Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 28,
2005
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
February 28, 2005
The Million Dollar Interview
Talking
to Mary Johnson about Clint Eastwood, Hunter Thompson and the
"Right to Die"
By
MICKEY Z.
"Does anyone need
another million dollar movie?
Does anyone need another million dollar star?"
-Lou Reed, "Straw
Man"
Journalist (and crip) John Hockenberry
recently wrote that the same critics heaping praise on Clint
Eastwood and "Million Dollar Baby" have "failed
millions of Americans with disabilities by accepting as utterly
plausible the plot-twist that a quadriplegic would sputter into
medical agony in a matter of months and embrace suicide as her
only option in a nation where millions of people with spinal
cord injuries lead full long lives." Thus, as the Oscars
threatened to become a lovefest for Dirty Harry, I posed some
questions to Mary Johnson, editor of The
Ragged Edge.
"I started a little publication
back in 1980 in Louisville called The Disability Rag because
one of the big problems locally was you couldn't get crips in
one place to do consciousness-raising," Johnson recalls.
The Rag became The Ragged Edge because of a successful anthology
by that name and is now totally digital and online only.
A self-described "garden-variety
non-disabled person," Johnson got involved in disability
issues in the 70s. "I got hooked," she says. "What
I've learned and seen over the years reporting on this stuff
has convinced me that disability rights issues are the quintessential
rights issues for this nation. We all face disability issues
sooner or later. Hiding our heads in the sand just leads us to
the sad conclusion Hunter Thompson drew. Tragic to have that
kind of fear."
Mary replied without hesitation
to my questions...but did make one agreeable request: "Let
us not bring up Christopher Reeve in this article, okay? I am
really tired of him being brought up as the sine qua non of cripdom."
Mickey Z.: The response of
some to the recent suicide of Hunter S. Thompson got me thinking:
How is it that the 67-year-old Thompson (or anyone non-disabled
who exercises their right to die) can be seen as having "so
much to live for" but it's so readily accepted by critics
and audiences alike that the character of Maggie (half HST's
age) in the film, "Million Dollar Baby," had nothing
to live for?
Mary Johnson: George Tobia
Jr., the lawyer who has represented Thompson for the past 15
years, told the Boston Globe that Thompson's suicide was "definitely
not spur of the moment.... He arranged to have things dealt with,
and he wanted his family close by, but he didn't want anyone
to know. He didn't want anyone to try to stop him....The best
explanation, perhaps, is that in recent months Thompson had chronic
pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. He also broke his
leg on a recent trip to Hawaii and was limping, which made it
difficult for him to travel. He didn't want to waste away. He
did not want to exist as an invalid or as someone who needed
constant care. It wouldn't suit his sense of self."
The Not Dead Yet folks say:
when someone who's not disabled wants to die, or actually commits
suicide, everyone thinks it's such a tragedy-but when a quad
does it then it's "understandable" and the death is
"a blessing" rather than "a tragedy." No
one ever stops to think what this might be saying to the crips
who don't decide to off themselves, do they? What it says is
that non-disabled people, who control the standards in society,
think unequivocally that life with a severe disability is a fate
worse than death, i.e. death is preferable. And it also is at
the root of all those "brave" and "courageous"
monikers that routinely get applied to crips who don't kill themselves,
who just keep plodding on.
MZ: What's really going
on in all this?
MJ: Cripdom is the big bogeyman
in our society today. We non-disabled folks are projecting our
own fears about disability onto the people who actually have
the severe disabilities. And we can't hear what they say because
our heads are full of what we WOULD say/think/do if we were in
that "condition." I believe the fear of living with
severe disability is far worse than the actual doing of it-as
countless quad friends I've had over the years have convinced
me. But you sure can't convince the public. If a quad says, "my
life is really OK" they're just discounted as being brave
or courageous and what they say isn't believed. Talk about dissing
someone! To me it's the ultimate form of dissing, and it goes
on all the time in regard to disability issues in this country.
Non-disabled people always set the terms of the debate. And we
must not forget that many, many people who acquire disabilities
like Maggie's are simply non-disabled people in paralyzed bodies-they
feel the same way about it they did before they'd become paralyzed.
It takes a while to sort things out. One of the best recent statements
of this fact was written by Canadian Ed Smith for CBC News and
it's online at: http://www.cbc.ca/
MZ: When I criticized Eastwood's
snuff film in a recent article, I was accused of not supporting
the "right to die." Your thoughts?
MJ: People believe it's about
autonomy. In my article, "The
Scribes Who Mistook The Crips for The Right", I wrote:
"The 'right to die' may sound egalitarian; it may sound
as though it's about nothing more than choice. In application,
though, it applies only to people who are living disabled lives.
And the disability rights movement continually returns to this
central truth. "Since virtually all people who request hastened
death have old or new disabilities, we're essential to the debate,"
wrote the late Barry Corbet, longtime editor of New Mobility.
Right to die, and death with dignity laws, Corbet wrote, "are
about us."
Attorney Diane Coleman, founder
of Not Dead Yet says: "Many of our allies in the civil rights
and health care movements have found this hard to understand.
