From: Christopher Phelps <crps-AT-uhura.cc.rochester.edu> Subject: THE NATION goofs Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 16:33:16 -0500 (EST) I am posting this message far and wide and invite you to post it wherever you wish. Since the NATION has a 100,000 subscribers, I can't be very effective in correcting its errors on my own, but perhaps at least I will reach those I know personally with word of this error. Back in September, I sent the NATION a letter regarding a column Alexander Cockburn wrote about Bernie Sanders. That letter is as follows: To the Editors: Alexander Cockburn will undoubtedly take a thumping from legions of Bernie Sanders supporters for his proposal to "throw the bum out." I cannot go the distance with Cockburn, for I do not see Sanders' self-designation as an independent socialist as a mere smokescreen. While cable surfing this summer, I happened upon Sanders on C-Span BLASTING a bill permitting increased corporate funding for public broadcasting in vigorous, uncompromising terms that would scarcely permit designating him a "coward" or "hack Democrat." Need it be said that advocating socialism would hardly befit an opportunist who, "given half a chance, would like to be Dan Rostenkowski"? So that Cockburn's real point not get lost in the ensuing fury, however, I wish to agree that Sanders' vote for the repressive crime bill was a shameful violation of socialist principle. Sanders requires serious pressure for the left lest the horse-trading world of Washington erode him further. Here is further evidence why we need not mere independent CANDIDATES but a labor PARTY which holds its representatives accountable to a program set democratically by its rank and file. To my surprise, I opened my NATION this week, five months later, to find that they had printed my letter. To my dismay, I found that they had bowdlerized it by deleting two important sentences in the middle of it. Here is how it now reads: Alexander Cockburn will undoubtedly take a thumping from legions of Bernie Sanders supporters for his proposal to "throw the bum out." I cannot go the distance with Cockburn, for I do not see Sanders' self-designation as an independent socialist as a mere smokescreen. So that Cockburn's real point not get lost in the ensuing fury, however, I wish to agree that Sanders' vote for the repressive crime bill was a shameful violation of socialist principle. Sanders requires serious pressure from the left lest the horse-trading world of Washington erode him further. Here is fresh evidence why we need not mere independent CANDIDATES but a labor PARTY which holds its representatives accountable to a program set democratically by its rank and file. I believe this changes the sensibility of the letter radically, from one which dissents from Cockburn's wild characterizations of Sanders but agrees with his immediate political criticism of Sanders' stance on the crime bill to one which seems essentially to uphold Cockburn's position, with a very mild and abstract dissent registered. I was not consulted about these changes or asked to approve them. The deletions will probably be justified for reasons of space, although I've not been able to get ahold of the editor in charge of the letters page, who is out of the office until Tuesday. However, the two pro-Sanders letters printed along with mine are each twice as long as my letter. In solidarity and frustration, Christopher Phelps crps-AT-uhura.cc.rochester.edu (716) 527-0454 ------------------
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