CounterPunchTells the Facts and Names the Names $2.50 October 16-31 2000 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair VOL. 7, NO.18 You Could Smell the Fear In This Issue Get Nader ! THE PAY-OFF political culture was under paign to reelect Ron Carey as president siege. Hear the panic as the of the Teamsters) A waters poured into Atlantis. Clinton threw the crime bill and the • The Nader/Green Jesse Jackson cried out that “Our welfare bill at the liberals and they took Surge Has Given very lives are at stake”. Paul Wellstone it with barely a bleat. In 1996 he never quavered that George W. Bush will “re- faced a challenge, as had Jimmy Carter Many Young Folk peal the twentieth century”. Martin from old-line liberalism embodied in the Peretz wrote furiously in The New Re- form of Ted Kennedy. In 2000 the only a Taste for the public that “Naderism represents the halfway-serious threat to Gore came Excitement of Radical emotional satisfaction of the American from another neo-liberal, Bill Bradley. left at the expense of the social and eco- By the early summer we were set for Organizing. People nomic satisfaction of women, blacks, another status quo election, a reaffirma- Carry Such Hours gays, and poor people in America.” tion of the one-party state. Back in 1992 Jackie Blumenthal, Somewhere in the third week of Oc- and Days With Them wife of Sidney Blumenthal, was asked tober the Gore crowd woke up to the for the Rest why she and her husband were such clear and awful thought that they might rabid supporters of a con man from Ar- not make it, that maybe it wasn’t their of Their Lives kansas called Bill Clinton. “It’s our turn any more and that the man to blame turn”, she hissed at once, as though that was Ralph Nader. It wasn’t the first time settled the matter once and for all. Nader had shown up on the crisis radar JIM CROW AT EPA And so indeed it was: the turn of that screen. Right around the time of the whole class that had endured the twelve Democratic convention in August Gore • Carol Browner long years of Reagan/Bush time to take had felt it necessary to make a populist their rightful place in Washington. Of feint to his left. Surrogates like Pat Ire- Heads Up course, in terms of substantive change, land of the National Organization of Racist Sinkhole America remained a one-party state. By Women, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, the spring of 1993 Al Gore was sitting Barney Frank and Jesse Jackson were VENTURA’S SCORE down to write the press release announc- sent out to firm up the faithful and paint ing the recruitment as White House sen- George Bush as the Great Beast. But at ior counselor of David Gergen, hauled that time, before the debates, Gore was • Fun Guy, But out of the archives of Reagan/Bush time to heading up in the polls to what looked What’s He Done? take over as impresario of the floundering like an impregnable 10 point lead and Clinton presidency. It was all over. the Nader numbers were around 3 per cent. There didn’t seem too much point UR ITTLE ECRETS The amazing thing is that Clinton O L S never endured mutiny from his left. He in roughing up Ralph and the Greens. stuffed NAFTA down the throats of Best let the defectors slowly trickle back • Studs Terkel labor and the AFL-CIO endorsed him in across the lines. Describes a Dinner 1996. (Why so quick with another en- By October 21 it was a very differ- with Churchill dorsement in 2000? One incentive may ent story. Gore had bombed in the de- have been a White House threat to un- bates. The Greens had organized a whole leash the Justice Department on Rich string of Nader super-rallies across the • Gen. Wesley Clark Trumka, top AFL-CIO official, for fi- northern half of the country from Seattle and His Mustang nancing shenanigans during the cam- (Nader continued on page 7) 2/COUNTERPUNCH OCTOBER 15-31, 2000 derided the Democrats for years, made sarcastic comments about his distant cousin? Studs said he reckoned he knew 0 utz /2ittle Sectzets the reason. Many years before Vidal had James Cameron, a fine British journalist come to Chicago to promote a book. long dead, who was always in trouble with Though Studs welcomed him to his show, LUNCH WITH STUDS Phil Donohue, at that time riding high as In Chicago to speak on Gore and his various employers for inconveniently honest reporting from Korea and other a radio host, declined to interview him. Nader at the 57th St Bookstore, part of the parts. Cameron once worked for the press These days Donohue is one of the chairs ever valuable