February 14, 2007

Josh Wolf is in jail for me.

But am I a journalist?

At the Free Josh Wolf Press Conference on the steps of City Hall on 2/6/07, the day Wolf became the longest-incarcerated (for contempt of court) journalist in American history (169 days and counting), I was not among those one speaker identified as “anyone out there holding a pad of paper or a camera,” and who was told, “Josh Wolf is in jail for you.” I had my hands in my pockets. But yes, I’m a writer and I’m “out there” on the web; of course I could conceivably have come to take notes and write about it, so he was talking to me. I just hadn’t thought about it, even though h brown seemed to think I was there “for the Dawg.”

BUT I AM NOT A REPORTER

and to me “journalism” has always denoted a focus on newsgathering and the timely dissemination of it, or on investigating and “breaking” stories. I don’t care if I’m topical or timely, I don’t meet any deadlines but my own, and I don’t “cover” events. I write about something when I feel like it and as soon as I get around to it, from whatever angle I wish to approach it. In any event, I don’t get paid for this column (it’s all about the glory!) so I assume the feds, as with Josh, would not consider me a “real” journalist.

But I have it better than the real ones. In fact when someone offered to pay me to post The Ax Files on his website, I was turned off by the idea. It just felt compromising to me. Mark Morford’s most recent piece on “the prudent follicular trimmage of the enchanted regions surrounding the male appendage,” clocks in at 1,138 words. So far, I’m going on 3,175 and counting. Nobody’s going to trim my appendage!

I am a completely unedited, unfettered, unbeholden writer whose stated mission is “to write anything I want, whenever I want, for whatever it’s worth.” It works for me! The Bulldog gives me the freedom to do this. My whole schtick revolves around freedom of speech, and I don’t need Big Brother telling me what it consists of. Nor does anybody. What if you want to exercise yours by telling a blogger something under his guarantee of your anonymity? That blogger needs protections. Or what if you are that blogger with that bombshell on your hands?

I AM NOT A BLOGGER.

Not everything published on the web is a blog. This is not. This is a column. There will be no comments posting on here. This is my show. Anyone with something to say can email me at axfiles@sbcglobal.net. I want you to. (Anthony Faber checked in to say the Short Attention Span version of the Newsom-Tourk betrayal of the Man Code, would be: “Bros Befo’ Hos.”)

IF I AM A JOURNALIST, IT’S THE “GONZO” SORT

“New Journalism,” is defined by Merriam Webster as “journalism that features the author’s subjective responses to people and events and that often includes fictional techniques meant to illuminate and dramatize those responses.”

And of “gonzo” they say: “1: idiosyncratically subjective but engagé; 2: bizarre [strikingly out of the ordinary: as a: odd, extravagant, or eccentric in style or mode; b: involving sensational contrasts or incongruities]; 3: freewheeling or unconventional especially to the point of outrageousness.

Sounds enough like me. OK, sure, I’ll gladly cop to freewheeling outrageous journalism.

Merriam Webster also defines journalism as “writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest.” You could say that of me, I suppose. But that is not how I would describe my writing. I would say my writing does appeal to current popular taste or public interest, but I do not design it to do so. Appealing to a readership is a by-product of my writing, not its aim.

BREAKING NEWS: FISH HITS NAIL ON HEAD

Stanley Fish, a Professor of Law at Florida International University, in a 2/11/07 New York Times article, “Why Do Writers Write?”, relates that he heard the Irish novelist Colm Toibin, being interviewed by Diane Rehm on the radio, and found himself irritated by the author’s refusal “to engage with questions posed to him by Rehm and listeners who called in.” Toibin explained the stories were not autobiographical. “This effort,” wrote Fish, “to keep separate the stories as stories—that is, as verbal constructions—and the lived experience of the person who wrote them was intensified when it came time to respond to callers.” Some had formed bonds with him as a writer, and wanted to reinforce them with a personal interaction. Some wanted him to know how much his writing helps them, offers solace; they sought “recognition and empathy” [and] “he wasn’t giving any.” Rehm was forced to step in and provide it.

[Then]… “I heard him say something that turned his refusal of intimacy…into a stance I recognized and could admire. A caller asked…whether the writing…was a way of dealing with the deaths of his mother and younger brother. He replied…’It’s not therapy,’ and went on to explain that assuaging grief, his or someone else’s, is not what writing strives to do. In fact, if there is a relationship of an act to the satisfaction of a need, it is the other way around. The act of writing makes use of grief as it might make use of anything.”

