Stupid White Men and Other Excuses

When Michael Moore's publisher insisted he rewrite his new book to be 
less critical of President Bush, it took an outraged librarian to get 
it back in the stores.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Kera Bolonik

Jan. 7, 2002 | It was the kind of battle that provocateur journalist 
Michael Moore would ordinarily consider red meat: a major media 
corporation threatening a writer's freedom of speech. Moore's new 
book, "Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the 
Nation," which pointedly criticizes President George W. Bush and his 
administration, was due in stores on Oct. 2. As with many books 
scheduled for release in the weeks that immediately followed Sept. 
11, plans to ship the title to stores were put on hold. According to 
HarperCollins, "both Moore and [Judith Regan's HarperCollins imprint] 
ReganBooks thought its publication would be insensitive, given the 
events of September 11." 

By mid-October, there were 50,000 finished books (out of an announced 
first printing of 100,000) collecting a month's worth of dust in a 
Scranton, Pa., warehouse, and ReganBooks had yet to schedule a new 
release date for "Stupid White Men." It was holding off in hopes that 
Moore would include new material to address the recent events, and 
would change the title and cover art. Moore says he readily agreed to 
these requests. But once HarperCollins had his consent, it asked 
Moore to rewrite sections -- up to 50 percent of the book -- that it 
deemed politically offensive given the current climate. In addition, 
the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing house wanted Moore to help defray 
half the cost of destroying the old copies and of producing the new 
edition, by contributing $100,000 from his royalty account. 

Moore was aghast. "They wanted me to censor myself and then pay for 
the right to censor myself," he declared. "I'm not going to do that!" 
After close to three months of relentless negotiations that 
threatened to embarrass one of the country's leading publishing 
houses, the potentially explosive drama was suddenly resolved when 
HarperCollins announced on Dec. 18 its plans to publish "Stupid White 
Men" as is, slating the title for early March 2002. "We have made the 
decision to move it forward as it was. We're very happy about that," 
says Lisa Herling, HarperCollins' director of corporate 
communications. What motivated the publisher's change of heart? Not, 
as some might well expect, an ugly public fuss orchestrated by Moore. 
Instead, the author remained uncharacteristically quiet, and the 
protest over the holdup on "Stupid White Men" came from an unexpected 
source. 

In fact, the turnabout was a surprise to Moore, but then so were 
HarperCollins' initial reservations about publishing "Stupid White 
Men." After all, Moore observes, "They not only bought the book, but 
they accepted the manuscript and printed it." But after Sept. 11, the 
satirical bite of Moore's book was too sharp for his publisher. In 
particular, HarperCollins flagged an open letter to George W. Bush, 
in which Moore asks the president whether he's a functional 
illiterate, whether he's a felon and whether he is getting the 
necessary help for his drug and alcohol problem. "They said it would 
be 'intellectually dishonest' not to admit that Bush has done a good 
job, and that the other things in the book wouldn't be believable if 
I didn't at least give Bush that much," says Moore. The author was 
certain that HarperCollins would cancel and destroy the book if he 
didn't concede to its demands. (The rights to publish the book would 
subsequently revert to Moore after six months.) 

HarperCollins also wanted him to take out the chapter "A Very 
American Coup," about Dubya's dubious victory in Florida, and it 
objected to the title of an essay about race in America, "Kill 
Whitey." According to Moore, his editor at ReganBooks, Cal Morgan, 
explained, "It's not the dissent we disagree with, it's the tone of 
your dissent. You can't question the president about his past 
felonies or alcohol problems right now." (Cal Morgan did not respond 
to requests for comment.) 

The publisher's request came at a chilling moment, on the heels of 
presidential spokeman Ari Fleischer's Sept. 26 warning (later 
retracted) that "all Americans ... need to watch what they say, watch 
what they do." In the weeks that immediately followed Sept. 11, 
television host Bill Maher and essayist Susan Sontag were excoriated 
for presenting unconventional views on the hijackers, and newspaper 
journalists at the Texas City Sun and the Daily Courier in Oregon 
were fired for voicing unpopular opinions. 

