Soft Skull Announce

Kevin Powell to appear on Oprah Thursday 3/19

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:34:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.) __ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press Contact: Abbye Simkowitz 510.704.0230 x202 <a href="mailto:abbye.simkowitz@counterpointpress.com">abbye.simkowitz@counterpointpress.com</a> Kevin PowellWriter, Activist, Author of the forthcoming OPEN LETTERS TO AMERICA (September 15, 2009 Soft Skull Press) and author of Someday Well All Be Free and No Sleep Till Brooklynwill be a featured guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show Thursday, March 19th TOPIC: How Men Can Stop Violence Against Women. Check Your Local listings for times. Tomorrow Kevin Powell will be stepping onto the most globally influential platform as a guest on the Oprah Show to speak about ending violence against women and girls. His appearance will take place on the heels of one of the most-watched Oprah episodes of this year, dedicated to Chris Brown, Rihanna, and young adults in abusive relationships. Powell has been working relentlessly to help mentor others about this issue through his writings, including his essay Ending Violence Against Women and Girls. His forthcoming essay collection Open Letters to America (September 15 2009 / Soft Skull Press) addresses Americans of all backgrounds, written in the spirit of James Baldwins The Fire Next Time. The book is his celebration of the sudden, mass political engagement of Americas youth, and Americans in general; his thoughts in the aftermath of Obamas magical and historic presidential campaign; and his open acknowledgment that if twenty-first century America is going to be the great world democracy it promises to be, it will be Generations X and Y that make it so. Read more about the book, which is available for preorder on amazon.com, here: <a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-214-3">http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-214-3</a> Powell has authored two previous Soft Skull Press books. No Sleep Till Brooklyn (2007) is a poetry collection, confronting such issues as racism, black self-hatred, gender violence, and his own anguished revelations about sex, love, and misogyny. Someday Well All Be Free (2006) skillfully dissects the dreams of American freedom and democracy in the early days of the 21st century, addressing the reelection of George W. Bush, the colossal tragedy of September 11th, and the historic destruction of New Orleans before our very eyes. Read more here: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/No-Sleep-Till-Brooklyn-Selected/dp/0979663695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237409654&sr=8-1">http://www.amazon.com/No-Sleep-Till-Brooklyn-Selected/dp/0979663695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237409654&sr=8-1</a> Powell has been invited across the country to speak about domestic violence, and has just recently appeared on CNN, FOX 5 NY, NBC CH.4 NY, Hot 97 radio, and BETs 106 & Park. In addition, look for the May issue of Ebony magazine which will be featuring Kevins new short essay, Men Can Stop Domestic Violence. About Kevin Powell Kevin Powell is a Writer, Activist, Public Speaker, and Author of the forthcoming essay collection Open Letters To America (Soft Skull Press). Born and raised in Jersey City, NJ, Powell is the product of a single mother led household, extreme poverty, and violence. But he survived those difficult conditions to author or edit nine books and has been, among other things, an acclaimed national speaker and activist, a founding staff member at Vibe magazine, a cast member on the very first season of MTVs The Real World, and, in 2008, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Brooklyn, New York, where he has been a long-time resident. Besides his work around redefining manhood away from sexism and violence, Powell is also deeply committed to fighting poverty, environmental injustices, and educational inequities. For more information on Kevin Powell, visit www.KevinPowell.net For media inquiries, please contact Abbye Simkowitz at: (510)704-0230 x202; <a href="mailto:abbye.simkowitz@counterpointpress.com">abbye.simkowitz@counterpointpress.com</a> -- The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <<a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/>">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/&gt</a>; If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <<a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce>">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce&gt</a>; If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <<a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com>">mailto:publicity@softskull.com&gt</a>; The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

Soft Skull 2.5 and Fall 09 catalog

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:44:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  Dear Friends of Soft Skull, It�s a transitional time here at Soft Skull, but an interesting time, and a good time to send out an update, we think! As you may have heard, logtime publisher Richard Nash has decided to leave Soft Skull Press. Here's the PW article about it. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6639883.html We expect Richard to continue to do great things in the world of independent publishing, and we wish him the best. It�s been an incredible opportunity, at least for me, to work closely with a true publishing visionary, a person with boundless intelligence, quickness, creativity, knowledge about publishing, and ambition for Soft Skull�not to mention great warmth, kindness, and grace. Meanwhile, there are a number of folks who are continuing on in their involvement with Soft Skull, and we�d like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves. We will be frequently posting to the Soft Skull blog on softskull.com (news). I�m Soft Skull�s assistant editor, and I�ve been lucky enough to work for Richard for the past three years, both pre- and post-acquisition by Counterpoint. I came on board in time to be involved with the publication of some of my favorite Soft Skull books�<a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-60-8">Jamestown</a> by Matt Sharpe, <a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-44-6">American Genius, A Comedy</a> by Lynne Tillman, Lydia Millet�s <a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-184-8">How the Dead Dream</a>, Tim Wise�s <a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-207-0">new book</a> and the reissue of his earlier classic, <a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-99-3">White Like Me</a>, the new edition of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore�s <a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-932360-56-5">That�s Revolting</a>, the American release of <a href="http://softskull.com/detaile dbook.php?isbn=1-933368-36-5">Martin</a><a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=0-9796636-6-0"> Millar�s</a> <a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-200-3">oeuvre</a><a href="http://softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-227-5"> ...</a> and many other wonderful books. I�m very happy to be able to confirm that Soft Skull will continue to operate from our New York office and that I will remain with the company, working on developmental editing and acquisitions. We�ve also got a wonderful staff in Berkeley, headed by our publisher, Charlie Winton. While Counterpoint and Soft Skull books will remain distinct, there is much crossover in terms of personnel, and Soft Skull would be paralyzed without the efforts of the Berkeley staff. In particular, I�d like to introduce Adam Krefman and Charlotte Williams. Adam, who worked previously at McSweeney�s, works on Soft Skull�s production. He will most likely be the most frequent contributor to the Soft Skull blog. Charlotte is also a crucial member of Counterpoint/Soft Skull�s staff. She is also the person who handles all direct orders from the Soft Skull website. She will be a frequent contributor to the Soft Skull blog as well. And I�m also happy to be able to say that I will not be alone in the New York office for too long. We are hoping to have a new senior editor in place sooner rather than later�someone with his or her own bold vision of independent publishing, someone experienced, someone who loves the current and past list of Soft Skull books and authors and who is ready to take that list in a new direction. There�s no question that we will not be the same without Richard, but with this change, there is also an opportunity to continue evolving as a company, and to build upon the great legacy of books Richard has left for us. So on that note, here's our kickass <a href="http://www.softskull.com/files/SoftSkull_Cnpt_Spr09.pdf">Spring</a> and <a href="http://www.softskull.com/files/ctpt_softskull_fall09catalog.pdf">Fall 09</a> catalogs. Check em out. Thanks for reading, and Adam and Charlotte and I are looking forward to updating the blog on our site as Soft Skull 3.0 begins to take shape. Anne Horowitz anne@softskull.com  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/ </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"> publicity@softskull.com </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

Mike Knight's Islamic punk novel in NY Times today - The Catcher in the Rye for Young Muslims

