Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2002 13:30:04 -0500 From: Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> Subject: Fw: My reply to Cockburn
"Actually, I strongly doubt whether Hitchens ever looked at our web page, since he told me the last time I saw him that his Internet skills are confined to reading his e-mail. I also doubt he's ever read Baraka's poem, or his subsequent defense, both of which are well worth studying and far less deserving of the charges of subliteracy, viciousness and paranoia than much of what Hitchens puts out these days. The phrase 'Jew power,' by the way, is Hitchens's, not Baraka's."
Well, Alex, Hitchens did indeed read Baraka's poem and subsequent "defense," for I sent it all to him. And I don't know why you dragged in David Irving to justify your publishing Baraka's garbage -- Hitch said nothing about your rights, nor did he say that Baraka should be banned. And, yes, Baraka referred to Israelis, not "Jews,"; but anyone familiar with his previous poems knows that Baraka can work the Jew angle as well.
Try this, from "For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet":
"Smile, jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got something for you now though. I got something for you, like you dig, I got. I got this thing, goes pulsating through black everything universal meaning. I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured."
And Baraka can do the faggot dance, too. From "Civil Rights Poem":
"Roywilkins is an eternal faggot His spirit is a faggot his projection and image, this is to say, that if i ever see roywilkins on the sidewalks imonna stick half my sandal up his ass."
Subliterate? In the eye of the beholder, I suppose. But all of the above certainly fits the Counterpunch house style, perhaps best illustrated in Jack McCarthy's Oct. 22 piece:
"Hitchens, you fucking fat-assed drunken slut.
"You lying sack of shit . . .
"Sir, have you no sense of personal integrity whatsoever? Hitchens: You are a Big Fat Liar and a Right Wing Porker.
"And a fat assed fucking bore who deserves a good ass kicking."
Keep up the fine work, boys.
Dennis Perrin