Isn't this about individual autonomy and rights, they ask? No,
we say, it's about disability discrimination, a profit-oriented
health care system, and a legal system that does not guarantee
the equal protection of the law."
Or, as a sticker for sale from
Mouth Magazine says, "I support the right to die. You go
first."
MZ: What about the concept
of "assisted suicide"?
MJ: Actively helping someone
end their life is illegal in every state. But laws permitting
a doctor to provide lethal medication are being contemplated
in California, Vermont, Hawaii and Arizona (such a law is in
force only in Oregon.) Proponents insist safeguards exist. But
those safeguards, says Harriet McBryde Johnson, whose articles
have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, "are about
defining a class whose desire to die may be presumed rational,
because of illness or disability so 'bad' that no 'reasonable'
person would want to endure it." Right to die laws, says
Johnson, have "the power to validate and structure prejudice
-- to tell suicidal newbies that yes, it really is as bad as
it feels, and don't expect it ever to get better. They tell the
larger society that disability and illness equal misery, so there's
no need to bother about making our lives good. There's an easy
way out."
MZ: Tell us more about Clint
Eastwood's history, vis-à-vis disability rights?
MJ: The disability rights movement
has never forgiven Clint Eastwood for his celeb blitz against
the ADA in the spring of 2000. His campaign was heralded by a
May 9 article on page 1 of The Wall Street Journal by reporter
Jim Vandehei ("Clint Eastwood Saddles Up For Disability-Act
Showdown"): "These 'sleazebag lawyers,' the veteran
actor says, his voice constricting, messed with the wrong guy
when they 'frivolously' sued him and hundreds of other small-business
owners for failing to comply quickly enough with the Americans
with Disabilities Act. Mr. Eastwood...is striking back with a
Washington lobbying campaign for new legislation to modify the
law. 'I figure I won't back down because of all these people...who
can't defend themselves.' "
Eastwood had been called in
by Rep. Mark Foley who was pushing a bill called the ADA Notification
Act, which would require crips who were suing access violators
to give the violator 90 days' notice before suing them (no matter
that the business had had since 1992 to correct the violations).
The disability rights movement unilaterally opposed the bill,
and ultimately succeeded in keeping it from moving out of committee
that year-but the bill keeps re-surfacing in every session of
Congress and I'm sure a version will be re-introduced again soon.
California has just had a state version introduced.
In the week between the May
9 WSJ article and the May 18 hearing, Eastwood took part in a
media blitz against the law. One sound bite got picked up a lot:
"What happens is these lawyers, they come along and they
end up driving off in a big Mercedes, and the disabled person
ends up driving off in a wheelchair." It was designed to
sound as though he wasn't against the disabled (nobody is ever
openly against the disabled-note Clint's current remarks in the
"Million Dollar Baby" flap) but the "money-grubbing
lawyers." So the real story never did get out. The May 18
hearing had reporters there in droves to listen to Eastwood's
statement. Their jam of microphones and cameras had forced many
disability rights advocates to remain out in the hall-but as
soon as he'd finished, they all left. Naturally, he got to speak
first, being a celebrity whose time was valuable. His complaint
to the committee was, naturally, about the attorneys: "In
my opinion they are perverting the law by going around and filing
these broadside, sand-bagging type suits where they hit you broadside
from nowhere, with absolutely no warning. "I was hit by
one in an old hotel I was trying to restore" -- he was referring
to his Mission Ranch resort -- "just on an allegation that
somebody was there, and a year earlier they had been denied access.
They waited a whole year to file this suit. They claimed that
some employee told them that we did not have handicapped bathrooms.
Well, the truth is we did have handicapped bathrooms. But once
they file a suit on you, they keep adding everything. Every time
they come back they keep upping the ante, adding many more problems
to be solved which they can collect fees on. And it is really
not very fair."
MZ: What happened after
Eastwood and the media left?
MJ: The real story began to
emerge. Ragged Edge reported on it in 2000 and you can read some
very good comments from disability activists about why a "Notification
Act" was such a terrible idea at: http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/
The real clincher was the testimony
of Fred Shotz, an ADA consultant. Shotz testified: "I reviewed
photos of Mr. Eastwood's Mission Ranch, andwas able to read the
entire inspection report by the plaintiff's consultant in that
lawsuit. All it said are the violations; not violations of an
old building that people want removed, but the new steps that
got built so that people in wheelchairs could not get up, because
with the steps came no ramp; the restroom removed from the building
to enlarge the public space, or the restrooms being placed over
200 feet away from that building. If you are not disabled, restrooms
are just around the corner."
Eastwood was forced to admit
that he was being sued under California's access law as well
as the federal law, and it was the California law that allowed
plaintiffs to sue for damages. None of this got reported either.
There's a neat Quicktime tape on our website of these snatches
of the hearing (it's about 10 minutes). It's linked from: http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/.