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:12:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.) __ Michael Muhammad Knight, author of five, yes, FIVE forthcoming Soft Skull books is the subject of yesterday's lead story in the National section of the New York Times. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/us/23muslim.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/us/23muslim.html</a> (p. A16 for those following along in print...) And it spent all day on the top ten emailed stories of the day. The focus is on his first book, "The Taqwacores," which we are reissuing next month (moved up from February, and available right now on our website!), "a Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims," as the article describes it. The book has been adapted as an indie feature film to be released in the middle of next year. [More info on this title here: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-229-1">http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-229-1</a> and here's a link to a sample chapter <a href="http://www.softskull.com/files/TaqwacoresSoftSkull1stchapter.pdf">http://www.softskull.com/files/TaqwacoresSoftSkull1stchapter.pdf</a> ] We ourselves believe Knight's work is for an audience much broader than just his own subculture (though we think it pretty meaningful that a single book could spawn and name an entire subculture, the death of reading notwithstanding). We believe that this book and the four to follow (details below) represent a third way between a complete inward-looking rejection of society, and an unquestioning assimilation into society that are the typical absolutes for Muslims in the West--"taqwacore" represents instead a liberated, rebellious, critical engagement with both Islam and the West. As such, too, it points to how any outsider (on a personal level) or minority group (on a social level) might grapple with/against the dominant culture. You might also enjoy this clip from a recent Al-Jazeera story: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rbFyBedolM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rbFyBedolM</a> Anyhow, in addition to the article, we thought you might like to have info on each of the books, to get a sense of what we think is just so goddam great about this writer... THE TAQWACORES (January 2009) A Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, inhabited by burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straightedge Sunnis, Shi'a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists. Their living room hosts parties and prayers, with a hole smashed in the wall to indicate the direction of Mecca. Their life together mixes sex, dope, and religion in roughly equal amounts, expressed in devotion to an Islamo-punk subculture, taqwacore, named for taqwa, an Arabic term for consciousness of the divine. IMPOSSIBLE MAN When Knight was six years old, he asked his single mother about his absent father. His mother answered that his father got sick and ran away. Several years later, he learned the true story: how his father, a paranoid schizophrenic and white supremacist, alternately convinced that Michaels mother was in league with the devil and that she would give birth to a line of superhuman rulers. Impossible Man (April 2009) is the story of a teenagers troubled pathway toward maturity and the influences that steady him on his way to adulthood. Knights encounter with Public Enemy and The Autobiography of Malcolm X leads him to embrace Islam with all the unbalanced overzealousness and naivete of a disturbed adolescent in search of salvation. His affinity for Islam deepens and at age 17 he travels to Faisal Mosque in Islamabad to study his adopted religion, putting him on track similar to that of Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber. For all its extremes, Impossible Man descri bes a universal journey: a wounded boy in search of a working model of manhood, going to outrageous lengths to find it. And here's a sample chapter: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/files/ImpossibleManSampleChapter.pdf">http://www.softskull.com/files/ImpossibleManSampleChapter.pdf</a> BLUE-EYED DEVIL (May 2009) Knight embarks on a quest for an indigenous American Islam and for the true story of Nation of Islam mystery-man, W.D. Fard, in a series of interstate odysseys. Traveling 20,000 miles by Greyhound in sixty days, he squats in run-down mosques, pursues Muslim romance, is detained at the U.S.-Canadian border with a trunkload of Shia literature, crashes Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conventions, stink-palms Cat Stevens, and limps across Chicago to find the grave of Noble Drew Ali, filling dozens of notebooks along the way. The result is this semi-autobiographical book, with multiple histories of Fard and the landscape of American Islam woven into Knight's own story. In the course of his adventures Knight sorts out his own relationship to Islam as he journeys from punk provocateur to a recognized voice in the community, and watches first-hand the collapse of a liberal Islamic dream. The books extensive cast of characters includes anarcho-Sufi heretics, vegan kung-fu punks, tattoo-sleeved converts in hardcore bands, spiritual drug dealers, Islamic feminists, slick media entrepreneurs, sages of the street, the grandsons of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and a group called Muslims for Bush. OSAMA VAN HALEN (July 2009) Amazing Ayyub, an Iranian Shi'ite skinhead, and burqa-wearing punk Rabeya have kidnapped Matt Damon, and are holding him hostage. They demand that Hollywood depict Muslims in a positive lightjust one movie where were not these two-dimensional al Qaeda stereotypes. But Damons concerned theyre playing into that same terrorist paradigm and furthering a neo-conservative perception of Islam. Meanwhile, Ayyub embarks on a mission to rid the taqwacore scene of a Muslim pop-punk band called Shah 79. Along the way, he makes himself invisible, escapes punk-eating zombies in a mosque off the desert highway, and runs into some psychobilly jinns. Things turn existential when Ayyub finds himself face to face with his creatorno, not Allah, but the author. This riotous journey of enlightenment reads like a religious service for teenagers on Halloween. But it isnt all raucous fun; written into his own novel, the author finds he is at the mercy of his creation JOURNEY TO THE END OF ISLAM (November 2009) Most hajj narratives are written as glowing religious propaganda, painting a utopian and simplistic image not only of Mecca but Islam itself. Knights personal experience with Islam is very complicated; he has traveled the extremes of both blind faith and apostasy, and currently stand somewhere between. Embarking on the Hajj, then, touch on Knights confusions, wounds, conflicts with religion and with the Muslim community at large. Examining the historical background and origins of Islam, as well as the inherent challenges of organized religion, Knight asks the hard questions. What does the Quran mean to me? What do I know of Muhammad? And does sacred history have to be fact to be valid? He also asks, Who funds the Hajj? What role does the Saudi government play? What role does the bin Laden family play? Says the author, before leaving for the Hajj four weeks ago: "These are the two voices that I bring with me to Mecca: Kerouac, the earnest writer-as-spiritual-seeker, and Thompson, gonzo journalist, exposer-of-hypocrisy." -- The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <<a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/>">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/&gt</a>; If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <<a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce>">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce&gt</a>; If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <<a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com>">mailto:publicity@softskull.com&gt</a>; The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

Tis the season for thanking, and for hustling...

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:39:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  Tis the season when cultural authorities bestow their imprimaturs and while we can't really live for these things, lest we die from their typical absence, when they happen, we can't help but take note of them, thusly: <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="New York Times Notable" target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/books/review/100Notable-t.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1" id="k9jg">New York Times Notable</a> for <a title="Black Flies" target="_blank" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-191-0" id="usd.">Black Flies</a> by Shannon Burke (also an Amazon Best Book of the Year) <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="Hudson News Top Ten of 2008" target="_blank" href="http://www.pw.org/content/hudson_booksellers_names_top_books_2008" id="v4yg">Hudson News Top Ten of 2008</a> for <a title="All About Lulu" target="_blank" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-196-1" id="z5ez">All About Lulu</a> by Jonathan Evison <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year" target="_blank" href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6610357.html" id="ac:o">Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year</a> for <a title="How the Dead Dream" target="_blank" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-184-8" id="tb5c">How the Dead Dream</a> by Lydia Millet and <a title="The Solitary Vice" target="_blank" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-187-2" id="mrxs">The Solitary Vice</a> by Mikita Brottman And, while it is not strictly a "Best Book" type thing, <a title="The Customer Is Always Wrong" target="_blank" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-90-X" id="nc:p">The Customer Is Always Wrong</a> edited by Jeff Martin was <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="this week's book pick for The Very Short List" target="_blank" href="http://www.veryshortlist.com/vsl/daily.cfm/review/812/Book/the-customer-is-always-wrong/?tp" id="cxm2">this week's book pick for The Very Short List</a>�listen out for the author detailing the travails of the retail worker on NPR's All Things Considered today, Black Friday.  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/ </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"> publicity@softskull.com </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

SOFT SKULL NEWSLETTER Vol 3.

