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The First Commitment

Civil Offense

671

Milestones of Civil Rights

Halfway on the LongWalk

Getting Down to Cases . .

674

Llke a Checker on a Checkerboard

675

Sort

of

Dampens Your Splrits

Scott

Need

a

Cause

Careys Night

Variations Calvin

Leadership:

Falling Behind Again:

n the System:

. I

The Legacy that

Soured Wilhins

WhiteMyths of Blackconomics

Hill

Finding

a

to Vote , , V.Hamilton

BOOKS

THE

ARTS.

677 Black Writing in the

1970s

678 Observlng Whales Through

679 Murray.Proud Shoes

680 Callaloo

#2

680 Photograph o Rain (poem)

682 ndigenousMusic

682 CharlesBaudelaire poem)

683 Music

685

Theatre

Binoculars (poem)

Drawings by Marshall Arisman

1

I

- num ber a r e ve t e rans i n t he s t rugg leor equal r ights ,

men whose opinions and perspect ives are as. informed

as they have been hard-earned. Carey McW illiamss

heFirst

en as V ernon Jordan,and adozen other black

leaders emerged from two-and-a-half-hour

White House meeting to denounce the Presi-

dents inverted priorities, which once aga in

a v e b la ck s, at the en d of . the line, wa s

o resswithhis pecial issue nBlack

The condition

of

blacks in Am erica is not , we ar e

a

politically profitable, popu lar or chic subject.

t

not, n other word s, ell mag azines. I t is,however,

very issue with which

Nation

began in 1865-

of its founder s w a s a lso founder

of

the Ant i -

ry Society-and whichhas emained for u s

a

I t is appropr ia te that the cont r ibutorso this speciai

unflagging involvem ent in the ivil r ights m ovem ent

goes back

t o

t h e 1930s. Herbert Hil l , who joined the

N A A C P as Director

of

Labor Programs, has been the

countrys leading expert pn these m att ers ev er since.

Charles Hamilton wrote with Stokely Carmicha el a

book

on Black Power at the very beginning

of

t h a t

mov emen t, and ven of th at slogan. Roger Wilkins has

hzid broa dly influe ntial care er ascivil rights activ-

ist, hig h go ve rnm en t offici.1 and jour nalist spec ializ-

in urban and minor i ty affairs. Along with Robert

Bone, whose America was among

the first books

to

a t t e m p t a systematic survey

f

black

. l i terature in this countyy, these com mentators have

t

their comm and a remarka ble aggregation of expe-

r ience in the thru s t or

black

equali ty. Thus their ol-

lect ive analysis the black condition,

which

doesnt

p r e t e n d , tobecom prehensive , urns ,ou t o

authoritative.

Bu t since thisssue does not t te m pt to cover the

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16 19

found and ntractable problem in al l its aspects, it

leaves many quest ions unanswered.How to reconcile,

or ex am ple , Herb ert Hills pessimistic prognosis of

steadilydeteriorat ingmaterialc i rcumstancewi th

CharlesHamiltonsoptim istic epo rt of slow bu t

steady progress t the local political level? The contra-

dictions seem due, in p art ,

to

the varying t ime scales

t h ewr i ters employ or hei rdifferingdiagnoses.

MeWilliams is encouraged ( though not

at

all compla-

cent) about the contemporary si tuat ion, but that is per-

hapsbecausehisbenchmarksare he even more

depressingly retrograde

1930sr

40s and 50s. Hill , ,on

the other hand, compares the conomic condit ions of

the 70swi th those of the

60s

and f inds causeor a l a r m

and outra ge. Roger W ilkins discoversra t he r an sc il -

lat ing series f poli tical ups and dow nshich have left

the real issues f racial just ice and equali ty t ragical ly

unaddressed.

The common theme: Is it possible-in the wa ke

f

so

much promise (organizat iqnal and individual) unful-

filled, defeated, assassinated and/or disintegrated-to

resurrect

a

mov emen t for social justice? How should

one measu re the impactf th e public disavowal f pub-

lic promises,he hopelessness born of scandalously

high

unempioyment rates, theominous

loss

of faith in

the possibilities of politics?

