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Alexander Cockburn June 6, 1941 – July 21, 2012

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Alexander Cockburn June 6, 1941 – July 21, 2012 . -, . . , . - Special Tribute Issue Alexander Cockburn June 6, 1941 – July 21, 2012 Photo by Sonny Anderson for Dobson Images, c. Featuring Essays by: Jerey St. Clair, Peter Linebaugh, Frank Bardacke, Robert Pollin, JoAnn Wypijewski, Pierre Sprey, Susanna Hecht, Bruce Anderson, Doug Peacock, Debbie Nathan, Mike Whitney, Ben Tripp, Joe Pa and many others... -, “ anks, Buddy.” Village Voice, James Ridgeway, called him Go Ask Alex That was the last time I heard his “the Master.” By Jerey St. Clair voice. Two months later Alex was writing The first time I heard his voice was for me. After his rst column appeared “Feed your head.” in the fall of , after the presidential in Wild Forest Review, Alex rang me up. —Jeerson Airplane elections. I was editing the environ- “Jerey, nice looking issue. But didn’t you y last talk with Alex was like mental magazine Wild Forest Review at forget something?” so many others. It wandered the time. e phone rang. I picked up. “What’s that?” I said, fearing that I’d around from topic to topic in “Jerey, hullo, Jerey, is that you? is is mangled one of his paragraphs. Man easy, freestyle way. His voice was a Alexander Cockburn at e Nation.” “My payment. I’m a professional writ- little weaker than usual, a little scratchy Even though I’d long given up reading er, you know. Just a little something to in the throat. He was in Germany, talk- the tedious, East Coast-biased prose of make me feel I’m not giving it away.” ing on a cell-phone, in a hotel room near e Nation, the name was familiar from We weren’t paying writers then. We the clinic where he was being treated the Village Voice, which I used to read as- could barely pay the rent. I scrambled for for cancer. We talked about how dreary siduously in the s, and his marvelous a plan. American politics had become, about books Corruptions of Empire and Fate of “Can I send you a bottle of Scotch?” the spinelessness of Obama and his the Forest, with Susanna Hecht, both of “I hate Scotch. Make it Irish whiskey. liberal supporters, the insanity of the which had fractured spines. The voice Jameson’s.” Republican ultras, and the stuness of was sweetly accented, seductive almost. Alex had a reputation as a heavy drink- Mitt Romney. “Is this all there is?” he “That was a helluva piece you wrote er. But that wasn’t my experience with asked. “Politics used to be so much more on Clinton’s environmental record in him. In the last few years, he tended to fun.” Arkansas. You know, we may be the only drink wine more than hard liquor. He Then his voice livened up. He de- two people in the country to the left of ­irted with hard cider and often came scribed an online photo essay on Bridget David Broder who see Bill for the corpo- into possession of exotic distillations of Bardot, then vividly recalled his stroll rate whore that he is.” dubious legality. But he didn’t get rip- through the Pompidou Center in Paris We talked for an hour or so about roaring drunk very often. Instead, he with his daughter Daisy to view the Clinton, Weyerhaeuser, Tyson Chicken revealed a predisposition toward narco- vast Matisse retrospective. “No ques- and the poisoning of the White River. lepsy. He could simply fall asleep, often tion, Matisse was the greatest.” Matisse Turns out, Alex was not “at” e Nation, at surreal times. Once his ex-girlfriend had deposed Samuel Palmer, Edouard geographically anyway. I was surprised Barbara Yaley had gotten us tickets to see Vuillard, Turner, Hokusai, Bruegel the to learn that he lived on the Lost Coast Little Richard perform in San Francisco Elder, Morris Graves and Giorgioni, in in a little hamlet along the Mattole River as a birthday present. Twenty-minutes Alex’s ever-changing retinue of favorite called Petrolia. He’d left Manhattan be- into a raucous performance, Alex’s head painters. hind to the consternation of many of his was nodding on my shoulder, snoring He asked what I’d been listening to. readers, friends and editors. But most of in sync to the beat of “Good Golly Miss I told him Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee them had never seen the Mattole Valley Molly.” Hooker, as usual, reigniting a long- or that wild stretch of California coast A few years earlier we gave a book running debate between us. Alex was that runs from Shelter Cove north to talk at Powell’s in downtown Portland. a Muddy Waters man. I