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:57:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  SOFT SKULL NEWSLETTER Vol. 3 October 2008 Soft Skull in the Fall-- Keep up to date on all the latest goings on at Soft Skull on our <a title="blog" href="http://www.softskull.com/news/">blog</a>. <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-215-1">Bad Habits</a> by Cristy C. Road is starting to receive buzz. <a href="http://youngmanhattanite.tumblr.com/post/55624430/dabbling-in-sincerity-another-boring-gamble">Young Manhattanite</a> said, �It�s like Bukowski and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cometbus">Cometbus</a> blowing each other on the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. The Illustrations are pretty fantastic, too. If you need MORE convincing, I am certain she could beat the living crap out of Tucker Max and paint his face with it.� The author was recently interviewed in Bookslut�s <a href="http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2008_10.php#013584">�Indie Heatthrob�</a> series; topics included Bad Habits, Green Day, and why, if she were to create a new illustrated biography of Sarah Palin, it would have to feature �a classy full color piece showing her severed head inside of a giant condom, encircled by a montage illustrating the outcomes (STDs, pregnancies by way of abuse, dead polar bears) of some of her proposed VP policies.� The official release party for Bad Habits will be Saturday, November 22nd at <a href="http://www.deathbyaudio.net/">Death By Audio</a> in Williamsburg, at 8pm. Expect readings, DJs, and performances by several bands, including Cristy�s own HOMEWRECKERS. Dates for her upcoming bi-coastal book tour include: Dec. 10 at Word bookstore in Greenpoint Dec. 17 at the Brooklyn Public Library�s Central Library Jan. 18 with Rhiannon Argo and Nicole Georges at Powell�s in Portland Jan. 20 at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco Jan. 25 at the San Francisco Public Library Feb. 6 at Skylight books in Los Angeles As dates are added, and to see our other author appearances and readings, check out the <a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=publicity%40softskull.com&ctz=America/New_York">Soft Skull Calendar</a>. Excellent reviews for <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=0-9796636-7-9">The Pisstown Chaos</a>, the latest weird and creepy and hilarious installment from cult author David Ohle continue to pour in. <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6545564.html">Publisher�s Weekly</a> remarked: �Fans will rejoice�in their own dystopian way�at the arrival of this mesmerizing installment... Ohle�s creation of a vivid world, both familiar and foreign, dark and slyly humorous, makes the book a grim delight.� From <a href="http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_03/2741">Bookforum</a>: �One could thumbnail The Pisstown Chaos, David Ohle�s third novel in thirty-odd years, as a dark-comic fantasia, and the author himself as a long-term toiler in the fields of postwar American experimentalism. And yet he remains elusive, far more obscure than he deserves to be, and the book, like the rest of Ohle�s small oeuvre, is a bit hard to account for... Ohle�s rich black comedy becomes, as you go on, a bit harder to laugh at.� And <a href="http://www.believermag.com/issues/200810/?read=review_ohle">The Believer</a> wrote, �No amount of description will prepare you for the icky, cavernous, taboo places in your mind to which he�ll lead you, hand in hand, Virgil to your Dante. You�ll recognize some of these places, of course. The question is, how did he get in there?� The indie rock cookbook <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-59376-203-8">Lost in the Supermarket</a>, which is now being sold at <a href="http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?itemdescription=true&itemCount=10&startValue=1&selectedProductColor=&sortby=&id=15636335&parentid=A_FURN_DESIGN&sortProperties=&navCount=9&navAction=poppushpush&color=">Urban Outfitters</a> nationwide and was recently #68 on Martha Stewarts, <a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/article/100-reasons-to-learn-something?lnc=9bd9cf380e1dd010VgnVCM1000005b09a00aRCRD&page=4&rsc=articlecontent_magazines">�100 Reasons to Learn Something�</a>, recieved a mention in <a href="http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/reviews/books/lost-in-the-supermarket/lost-in-the-supermarket.html">Playboy</a> of all places: �It�s quite enjoyable. The dishes we tried�Belle and Sebastian�s Thai Sweet Potato Soup and Animal Collective�s Geologist�s Greek Style Shrimp�were both delicious. And there is something cool about serving meals that our favorite bands eat.� The <a href="http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7240">San Francisco Bay Guardian</a> observed, �You won't find Alice Waters or Thomas Keller level cooking in Lost, but fans of, say, starving college student cookbooks or quirky compendiums of Spam or ramen recipes will find plenty of tasty notions here... As the Rae-monster might roar, �Yummo.�� <a href="http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2008/09/book_notes_lynn_1.html">Largehearted boy</a> remarked that, �The authors' conversational style pulls the book together smoothly, and their introductions to the recipes and musicians are often as interesting as the recipes. True fans of both food and music, Lynn and Kay Bozich Owens will not only introduce you to new food, but possibly a new band or two.� And from the <a href="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/blackplasticbag/2008/09/18/dining-with-guy-picciotto/">Washington City Paper</a>, �I know practically nothing about cooking, and I�d be pretty careful about ingesting anything prepared by a former member of Spacemen 3. But Guy Picciotto�s recipe for rhubarb crumble does sound appealing.� <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-90-X">The Customer is Always Wrong</a> was recently #4 on the <a href="http://www.powells.com/bestsellers.html">Powells.com Best Seller List</a> And check out the amazing review this hilarious book about working retail received in <a href="http://news.shelf-awareness.com/msgget.jsp?mid=2561816">Shelf Awareness</a> (John McFarland wrote, �The results are uniformly sardonic, touching, hilarious, uplifting and bizarre; in short: terrific! ...one really original take on retailing after another.... Kudos to Jeff Martin for compiling essays that so consistently fly readers to the moon.�) Jeff Martin will be going on a mini-tour this fall and winter, so check him out at Full Circle Books in Oklahoma on Dec 18 (7pm). Chances are he�ll be making stops at Watermark books in Kansas and also in Mississippi and possibly Texas as well, so stay tuned and check out our calendar. So...are you planning your post-election elegies for the Bush regime yet? David Rees, creator of the infamous Get Your War On cartoon, has appearances scheduled all over the country. The cartoon has been serialized in Rolling Stone, adapted for the stage, and animated. It isn't just a caustic analysis of American foreign policy. It's also an emotional kaleidoscope of American life and absurdity, from October 9th, 2001, when American bombs first fell in the poverty-stricken, terrorist safe haven of Afghanistan, to 2008, when bombs continue to fall in the poverty-stricken, terrorist safe haven of Afghanistan. (There's some stuff about Iraq in the middle, too.) Get Your War On illustrates better than any artist, politician, or pundit the true state of America's soul--its violence and its compassion. And it's f***ing hilarious. "Riotous and principled."--Washington Post "Brilliant."--USA Today "[T]he Thomas Nast of the internet."--Comedy Central "[H]ilariously deadpan fatalism . . . a surprisingly articulate expression of our anxieties."--Newsweek "Rees [is] a phenomenal cult hero."--Variety "A glorious excoriation of our post-9/11 loony bin."--New York Times "The most original cartoon to emerge since . . . well ever. Raw, enraged, sardonic, hilarious, despairing, and impossible to pigeonhole."--Rolling Stone SCHEDULE OF EVENTS: Nov. 11 at Paradise City Tavern, 1 Bridge Street, Northampton, Mass (7:30pm) Nov. 15 at the Brooklyn Public Library for <a href="http://flavorpill.com/newyork/events/2008/11/15/rees-vs-taibbi">�How Doomed is America?�</a> with Matt Taibbi <a href="http://www.busboysandpoets.com/events.php?loc=2">Nov. 23</a> at Busboys and Poets, 1025 5th St (5th and K), Washington D.C. (6pm) <a href="http://mhpbooks.com/event.php?id=160">Dec. 4</a> at Melville House Books, 145 Plymouth St, Dumbo, Brooklyn (7pm) And check out the latest animated strip of Get Your War On at the Huffington Post blog: <a href="http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_jump_off_the_r_9773.php">http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_jump_off_the_r_9773.php</a> Print and internet media abound with praise for Alex Cox�s career autobiography, X Films: The True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker. <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6591466.html">Publisher�s Weekly</a> gave it a starred review, saying �Cox�s at-times bizarre perspective is reigned in with a funny, conversational style and eye for detail that propel all ten of these fascinating nuts-and-bolts essays.� It was a Critics� Pick for <a href="http://www.salon.com/ent/critics_picks/2008/09/20/september20/">Salon.com</a>, where they noted the �inspiring sense of possibility to the story of [Cox�s] years in the trenches as an independent filmmaker's independent filmmaker: Armed with no money, little support from producers, a practically feral aesthetic, and an antagonistic relationship to promotion and income, he still made some terrific movies.� <a href="http://www.powells.com/review/2008_08_23.html">Powell�s Books</a> was impressed, saying his �steadfast subversiveness makes Cox's films and this book so enjoyable. Cox's writing in X Films is loose and conversational, informative without being overly technical.� <a href="http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/books/56701/x-films-true-confessions-of-a-radical-filmmaker">Time Out New York</a> was quick to note, �Alex Cox�s highly readable career diary is�like his output�inspiring, cheeky and maddeningly brief� We are lucky to have this book.� <a href="http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book11-2008sep11,0,4628906.story">The Los Angeles Times</a> applauds Cox�s �breezy good humor and flashes of radical outrage,� which is sort of echoed by the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/08/DDVS12RKV7.DTL">San Francisco Guardian�s</a> assessment that, �Off-kilter humor and polemical tendencies are both the key to Cox's originality.� Finally, <a href="http://www.ascmag.com/book_reviews/August2008/index.php#book_review57">American Cinematographer Magazine</a> heartily enjoys the book: �Cox is a witty raconteur and an articulate advocate for movies as art, not commerce� X-Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, is one of the best books ever written by a film director, a revealing and passionate celebration of a life in the cinema.� Publisher�s Weekly recently released their <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6610357.html">Best Books of the Year</a> (2008), which included two Soft Skull offerings: The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman and How the Dead Dream by Lydia Millet. The Solitary Vice is a critical look at the act of reading as a tool of elf-exploration. Publisher�s Weekly remarked, �with sharp observations, a brisk style and a wide range of topics, Brottman�s is a rare feat: a crowd-pleaser that could make converts out of readers and nonreaders alike,� and from USA Today: �Here�s a book, from a professor no less, that asks the heretical question: Is readng as great as all those preachy public service campaigns would have us believe? But as Mikita Brottman ...acknowledges, she�s not against reading. She�s for thinking about reading in more complex ways� The Solitary Vice will help.� How the Dead Dream, Millet�s subtle missive on environmentalism and greed, has ridden the wave of good press this year. The Believer gushed on Millet�s ability �to write fiction that confronts social issues without falling into shrill hectoring or dill didacticism. No easy trick.� The Chicago Sun Times calls the book, �both lyric and wonderfully schizophrenic.� From The Los Angeles Times, �Millet achieves a balance of humor and seriousness� In How the Dead Dream, Millet has hit on a wonderfully unique formula: To write engaging fiction about serious matters, it helps to mix in the plain dumb seriousness of goldfish poop.� Publisher�s Weekly also greatly admired the book, calling it, �brilliant� while redolent of Heart of Darkness and Don Quixote, takes readers to a place entirely Millet�s own, leavened by very funny asides� unfolds like a beautiful, disturbing dream.� And finally, from the Village Voice, �She has pulled off her funniest, most shrewdly thoughtful and touching novel. If Kurt Vonnegut were still alive, he would be extremely jealous.� For fellow NYCers, several autographed copies of offbeat indie filmmaker Hal Hartly�s True Fiction Pictures and Possible Films are available at St. Marks Bookshop. He�s been called, �Long Island�s answer to Jean-Luc Godard,� and In True Fiction Pictures, Hartley discusses the development and collapse of the American indie film culture of the 90's and reflects upon his experiences as an independent creative artist trying to exist within the commercial film culture business. And finally, Tim Wise, author of the best-selling White Like Me and his most recent Speaking Treason Fluently, has a couple new essays available online, �<a href="http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege-updated">This is Your Nation on White Privilege</a>,� and �<a href="http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/racism-reflex-reflections-conservative-scapegoating">Racism as Reflex: Reflections on Conservative Scapegoating</a>.� That�s all for the fall, folks! Soft Skull Press  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/ </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"> publicity@softskull.com </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