Adding urgency to the si tuat ion, in our view, ar e

thpsemanyntel lectuals nd omm entators who

who leheartedly suppo rted the civil rights mo vem ent

of the

1950s

and ear ly

1960s

but now find themselves

in opposition to the black agenda. Blacks themselves

are not direct ly at tacked, but such phrases

s

equal-

ity of results, quota system, and reverse discrimi-

Inthese c i rcumstances t i s impor tant to remember ,

a s , Chr is topherLasch emindedus in discussing

McWill iamss early wri t ings in these pagestwo week s

ago, th at , the race problem is in pa rt

a

civiI

issue and that u1tim ately i tsnly solution lies in popu-

lar ac t ion ra ther than governm ental ly imposed ad-

ministrat ive reforms, important though they are.

This issue f The

Nut lo t ,

he n, is not merely a eces-

sary , if incom plete, accou nt f the continued shameful

situation of a chronically oppressed American minor-

i ty

bu t a l so

a

rededication of the ma gaz ine o one of its

most fundamental and endur ing comm itments .

nation frequen tlymack of euphemism.

Offense

ivil defense is, of cou rse,

offensive

in the nu-

clear age, i ts strategic purpose being

o

m a k e

nuclear war less unthinkable.f by evacuating

i t s c i t ies the Uni ted S ta tes can defendXil-

lions

of

citizens who would therw ise be onsumecj in a

war , i t makes the nuclear exchange that much more

possible, or likely. Civil defense, so called, frees both

superpowers to behav e m ore offensively.

Civil defense is also offensive, in George Orw ells

sense of th e dec ent an d app rop riate use of the lan-

guage in politics, inha t i t s t rueignificance

is

the op-

posite of its apparent (purely defensive) meaning.

Nevertheless, we have been launched by Presiden t

Carter intoa new er a ofcivi1 defense.Characteris

cal ly, Carter has ot ma de clear the exten tf his co

mitment to this old notion. It has leaked out of t

interested part ies lairs in the Pen tag on tha t in la

September he approved

a

decision memorandum

call ing for the development

of

a thing named cri

relocation program.. A pr i ce t ag

f

$2 billion over t

next five years was attached to the leak,u t t he P

dent denies that he has se t t ledn a precise

sum.

The phrase crisis relocation

s

so typical

of

the

ceptive jargon of Pen tagon bure auc rats that

one

tempted to toy with it and tw ist it into tpe asserti

that the real crisis resides n the defense establi

ment , which should e relocatedelsewhere, farfr

theenter of national policy.

Common sense assures

us

th at modern cities-and

especially American ones choked every working d

in their own vehicular traffic-cannot be evacua t

short

of

days and daysf chaos. Th e next imm ediat

following idea is tha t,

if

we ever began such gigant

tre k, he ,adversary-about-to-become-enemy wou

take it as the cleare st sign al that we were abo ut

launch our arsenal against him.ould he he n polite

wait for more evidence? On the contra ry, he wou

have every reason to str lke pre-emp tively, ju st wh

the exodus bottlenecks were most jammed,

Thisevacuouspropo sal to recycle

Eco

w i s f s Jesting headline) is bu t the latest in a series

our civil defense efforts. Back i n H a r r y T r u m a n

day s this grim comedy was al l about holes, in t

ground, backyard shel ters, and designatedsafe

in publicbuildings.Those ymbolic r iangles th

marke d them hav e faded over the years, but the

i

pulse to hide from . the atom has su rged a nd reced

with the tides

of

the co nfrontational cycle. In his l

year in off ice Tru m an, t ryin go squeeze m pney ou t o

skeptical Congress, wroteh a t every weakness n ci

defense increases an aggressors temptation

t o

at ta

us (note the cautious anonymity of th at ph ras e;

i

norm al now

to

call it-a Soviet spade).

