<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/31/the-shame-merchants/>
"...how quickly the prosecutorial mindset of those possessed by a poisonous manifestation of identity politics can congeal into a lynch mob. It’s something that my old pal Alexander Cockburn knew intimately. In 1990, Alex was invited to speak by a gang of puritanical Trots at Reed College in Portland, a city almost paralyzed by the conventions of political correctness...
"The invitation was a setup. Instead of a lecture, a self-appointed tribunal had been convened to put Alex on trial for his series of provocative columns in The Nation, which denounced the sexual witch-hunts sweeping the country in the wake of the McMartin pre-school case. Along with the great Debbie Nathan, Alex was one of the very few journalists to slash through the toxic hysteria and expose the accusations as fraudulent claims cooked-up by politically-motivated social workers and therapists. At the time, Alex was derided as an “anti-feminist,” but he was proved right. There were no apologies from his accusers.
"That case was deadly serious. L’affaire Jolie is comically absurd..."
--CGE
On May 28, 2013, at 9:32 PM, Chuck Grimes <cagrimes42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> LBO Tiff goes Viral on Counterpunch. I laughed, hence the absurd subject line. Here is Michael Yates' essay:
>
> ``St. Clair's essay, "The Silent Death of the American Left," succinctly discusses the absence of a left-wing presence and activism in the face of myriad social and ecological disasters. Somewhat surprisingly, this straightforward account elicited sharp criticism - St. Clair's pessimism was unwarranted and a sign of an intellectual pathology of defeatism, especially in light of the move of some liberal intellectuals toward the left and agitations such as OWS and the Chicago Teachers Union strike.
>
> One troubling criticism of the article was that the author was some sort of "Edward Abbeyist," a reference to the great writer of the American West. Abbey, it was argued, was a representative of an anti-urban philosophy that was out-of-date, with nothing to offer the 80 percent of the U.S. population..
>
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/28/one-nation-one-world/
>
> It got started with this by Marv Gandall:
>
> ``Below is a rather overwrought illustration in today's Counterpunch of the idealist pessimism of the US left which I alluded to in my previous post. The cry of despair by the magazine's editor, Jeffrey St. Clair attributes the "somnambulism" of the masses to their "betrayal" by cowardly and wrongheaded liberals and DP-oriented leftists - a favourite theme of Carrol's and others on this and related lists.''
>
> To which Doug answered,
>
> ``JSC is no Marxist, if that's what you're implying. He's some sort of Edward Abbeyist or something. This despair is too thick. The kids are great. Krugman is quoting Kalecki.''
>
> This must have ticked off Yates:
>
> ``Doug says St. Clair is an Edward Abbeyist. What does this mean? Out here in the sticks, we really like Abbey. He liked the kids too. and they loved him. They're still working hard to save these sticks from all the capitalist predators ..''
>
> And Doug answered:
>
> ``A serious minority of the U.S. population lives in the sticks. As many people live in NYC as in the 10 smallest states combined - in Brooklyn as the 4 smallest states. You are not the Real America. The Abbey agenda has nothing serious to offer the 80% of the U.S. pop that lives in metro areas.''
>
> A lot was stirred up that really needs better treatment. The manipulated division between urban and rural has been the backbone of US politics since before the Constitution.
>
> CG
>
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