This is How Fascism Comes

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:28:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  This is How Fascism Comes: Reflections on the Cost of Silence By Tim Wise October 12, 2008 For those who have seen the ugliness and heard the vitriol emanating from the mouths of persons attending McCain/Palin rallies this past week--what with their demands to kill Barack Obama, slurs that he is a terrorist and a traitor, and paranoid delusions about his crypto-Muslim designs on America--please know this: This is how fascism comes to an ostensible democracy. If it comes--and if those whose poisonous, unhinged verbiage has been so ubiquitous this week have any say over it, it surely will--this is how it will happen: not with tanks and jackbooted storm troopers, but carried in the hearts of men and women dressed in comfortable shoes, with baseball caps, and What Would Jesus Do? wristbands. It will be heralded by up-dos, designer glasses, you-betcha folksiness and a disdain for big words or hard consonants. If fascism comes, it will spring from the soil of middle America, from people known as values voters but whose values are toxic, from simple folk whose simplicity, far from being admirable, is better labeled ignorance, from "all-American" types whose patriotism is a dagger pointed at the very heart of the national interest, for it so forsakes all the best principles upon which the republic was founded, choosing instead to elevate and ratify the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, and the intolerance that also marked our country's origins. If fascism comes, it will be ushered in by tailgaters at the big football game, by Joe Six Pack, who, upon finishing his sixth beer and belching forth the stench of a mediocre life lived, will gladly announce its arrival, so long as it comes with a steady supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon and hot dogs on the grill, and giant foam hands with a "We're Number 1" finger, some Mardi Gras beads and a good titty bar. If fascism comes it will dress like a hockey mom, or a NASCAR dad. It will believe Toby Keith to be an artist, Larry the Cable Guy to be a comic, and that the world was made in six literal days less than 6000 years ago. If fascism comes it will come from the small towns; the ones Sarah Palin, quoting a famous racist and Jew-hater, said "grow good people," and which occasionally do, but which, just as often grow provincial, isolated, fearful and superstitious ones. If fascism comes it will come from faux populism, from anti-immigrant hysteria, from persons who have more guns in their homes than books, or whose books, when they have them, are principally volumes of the Left Behind series, several different copies of the Bible, and a plethora of romance novels. If fascism comes it will be welcomed, lock stock and barrel by persons who pray at every meal to a God they visualize as white, whose son they also think was white, and who they believe is going to rapture them all into the sky upon the blowing of some heavenly trumpet, after which point all those who don't think as they think will be burned in an eternal lake of fire. Their vision and version of God is itself fascistic--to love a God who would do such a thing is to love an abusive, sadistic and evil deity after all--so it should come as little surprise that their conception of the state would be equally authoritarian or worse. If fascism comes it will be at the behest of those who hold a contempt for what they call "book learnin," who prefer Presidents who mispronounce basic words because they make them feel smarter, and who are looking for nothing so much as a commander-in-chief with whom they would enjoy having a beer, or two, or twelve at some backyard barbecue. If fascism comes it will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio, by hosts whose cerebral inadequacies are more than made up for by their bellicosity, their bombast, their willingness to shout down those with whom they cannot argue, for argument requires knowledge, and this is a commodity with which they have not even a passing familiarity. If fascism comes it will come wrapped in red,white and blue, carrying a crucifix and a shotgun, projecting its own sexual confusion and insecurity onto others, substituting volume for veracity and rage for reason, and landing on the New York Times best-seller list as a result. If fascism comes it will have a pajama party at Ann Coulter's house, pop pills with Rush Limbaugh, and go gay-bashing with Michael Savage, all in the same weekend. And it will refuse to learn another language or get a passport, because doing either of those would make one cosmopolitan--which is just another word for "faggot." If fascism comes it will come because a lot of people who aren't like the folks I'm talking about here, won't stand up to the ones who are. Because we're too busy, don't want to make waves, don't want to lose friends, or alienate family. It will come, in other words, because those who know better are cowards, more concerned with getting along, making nice, and being liked than with telling the truth, calling out evil and saving their country. If fascism comes it will come because of the silence, and thus, collaboration of those who think themselves good, and certainly superior to the knuckle-draggers they can see on YouTube at the McCain rallies, but who in the end are no better and in some ways worse than they: after all, at least fascists stand up for what they believe in. They are telling us, in no uncertain terms what kind of United States they want and are willing to fight for, and maybe even to kill for. But many "progressives," many liberals, many of the so-called enlightened are doing nothing at all. If fascism comes it will come because those liberals thought voting for Barack Obama was all they needed to do; it will come because they allowed themselves to believe that politics is what a person does every four years, but not at work, and not in the neighborhood, and not at the dinner table. Meanwhile, know-nothings filled with hate, nurtured on racial and religious bigotry and who have overdosed on the kind of hypernationalism that has always proved fatal to those places foolish or craven enough to allow it a foothold, talk of their visions for America at every opportunity. They raise their kids on that sickness, they build churches whose very foundation is rooted in that cancerous rot, and they will think nothing of steamrolling those who get in their way. So when, exactly, do we fight back? When do we say enough? When do we stand up to our relative or friend who sends us the e-mail about Obama being a Manchurian Candidate or al-Qaeda sympathizer, or the one about the decency of Midwestern flood victims as opposed to those stranded after Katrina, or about how God was punishing New Orleans because of its tolerance of homosexuality, and tell them what we think: namely, that they are a bunch of racist, heterosexist loons, whose friendship or familial connection we neither want nor intend to pursue unless they get help. When do we decide that we love our country and humanity too much to allow these people one more day of decent sleep, one more day of self-assured confidence in their craziness and the willingness of the rest of us to just take it? When do we decide that every irrational, Jeezoid, racist thing that comes from their mouths will be attacked, will be rebutted, until they can no longer take for granted the ability to say any of it in mixed company without being called out? Why, in the face of the fascism they would surely introduce if given the chance, are we intent on being so nice? Why are we not more offended? Offended not merely at what such persons say about others--like Obama, or Latino immigrants, or whatever--but even about we who look like them? After all, their open exhortations of racism presuppose that they are speaking for us, and that this kind of brain-dead ventilation is something to which all white folks should aspire as though it were virtually the essence of enlightenment. If fascism comes it will come because we did not see in their actions a sufficient threat, or because we allowed ourselves to believe that it couldn't come, that our institutions were too strong, our people too good, for that to happen. If it comes it will come because we allowed ourselves to believe the rosy and optimistic version of America spun by Obama, without tempering that optimism with a clear-headed appraisal of the way that (sadly) a still huge number of Americans actually think: because we allowed the vehicle of our hopes to outrun the headlights of truth; because we convinced ourselves that we actually lived in the country of our aspirations, rather than the nation we have at present. And if fascism doesn't come--if, rather, democracy does--it will come because good people said no. It will come because we saw in this moment the opportunity to demand the full measure of our humanity and to pour it forth upon the national soil. It will be because we understood that democracy isn't what you have, it's what you do. But if we are to issue that demand, if we are to stand straight and fulfill the potential we possess to do justice, we had best exercise the option quickly, for the opponents of justice are on the move. They are preparing to enter on the winds of our silence and indifference, and complacency. Let them find no quarter here. Tim Wise is the author of <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-99-3">White Like Me</a> (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=978-1-59376-207-0">Speaking Treason Fluently</a>, publishing this month, also by <a href="http://www.softskull.com">Soft Skull</a>. For review copies or interview requests, please reply to <a title="E-mail us" href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com" id="pgb1">publicity@softskull.com</a>  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/ </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"> publicity@softskull.com </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

Tim Wise on How Conservatives Scapegoat Minorities, Even for the Wall St Bail-out

