<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4611.1300" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV> <P><FONT color=#990000>Michael Lerner: Should He Speak?</FONT></P> <P>"CounterPunch's inbox is suddenly clogged with e-traffic about Michael Lerner being banned from speaking at the San Francisco rally. We got one list of protesting signatories studded with notables and miscreants, like Eric Alterman who normally spends his time deriding the antiwar protests, just like Marc Cooper, who clearly sees a 'Let Lerner Speak' campaign as a good way of smearing ANSWER and NION (Not in Our Name).</P> <P>"My initial reaction was to say to Jeffrey St Clair that any move to keep Lerner from pouring out his usual freshets of idiocy is sound by definition, but on mature consideration I counsel the organizers of the San Francisco rally to slot Lerner in at some point in the proceedings</P> <P>"I'm quite prepared to believe that Lerner, a relentless self-promoter, has managed to piss off everybody with egocentric posturing and unity-wrecking maneuvers, and maybe his plan from the start has been to engineer a situation in which he can howl that Jew-haters have laid him low. But let the guy speak anyway. Mostly people don't listen to speeches, and if you suddenly hear Lerner's voice disturbing the harmony of the great convergence, move into a drumming circle and blot the guy out."</P> <P><<A href="http://www.counterpunch.org/">http://www.counterpunch.org/</A>> </P> <P>DP</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>