Given the tenor of the times, Moore had reason to assume that his 
publisher would follow suit. After two months of uncharacteristic 
silence ("I spoke to no one in the media. I didn't want to upset 
anyone at News Corps [HarperCollins' parent company] and tip the 
scales toward the decision of pulping my book."), the author 
discussed his struggle with a crowd of 100 during a keynote speech at 
a New Jersey Citizen's Action private event on Dec. 1. He even read 
passages from the book: "It may be the only time it's ever heard by 
anybody," he explained at the time. "As far as I knew, there wasn't 
any press there, so I told people what had happened. They 
asked, 'What do you want us to do?' I said, 'Don't call the 
publisher, don't call the press. Let me deal with it.'" 

But one person in the crowd refused to heed Moore's request. Ann 
Sparanese, a librarian at Englewood Library in New Jersey and a board 
member of the American Library Association (ALA), returned to work 
that Monday and posted a message on several ALA listserves -- among 
them, Library Juice -- detailing Moore's predicament. According to 
the ALA, libraries represent big money to publishers, spending over 
$2 billion a year for books and electronic information, and because 
of it, librarians have publishers' ears. 

"I thought these particular librarians would be especially 
concerned," explains Sparanese. "The ALA has this big conference 
coming up in midwinter, and all of the publishers have booths there. 
At the very least, I thought some of us would've gone over to the 
Harper booth and said, 'What gives?'" 

In her posting, Sparanese explained, "This is NOT a question of the 
CIA or the government demanding that a publisher stop publication for 
national security or some other well-known reason. The publisher just 
decided to walk away from the money -- the book's ALREADY printed and 
sitting in a warehouse -- because of the current war-inspired, anti-
dissent atmosphere. Even satire is biting the dust, by the 
publisher's own hand." 

Publishing insiders caught wind of Sparanese's message when Pat Holt, 
a former book review editor and critic for the San Francisco 
Chronicle, included it in her twice-weekly publishing industry 
newsletter. Within days of the posting, a HarperCollins editor told 
Moore that they were receiving a lot of e-mail from angry librarians 
about "Stupid White Men." Moore hadn't realized Sparanese had 
attended the Citizen's Action event (the two never met), but he 
partly attributes the publisher's shift in stance to her mobilization 
of other librarians. "Librarians see themselves as the guardians of 
the First Amendment," says Moore. "You got a thousand Mother Joneses 
at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for 
them!" 

Lisa Herling, who says she was not familiar with the librarians' e-
mail campaign, could neither confirm nor deny their impact. "From our 
perspective, I don't know if it has anything to do with our 
decision." 

Throughout it all, Moore insists he has kept his relations with 
HarperCollins friendly and intact. "I have complete empathy and 
understanding with HarperCollins and what they were going through -- 
and what everybody's been going through -- since Sept. 11. We've 
never been through any of this, and everybody is reacting in various 
ways and some people are behaving inappropriately. 

"But I think we have to cut everybody a lot of slack because nobody 
has a playbook here. They went with their first instincts, which 
were 'Don't offend the president.' They said to me, 'We're publishing 
four Sept. 11 books, and we don't want to put this out and create 
confusion in people's minds.' 

"This is a fascinating story because it shows what a free society 
does when confronted with a crisis. Do we maintain our sense of 
freedom and liberty and dissent and open discussion of the issues? Or 
do we start putting the clamp down? I waited it out to see. And 
HarperCollins eventually did the right thing. I'm really proud of 
this book, and I'm dying for it to get out there." 
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Kera Bolonik is a freelance writer. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. 

*****

The Day Ashcroft Censored Freedom Of Information
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle 
1-6-2


The President didn't ask the networks for television time. The 
attorney general didn't hold a press conference. The media didn't 
report any dramatic change in governmental policy. As a result, most 
Americans had no idea that one of their most precious freedoms 
disappeared on Oct. 12. 
  
Yet it happened. In a memo that slipped beneath the political radar, 
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft vigorously urged federal agencies 
to resist most Freedom of Information Act requests made by American 
citizens. 
  
Passed in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Freedom of 
Information Act has been hailed as one of our greatest democratic 
reforms. It allows ordinary citizens to hold the government 
accountable by requesting and scrutinizing public documents and 
records. Without it, journalists, newspapers, 
  
historians and watchdog groups would never be able to keep the 
government honest. It was our post-Watergate reward, the act that 
allows us to know what our elected officials do, rather than what 
they say. It is our national sunshine law, legislation that forces 
agencies to disclose their public records and documents. 
  