independent store, the Semi- of the Nader campaign. Vidal is not a man nary Coop, we went along with our host magnate Max Aitken, aka Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian-born tycoon to forget a slight and Studs reckoned that Danny Postel for lunch with Studs Terkel, this was probably Vidal’s long postponed aged 88. Studs claims he’s deaf now. We who had also served with ruthless verve as Churchill’s minister of aviation during revenge on Donohue. say “claims” because thirteen years ago the war. Beaverbrook had fired Cameron, Then Terkel hauled out of his pocket a Studs interviewed a CounterPunch editor clip from the late Chicago columnist Mike for his radio show and exhibited similar but suddenly sent him a telegram from the south of France, telling him to come at Royko, published in the Chicago Daily facility in ignoring any unwelcome inter- News on December 1, 1970. Royko had polations and in guiding the conversation once, to have dinner with his former em- ployer, along with two other guests, printed a coupon carrying the names of the along his preferred path. Winston Churchill and Aristotle Onassis. four men most often mentioned as possible Studs generously entertained us in a Democratic nominees for the presidency in pleasant Armenian restaurant in the Loop. This was at a point in the 1950s when there was widespread speculation that 1972: Muskie, McGovern, Kennedy and Having recently lost his wife of 60 years Humphrey. Then Royko added Nader’s Studs lives alone in the Uptown Churchill, who spent much of his time on the Cote d’Azur at Beaverbrook’s villa, name. 2,067 people responded to this cou- neighborhood. Watching a game on tv one was in a state of senile dementia. Cameron, pon. Their vote went as follows: Nader, night, Studs observed a burglar poking 1,614; Muskie, 148; Kennedy, 42; about in the bedroom. Studs hailed him by now working for one of Beaverbrook’s rivals, perceived he was being offered, for McGovern 41; Humphrey, 11. cautiously, then got up and went over to “The response to Nader,” Royko his jacket to give the intruder some money. some inexplicable reason, the possibility of a great scoop. He hastened to the south wrote, “was surprising for something be- “I meant to give him maybe a couple of $20 of France and made his way to sides its volume. About a third of the peo- bills”, Studs rasps, “but I came up with the ple who said they like him as a possible whole roll, which was $220. So I went over Beaverbrook’s place, to find his host peer- ing through binoculars at another villa presidential candidate also wrote accom- to hand it to him. He kept his face turned panying letters. I’ve never received that away, but said Thank You and made off.” lower down the hill, where Cameron could dimly see a very old man being lowered much mail about any political figure I’ve Studs reminisces about his close friend into a swimming pool by attendants. Cack- written about. ling malignly, the elderly but still vigor- A couple of days after the lunch with Terkel we went to a debate at the Hothouse Editors ous Beaverbrook told Cameron the man in downtown Chicago, a great club fea- ALEXANDER C OCKBURN splashing about in the pool was Somerset turing good music and political events. JEFFREY ST. C LAIR Maugham, whom he held under close ob- servation for the next few minutes, cack- Here were ranged advocates of the Nader/ Business Manager ling vulgarly about the great writer’s en- Green third party bid against Democratic BECKY G RANT feebled physical condition. loyalists. We heard Sam Smucker, an or- The butler finally called Cameron to ganizer from the United Electrical Work- Design dinner. Inside the dining room he found ers, put up a strong argument as to why DEBORAH THOMAS Beaverbrook and Onassis deep in tedious labor should rethink its loyalty to the conversation about business matters. Sud- Democrats. He pointed out that at the Counselor stroke of a pen Clinton could have helped BEN SONNENBERG denly the doors burst open and the butler and a footman carried in Churchill and labor immensely by any number of execu- tive orders. No such orders came. Published twice monthly except deposited him in a chair at the head of the August, 22 issues a year: table, where the great man remained in- $40 individuals, ert. Many minutes passed in this manner, PUNKS & REDS $100 institutions/supporters before Churchill suddenly raised his head CounterPunch has many friends in $30 student/low-income and said “Max, didn’t I send you to Mos- Chicago, and we made some new ones.