emailed him a Cape Mendocino. As usual, Alex drove his precious white video clip of our mutual hero Ike Turner, A few days later, the fax machine Plymouth Valiant. After the gig we en- playing at some odd venue in Italy, with began to spit out Alex’s column. It was joyed a nice dinner at Jake’s Famous the Ikettes high-stepping it in white pretty much a verbatim transcript of our Crayfish, drained a couple glasses of mini-skirts and go-go boots. We watched talk—though I didn’t make an appear- wine and headed back to Oregon City it together online, laughing at the way the ance. And that was vintage Alex, too. If on Highway . We’d barely reached dancers seemed to mock Turner. “Ike’s there was a deadline, he would run right the swank community of Eastmoreland, headed for trouble,” Alex said. up to it and often past it. This wasn’t near Reed College, when Alex muttered, en Alex asked if the trout were ris- because Alex had writer’s block, it was “Jerey, can you take the wheel? Now….” ing in the Deschutes River in central because he had better things to do, like His chin dropped to his sternum, the Oregon. He said when he got back to feed the horses, teach his cockatiel Percy tiny car veering toward the Willamette. the states we should ring up old Doug to whistle the Internationale, x—or try I leaned over, grabbed the steering wheel Peacock in Montana and spend a couple to x—the septic, prune the apple trees, with one hand, pounded the break with days tossing dry ­ies at the rainbows. I tweezer out a deer tick from Frank the the other. I negotiated the car to the side told him to count on it. cat’s black dreadlocks, distill hard cider, of the highway, heaved Alex into the pas- “Can you bring sausages? I can’t be- check the progress of the pit barbecue, senger seat, then sat befuddled at the lieve I’m in the heart of Germany and negotiate a complex Persian rug deal control panels wondering how to get the can’t even eat sausages.” with Lawrence of La Brea or find his car into gear. It was my rst, though not I told him I’d order some garlic sausag- glasses. Alex could write faster than any- last, encounter with the Valiant’s infa- es from Taylor’s down in Cave Junction, one I’ve ever met and the faster he wrote mous push-button transmission. pack some goat cheese and a dozen bot- the sharper his prose. And Alex wrote en there was the notorious incident tles of Cote du Rhone. very sharp prose. His old partner at the in North Richmond, California. Our -, book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Gellhorn Prize for war reporting. And Lake District. But those were danger- Press had recently been published, greet- he’s going to accept it!” Who says Alex ous sentiments, even coded in verse, and ed by what was perhaps the most hos- refused to change his mind? Wordsworth was hounded by the secret tile review ever printed by the New York Increasingly, we didn’t talk much police and broke under the pressure. Times Book Review. We were speaking to about the political scene: too dull, too Alex never broke, never retreated, but a big and boisterous crowd in this largely predictable, too dreary. We taunted always moved forward, toward greater black community in the East Bay Area each other on the phone with jokes and liberation, toward justice and some- detailing the CIA’s role in abetting co- pop quizzes: indentify this painting, this times toward vengeance for grievous caine tracking during the Contra wars. singer, this line from Joyce, Wodehouse, wrongs. His favorite line from Lenin was I was about halfway through my talk Ruskin, Edward Gibbon or Henry Miller. “Be as radical as reality.” This became when I was distracted by a delicate purr- We played these games right up to the CounterPunch’s motto. Alex’s politics ing sound to my left. It was Alex, glasses end. On Bastille day, a week before he weren’t static and they weren’t theoreti- perched on his forehead, hypnotized by died, I sent Alex this stanza under the cal. ey were geared toward the circum- the sedative power of my voice into a subject heading: “?” stances of our daily lives. somnatic state. So, In the hundreds yes, even Cockburn of interviews I’ve nods. given since Alex’s Nearly every death, I’ve taken morning for the to calling him “our past years, the Voltaire.” He shared phone would ring Voltaire’s wide- in our house at ranging mind, his am. “Jeffrey, this is hatred of oppres- Alex.” As if it could sion, his rapier wit be anyone else. We and astounding talked an hour each productivity.
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