That fall, the trial Eastwood
alluded to occurred in San Francisco. At its end, the jury noted
that Eastwood's Mission Ranch had indeed broken the law. There
was no ramp to the registration office. An "accessible"
guest room wasn't. No signs pointed to the accessible public
restroom. All were violations of the ADA and California law.
However, Eastwood, standing before the cameras outside the courtroom,
declared victory. The lack of access was a mere technicality:
those "improvements" were already in the works. It
is true that the jurors did not award the plaintiff the money
that California's Unruh Civil Rights Act would have granted someone
who had suffered as a result of access denial. It was the state
law, not the ADA that allowed for damages anyway. So Eastwood
crowed to reporters that he had "won." He made light
of the fact that it was the lawsuit that had impelled him to
finally provide the access. He also failed to say that in making
his choice to fight the charges, rather than simply comply, he
had paid out tens of thousand of dollars to his own attorneys
(which, evidently, were not "unscrupulous" ones). "If
you're right, you've got to hold your ground," Eastwood
told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I also fought for the
businessmen and businesswomen who own small businesses who are
trying to get by and they get worked over by those people."
It is a sad but typical note
that the federal courtroom in which the Eastwood trial took place
was not accessible, either. People in wheelchairs had to be brought
in through an exit door. Neither the witness stand nor the jury
box was accessible. "Court officials had to remove a bench
to allow room for observers in wheelchairs," said the Chronicle.
MZ: Why have progressives/radicals
been so hesitant and/or resistant to aligning with the disability
rights movement? It seems like a natural fit.
MJ: This is a theme I seem
to return to over and over, for it is very painful for me-and
for most of the disability activists I know-to realize that progressives
are rarely any better on our issues than conservatives, and sometimes
actually much worse. The concepts of individual rights and an
egalitarian society, concepts that drive disability rights thinking,
are borrowed from liberal ideology, and most of the activists
in the movement today come from backgrounds in the civil rights,
women's rights, anti-war movements of the 60s and 70s. Yet, get
any group of disability activists together for more than a few
minutes and you'll start hearing the familiar griping about how
liberals don't "get" disability rights.
In my book, "Make Them
Go Away," I keep coming back to this theme. I wrote that
free-market conservatives were against disability rights, but
that could have been expected; but that what was not expected
was that almost no liberal groups spoke out in support of disability
rights.
Most liberals and progressives
believed that the problems racial minorities, women, and gays
faced were the result of animus, the work of a discriminatory
society. When it came to disabled people, though, liberals' views
were similar to those of the anti's. They believed disabled people
faced essentially private, medical problems rather than problems
of discrimination. What a disabled person needed, they felt,
was medical intervention-a cure. Lacking that, they should be
given help, through private charity or government benefits programs.
Almost everyone instinctively felt that "rights" was
simply the wrong lens through which to view the disability situation.
This concept-that disability
belongs to the realm of the private, not the political-was noted
originally by disability scholar and historian Paul Longmore.
I think he's right on the money. But equally important is the
belief that "no one is against the handicapped"-that
no animus is involved. Completely inaccurate, but people cling
to this belief, even crips. It's probably the biggest obstacle
to organizing. At least when you're gay, you know folks hate
you. That's empowering, actually, within your own community.
Crips have "no enemies" thus no reason to form community-this
is the most pernicious thing going for the crip nation (which
doesn't exist, and this is why).
MZ: What is the biggest
myth you'd like to dispel about disability rights?
MJ: That the problems disabled
people face are primarily caused by their disabilities, and that
nobody is against the handicapped (I know, that's two). The truth
is that the real problems a disabled person faces are caused
by a society that refuses to see the condition of disabled people
as being a result of bigotry, discrimination, and flawed social
policies emanating from the belief that nothing can really be
done for a disabled person if they can't be cured or made "better"
physically. In fact the struggles that most disabled people face
that make life unbearable have to do with not being able to hire
decent attendants (no money; no program to pay decent wages)
housing you can't even get out of, buses you still can't ride,
employers who still don't want to hire you. If you don't read
any other link I've provided, do read this one: http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-04-08/news_story5.php.
It's an article by a crip who writes for Toronto Now alternative
paper, about the problems he's had with having someone come in
and help him bathe and dress. These kinds of things, happening
daily, over and over, to quads everywhere, are the real reasons
people get discouraged sometimes and think of suicide-but as
one should be able to tell from Shupak's article, the problem
here isn't being disabled, per se, but the conditions under which
society forces crips to live. A fine distinction, but a vital
one. Why do we keep missing this?
These kinds of things are easily
within society's power to change. Unlike The Cure, which is elusive
(and people rarely take time to realize that the cure for spinal
cord injury isn't going to help me if I have ALS; that the cure
for ALS isn't going to help me if I have osteogenesis imperfecta),
providing decent in-home services is very much within the power
of society to do. If only the political will were there. But
rather than take up this issue, liberals would rather worry about
guaranteeing the Right To Die. Funny, eh? It would be if it weren't
so tragic.
For more on Mary Johnson, please
visit: http://www.raggededgemagazine.com
Mickey Z. is the author of four books, most
recently: "The
Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda"
(Common Courage Press). He can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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