. imperial policy, underscores how close this is to the
> conspiracist explanation of U.S. behavior.
I don't think he's aging gracefully, but to be fair to AC, I think he was personally subject to one of the worst campaigns of anti-semite baiting I've ever seen. It was arguably the very height of his career and influence. He was writing two columns a week for the Village Voice in the early 80s, Press Clips and one of his own stuff, back when it was still the widest circulation left weekly in America. His reportage and press criticism on the Lebanese war was absolutely top notch and he seemed to have the influence in the city of a modern Karl Kraus. And as I remember it, the New York Jewish establishment pretty much ran him out of his job. I think the pretext was that he had taken a $10,000 or $20,000 advance to write a book on the Middle East from an organization with Arab associations and he hadn't disclosed it to his readers. It struck me at the time as a completely contrived charge, and outrageous and racist, but it was fanned into a big scandal, as proof that he really was an anti-semite and an unethical man, and the editor finally gave in and forced him out from a great job at the top of his game. He became a columnist at the Nation shortly thereafter, which is by no means a terrible job, and most of his readers followed him there, and he wrote good columns. But at the Voice he'd seemed always energized and at the center of the New York Zeitgeist. For a guy like him it didn't seem like there could be a better job. And his leaving seems in retrospect like the beginning of the Voice's long decline.
If my memory is correct of what happened (it's been two decades, and I was young) his seemingly growing weakness for saying things that sound like a slap in the face might be understandable. I think that before he was more scrupulous about not giving even the the appearance of offense. And it didn't do him any good. He has reason to be bitter.
Michael