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:57:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  In light of how much members of this list enjoyed (if that's the right word) Tim Wise's "This is Your Nation on White Privilege" two weeks ago, here's another essay by Tim: Racism as Reflex: Reflections on Conservative Scapegoating By <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="Tim's own website" href="http://www.timwise.org" id="v.n0">Tim Wise</a> September 28, 2008 If hypocrisy were currency, conservatives would be able to single-handedly bail out the nation's free-falling financial system in less than a week, without the rest of us having to front so much as a penny. So on the one hand, folks like this always tell others�especially the poor and people of color�to take "personal responsibility" for their lives, and not to blame outside factors (like racism, or the economic system) for their problems. But on the other hand, these same persons then demonstrate that their own ability to blame others for their personal setbacks, or the nation's problems, knows no rival. So, for instance, if they or someone they know didn't get the job they wanted, it must be because of affirmative action or because the job was "taken" by an illegal immigrant; if their child didn't get into the college of his or her choice it must be because of some preference given to a black kid; if they can't afford to send their child to college it's because all the scholarship money was given to students of color; if their local schools are falling apart it's because of integration or multiculturalism; if their taxes are too high it's because of all those government programs for "those people." On and on it goes, with never so much as a nod to personal responsibility. Whatever goes wrong in the lives of white conservatives is almost always the fault of black and brown liberals, or so the story goes. The right is so predictable when it comes to this kind of thing, that you can almost set your watch by their daily eruptions of stupidity. And so in the past several weeks, we have been treated to three fresh examples of conservative scapegoating and buck-passing, in which they seek to blame the poor or folks of color for various social problems for which the latter are not the least bit responsible. First, we have Neil Cavuto of Fox News, followed by Rush Limbaugh a few days later, along with smaller-market talk radio hosts and commentators, insisting that the nation's current financial mess is not the fault of greedy investors, free-wheeling bankers, speculators and other assorted rich people taking advantage of a largely deregulated market for bogus investments. Rather, it is the fault of poor people and those who seek to serve their communities, and especially folks of color, and those who insist on such things as civil rights. How so? Simple: according to these blowhards, laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which seeks to steer investments to economically marginalized communities so as to stimulate economic development and reverse the longstanding process of racial and economic redlining, is the real culprit. If banks hadn't been forced to throw good money after bad, and make loans to "minorities and risky folks" as Cavuto said on September 18th, none of this would have happened. Of course, none of the reactionary cranks making this argument has seen fit to present even a single, solitary piece of statistical evidence to support their scapegoating of CRA. Evidence doesn't matter. Simply saying it, simply insisting that it's the black and the brown and the poor who are to blame is supposed to be enough. Sadly, for lots of Americans it will be. The kind of people who listen to the Limbaughs of the world, after all, rarely care much for facts. But for those who still put a premium on truth, and who place more value on honesty than their own need to nurture their anger, here are a few things to keep in mind. First, the Community Reinvestment Act only applies to banks and thrifts that are federally-insured. This means that the independent mortgage brokers, who are responsible for half of all the nation's sub-prime lending�and who have been writing such loans at more than twice the rate of banks and thrifts�aren't even covered by the law. And make no mistake, it was the hand of the mortgage broker, more than any other, that precipitated the housing bubble. These are folks who were writing "stated income" loans (which means you don't have to prove your income, you can just tell them a number and get the OK), not caring about whether the borrower might default, since they were going to turn around and dump the loan at a profit, onto the secondary market, by pawning it off to investors who were gobbling up debt, betting on the further expansion of home values. In this scenario, neither the original broker nor the investor who bought up the debt was concerned about what would happen to the borrower who took out the initial loan. After all, if a borrower defaulted, but the housing market was still going up in value, they could swoop in, foreclose and sell the house again at a profit. On neither end of this equation were poor people to blame. The persons getting stated income loans were overwhelmingly middle class, perhaps hoping to keep up with the richer folks down the block, but certainly not the poor. Most poor folks are still renters, or just hoping to get a modest home. And let it suffice to say that none of the vultures snapping up the mortgage debt on the secondary market were poor, and very few were persons of color. These were affluent white people, willing to gamble on the potential misfortune of others. Secondly, the idea that loans to the poor or to moderate income folks could create this mess is almost inherently absurd. Fact is, the risk involved with loans to such persons is quite low. The amount of money lost, even when a low income family does default, is quite minimal. On the other hand, when a middle class family, striving to live above their means, takes out a note that eats up half of their income, the amount lost when the bubble bursts is quite a bit more substantial. This is one of the reasons that, according again to the evidence, loans to those with more moderate incomes are actually less risky than those to the affluent. Looking at CRA-related loans, for instance, the fact is, these represent nearly one-fourth of all loans written, but less than 10 percent of the high-cost, high-risk loans that precipitated the current crisis. These loans actually have lower default and foreclosure rates than non-CRA connected loans, and are twice as likely to be retained in the portfolios of the banks that originated them than other loans. In other words, it is not CRA loans being dumped into the hands of greedy speculators, and then falling flat, taking the economy with them. Finally, to the extent low-income folks of color are shuttled into the sub-prime market, and then unable to pay their house notes, this unhappy fact owes more to discrimination than anti-discrimination efforts such as CRA. As several studies have shown, banks often reject borrowers of color, even when they have credit records similar to whites with the same incomes. Then, these rejected applicants are steered towards sub-prime lenders which charge far higher interest and place the borrowers in great jeopardy by driving up the amount they must repay. A few years back, a study of Citigroup (which includes Citi, the group's sub-prime lender), found that Citi in North Carolina was charging higher interest even to borrowers who could have qualified for regular loans. In the process, over 90,000 mostly black borrowers were roped into predatory loans, and as a result paid an average of $327 more per month for mortgages than those getting loans from a prime lender. This added up to over $110,000 in excess payments over the life of the loans, on average. In other words, folks of color who could have qualified for lower-interest loans (that they would have been able to pay back far more easily) were steered to higher-cost instruments by greedy financial institutions, looking to make a quick buck at their expense. That's not the fault of civil rights protection, it's the fault of economic civil rights violations. As if blaming the global financial squeeze on the poor wasn't putrid enough, along comes the National Review Online, which descended even deeper into the pit of obvious racism on September 26th. To wit, the blog entry entitled "Cause and Effect?" by Mark Krikorian, executive director of an anti-immigration group in DC, in which he notes failed S&L Washington Mutual's stellar record on corporate diversity, as if this were somehow connected to their insolvency. The fact that WaMu had been ranked as one of the top ten businesses in the Hispanic Business Diversity Elite, and had received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equity Index (which focuses on equity for lesbian and gay folks), are, in Krikorian's mind, linked to their financial troubles. Because, ya know, if you have too many Latinos and gays working for you, well, clearly you can't care anything about the bottom line. That Krikorian presents no evidence, or even logic, to suggest a linkage between workplace equity and financial incompetence doesn't matter: his readers, predisposed to scapegoat the non-white and non-straight for anything and everything, can be expected to take the bait. And then there's Louisiana state lawmaker, John LaBruzzo, who proposes solving the problem of poverty by giving financial incentives to poor women on public assistance to be sterilized, so as to cut down on their birthrates. LaBruzzo, whose legislative district was once represented by neo-nazi David Duke (who also proposed something like this in 1991), insists his plan isn't racist, sexist, or classist, but merely aimed at cutting down on excessive welfare costs. He also claims that his plan would reverse the current pattern, whereby poor women are encouraged to have more babies so as to collect more welfare. Putting aside the inherently Hitlerian, eugenic rationale for such actions, LaBruzzo, as with Duke, and most right-wingers, ignores every bit of logic and evidence so as to push this kind of nonsense. First off, he ignores the now-twelve-year-old welfare reform law, which prevents additional payments for persons on welfare who have additional children. Although these "extra" monies were never very much (in Louisiana they amounted to less than $100 per month at the time the law was changed), now they are essentially non-existent. Secondly, LaBruzzo ignores the evidence from more than twenty years of research, which indicates that persons receiving public assistance do not, in fact, have more children, on average, than non-welfare receiving families. So the idea that poor women need incentives not to have babies is nonsense. What they need is decent-paying jobs, something LaBruzzo has no idea how to create. And finally, the underlying premise of LaBruzzo's plan�which, if the public comments posted to Nola.com (New Orleans' main media website) are any indication, is quite popular�is entirely bogus. Contrary to conventional wisdom (or at least, contrary to what a lot of white people think, whether wise or not), the numbers of people even receiving cash welfare in Louisiana are ridiculously small. LaBruzzo, who said the idea for this bill came to him after seeing folks in New Orleans during Katrina who were dependent on so-called government handouts, apparently doesn't feel the need to do any homework. For had he done so, he would have discovered that at the time of the flooding, there were fewer than 5000 households in the entire city receiving cash assistance, out of nearly 200,000 households in all. Fewer than four percent of black households, and only about one in ten poor households were receiving the kind of welfare that LaBruzzo would seek to tie to sterilization. Since Katrina, the number of persons on state aid have fallen even further, as the poor muddle through with very little assistance of any kind. But rather than push for rental assistance for low-income folks, which would improve the lives of poor folks and their communities dramatically, LaBruzzo is content�as conservatives almost always are�to blame the poor for their condition and seek to change their behavior (or in this case, compel their infertility) so as to solve the problem of economic deprivation. How very typical. So there you have it: white conservatives who simply cannot bring themselves to blame rich white people for anything, and who consistently fall back into old patterns, blaming the poor for poverty, black and brown folks for racism, anybody but themselves and those like them. That anyone takes them seriously anymore when they prattle on about "personal responsibility" is a stunning testament to how racism and classism continue to pay dividends in a nation whose soil has been fertilized with these twin poisons for generations. Unless the rest of us insist that the truth be told�and unless we tell it ourselves, by bombarding the folks who send us their hateful e-mails with our own correctives, thereby putting them on notice that we won't be silent (and that they cannot rely on our complicity any longer)�it is doubtful that much will change. Tim Wise is the author of <a style="font-family: Georgia;" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-99-3">White Like Me</a> (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of <a style="font-family: Georgia;" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=978-1-59376-207-0">Speaking Treason Fluently</a>, publishing this month, also by <a style="font-family: Georgia;" href="http://www.softskull.com">Soft Skull</a>. For review copies or interview requests, please email <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="E-mail us" href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com" id="pgb1">publicity@softskull.com</a>  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/ </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"> publicity@softskull.com </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

