[PEN-L:30239] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Reply to Marc Cooper

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't think that it requires a shrink.  I regard him as the person who
did the most to give some credibility to the Pacifica Board, back then.

On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 06:50:28PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >Maybe that is why he pisses me off.  He does sometimes do interesting
> >journalism, but on some issues he is so far off that he gets my anger up.
> >Very few people can do that to me.
>
> Sorry to sound like a shrink, but maybe that's a sign worth
> interpreting. Why does he get you so angry? It might be about
> ambivalence or defensiveness or the sense that maybe he has a point
> that you'd rather not consider. I doubt Alterman makes you mad in the
> same way.
>
> Doug
>
> PS: One of the funniest columns ever written was this account of a
> Marc Cooper book party.
>
> Daily Telegraph (London) - February 3, 2001
>
> The smart set entertains thoughts of revolution
>
> By Zoe Heller
>
> ONE of the more curious aspects of LA life is the way in which a
> certain sector of its middle class is constantly trying to prove the
> city's cultural standing. The disinterested visitor is likely to find
> all sorts of things to recommend Los Angeles - beautiful scenery,
> nice beaches, a pleasant climate and of course the specific, vulgar
> charm that comes with being Entertainment Capital Of The World.
>
> But the would-be bohemians of the city want you to know that LA also
> boasts a thriving life of the mind. One highly suspect factoid often
> used to substantiate this idea has it that Los Angeles represents
> "the largest book market of any city in the United States". If I had
> a dollar for every time I've heard an Angeleno say, "People think all
> we do here is watch movies, but actually we are voracious readers", I
> wouldn't be flying Economy any more. I don't know, perhaps Angelenos
> do buy a lot of books. (The vast "libraries" of those movie star
> mansions in Bel Air have to get filled somehow.) But it is definitely
> a step too far to claim - as people inevitably do, every time one of
> the city's gruesome dance groups is putting on a Tribute to Spring -
> that the LA arts are "as good as anything you'll find in New York".
>
> The attempt to position LA as a cultural mecca has recently received
> a big boost from the advent of Arianna Stassinopoulos's radical
> Brentwood salon. The LA Times ran an article about this new
> intellectual forum the other day, citing it as "precisely the sort of
> cultural and artistic resource that the city is often accused of not
> having". As fate would have it, just a few hours after I had read
> this article, a friend of mine called to say that he had an
> invitation to the next Stassinopoulos gathering and would I like to
> go with him? This particular soiree, he explained, was being held to
> celebrate a new book about Pinochet by the Left-wing journalist (and
> Arianna's dear friend) Marc Cooper.
>
> Leftist chums are, of course, a relatively recent phenomenon in
> Stassinopoulos's life. It was only a few years ago, you will
> remember, that she was being hailed as one of the Boudiccas of
> America's Right wing. In 1994, when she was still married to the
> billionaire Michael Huffington, she essentially ran his $30 million
> campaign to become Republican Senator for California. But Huffington
> lost the Senate race to the Democratic incumbent, and shortly
> afterwards he and Stassinopoulos parted ways. He publicly declared
> his homosexuality and joined the Democratic Party. She abandoned
> Washington for California and repositioned herself as a populist
> progressive.
>
> You have to hand it to her; the woman is a lightning-quick study. In
> her new revolutionary incarnation, Stassinopoulos rejects both the
> Democrats and the Republicans as equally corrupt and regards civil
> disobedience as the only way forward. Her latest book, published
> during the presidential campaign, is Overthrow the Government. On the
> home page of the overthrowthegov.com website, you will find a cartoon
> image of Stassinopoulos at a cocktail party, tossing a complacent
> male voter over her shoulder.
>
> The vast neo-gingerbread mansion that is the Stassinopoulos residence
> was all lit up when we arrived on the appointed Tuesday evening. We
> handed over our car to the valet parkers, crunched up the drive and
> rang the musical doorbell. We were, it seemed, horribly early.
> Inside, Stassinopoulos was whisking about attending to domestic
> affairs with her housekeeper and the retinue of canape servers were
> still changing into their butler and maid outfits. We stood at the
> bar and chatted with the other premature arrival - a handsome but
> phenomenally dull Texan who wrote scripts for a Fox sitcom. After a
> while, I began to want to escape the Texan, so I pretended to need
> the loo.
>
> The downstairs guest bathroom was a pretty snazzy affair with a
> sunken Jacuzzi and paper towels arranged in little fans, as if it
> were a hotel restroom. In order to get to it, I was delighted to
> discover, you had to pass through a vast, walk-in closet stuffed full
> of the hostess's clothes. Judging from the number of extremely
> expensive, brightly chequered, woollen skirt suits, this was the
> graveyard for Stassinopoulos's redundant Republican-wife costumes.
>
> I stayed in the closet for quite a while, checking out the Right-wing
> schmatte and when I emerged, the party had got going. Roughly 200
> people - a weird mix of highly groomed Hollywood types and
> considerably less groomed bien-pensant types - were milling about
> eating stuffed vine leaves and spannokopita. At some point, Warren
> Beatty and Annette Bening turned up and made one or two vaguely royal
> circuits of the living room. "Warren," people kept saying as they
> leapt into his path, "you don't know me, but I've been wanting to
> talk to you for a long time about . . ."
>
> Personally, I didn't enjoy many intellectual exchanges. For some
> reason, I kept being approached by young women wanting me to
> introduce them to eligible men. It was rather sinister. I'm all for
> playing Cupid, but there is something a bit galling about having
> twenty-somethings assume, just by looking at you, that you are one of
> those raddled, giggly old trouts from an Austen novel, whose sole
> remaining delight in life is brokering the romantic liaisons of the
> junior set.
>
> Still, Beatty had a harder time, by the looks of it. As I was
> leaving, some very tenacious old fart had managed to collar him and
> was sharing his dreary thoughts on Ralph Nader. Beatty had a slightly
> panicked look in his eye and kept making Must Be Moving On gestures,
> but the man wouldn't take the hint. "Now about this Stassinopoulos
> woman," he said when he'd exhausted the Nader issue, "can we trust
> her?"
>
> "Oh yes," Beatty said, nodding furiously, "she's uh, very much a
> woman of the Left." Then, capitalising on the momentary distraction
> caused by a passing tray of miniature raspberry tarts, he turned and
> fled.
>

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx