Dave Markland:
>
>As Michael Moore wrote recently, the left has to get off its butt, stop
>infighting, and get to the people who will make a difference: the bus driver
>with a second job to make ends meet; the waitress who's a single mom; these
>people are about 3 inches from denouncing capitalism, only they don't even
>know what caitalism is. As Moore points out, it's no coincidence that Terry
>Nichols is from the Flint, MI area; while GM employees were being laid off
>by the thousands, 'the left' was in Nicaragua supporting the Sandanistas, or
>in Philly protesting the death penalty.
>
PEN-L'ers should be aware that a full-scale verbal war has erupted between
Alex Cockburn and Michael Moore over this article. The NY Press, which
Cockburn writes for, has been attacking Moore as a do-nothing hypocrite for
a while now and Cockburn has entered the fray.
For example, on the question of the left getting enthused over the
Sandinistas and ignoring Flint, Cockburn says:
"More news for you, Michael. The 'left' did come [to Flint]. They supported
Jesse Jackson. That particular year, under the influence of Andrew Kopkind,
the Nation actually endorsed Jackson. We wrote pages about the Michigan
vote, many of them by me. The people who didn't want to pay attention to
the Michigan vote were the liberals backing Dukakis. If you had a memory
instead of a set of one-liners you'd remember that, and you'd attack the
liberal Democratic mainstream. But it's somehow more fun to flail away at
that poor old tarnished nag, 'the left,' in which activity you're at one
with the entire political mainstream."
Louis Proyect