John F. Kenn edy deplored the publics ap athy ,

difference and skepticism and called for insuran

which we could never forgiveourselves for forgoing

the event

f

catastro phe (he mu st ave been talking

the survivors guil t ) . But he

u ick ly

let thewhole ci

defense notion drop , even t h o u g h Rober t McNama

called it absolutely essential, right after the Cub

missile crisis. Congress and the public had rio,faith

it, t rust ing instead n the ir own inst incts that anuc

war would truly be a no-win co nflict and there fo

would not h app en, however much >both govern men

brandish ed their missiles. We had

fu l ly

entered t

quitesane period thatwascal led MAD forshor

meaning that deterrence hecked both sides with.t,

knowledge that mu tual assured destruct ion ay dow

the road.

Thus it is always ominous when a President rai

again the specter ,or t h a t is wh at i t s , of civil defen

I t means t ha t t heoffensive capability is bein g gea

u p a notch

or

two. In Carters case theotivation is

sviously to app ease heSenateswarhawks, as t

SALT

I1 t reaty nears complet ion and heads towar

ratification. The Soviet Unionwill not b e fooled by

so why should the Am erican Cong ress or public

-

I

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16

1978 66

in bv this old charade? In fact. thev ill not be,

it is always distressingo find that particular skeli

ratt ling again n the nationalcloset. Civil defense

process of offensive posturing which some day

.

Cause

mething seems

o

us

to be missingfrom all that

we have read on the People's Temple disaster.

Many of the accounts and analyses focusn the

Rev. Jim Jones in an efforto comprehend how

achieved so great a power over his congregantshat

o a jungle in Guyana and then

a megalomaniac

s less in-

omen of all ages and all

who followed him. They demonstrated an ex-

a

cause, ultimately even sacrific-

their lives and-the livesf their children.

We find them interestingot because we think they

freaks but because e think they maybe repre-

of a great many other Americansho would

elcome the opportunity to dedicate themselves to a

th at J im Jones achieved over them

not emanate from him. I t came, we think, from

f

he sacrifices they were prepared to make.

,

As

everyone knows, new religious movements-or

cults, to use the pejorative ord-have enjoyed gr ea t

success in recent years'in attracting adherents. Other-

wise sane appearing young men and women haveor-

shipped a chubby15-year-old boy, or shaved heir

heads and danced in the streets inellow robes,

o r

re-

vered

a

Korean munitions manufacturer

as

the Mes-

siah. Distraught parents have tried to explain such

behavior

by

alleging that their children have been

brainwashed. While the doctrines preached by these

movements ar e indeed strange tos, thejr appealdoes

not seem very mystifying. It appears to lie in the in-

tense com.mitment and sacrifices they demand from

'their adherents

at

a moment when American society

f the

parents of those joining these movements revile their

faiths or threaten them with deprogramming, that

may even intensi fy the attraction. The threatf perse-

cution makesgreater the sacrifice required fromhose

who belong.

Just as the new religious movements ar e flourish-

ikg, so

ar e revival movements n established religions.

' 'Born again Christ ianity, which calls for sacrificial

abstinences, is a powerful force that has appealed

to

millions of Americans cross

a

spectrumbroad

enough to include immyCarter,Eldridge Cleaver

andCharles Colson. Orthodox Judaism,certainly

among: the most demanding. f faiths. seems also to be

qryehNeier member

of

The Nation's

dito?.ial

bdard

is

visiting

professor o L a w ;at New York Uwiuersitg

and

a

f e l l o w o ITlstztute

for

Humanities.

growing, if we ar e to judge by the strengthof various

Hasidic sects and the number of students on college

campuses we see wearing yarmulkes.

The impulseo join with others n making sacrifices

on behalf

of

a cause is not nique toour time. Virtual

everyeligiousmovement, no matter how well-

established and comfortable itay be today, require

great sacrifices of its early adherents. Its liturgy me

morializes the persecutions endured by

its

founders

and its greatest heroesare

its

martyrs. Religions also

celebrate those scourgesho led ebellions againsts-

tablished leaders for indulging too greatly in secular

pleasures and who periodically renewed and purified

the faith through sacrifice.

Religion, of course, is not the only force capable of

providing thosewho seek t the opportunityo join oth-

ers in making sacrifices. Some finduch opportuqities

in military service and war, others in politicalmove-

ments,others in humanitarianendeavor.Counter-

par ts of the young men and women who are join ing

new religious movements today supplied the energy

that fueled the civil rights and anti-war movements

decade or

so

earlier. We who believed in those causes

then rejoiced in the intensity

f

the commitments.

W e

might rejoice again today in the willingnessof people

to make sa.crifices

if

it were in a cause th at we found

admirable.

The late

1950s

resembled the late 1970s in lacking

good causes in which young Americans saw oppo

ties to join 'with one another in making sacrifices. Pe

haps that iswhy the response was

o

immediate and

enthusiastic in 1960 when J0hn.F. Kennedy proposed

the Peace Corps in the course of his campaign to be

President. We

do

not suggest that the time hascom

revive that idea.For good reason, Americans havee-

come cynical about causes their government mighs-

pouse. But we miss any discussion f ways to at tr ac t

to

goqd causes those Americanswho seek the fulfillment

they derive from joining together and mahing sacr

fices. We say this, not becausewe are ready with ou

own five-or ten-point prografio propose, but because

we think somegood might yet ome out of the events

Guyana if we examined how to appeal to the movem

that seems to, be o u t , here' waiting for a good cause.

Those who went to Guyana and died there seem t

thought that preferable to the other ways they could

have spent their lives. Only the likes of the Reverend

Jones and the Reverendoon have understood and a

pealed

to

their need to sacrifice. Is there no one else

around?RYEH N EI ER

Carey s

Night

vv

wish hat all ur readers, and allf that

much larger company that wishes Ca

MeWilliams well, could have been pres-

ent at Nat ion dinner on November 29

at

the BiltmoreHo;tel in New

It

celebrated UT

retired editorand the purposes he servedo well for o

long; it also looked to the futuref this country and h

it could be served bya journal of this kind. Here the

O H

PagP

663

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16

1978

CA L V IN TRILLIN

A

a loverof t ru th, I am natural ly pleased to see

the acts emerging bout hepredict ion

at t r ibuted to H.L. Mencken concern ing the

f i r s t Pres ident f rom he DeepSouth. I t is

gyatifying to see yet anothe r con firmation of th at old

.Ame rican political adage, u sually credited t o the late

John Foster Dulles,

You

cant fool all of the.p eop le all

of

the t im e, but you might

Bs

well give -it y our b est

shot.

I suppose wh at st i rred interes t n the passage from

the tar twas hat , by chahce, heFirstFami ly

Mencken envisioned seemed ra th er close t o o u r very

own First Family-a beer-swilling brother, a cousin

on the hal lelujah circui t, a daug hter takin g pictu res

with her camera , and an incumb entho, shorn of

his bum pkin way s by some of Gradys New, South

hucksters, wil l have

a

charm comparable to thatof the

leading under takerf Dothan , Alabam a, qst spr ing,

I

rep rint ed the Mencken quotation in this colu?mn-

reprinted i t routinely,

I

might add, in the way that

Am erican newsp apers once routinely reprinted the

body count handed out eachday by the

U.S.

A r m y

spokesman in Saigon.

For

a while, other publications reprinted the pas-

sage as routinely as 1had. Theri we were faced with

w h a t I can only call,a backlash. I t was ed by Georgia

state Sen . Jul ian ond, whose statesmanlike exterior ,

I

know, has masked a deep sense of frus tration and

rage ever since he mana ged, in 1961, to integ rate the

public tennis courts of A tlanta only

to

be beaten in

s t ra ig ht se ts by

a

female diet it ian n her late

0s.

Bond

himself reprin ted the Mencken passage in a column

(for theAt lanta Gazet te) provokinga Los

investigation of its origin which has not been

match ed for journalistic enterprise since my own in-

vestigation, in the ea rly 970s, uncovered aonspiracy-

between Richard

M.

Nixon an d Willard Marriot t

to

consolidate all

of

the cooking in this country nto one

giga ntic kitch en, o be located some where in Virginia.

