Entries by

Prizing Great Advocacy Journalism at the Hillman Awards

“We want a better America.” These were the first words printed in the program of the 62nd annual Hillman Prizes. Reading them I experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance, for only a few days earlier Mitt Romney had uttered something similar at a campaign rally: “A better America begins tonight.” However, the words in the program were spoken in 1946 by Sidney Hillman, a very different public figure than the presidential candidate, who had a very different public agenda than the quarter-billionaire politician. Hillman was President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and he spoke them a couple months before his untimely death at age 59. The foundation that was later started in his honor has been giving out prizes for the best in advocacy journalism since 1950. Winners in previous years have included Murray Kempton, Bill Moyers, Spike Lee, Maria Hinojosa, and Robert McNeil and Jim Lehrer.

The latest rendition of the awards was held, fittingly, on May Day. I had been invited to attend by Tom Watson of causewired.com who asked more than a dozen bloggers to be part of a guest blogging contingent for this event at the New York Times Center. We were seated with a prime view of the presenters and recipients, with access to wifi so we could live tweet the proceedings. I emerged a few hours later, fired up and rededicated to the proposition that dedicated reporters, photographers, broadcasters, and authors really do make a difference in people’s lives.

The evening kicked off with remarks by Bruce Raynor, President of the Hillman Foundation, who observed that while New York Times columnist David Brooks has over the past few years been naming recipient of his “Sidney” awards, named in honor of conservative thinker Sidney Hook, the Hillmans have been giving out their “Sidney awards” for decades, and I promptly tweeted that we were at the “progressive Sidneys.” Here’s a rundown on the honorees, with takeaways from the speeches, and photos from the evening, reproduced here from notes and partial audio tape. Corrections welcome, please excuse any errors or omission; for further information, this link will take you directly to the Hillman Prize website. Click on this link to read about all the honorees and view lots more photos. // more. . .

The Sketchbook Project–Ways to Share Urban Lives

Earlier this year, my wife Kyle Gallup  created a sketchbook for the Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project, and it is now part of a traveling exhibit. This ambitious project, which invites work from artists all over the world, is written up in today’s New York Times with an article that includes a slideshow. Click on this link to see more of the images from the sketchbook that Kyle created.

#FridayReads, May 11–“Anatomy of Injustice” & “Have Not Been the Same”

#FridayReads, May 11–Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, Raymond Bonner’s powerful and sad indictment of the system in a S. Carolina death penalty case. Also, “Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance, 1985-1995 by Michael Barclay, et al, a rich, readable tour of Canadian rock n’ roll, accompanied by a great CD compilation of the same name.

Cuff the Duke–Great Folk Rock in Brooklyn May 12

NYC friends who love great live folk rock: If you’re in the market for musical entertainment this Saturday night, May 12, consider heading out to hear Cuff the Duke, an inspired outfit originally from Oshawa, Ontario. They’re playing at the Rock Shop, a friendly club with good acoustics on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn. The nearest subway stop in Union Street on the R train in Brooklyn. Here are details. They are not the headliners–though they’re good and polished enough with great vocals and songwriting to warrant top billing–so they may go on as early as 7:30. I’ve got a call in to the club about that and will post new info when I get it. I’ll be there. If you’re curious about their sound, click on the video below or on their band page at CBCRadio3 where you can hear many of their songs. Hope to see you then/there.

Mitt Romney–Prep School Bully

Evening Update: In the most disturbing eyewitness report yet, a Mitt Romney classmate involved in the assault on John Lauber has told ABC,

“’It’s a haunting memory. I think it was for everybody that spoke up about it. . .because when you see somebody who is simply different taken down that way and is terrified and you see that look in their eye you never forget it. And that was what we all walked away with,’ said Phillip Maxwell, who is now an attorney and still considers Romney an old friend. ‘I saw it with my own eyes,’ said Maxwell, of the anecdote first reported by the Washington Post. Maxwell said Romney held the scissors helping to cut the hair of a student, John Lauber, who was presumed to be gay and who had long hair. ‘It was a hack job. . . clumps of hair taken off.’ Asked if he has any doubt that what Romney did could be considered bullying, Maxwell responded, ‘Oh my god, are you kidding?. . .  I castigated myself regularly for not having intervened. I would have felt a lot better about myself had I said ‘hey, enough.’ When I saw the look on his [Lauber’s] face, it was a look I’ll never forget,” said Maxwell. ‘When you see a victim, the sense of trust betrayed in this boy who was perfectly innocent for being different. This was bullying supreme,’ he said.”

