50 Years of Pissing People Off - Nat Hentoff V V

[BridgeTheGap]

Sometime in the late '80s, during a typical internecine squabble at the Voice, I took a cheap shot, in the form of a letter to the editor, at Nat Hentoff. There were many such squabbles back then, and an amazing number centered around Hentoff. Nat had a way of pissing off the writers and editors of two generations of lefties (by which, not to put too fine a point on it, I mean just about everyone who came of age from the Vietnam era on) that was unmatched by anyone I know of.
Suffice it to say that the spat had to do with something Hentoff had written about abortion, and my letter, which earned me pats on the back from some of my friends at the Voice, made liberal use of the word "fascist." (We were young and passionate then and slung such words as "fascist," "zeitgeist," "subversive," and "existential" the way Giuliani uses "9/11.") I had also shown our disdain for Hentoff by briskly passing by his office door and refusing to ask him if he had gotten any good jazz records in the mail, which hurt me a lot more than it did him.

A few days later, I got my reply. In my mail slot, I found a reissue of a Pee Wee Russell album with a note taped to it: "Hey, give me a break. You may need it yourself some day. P.S. Listen to this. It might clear your head out." What an asshole. Instead of jumping into the argument with pettiness and personal acrimony, he sought to create a dialogue with reason, tolerance, and jazz. What can you do with a guy like that?

Well, for one thing, you can read him, and—to borrow André Gide's advice—do him the favor of not understanding him too quickly. It took me over 25 years to understand Nat Hentoff, and I'm still in the process of clearing my head.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0802,barra,78810,6.html