How Conservatives Scapegoat Minorities, Even for

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:54:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  In light of how much member sof this list enjoyed (if that's the right word) Tim Wise's "This is Your Nation on White Privilege" two weeks ago, here's another essay by Tim: Racism as Reflex: Reflections on Conservative Scapegoating By <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="Tim's own website" href="http://www.timwise.org" id="v.n0">Tim Wise</a> September 28, 2008 If hypocrisy were currency, conservatives would be able to single-handedly bail out the nation's free-falling financial system in less than a week, without the rest of us having to front so much as a penny. So on the one hand, folks like this always tell others�especially the poor and people of color�to take "personal responsibility" for their lives, and not to blame outside factors (like racism, or the economic system) for their problems. But on the other hand, these same persons then demonstrate that their own ability to blame others for their personal setbacks, or the nation's problems, knows no rival. So, for instance, if they or someone they know didn't get the job they wanted, it must be because of affirmative action or because the job was "taken" by an illegal immigrant; if their child didn't get into the college of his or her choice it must be because of some preference given to a black kid; if they can't afford to send their child to college it's because all the scholarship money was given to students of color; if their local schools are falling apart it's because of integration or multiculturalism; if their taxes are too high it's because of all those government programs for "those people." On and on it goes, with never so much as a nod to personal responsibility. Whatever goes wrong in the lives of white conservatives is almost always the fault of black and brown liberals, or so the story goes. The right is so predictable when it comes to this kind of thing, that you can almost set your watch by their daily eruptions of stupidity. And so in the past several weeks, we have been treated to three fresh examples of conservative scapegoating and buck-passing, in which they seek to blame the poor or folks of color for various social problems for which the latter are not the least bit responsible. First, we have Neil Cavuto of Fox News, followed by Rush Limbaugh a few days later, along with smaller-market talk radio hosts and commentators, insisting that the nation's current financial mess is not the fault of greedy investors, free-wheeling bankers, speculators and other assorted rich people taking advantage of a largely deregulated market for bogus investments. Rather, it is the fault of poor people and those who seek to serve their communities, and especially folks of color, and those who insist on such things as civil rights. How so? Simple: according to these blowhards, laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which seeks to steer investments to economically marginalized communities so as to stimulate economic development and reverse the longstanding process of racial and economic redlining, is the real culprit. If banks hadn't been forced to throw good money after bad, and make loans to "minorities and risky folks" as Cavuto said on September 18th, none of this would have happened. Of course, none of the reactionary cranks making this argument has seen fit to present even a single, solitary piece of statistical evidence to support their scapegoating of CRA. Evidence doesn't matter. Simply saying it, simply insisting that it's the black and the brown and the poor who are to blame is supposed to be enough. Sadly, for lots of Americans it will be. The kind of people who listen to the Limbaughs of the world, after all, rarely care much for facts. But for those who still put a premium on truth, and who place more value on honesty than their own need to nurture their anger, here are a few things to keep in mind. First, the Community Reinvestment Act only applies to banks and thrifts that are federally-insured. This means that the independent mortgage brokers, who are responsible for half of all the nation's sub-prime lending�and who have been writing such loans at more than twice the rate of banks and thrifts�aren't even covered by the law. And make no mistake, it was the hand of the mortgage broker, more than any other, that precipitated the housing bubble. These are folks who were writing "stated income" loans (which means you don't have to prove your income, you can just tell them a number and get the OK), not caring about whether the borrower might default, since they were going to turn around and dump the loan at a profit, onto the secondary market, by pawning it off to investors who were gobbling up debt, betting on the further expansion of home values. In this scenario, neither the original broker nor the investor who bought up the debt was concerned about what would happen to the borrower who took out the initial loan. After all, if a borrower defaulted, but the housing market was still going up in value, they could swoop in, foreclose and sell the house again at a profit. On neither end of this equation were poor people to blame. The persons getting stated income loans were overwhelmingly middle class, perhaps hoping to keep up with the richer folks down the block, but certainly not the poor. Most poor folks are still renters, or just hoping to get a modest home. And let it suffice to say that none of the vultures snapping up the mortgage debt on the secondary market were poor, and very few were persons of color. These were affluent white people, willing to gamble on the potential misfortune of others. Secondly, the idea that loans to the poor or to moderate income folks could create this mess is almost inherently absurd. Fact is, the risk involved with loans to such persons is quite low. The amount of money lost, even when a low income family does default, is quite minimal. On the other hand, when a middle class family, striving to live above their means, takes out a note that eats up half of their income, the amount lost when the bubble bursts is quite a bit more substantial. This is one of the reasons that, according again to the evidence, loans to those with more moderate incomes are actually less risky than those to the affluent. Looking at CRA-related loans, for instance, the fact is, these represent nearly one-fourth of all loans written, but less than 10 percent of the high-cost, high-risk loans that precipitated the current crisis. These loans actually have lower default and foreclosure rates than non-CRA connected loans, and are twice as likely to be retained in the portfolios of the banks that originated them than other loans. In other words, it is not CRA loans being dumped into the hands of greedy speculators, and then falling flat, taking the economy with them. Finally, to the extent low-income folks of color are shuttled into the sub-prime market, and then unable to pay their house notes, this unhappy fact owes more to discrimination than anti-discrimination efforts such as CRA. As several studies have shown, banks often reject borrowers of color, even when they have credit records similar to whites with the same incomes. Then, these rejected applicants are steered towards sub-prime lenders which charge far higher interest and place the borrowers in great jeopardy by driving up the amount they must repay. A few years back, a study of Citigroup (which includes Citi, the group's sub-prime lender), found that Citi in North Carolina was charging higher interest even to borrowers who could have qualified for regular loans. In the process, over 90,000 mostly black borrowers were roped into predatory loans, and as a result paid an average of $327 more per month for mortgages than those getting loans from a prime lender. This added up to over $110,000 in excess payments over the life of the loans, on average. In other words, folks of color who could have qualified for lower-interest loans (that they would have been able to pay back far more easily) were steered to higher-cost instruments by greedy financial institutions, looking to make a quick buck at their expense. That's not the fault of civil rights protection, it's the fault of economic civil rights violations. As if blaming the global financial squeeze on the poor wasn't putrid enough, along comes the National Review Online, which descended even deeper into the pit of obvious racism on September 26th. To wit, the blog entry entitled "Cause and Effect?" by Mark Krikorian, executive director of an anti-immigration group in DC, in which he notes failed S&L Washington Mutual's stellar record on corporate diversity, as if this were somehow connected to their insolvency. The fact that WaMu had been ranked as one of the top ten businesses in the Hispanic Business Diversity Elite, and had received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equity Index (which focuses on equity for lesbian and gay folks), are, in Krikorian's mind, linked to their financial troubles. Because, ya know, if you have too many Latinos and gays working for you, well, clearly you can't care anything about the bottom line. That Krikorian presents no evidence, or even logic, to suggest a linkage between workplace equity and financial incompetence doesn't matter: his readers, predisposed to scapegoat the non-white and non-straight for anything and everything, can be expected to take the bait. And then there's Louisiana state lawmaker, John LaBruzzo, who proposes solving the problem of poverty by giving financial incentives to poor women on public assistance to be sterilized, so as to cut down on their birthrates. LaBruzzo, whose legislative district was once represented by neo-nazi David Duke (who also proposed something like this in 1991), insists his plan isn't racist, sexist, or classist, but merely aimed at cutting down on excessive welfare costs. He also claims that his plan would reverse the current pattern, whereby poor women are encouraged to have more babies so as to collect more welfare. Putting aside the inherently Hitlerian, eugenic rationale for such actions, LaBruzzo, as with Duke, and most right-wingers, ignores every bit of logic and evidence so as to push this kind of nonsense. First off, he ignores the now-twelve-year-old welfare reform law, which prevents additional payments for persons on welfare who have additional children. Although these "extra" monies were never very much (in Louisiana they amounted to less than $100 per month at the time the law was changed), now they are essentially non-existent. Secondly, LaBruzzo ignores the evidence from more than twenty years of research, which indicates that persons receiving public assistance do not, in fact, have more children, on average, than non-welfare receiving families. So the idea that poor women need incentives not to have babies is nonsense. What they need is decent-paying jobs, something LaBruzzo has no idea how to create. And finally, the underlying premise of LaBruzzo's plan�which, if the public comments posted to Nola.com (New Orleans' main media website) are any indication, is quite popular�is entirely bogus. Contrary to conventional wisdom (or at least, contrary to what a lot of white people think, whether wise or not), the numbers of people even receiving cash welfare in Louisiana are ridiculously small. LaBruzzo, who said the idea for this bill came to him after seeing folks in New Orleans during Katrina who were dependent on so-called government handouts, apparently doesn't feel the need to do any homework. For had he done so, he would have discovered that at the time of the flooding, there were fewer than 5000 households in the entire city receiving cash assistance, out of nearly 200,000 households in all. Fewer than four percent of black households, and only about one in ten poor households were receiving the kind of welfare that LaBruzzo would seek to tie to sterilization. Since Katrina, the number of persons on state aid have fallen even further, as the poor muddle through with very little assistance of any kind. But rather than push for rental assistance for low-income folks, which would improve the lives of poor folks and their communities dramatically, LaBruzzo is content�as conservatives almost always are�to blame the poor for their condition and seek to change their behavior (or in this case, compel their infertility) so as to solve the problem of economic deprivation. How very typical. So there you have it: white conservatives who simply cannot bring themselves to blame rich white people for anything, and who consistently fall back into old patterns, blaming the poor for poverty, black and brown folks for racism, anybody but themselves and those like them. That anyone takes them seriously anymore when they prattle on about "personal responsibility" is a stunning testament to how racism and classism continue to pay dividends in a nation whose soil has been fertilized with these twin poisons for generations. Unless the rest of us insist that the truth be told�and unless we tell it ourselves, by bombarding the folks who send us their hateful e-mails with our own correctives, thereby putting them on notice that we won't be silent (and that they cannot rely on our complicity any longer)�it is doubtful that much will change. Tim Wise is the author of <a style="font-family: Georgia;" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-99-3">White Like Me</a> (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of <a style="font-family: Georgia;" href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=978-1-59376-207-0">Speaking Treason Fluently</a>, publishing this month, also by <a style="font-family: Georgia;" href="http://www.softskull.com">Soft Skull</a>. For review copies or interview requests, please email <a style="font-family: Georgia;" title="E-mail us" href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com" id="pgb1">publicity@softskull.com</a>  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/ </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"> publicity@softskull.com </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