Afternoon Update: This situation has gotten murkier all day, with Romney’s spokesperson (in my initial post below) denying that the candidate had any recollection of such an incident, then Romney himself later saying he didn’t at the time think of the classmate as gay, but implying that he did indeed know and remember him. He continues to say he doesn’t recall this incident, though he adds he won’t “argue” with the report of it. And while the Romney campaign is reportedly trying to arrange for former classmates of his to vouch for him, the only one contacted so far is still deciding whether or not he’s going to speak on behalf of Mitt’s campaign. Then there is one former classmate, quoted here via ABC who the campaign will probably not be asking for a character reference:

“One former classmate and old friend of Romney’s–who refused to be identified by name–said there are ‘a lot of guys’ who went to Cranbrook who have ‘really negative memories’ of Romney’s behavior in the dorms, behavior this classmate describes as ‘evil’ and ‘like Lord of the Flies.’ The classmate believes Romney is lying when he claims to not remember [the hair-cutting incident]. ‘It makes these fellows [who have owned up to it] very remorseful. For [Romney] not to remember it? It doesn’t ring true. How could the fellow with the scissors forget it?’ the former classmate said.”

“Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
‘He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!’ an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled. A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors. The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another.”

That is the opening of a lengthy bombshell article by Jason Horowitz in today’s Washington Post about the abusive and appalling treatment he reports Mitt Romney led against classmate John Lauber in 1965.  Before going to press Horowitz asked Romney’s campaign for comment:

“His campaign spokeswoman said the former Massachusetts governor has no recollection of the incident. ‘Anyone who knows Mitt Romney knows that he doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body,’ Andrea Saul said in a statement. ‘The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.’”

The nearly 5500-word article seems to be meticulously sourced and carefully reported, though I’m sure Romney allies and rightwingers will attack the reporter and the Post. Still, with five classmates remembering the incident so vividly, all looking back on it with deep regret, I predict this denial will be assailed until the campaign–or even the candidate himself–is forced to come up with a more believable response. The image of Mitt Romney rallying a veritable ‘lynch mob’ to forcibly pin down their classmate and make him submit to a sadistic and weird kind of de-feminizing of his supposedly effeminate affectation–his hair that swooped over an eye–is sick and disgusting, especially when contrasted with President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality yesterday.

Apart from the possible political repercussions from this story, it is also very sad. The effects of this incident in Lauber’s life echoed down through the years. While Romney suffered no discipline for his deeds at “the famously strict” Cranbrook, Lauber was expelled prior to graduation, for smoking a cigarette. He died in 2004. I suspect I’ll be updating this post and commenting again on the story as it develops. For now, I urge you to take the time to read the disturbing article.

Warding off a Zealous Censor of Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen”

With the news of  Maurice Sendak’s sad passing today, I’ve been reminded of a brush with intolerance that I experienced many years ago, when one of his most popular books unexpectedly became an issue with a censorious customer.

When I worked in my family’s Cleveland bookstore, Undercover Books, the children’s book section was not my strong suit. I was responsible for ordering our adult books and shelving and merchandising them in their separate sections of the bookstore.

While I looked after the adult books, my sister Pamela ordered all our kids books and worked on the best ways to display them, including the type of merchandise that I regarded skeptically—board books, plush books, sticker books, scratch & sniff books, etc. Pam knew these titles and their authors best, and had a far better knack than I of finding a particular thin-spined book when a customer came in asking for a specific title, as they often did. She had it all over me in this department, and also on our brother Joel—whose chief responsibilities included future business planning and working on the main sales floor, waiting on customers face to face—and our parents Earl and Sylvia, who handled myriad duties such as bank deposits and bill-paying, as well as minding the cash register and waiting on regulars and walk-ins. But when it came to helping a grandmother, relative, or family friend seeking a book for a little one, or a middle-grader, the call often went out for Pam. But she couldn’t be available at all times and I recall she sometimes just wearied of being summoned for this often challenging duty. Grown-ups were so often unsure what a child might like they could take a really long time deciding on a gift book to buy, even after many offerings had been shown them. So, every now and then I would be pressed into duty to take care of a customer who simply had to buy a children’s book.