…what I had first regarded as a suspect evasiveness was in fact a determination to be faithful to the practice he was dedicated to and a refusal to claim for that practice effects that could not or should not be its objective. If a reader feels consoled or comforted, that’s all to the good, but it’s not what writing is about. Writing is about crafting sentences and building them into paragraphs and building the paragraphs into arguments and narratives. What Rehm and her listeners were proffering was a rationale for the act that was not internal to its demands, a rationale that could take the form of an external justification: I write so that you will feel better or I write so that the world will become a better place.

Toibin was saying, I write because making things out of words is what I feel compelled to do. Of course the words refer to events in the world, including events I may have witnessed or experienced, but to locate the value of the writing either in its effects or in the verisimilitude it achieves is to grab the wrong end of the stick…

Fish concludes, “If you’ve found something you really like to do–say write beautiful sentences–not because of the possible benefits to the world of doing it, but because doing it brings you the satisfaction and sense of completeness nothing else can, then do it at the highest level of performance you are capable of, and leave the world and its problems to others.”

AN ODD CONVERSATION TO HAVE HAD WHILE NAKED

was my saying to a guy in bed once, who had said he was not a big reader, “Don’t you love reading beautiful sentences?” “You have written some,” he acknowledged (in my love letters to him).

I believe Andy Rooney said something like the secret of life is to find something you want to do and do it well, and that doing that thing well could (well) be the best thing you can do for the world (distant recollection).

Fish got lots of flack from readers disagreeing with him, in whole or in part, that writing can certainly have more than one impetus, and trying to alleviate the world’s problems is nothing to be ashamed of, but I know what the guy is talking about. There’s a purity in writing for writing’s sake. It’s amazing what springs up. And cultivating a world of satisfied workers who are doing what they do best would be a revolution in itself.

“WHAT IS THE ‘DIRECTION’ OF THE EARTH IN ITS JOURNEY;
WHERE ARE THE ATOMS ‘GOING’ WHEN THEY SPIN?”
- Sissy Hankshaw, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

This is what I do all day, sit around combining words. I’m just a spinning atom, I’m just the turning earth. I might put it, rather than “any means to an end,” “any ends from a means.” Whether manifesting as a novel, a column, a poem, a letter, the object is to write. I’m not “trying” to do anything, like amuse, educate, wake up the world. Those reactions come from the reader. You can call me whatever you please, but in any event, that’s why I think of myself as a writer, not a journalist. My motivation is in the act of writing, not the product or its effects on people.

But Josh Wolf is certainly not one to leave the world’s troubles for others to solve.

WHO IS JOSH WOLF?

asked a German lawyer of me at the conference. I explain the circumstances, that he refused to turn over unpublished videotapes of an anarchist demonstration to the feds and was jailed for contempt. The jail time has become punitive. It is hard to realize when you are passionate about something, that many people may not even be aware of your cause. I bet 9 out of 10 people on the street don’t know who Josh is or why he is newsworthy; maybe 10 out of 10 depending on the street. But the group of people assembled on these stairs think his case may be one of the most important in American history, among them Julian Davis and Andy Blue of the Free Josh Wolf Coalition, SF Bay Guardian Editor and Publisher Bruce Brugmann, feelance journalist Sarah Olson, whose subpoena by U.S. Army prosecutors to testify at a court martial, was recently dropped, filmmaker Kevin Epps, and Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Ross Mirkarimi (who got all heated up and had a “mad as hell” moment pounding his fist on the podium. I had to smile. He is such a hotdog!).

WHAT’S THE BIG WHOOP WITH WOLF? WHAT DOES IT MATTER
WHAT HE IS OR ISN’T? OR YOU? WHAT’S IT GOT TO DO WITH ME?

For instance:

“Bloggers break the news, just like journalists do. They must be able to promise confidentiality in order to maintain the free flow of information,” said EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “Without legal protection, informants will refuse to talk to reporters, diminishing the power of the open press that is the cornerstone of a free society.”

Writer Jackson West said of the Wolf case, “It turns anyone with a video camera into a sort of an arm of the American surveillance machine…basically if they discover that you were filming at a particular event that they might be interested in, they could legally compel you to turn over those tapes, regardless of whether you’re a journalist or not.”

