EDITOR'S NOTE
Rothschild, Matthew
EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild Box Scores One of the real pleasures of being a magazine editor is to get to see great books before anyone else. Every day here we receive four or five review...
...But the Times wouldn't content itself with just one put-down in that day's paper...
...And our one ringer, University of Wisconsin art professor Steve Feren, initiated a historic triple play...
...Foolish baserunning, stellar fielding, and one highly questionable call marked the proceedings...
...It is so comfortable for the media to sneer and belittle, so tempting to impugn the motives of those who are trying to stand up for justice...
...Rant of a caged animal...
...Ruth and I would have to toss out at least forty more for this excerpt...
...Later, when my mind cleared, I realized I had marked nearly sixty pages...
...It was 384 pages, loose-leaf, and it arrived in a cardboard box, with a note asking for her advice, criticism, and suggestions...
...Over the past few years, Ruth and Ko-zol have struck up a literary friendship...
...I strongly recommend the whole book to you, and I hope you enjoy the sample we've prepared...
...Between doses of codeine, I made notes on a yellow legal pad, marking sections that I desperately wanted to excerpt...
...Ruth obliged, and the next cardboard box that arrived contained 326 loose-leaf pages...
...Ridicule is the sleeping pill of the scribbling class...
...Oh, as to that highly questionable call: I'm up to bat, the bases loaded, two outs, we're down 14-10 with only an inning left, and I smash a ball down the third base line, clearly in fair territory, or so I thought until I puffed into second and was told that it somehow went foul...
...Abu-Jamal's jeremiads against the American justice system are strangely banal—angry but shallow, the rant of a caged animal staring at extinction without any gain of comprehension...
...And those of us who oppose Abu-Jamal's execution also oppose the execution of the 3,009 others on death row in whom Clines feigns interest...
...Mumia Abu-Jamal won a stay of execution on August 7. This seemed to undo the mainstream media, none more so than the mighty New York Times...
...The other was a tiny review of Abu-Jamal's Live from Death Row (the book we excerpted in our May issue...
...How dehumanizing are they going to get over there at the Times...
...In These Times's ace labor reporter, David Moberg, failed to get back to first on a fly out and was doubled off, a Little League blunder that I proceeded to commit myself...
...Ruth was an admirer of Kozol's Savage Inequalities, and Kozol had complimented Ruth for the writing she's done on welfare in our pages...
...The reviewer, one Michael Anderson, wrote: "Mr...
...Grunting...
...But for Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace, we saw even earlier versions— thanks to Ruth Conniff, our managing editor...
...He was playing short, and In These Times had runners on first and second when their batter hit a hard grounder...
...Jim Weinstein, editor of In These Times and on the mound for the visitors, made a lucky grab of a line shot I'd aimed perilously close to his body...
...The thirteenth annual leftwing softball fest between The Progressive and In These Times, the socialist weekly based in Chicago, was held on August 5 at Vilas Park here in Madison, and I've got good news to report: we finally won one...
...The case was hardly driven by celebrities, most of whom only signed on long after anti-racism and anti-death-penalty activists had worked tirelessly on the case...
...Tongue-tied peers— 3,009 and growing at last count of America's burgeoning death rows—can only wonder in silence, perchance grunting of their own innocence, but well ignored...
...Feren fielded it cleanly, tagged the runner going to third, then ran to second, stepped on the bag, and fired to The Progressive's publisher, Joy Wallin, at first for the dazzling denouement...
...In its "The Week in Review" section for Sunday, August 13, it led off with a story entitled, in cutesy typeface, "The Case that Brought Back Radical Chic...
...Every day here we receive four or five review copies of new titles, and we often get bound galleys of books before the final proofs have been corrected...
...We hung on to a 4-3 victory in the first game, but the odds prevailed in the second game, which we lost 14-11...
...Clines's piece ranks high on the sneering charts, and it was filled with falsity...
...Mutual flattery being the milk of human kindness, Ruth and Kozol stayed in touch, and in February, Kozol sent her a manuscript of Amazing Grace...
...That was the hard part...
...It added two more: one was an op-ed by the Philadelphia district attorney, who is supervising the case against Abu-Jamal...
...The first paragraph of Francis X. Clines's story tells all: "The hard fact that criminal justice is grossly relative is never clearer than when a felon gifted with artic-ulateness approaches the gallows, rallying celebrities to his side...
...Can't trust those socialists...
...It got here in early May, and I took it home one weekend when I was recovering from minor surgery...
Vol. 59 • October 1995 • No. 10