One such occasion arose one day in the early 1980s, when a rather elderly woman customer who I recognized from a previous visit to our store, a Mrs. Stewart, came in and without hesitation asked if we had Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. She was emphatic in saying she wanted to purchase it, in fact, she said, “I want to buy all the copies you have.” I blanched, worrying if I’d be able to find a copy, or multiple copies if we had them—we always hated to miss a multiple copy sale if we could avoid doing so. There was something weird about Mrs. Stewart’s nervous energy, but it didn’t stop me from feeling satisfaction when I quickly put my hands on a copy, and established with certainty that it was our last one. Mrs. Stewart had come back to the children’s section with me and I eagerly presented it to her, adding that it was unfortunately our only copy, though I added, we would certainly be ordering more. She grabbed it from me, a bit aggressively, and said, “I’m going to buy it so no one else can. You should not be selling this book. It shows a naked boy and his private parts. I want you to stop selling this book. You must not reorder it or sell it any longer!”

Suddenly recalling that on her earlier visit to the store Mrs. Stewart had asked for a fundamentalist tract that we didn’t carry, I realized that I had a kind of religious fanatic on my hands, with some essential human right suddenly at stake, the freedom to read. By this time I was highly agitated, and more than a bit angry at her high-handed claim to tell me what books we should sell in our bookstore. Wanting to get her out of the store as quickly as possible, and before she made a scene in front of other customers, as smoothly as I could manage I took the book from her hands—as if I were simply walking her back up to the cash wrap where she could complete her transaction—mumbling some indistinct nicety about the naked boy in the book. Reaching the register, which was almost to the front door, I changed my tone and said as forcefully as I could without actually yelling, “I won’t sell you this book, Mrs. Stewart, and I won’t allow you to tell me what books we should be selling, or what is proper for customers to buy. You’ll have to leave now, please.”

Realizing that in my gambit to get her out of the store, I had also taken from her hands what she considered to be this very offensive book, she reached to regain possession of it but by now I was behind the counter and handed the copy to my mother. Angry and frustrated, Mrs Stewart began yelling, repeating with horror in her tone, “The boy in that book is naked and you should not be it selling it. I must buy that book so no one else can!”

Again, trying to avoid yelling over her, I said, “I will not sell you this book. Our customers have a right to buy any of our books, and we will not stop carrying this book just because you don’t approve of it.” She took a long time to decide to leave, though eventually she saw that I wasn’t going to sell her the book under any circumstances. She never came in our store again.

Over the years that have followed—as a bookseller, and later as an editor and publisher and engaged literary citizen—I alway take note of Banned Books Week as it comes around on the calendar (this year it will be held September 30-October 6), when libraries and bookstores are encouraged to make displays of books that intolerant people have demanded be removed from library stacks and bookstore shelves. I wonder about the sort of person who would do this, and then think of Mrs. Stewart with her strident voice and straining neck muscles—determined to persuade me that we must not allow anyone else to buy Maurice Sendak’s picture book, lest they see little Mickey’s nakedness—the very face of intolerance.

July 11, 2021

As a postscript to the 2012 post of mine above, I want to share an image of a poster Maurice Sendak drew to support the American Booksellers Association Freedom to Read campaign in 1991. A copy of the poster was part of an exhibit and sale at the Society of Illustrators in Manhattan that Ewan Turner and I attended yesterday at the invitation of children’s book scholar Michael Patrick Hearn. Note the many books labeled on it, from Catcher in the Rye to Native Son to The Giving Tree. His own In the Night Kitchen might’ve been on there, too, if old Mrs Stewart had had her way!

 

#FridayReads, May 4-“Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland” & “Rifftide”

#FridayReads Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland, artist Joseph Remnant and editor Jeff Newelt’s posthumous publication of one of the late Pekar’s last manuscripts, lovingly assembled. Also, Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Joe Jones, as Told to Albert Murray, edited by Paul Devlin–Jones was longtime drummer in the Count Basie Band, a garrulous soul.

Katherine Bradford at Edward Thorp Gallery–a Guest Post by Kyle Gallup

My wife Kyle Gallup is a visual artist who also writes for LeftBankArtBlog. Her latest piece, published there on April 28, is on the New York painter Katherine Bradford, whose current exhibit at Edward Thorp Gallery is up through May 26. The work of Bradford’s shown to the left is “S.O.S., 2012.” I hope you enjoy reading Kyle’s review here as a guest post and if you’re able to, get out and see Katherine Bradford’s paintings at the gallery.