In the case Apple v. Does regarding leaking of trade secrets, West said, “The judge …ruled that regardless of …your state as a professional journalist, ‘acts of journalism’ are protected under at least California state law…if you’re a blogger… and you happen to break a story…that is an ‘act of journalism,’ whether or not you were originally a journalist in the first place.” West gave as an example a cat blogger revealing that a brand-name cat food was killing her cats.
http://ryanishungry.com/2006/08/30/josh-wolf-update-interview-with-jackson-west/

“The right to take photographs in the United States is being challenged more than ever,” says attorney Bert B. Krages on his web page http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm about photographers’ rights. “People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, buildings, trains, and bus stations.”

That could be you and your camera someday, taking pictures of Portland’s beautiful Union “Go By Train” Station, which someone in a Homeland Security suit might think means you intend to blow it up. Stranger things have happened.

BACK AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE

I am not surprised, in Wolf’s Statement to the Press from prison, that he quotes the very Mario Savo speech I referenced in my column of 9/25/06 discussing Wolf’s appearance at Crash in September, “Welcome to Death, Little Girl,” http://sfbulldog.com/alexandra/2006/09/25/axfiles0610/ (section I’M GOING TO HELL). Let’s hear it again:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Savo did cut to the chase. So I will swallow my shame and finally get around to writing Wolf and sending him my columns about him. Will they make it to him through the feds’ “anonymous authorities” mailroom review? Looking at the letter-writing guidelines, I’m thinking, don’t waste your time. “Keep in mind that all mail is read by authorities. Please do not discuss cases, charges or issues relating to either.”

But I’ll make it onto some kind of list in some kind of file, for sure, prime among them “Agents Provocateurs who Wrote to Josh Wolf.”

WE’RE THE TROUBLEMAKERS

All the troublemakers are watching this issue. Noir Icon Marsha Hunt, in describing similarities of the anti-Communist era to ours, said: “Conformity is a dangerous word. It means don’t think for yourself, go with the safe ticket, the safe viewpoint, don’t ask questions, don’t make waves. If the public is convinced of that, you’ve got them and nobody will challenge you. There has been a bit of this, more than a bit, in the last few years.”

Wolf’s waves are by now of tsunami force. “Many have characterized the investigation,” said Julian Davis of the Free Josh Coalition, “as a fishing expedition by an Administration determined to identify and threaten voices of dissent.”

“One thing that they’re trying to do,” said Wolf in a radio interview on “Democracy Now!”, “is they’re trying to basically move toward state-sanctioned journalism. They’re trying to say that I’m not a journalist, and even if I was, that journalists aren’t protected, in order to basically force journalists to act as agents for the state. Beyond that, they’re also trying to identify civil dissidents and form databases.”

HIS MESSAGE TO THE WORLD

Look around you. If they’re sending me to jail for essentially no charges, what’s next? We need to wake up. We need to come to terms with the government we have right now and demand a change, demand a free media that’s not encumbered by interference, that doesn’t force journalists to act as agents of the state, that truly is free, both in terms of corporate control and government control, and hopefully if we demand it, we’ll have it.

http://joshwolf.net/blog/
http://freejosh.pbwiki.com/

SHOWTIME: 2:00 P.M.

As it’s a Tuesday and I’m already at City Hall, it enters my head to attend the Board of Supervisors meeting to get a live view of Jake McGoldrick going apopleptic if he calls for the resignation of Mayor Newsom. I position myself for a good view of him.

Part government meeting, part TV show, part grandstand, Board meetings can be deadly dull or full of drama. Personalities in conflict, egos on display, policy wars; it can be boring, or enthralling. The best show is when one of the hotheads gets worked up about something—but Chris Daly’s been behaving himself lately (though I always sense an undertone in his voice of readiness to fly off the first handle that presents itself).

I admit I am here to laugh, discreetly. I want to see McGoldrick lose it. Not the most noble of motivations, but it would be good theater. Look at the venue! The chambers are a natural setting for grandiose histrionic declamations, and no one’s better at it than McGoldrick. He’s already pretty pink—I want to see how red he can get.

BUT HE DOESN’T GO FOR IT

Perhaps he wants to give it more thought. He has just had a brief unpleasant meeting with The Gav, who asked him not to kick him while he’s down, while McG says it’s not forgiveness he needs, but forgetfulness he wants. Newsom will not resign. McG is not afraid to point out the Emporer’s lack of clothes.