The

Los

Times reporter , Jeff Prugh, ques-

tioned a number of Mencken scholars, includingAlis-

tair Cooke, who put toge ther Vintage

Menclfen

long beforeh e m e t t h eellamys. According to Prughs

accou nt, Cooke pored voraciously over his M encken

collection for nine days, and then concluded tha t th e

passagewas a mischievous arody. Theip-dff,

Cooke said, was the usef the word pornographer, as

in th e Presidents cousi,npraying for theonver sion of

some Northern Sodoms most Satanic pornographer

as she waveshis work-well thumbed-for all th e

yokels to gasp .at. Inform ing Prug h that pornog-

rapher was l i t t l esed in he 1920s, Cooke offered th e

opinion that the en t ire passage may have been in-

vented . by Julian Bond.

A

few day s later, Bond hastened

to

clear-himselfby

te l l ing the implacable Prugh that the passage may

have originated n this column.I had to face up to the

.

implication carried n Bondswords: there wa s apo ssi-

bi li ty th at , th e person who passed th e quotation on

t o

a person

I

have refused toay was or wasnot Zbig-

niew Brzezinski , had taken advantagef my trust ing

nature. ButBdnd,llike one of thos e fallen -aw ay Stali

ists who immediately

start

accusing everyone

o

being an ag en t of the Red Men ace, began writing le

ters to the edi tor c la iming thatwa s not what the om

mittee used to dismiss as an innocent dupe but th

inventor

of

th e quotation myself-a conscious hoaxe r

of the Am erican eople who had been caugh tt last by

the wilyCooke. According

to

Bonds,letters.

I

had bee

driven

to

t he deed by my em bar ras sment a t hav ing

been snookered many years before by a story abou

seal boy , a youth ho fell off a boat

in

th e Gulf of M ex-

ico and wag raised by porpoises. I was not so much

a n g r y

as

a l i t t le bi t hurt .

view

of

a book

I

recently published , m y own wife, in

this very mag azine, implied that

I

had invented th e

Mencken quotation-a charge made,in directiolation

of

the rule

of

evidence tha t pro hib its wife from testi

fying agains t her husbandn a jou rna l of opinion. Th e

sta te of mind my wife was n when she tossed off this

calumny can best be described y not ing that her r

view

of

my book was distinctly unfavorable.

Then, aso often happens n Am erica these days,

t ruth began

to

emerg e through the efforts of a n ac

countant . Don Harvey,anaccoun tant n Chicago

wrote meo

say that

pornographer was notnly use

in the 20s bu t had been used by Mencken,himself in

1920 n

a

New art icle cal led Star Spangl

Men. If I did not have access to back umbers of

New Harvey said, could ind the same es

reprinted in col lectedand wit

an introdu ction by Alistair Cooke.

Even that was nQt the unkindes t . cut . In wiag a re-

T

i skaises a num ber of que stion s abo ut ookes

role.

f

the Mencken quote

s

not genuine, w

did Cooke try t o shi f t the blame . to Jul ian

Bond? Does Coqke know Brzezinski? Does he

know Don Harv ey? Is i tossible th a t Cooke had some-

th ing to do wi th m aking up the qu ote an dow fears h

may be depor ted if discovered? Is Alistair Cooke an

American ci t izen?

If so,

why does he talk so funny?

nay saye rs and ynics. ,Only ast mo nth, n the course f

interviewing a visiting specialist on the subject (me

th e Kansas City Star f inal ly pr inted the t ruth abou

th e seal boy hoax..Th e Seal oy Hoax (a oy who sup -

posedly livedwith dolphins in theulf of Mexico)was

a confusion Bond took for real, the tar art icle said

He reported i t , and then blamed Tri l lin wlien the

truth was made known.

Recently,

I

received a let ter from John Givens, th e

news director

of WAGF

in Dothari,Alabama.

I

could

dismiss the quote

s

being: a hoax, Mr.Givens wrote

%stead of th at , I asked around town and found hat

the piece reeks f Menckens pen and ma yery well e

authent ic . Let me expla in that

.L.

Mencken wasver

much f ami l i a r w i th Dothan , A labama ..After list

ing some of Menckens Dotlian connections and

reaf

firmin g his own belief in the quo tation, Givens

end s by saying ,

I

would appreciate some insight tts

authenticity.his,r. Givens, is it.

. D

Once the t ruth bega n o emerge,

it

overwhelmed th e

I

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