MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Prophet with Honor As is often the case, I.F. Stone said it best himself, and said it a long time ago: "If I lived long enough I'd graduate from being a pariah to being a...
...Stone's latest book, The Trial of Socrates (Little, Brown, $18.95), an intrepid investigative reporter's re-examination of the most momentous political trial in all human history...
...Stone, which appeared in our January 1975 issue...
...And so at eighty I.F...
...Stone's Weekly, and a poster for it has hung over my desk at The Progressive for the last dozen years— partly because it features a splendid caricature of Stone by David Levine, but mostly because of something Izzy says in the film: "Every government is run by liars...
...Characteristically, Stone starts with no preconceptions and takes nothing for granted...
...In 1973, another young man, Jerry Bruck Jr., made a documentary film about Izzy Stone and his remarkable journalistic enterprise...
...It was Stone's example that inspired a couple of generations of journalists, including those who, more than two decades ago, began telling the truth about the American military intervention in Vietnam...
...Those who have had no opportunity to read his reporting and commentary—even those who have never heard of him—have been affected by his work...
...When it was brought out by Monthly Review Press, no one bothered to review it...
...Stone is celebrated everywhere—in broadcast interviews (even on the Voice of America), in admiring feature articles in all the major newspapers and mainstream magazines, in thoughtful (though sometimes critical) reviews in serious literary journals...
...I haven't the background to form an independent judgment on the period in which Izzy has immersed himself for the last fifteen years or so, but I know this: The Trial of Socrates is an absorbing account of ideas and events that still matter today to anyone who cares about the democratic idea—and no one cares more than Izzy Stone...
...Stone's Weekly had the benefit of his insights...
...Stone: A Portrait, by Andrew Patner (Pantheon, $15.95)—and I recommend it to you as an engaging but accurate portrayal of one of the outstanding human beings of our time...
...Stone said it best himself, and said it a long time ago: "If I lived long enough I'd graduate from being a pariah to being a character^ and then if I lasted long enough after that I'd go from being a character to being a public institution...
...It's in the stores now—I.F...
...In those days, he couldn't find a commercial publisher for his uniquely informative book, The Hidden History of the Korean War...
...A third man was in the room—a young student named Andy Patner, who was writing a paper on Izzy and had asked whether he could sit in...
...In those days, only a few thousand subscribers to I.F...
...It evens itself out...
...Though we ran out of reprints long ago, I'll be glad to send a photocopy, free, to any reader who sends me a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Izzy Stone is a wise and wonderful octogenarian, an incisive analyst of contemporary events, an energetic reporter who can still turn up a story everyone else has missed...
...Those are the rewards of old age: When you are young you get blamed for crimes you never committed, and when you are old you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed...
...Today, it is valued by students of the events that led up to the Korean war, and it will soon be reissued by one of the big commercial publishing houses...
...The film—you can catch it sometimes at an art house or campus showing—is called I.F...
...One of the pieces I'm most proud of in my twenty-year association with The Progressive is "On Justice for the Palestinians," by I.F...
...That encounter between Patner and Stone turned into a friendship, and the term, paper turned into a book...
...Nothing they say should be believed...
...One day in the spring of 1984,1 sat across from Izzy Stone at his cluttered desk in his Washington home, interviewing him for a piece that would appear that summer in The Progressive's Seventy-fifth Anniversary issue...
...His fresh look has outraged and offended some classicists and historians...
...But he was wise and wonderful, incisive and energetic thirty years ago and more, when he and his pathbreaking journalism were studiously ignored by the mass media...
...That we know as much as we do about the machinations of the CIA, about Watergate and the Iran-contra arms scandal, is due in no small measure to Izzy Stone's pioneering work...
...Every word of it bears repeating today— especially today...
...Directly or indirectly, every living American owes a debt of gratitude to I.F...
...That same skepticism informs I.F...
Vol. 52 • June 1988 • No. 6