Tim Wise: "This is Your Nation on White Privilege"

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:03:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  Tim Wise's latest opinion piece: This is Your Nation on White Privilege By Tim Wise 9/13/08 For those who still can�t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help. <ul> <li>White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because �every family has challenges,� even as black and Latino families with similar �challenges� are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. </li> <li>White privilege is when you can call yourself a �fuckin� redneck,� like Bristol Palin�s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll �kick their fuckin' ass,� and talk about how you like to �shoot shit� for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. </li> <li>White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action. </li> <li>White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don�t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you�re �untested.� </li> <li>White privilege is being able to say that you support the words �under God� in the pledge of allegiance because �if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it�s good enough for me,� and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the �under God� part wasn�t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was �Alaska first,� and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she�s being disrespectful. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you�re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you�re somehow being mean, or even sexist. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to convince white women who don�t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a �second look.� </li> <li>White privilege is being able to fire people who didn�t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God�s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you�re just a good church-going Christian, but if you�re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you�re an extremist who probably hates America. </li> <li>White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a �trick question,� while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O�Reilly means you�re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a �light� burden. </li> <li>And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren�t sure about that whole �change� thing. Ya know, it�s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain. </li> </ul> White privilege is, in short, the problem. Tim Wise is the author of <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-99-3">White Like Me</a> (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of <a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=978-1-59376-207-0">Speaking Treason Fluently</a>, publishing this month, also by <a href="http://www.softskull.com">Soft Skull</a>. For review copies or interview requests, please reply to <a title="E-mail us" href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com" id="pgb1">publicity@softskull.com</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

Tim Wise: "This is Your Nation on White Privilege"

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:24:00 GMT

<html> <head> <title>Tim Wise: "This is Your Nation on White Privilege"</title> </head> <body>  (Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  Tim Wise's latest opinion piece: This is Your Nation on White Privilege By Tim Wise 9/13/08 For those who still cant grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help. <ul> <li>White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because every family has challenges, even as black and Latino families with similar challenges are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. </li> <li>White privilege is when you can call yourself a fuckin redneck, like Bristol Palins boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll kick their fuckin' ass, and talk about how you like to shoot shit for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. </li> <li>White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action. </li> <li>White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people dont all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means youre untested. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to say that you support the words under God in the pledge of allegiance because if it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me, and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the under God part wasnt added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was Alaska first, and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think shes being disrespectful. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think youre being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--youre somehow being mean, or even sexist. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to convince white women who dont even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a second look. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to fire people who didnt support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is Gods punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think youre just a good church-going Christian, but if youre black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, youre an extremist who probably hates America. </li> <li>White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a trick question, while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill OReilly means youre dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced. </li> <li>White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a light burden. </li> <li>And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters arent sure about that whole change thing. Ya know, its just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain. </li> </ul> White privilege is, in short, the problem. Tim Wise is the author of <a href="<a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-99-3">White">http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-933368-99-3">White</a> Like Me</a> (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of <a href="<a href="http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=978-1-59376-207-0">Speaking">http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=978-1-59376-207-0">Speaking</a> Treason Fluently</a>, publishing this month, also by <a href="<a href="http://www.softskull.com">Soft">http://www.softskull.com">Soft</a> Skull</a>. For review copies or interview requests, please reply to <a title="E-mail us" href="<a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"">mailto:publicity@softskull.com&quot</a>; id="pgb1"><a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com<">publicity@softskull.com&lt</a>;/a>  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="<a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/">">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"&gt</a>; <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/</a> </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="<a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce">">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"&gt</a>; <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/[list">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/[list</a>] </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="<a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"">mailto:publicity@softskull.com&quot</a>;> <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com">publicity@softskull.com</a> </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="<a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing">http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing</a> List Powered by Dada Mail</a>  </body> </html>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below:

Soft Skull Announce Message

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:46:00 GMT

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions, is located at the end of this message.)  LE SOFT SKULL NEWSLETTER, vol. 2, AUGUST 2008 Welcome, welcome internet readers! Here today for your grazing pleasure is the Second Edition of the all-electronic Soft Skull Press Monthly Newsletter, featuring a full re-cap of this months most delicious deep-fried news tid-bits, smothered in a rich, savory informational gravy. So, dear internet readers, gorge yourself on this news-feast without shame, and whatever your plate may be - laptop, blackberry, your grubby awful jealousy-inducing iphone - be sure to lick it clean! It begins! ------------------------------- FIRST OFF - a light salad of selected scrumptious reviews: David Ohle's "The Pisstown Chaos" has received recent praise from a number of leading leafy publications. Time Out New York calls it <a title=""tragically hilarious"" href="http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/books/37431/absolutely-fabulist" id="avtp">"tragically hilarious"</a> and recognizes Ohle as "a beacon to younger, loosely experimental fiction writers;" The Village Voice praises the book's "<a title="cool logic of the insane" href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-12/books/david-ohle-s-journey-through-the-pisstown-chaos/" id="udnz">cool logic of the insane</a>;" and the ever-satisfying and hearty Huffington Post calls Ohle's approach to political satire "<a title="potent and compelling" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-vandermeer/summer-political-fiction_b_118486.html" id="pp4z">potent and compelling</a>." Not one to be left out of the praise-jamboree, the Brooklyn rail had the following to say: "<a title="Ultimately... The Pisstown Chaos revea ls itself to be a sly and rambunctious satire, devilishly well-imagined and playfully rough with the reader" href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/07/books/fiction-illness-as-metallurgy" id="nkdx">Ultimately... The Pisstown Chaos reveals itself to be a sly and rambunctious satire, devilishly well-imagined and playfully rough with the reader</a>." Ah, so crisp! Do make sure to keep you ear to the wind, for blowing in from this nation's far Left Coast in the frighteningly-near future will be an wee article on Mr. Ohle Himself, courtesy of  those language-wizards over at San Francisco's The Believer! SECOND - Even when enjoying the fruits of a fine harvest, one mustn't forget to pay attention to their global current-events. For this, we direct your attention to the War Nerd's <a title="most recent revelations." href="http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-south-ossetia-the-war-of-my-dreams/#more-270" id="m1w3">most recent revelations.</a> And while you chew over that particular morsel, take care to wash it down with a few words from <a title="Mother Jones" href="http://www.motherjones.com/arts/books/2008/08/war-nerd.html" id="ydo7">Mother Jones</a> and the <a title="Washington City Paper" href="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=35934" id="dclz">Washington City Paper</a>. THIRD - Review Soup! What is more satisfying than soup? Nothing! Everyone loves it! We drink it up! Enjoy this hodge-podge stew of recent reviews from our most-visually stimulating of offerings, E. Robert Arellano's "Dead in Desemboque" and Ilan Stavans' "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington." New Mexico�s Read Five magazine's cavernous cauldron-style feature about about "Dead in Desemboque" yields the following lip-smacking nugget: �The combination of great art and the story of a heroic rake chasing loose mujeres and being dogged by posse of unsavory hombres makes Dead in Desemboque an historieta worth experiencing over and over again, no matter which side of the border you�re on.� Bookslut�s John Zuarino recently conducted an interview with Arellano, discussing <a title="powerful recollection of a genre that has somehow been primarily unexplored in anglophone literature"" href="http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2008_07.php#013127" id="nx7o">�powerful recollection of a genre that has somehow been primarily unexplored in anglophone literature"</a>. Never one's to skimp on portion, Bookslut also featured an interview with Ilan Stavans,  discussing Stavans� ideas of <a title="progressive revolution to an old-fashioned system that sometimes seems like it will never change." href="http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2008_07.php#013155" id="hbat">�progressive revolution to an old-fashioned system that sometimes seems like it will never change.�</a> More love for Stavans came in from <a title="The Amhearst Bulletin" href="http://www.amherstbulletin.com/story/id/101522/" id="teda">The Amhearst Bulletin</a>, <a title="My San Antonio Entertainment" href="http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/books/Review_Idealistic_Mr_Spic_shocks_and_provokes.html" id="aafz">My San Antonio Entertainment</a>, and <a title="Tu Boston" href="http://www.tuboston.com/article-515-libro-expone-estereotipos-sobre-latinos.html" id="ho_o">Tu Boston</a>, along with blog-luvvin' from <a title="Tex[t]-Mex" href="http://textmex.blogspot.com/2008/07/ilan-stavans-goes-to-bat-on-mr-spic.html" id="o0ji">Tex[t]-Mex</a>, <a title="LaBloga" href="http://labloga.blogspot.com/2008/08/comings-and-goings-and-end-of-book-as.html" id="urbx">LaBloga</a> , and <a title="Tejaztlan Notebook" href="http://tejaztlan.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/mr-spic-delivers-latino-history-lessons-with-comedic-bows/" id="egut">Tejaztlan Notebook</a> (which are, by the by, the three greatest blog names in the short, epic history of blog name). Allow their combined mellifluousness to dance about your senses, be they confused and prone to synesthesia as my quickly unraveling extended news=food metaphor! (P.s. Check out a teeny excerpt of Mr. Spic <a title="here." href="http://lae.greenwood.com/blog/" id="gy43">here.</a>) AND NOW THE MAIN EVENT! Adjust your waistbands and spectacles, my dears, for we give you now the entertainment portion of the evening! Put down your forks, remove your pudgy fist from the french-fry dish, and plug in your RealPlayer - it's time for some Audio/Visual stimulation! Perhaps you remember way back when, during summers on Cape Cod, you would gather 'round the children, plop them down on the sofa, and fire-up the boob tube for the once-a-year showing of the only movie that has ever really mattered: the Wizard of Oz. Oh, the joy in their eyes! Well, those days are gone! The Age of Film is dead and buried, replaced by a blinding fusion of all media (or so some would have you think.) Either way, a NEW version of L. Frank Baum's classic story is being forged as we speak, a remarkable cyborg of text and illustration by none other than Graham Rawle. Behold, in a fabulous YouTube preview, the<a title="WIZARD" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt6hRpEOv3w" id="lkh3"> WIZARD</a> of <a title="OZ" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wmsjiJA5E4" id="ygku">OZ</a>. And while you are there, on that most distracting of sites, check out this little <a title="youtube clip" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEUwGGXYJGw" id="m0v0">youtube clip</a> about the <a title="acclaimed" href="http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/books/38931/all-about-lulu" id="y_oi">acclaimed</a> "All About Lulu." Speaking of Lulu, we must mention a recent rights acquisition by a certain Brazilian publisher: Arx has bought the rights to Mr. Evison's novel, and will soon be spreading Lulu love all over their fine country. In other rights and acquisitions news, "War Nerd" is going international! It will soon be published in Spanish by Enrique Murillo's new publishing venture Los Libros del Lince. Next time you find yourself enjoying tapas under a heavy Catalonian sun, consider picking up a copy. AND our beloved Black Flies will soon see release, courtesy of Random House, in those most United of Kingdoms, THE United Kingdom. Perhaps you live under a rock. Perhaps your genetic capacity to laugh was removed at birth. Perhaps you have embraced irony to a point so deep that the only "funny" things in the world are extinction and apocalypse. Whatever the reason, your too-cool-for-school days-without-laughing streak is over. BEHOLD.....the animated, the unbelievable, the red-white-and-blue <a title="FIRST EPISODE" href="http://www.236.com/d/?video=1703403258" id="tbj9">FIRST EPISODE</a> of GET YOUR WAR ON! The hilarity spilling out of Get Your War On's animated edition has been recognized by quite a few little internet soap-boxes. Ladies and gentleman, a run down: From BoingBoing, who call it their "<a title="absolutely my favorite political comic" href="http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/31/get-your-war-on-the.html" id="wav4">absolutely my favorite political comic</a>" - From <a title="Comedy Central" href="http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2008/08/get-your-war-on.html" id="j6.f">Comedy Central</a>, and it's <a title="Indecision 2008" href="http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/08/01/get-your-war-on-who-do-you-have-to-kill-to-get-on-the-terrorist-watch-list/" id="hmrt">Indecision 2008</a> blog - From <a title="Wired" href="http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/08/get-your-war-on.html" id="i3vp">Wired</a>, the overlords and chroniclers of all thing techno-trendy.  From a <a title="French politics blog" href="http://www.ilovepolitics.info/Get-your-war-on,-le-comics-anime-qui-fait-la-guerre-a-George-W-Bush_a750.html" id="dtq3">French politics blog</a> - From <a title="Raw Story" href="http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Get_Your_War_On_gets_its_0801.html" id="uw_2">Raw Story</a> - From <a title="The Guardian" href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/usa/2008/08/friday_morning_memo.html" id="smuu">The Guardian</a>: and finally, from <a title="the Times" href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article4472880.ece" id="irup">the Times</a>! But now, back to the cinema! sort of! Alex Cox's fascinating "X-Films" has been drawing the attention of some note-worthy outlets over there on the distant, expensive shores of the United Kingdom. The Independent calls the book "a very revealing look at the day-to-day difficulties of being an independent filmmaker" and suggest that  <a title=""every student at film school should be obliged to read it."" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/x-films-by-alex-cox-874673.html" id="gt_i">"every student at film school should be obliged to read it."</a> Continuing the academic hints, Film in Focus writes that <a title=""the book...reflects Cox's own generous, passionate, instinctively polemical nature: he makes a great teacher both of film production and film history."" href="http://www.filminfocus.com/faber-and-faber/alex-cox-dedicated-to-the-stru.php" id="s.-y">"the book...reflects Cox's own generous, passionate, instinctively polemical nature: he makes a great teacher both of film production and film history."</a> Somebody hire this man! Let him instruct your visionary children! X-Films will be out this fall from Soft Skull. Ah, so this edition of the Soft Skull Newsletter draws to a close. The bones have been picked dry, the casks of ale nearly exhausted, and the mighty towers of dessert Jello - once so wiggly and gravity-defiant - have been consumed down to their giggly, jazzy basements. Let the dish wait till morning. All there is left to do is slip into our robes, retire to our leather-trimmed studies, and contemplate the ungodly media ingestion that has just taken place, until sleep - that dusky, ancient phantom - falls over our brows like so much devils food cake at a sloppy birthday party food-fight. I leave you with <a title="this" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmglGWMsdk" id="spii">this</a>, and perhaps <a title="this" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcPQhS8W8g4" id="zir:">this</a>, to help you along the way. Alas, Jonathan Lazzara Newsletter Editor Soft Skull Press  The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription: You are subscribed to the following list: Soft Skull Announce using the following email: example@example.com You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Announce/ </a> If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism. You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce"> http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Announce </a> If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at: <a href="mailto:publicity@softskull.com"> publicity@softskull.com </a> The following physical address is associated with this mailing list: <a href="http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/">Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail</a>

Subscribe to Soft Skull Announce via email by entering your email address below: