[lbo-talk] ironies of juxtaposition

[Doug Henwood]

The NYT has two obits placed next to each other in today's edition. 
On the left, appropriately enough, is that of William Hinton, 
blacklisted author of several sympathetic books about the Chinese 
revolution; on the right, that of Melvin Lasky, cultural cold warrior 
and editor of the CIA-subsidized Encounter. Whether by accident or 
design, or maybe some unconscious force somewhere between the two, 
these passages appear inches from each other.

This, from Lasky's 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/international/europe/22LASK.html>:


>In what was a kind of personal credo, he once wrote about the 
>intellectual's responsibility to mount an unwavering defense of 
>individual rights, or else, as he put it, "manuscripts will be 
>banned, books will be burned, and writers and readers will once 
>again be sitting in concentration camps for having thought dangerous 
>ideas or uttered forbidden words."

And this, from Hinton's 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/international/asia/22HINT.html>:


>With high hopes for the Chinese revolution, Mr. Hinton returned to 
>China during World War II as a propaganda analyst for the Office of 
>War Information, and then again in 1947 as a tractor technician for 
>the United Nations. When the United Nations program ended he stayed 
>on as an English teacher and land-reform adviser in Fanshen, where 
>he took more than 1,000 pages of notes on what he saw.
>
>When his passport expired, he returned to the United States in 1953, 
>and his troubles began. After the Eastland Committee held hearings 
>on him and pronounced the trunk full of papers they had taken from 
>him to be "the autobiography of a traitor," he worked as a truck 
>mechanic in Philadelphia until he was blacklisted, then took up 
>farming in Fleetwood, Pa., on land that his mother owned.

At least the American version stops short of concentration camps, 
Camp X-Ray aside.

Doug