Lack of clothes is what got the Emporer into all his trouble to begin with. But as Daniela Kirschenbaum warns in Fog City Journal, we are not to dismiss this as a sex issue; the bigger concern is the “lack of credibility of the entire Newsom administration.”
http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/kirshenbaum_070202.shtml

Michael Wilbon, in the 2/9/07 Washington Post, reports that “John Amaechi has become the first former NBA player to publicly say he’s gay. The reaction to Amaechi’s announcement…is all over the place, from appropriate indifference to utterances that border on homophobic to, well, stock ignorance…NBA Commissioner David Stern, in trying to make plain that a player’s sexuality simply isn’t important, said: “We have a very diverse league. The question at the NBA is always, ‘Have you got game.’ That’s it, end of inquiry.’”

WELL—DOES GAVIN HAVE GAME?

I say, give our boy the rest of his term to prove he does, or die trying. I say rally ‘round our native son and give him the support he needs, personally and professionally. At eight-and-a-half months before Election Day, I would find it a distraction to have the City occupied with a mayoral resignation and change of personnel, even though McGoldrick would scold that San Francisco is not a principality. Soon enough we’ll find out how the entire City feels about Newsom and the job he has done. Assuming he’s got a challenger.

THE BOOZE PART

The rehab announcement, what Mireya Navarro of The New York Times calls “the script for public penance” was called “A Sorry Excuse,” in a so-named Los Angeles Times editorial. They thought the apology was delivered with

…a directness rare in a politician…The mayor’s apology came with no ifs, ands or buts. For once, the public was presented with a simple and frank admission of wrongdoing. Most refreshing of all, Newsom did not undermine his sincerity with the by-now-obligatory confession that he has a substance abuse problem and will be entering rehab.

UNTIL HE DID.

It’s Crisis Management 101—first you apologize…then take “full responsibility” for your actions, then loudly announce that you are seeking a treatment whose first step is admitting you are “powerless.” The inference to be drawn by the public is that it wasn’t you who did those bad things, it was the disease (or disorder or lack of cultural sensitivity or “issues” that haven’t been “worked out”). Your obligation isn’t to “sin no more,” it’s to “get help.”

The problem is that, after seeing so many compromised celebrities seek therapy, the public is likely to come to a different and more cynical conclusion: that the primary purpose of rehabilitation is damage control.

QUEL DOMMAGE

I had asked myself when I heard the rehab announcement, “Why do all celebrities have to go into rehab after they apologize for something?” Though the LA Times did quote Newsom, “in his defense,” as saying that his problems with alcohol “are not an excuse for my personal lapses in judgment” they still rag on him for the timing of his announcement [which] inevitably recalls the recent two-step programs executed by former Rep. Mark Foley… Miss USA Tara Conner… and Mel Gibson.”

BACK AT THE RANCH

I catch Supervisor Sean Elsbernd checking out me and my Free Josh Wolf t-shirt; he averts his eyes. I could listen to Sean Elsbernd talk for hours. He has a very pleasing—not to say monotonous—“even keel” speaking voice that makes me feel calm. I like things that make me feel calm—things like a warm, comforting mug of tranquilizers.

It occurs to me to make some sort of public comment regarding Josh and his record-breaking day but I haven’t prepared anything and am the worst extemporaneous speaker in all the kingdom. I would just embarrass myself so instead I leave, as my mind has begun to wander in and out of the realm of boredom.

FORGET VALENTINE’S DAY

Who needs it? But don’t forget Februatio on February 15th—the fertility festival from which February gets it name.

An ancient Roman festival held annually in honor of Lupercus [aka Faunus], the god of fertility, woodlands, and pastures. Lupercalia is older than Rome itself. The festivities were run by the Luperci, or “Brotherhood of the Wolf”. Two male goats and a dog were sacrificed, and the blood of the goats was smeared on the foreheads of two youths with a knife. The knife was then wiped on wool dipped in milk, and the youths were required to laugh. The Luperci, who administered the rites, were crowned, anointed, and wore only an apron of goatskin. Women would line up along the road to receive lashes from the whips [februa] to insure fertility.

http://www.heart7.net/date/february.htm

Skip the chocolates! Sign me up!

ANYWAY IT’S FEBRUARY

And as Maira Kalman points out in “The Impossibility of February” in The New York Times, “It is impossible not to lie. It is February and not lying is impossible.”

And then, “It is February and all is forgiven. I think.”

We wuv you Josh

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Short Attention Span Poetry Corner

Careful what you knew
Careful what you do
Careful whom you do it with
Careful through and through

Careful when you wake
Careful not to fake
Life's no piece of cake
You might burn at the stake
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3,300+ words
2/14/07

axfiles@sbcglobal.net

copyright Alexandra Jones 2007