Yet without fanfare, the attorney general simply quashed the FOIA. 
The Department of Justice did not respond to numerous calls from The 
Chronicle to comment on the memo. 
  
So, rather than asking federal officials to pay special attention 
when the public's right to know might collide with the government's 
need to safeguard our security, Ashcroft instead asked them to 
consider whether "institutional, commercial and personal privacy 
interests could be implicated by disclosure of the information." Even 
more disturbing, he wrote: 
  
"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold 
records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department 
of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal 
basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability 
of other agencies to protect other important records." 
  
Somehow, this memo never surfaced. When coupled with President Bush's 
Nov. 1 executive order that allows him to seal all presidential 
records since 1980, the effect is positively chilling. 
  
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, we have witnessed a flurry of federal 
orders designed to beef up the nation's security. Many anti-terrorist 
measures have carefully balanced the public's right to know with the 
government's responsibility to protect its citizens. 
  
Who, for example, would argue against taking detailed plans of 
nuclear reactors, oil refineries or reservoirs off the Web? 
  
No one. Almost all Americans agree that the nation's security is our 
highest priority. 
  
Yet half the country is also worried that the government might use 
the fear of terrorism as a pretext for protecting officials from 
public scrutiny. 
  
  
Now we know that they have good reason to worry. For more than a 
quarter of a century, the Freedom of Information Act has ratified the 
public's right to know what the government, its agencies and its 
officials have done. It has substituted transparency for secrecy and 
we, as a democracy, have benefited from the truths that been 
extracted from public records. 
  
Consider, for example, just a few of the recent revelations -- 
obtained through FOIA requests -- that newspapers and nonprofit 
watchdog groups have been able to publicize during the last few 
months: 
  
-- The Washington-based Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit 
organization, has been able to publish lists of recipients who have 
received billions of dollars in federal farm subsidies. Their Web 
site, www.ewg.org, has not only embarrassed the agricultural 
industry, but also allowed the public to realize that federal money --
 intended to support small family farmers -- has mostly enhanced the 
profits of large agricultural corporations. 
  
-- The Charlotte Observer has been able to reveal how the Duke Power 
Co., an electric utility, cooked its books so that it avoided 
exceeding its profit limits. This creative accounting scheme 
prevented the utility from giving lower rates to 2 million customers 
in North Carolina and South Carolina. 
  
-- USA Today was able to uncover and publicize a widespread pattern 
of misconduct among the National Guard's upper echelon that has 
continued for more than a decade. Among the abuses documented in 
public records are the inflation of troop strength, the misuse of 
taxpayer money, incidents of sexual harassment and the theft of life-
insurance payments intended for the widows and children of Guardsmen. 
  
-- The National Security Archive, a private Washington-based research 
group, 
  
has been able to obtain records that document an unpublicized event 
in our history. It turns out that in 1975, President Gerald Ford and 
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave Indonesian strongman Suharto 
the green light to invade East Timor, an incursion that left 200,000 
people dead. 
  
-- By examining tens of thousands of public records, the Associated 
Press has been able to substantiate the long-held African American 
allegation that white people -- through threats of violence, even 
murder -- cheated them out of their land. In many cases, government 
officials simply approved the transfer of property deeds. Valued at 
tens of million of dollars, some 24,000 acres of farm and timber 
lands, once the property of 406 black families, are now owned by 
whites or corporations. 
  
These are but a sample of the revelations made possible by recent 
FOIA requests. None of them endanger the national security. It is 
important to remember that all classified documents are protected 
from FOIA requests and unavailable to the public. 
  
Yet these secrets have exposed all kinds of official skullduggery, 
some of which even violated the law. True, such revelations may 
disgrace public officials or even result in criminal charges, but 
that is the consequence -- or shall we say, the punishment -- for 
violating the public trust. 
  
No one disputes that we must safeguard our national security. All of 
us want to protect our nation from further acts of terrorism. But we 
must never allow the public's right to know, enshrined in the Freedom 
of Information Act, to be suppressed for the sake of official 
convenience. 
  
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle 
Page D - 4 
http://www.sfgate.com/

*****

Enron Scandal Shapes Us As 'Big, Big Trouble For Bush'
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 
The Independent - London 
1-7-2

It may not yet quite be the "cancer on the presidency" of which John 
Dean warned Richard Nixon in the early days of Watergate. But the 
collapse of the energy conglomerate Enron is suddenly shaping up as 
big, big trouble for George Bush. 
  
All the ingredients of a classic Washington scandal are there: the 
biggest corporate failure in history, a chief executive on such good 
terms with George Bush that the President refers to him as "Kenny 
Boy" and a history of massive contributions by the Houston-based 
Enron to the White House campaigns of Bush the father and Bush the 
son. 
  
The final element fell into place last week with the announcement of 
a full-scale Senate investigation, complete with subpoenas for top 
Enron executives including Kenneth Lay (aka "Kenny Boy"), 
representatives of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm which 
singularly failed to spot the impending disaster, and perhaps senior 
figures in the Bush administration as well. 
  
Even the cast of characters is comfortingly familiar. Enron's lead 
attorney, for instance, is Robert Bennett, the $500-an-hour DC 
superlawyer who featured in Washington's most recent presidential 
scandal when he represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones sexual 
harassment suit. That led directly to the Monica Lewinsky saga. 
  
By any yardstick, Enron is a massive financial scandal, a tale of 
concealed debt and shell companies, incompetent auditing and scanty 
regulatory oversight - not to mention the sudden impoverishment of 
thousands of employees obliged to hold their pension savings in now 
worthless Enron shares, even as senior executives cashed in stock and 
stock options for up to $1bn (£700m) during 2000 and 2001. 
  
Until now, however, Enron has been the dog which failed to bark - or, 
more exactly, was ignored as the media concentrated on Afghanistan 
and barely dared mention such goings-on as the presidential approval 
ratings hovered around the 90 per cent mark. Enron unravelled in 
November, but not until 28 December was Mr Bush first asked about the 
debacle. All that is about to change as the news focus starts to 
shift from the anti-terror campaign to domestic politics. Not only is 
this a mid-term election year in which the Democrats need just half-a-
dozen seats to recapture the House of Representatives, but thoughts 
are already turning to the 2004 White House race. In all these 
calculations, Enron could prove a factor. 
  
Already, at least three Congressional committees have been sniffing 
around the affair. But the main investigation will be conducted by 
the Senate's governmental affairs committee, headed by the Democrat 
Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Mr Lieberman, it will not be forgotten, 
was Al Gore's vice-presidential running mate last time and is is 
widely believed to have ambitions for the top job in 2004. 
  
Thus far, Mr Lieberman has followed the Washington scandal script to 
a T. Echoing investigators of Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater 
before him, he promises solemnly that his probe will be even-
handed, "a search for the truth, not a witchhunt". But, he 
warns, "we're going to go wherever the search takes us". If so, it 
could be a most interesting journey. 
  
Enron has been a fountain of money for politicians of every hue. 
Since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which 
monitors such donations, it has made campaign contributions of $5.8m 
(£4m), three-quarters of it to Republicans. The biggest single 
beneficiaries, unsurprisingly, have been the two Texas senators, Kay 
Bailey Hutchinson and Phil Gramm, whose wife Wendy sits on the Enron 
board. 
  
Like most big corporate donors, it has hedged its bets. On Capitol 
Hill, 71 of the 100 current senators and nearly half the 435 
congressmen have received contributions. The investment paid off with 
a vengeance, when Enron secured exemption for its energy derivatives 
business under a 2000 Act regulating commodity futures trading. But 
the Bush family has been a special object of its attentions. Mr Lay 
was listed by the Bush-Cheney campaign as one of the "Pioneers" who 
raised at least $100,000 (£70,000) for the election, while Enron gave 
$100,000 to the inauguration gala, a contribution matched by "Kenny 
Boy" and his wife. 
  
Potentially most damaging is its possible backstage role in the 
formulation of Mr Bush's energy policy. At least four Enron 
consultants and executives have done work for the administration. A 
champion of the deregulation favoured by the White House, Mr Lay was 
a frequent informal adviser to the panel under the Vice-President, 
Dick Cheney, which drew up a national energy strategy. 
  
"We've got to ask whether the advice tendered was self-serving," Mr 
Lieberman says. Or, to put it more bluntly, were the Texan oilman in 
the White House and the Texan energy baron in Houston running a 
mutual benefit society? These questions can no longer escape an 
answer.