_______________ SLEAZE, SMEARS AND SPLEEN BY ERIC ALTERMAN (01/08/98)

In replying to Philip Nobile's letter, I will resist the urge to get polemical here, and just point out that because a writer may have been late in condemning Stalin, that hardly qualifies him as a "Stalinist." Stalinism implies dishonest vituperation of those with whom one disagrees. Izzy was a "Jeffersonian Marxist" and a democrat to the bone. Moreover there was nothing "disingenuous" about his condemnation of Stalin and the Soviet Union in 1956. He went there, and what he saw set him (intellectually) free. Richard Rovere's comment is entirely ad hominem and, personally, I do not think that Mr. Nobile is in a position to condemn the likes of Izzy Stone. -- Eric Alterman Come, come Mr. Nobile. Why don't you give the rest of your citation from Richard Rovere's self-contradictory diatribe? "Izzy's scholarship is impeccable but based on a load of crap." I quote the whole rather sad rant (from Nobile's interesting and provocative "Intellectual Skywriting: Literary Politics and the New York Review of Books," 1974) in my book "I.F. Stone: A Portrait" (Pantheon, 1988, Anchor paperback, 1990). I also quote Stone's reaction, as it appears in Nobile's book: "But no group likes nonconformists. The tiniest splinter group expels nonconformists. And I was -- I was of the Left, but a nonconformist on the Left. And those who were not on the Left, like Rovere, hated me because I was still on the Left; and those in the Left were contemptuous of me because I fell off 'the locomotive of history.' Some of these ex-Communists were so anti-Communist that they turned against the Popular Front and considered me a fellow traveler, whereas the Communists regarded me as unreliable. Rovere, for example, was an ex-Communist. And ex's have to prove their apostasy." What the Novaks and the Nobiles don't like to acknowledge is that Stone put what he had to say in print, and kept it there -- his errors and his insights are there for anyone to see in his many collections without having to resort to posthumous Red-baiting or discredited smears. So, yes, he was late, compared to some, in denouncing the Soviet Union. But he was ahead of many in refusing to get on the bandwagons of the "innocence" of Julius Rosenberg or Alger Hiss. He was an early Zionist, when it was dangerous to be one ("Underground to Palestine," 1946), and an early critic of what Zionism was becoming in post-1967 Israel. A "premature" supporter of civil rights for blacks, he launched early warnings on the excesses of the New Left. That he was a friend and supporter of such dissidents and exiles as Czeslaw Milosz and Andrei Sakharov would indicate the depth of his break with Marxist-Leninist thought. Rovere is right about one thing -- - Stalinist is "a loose and nasty term." And, in Stone's case, a false one. As to Stone being "distrusted by his peers," hooey. His pieces in the Weekly were among the most (silently) recycled in modern American journalism. A last word on that from another pink-tainted observer, E.Y. (Yip) Harburg, lyricist of such "Red" songs and shows as "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," "Finian's Rainbow," and "The Wizard of Oz": HUAC reads him and it cites him, Alsop reads him and indicts him, Reston reads him and rewrites him, But the Stone goes rolling on! (On the occasion of Stone's 60th birthday and the 15th anniversary of I.F. Stone's Weekly, 1968) -- Andrew Patner One teeny tiny quibble with Eric Alterman's piece on Novak. Wilbur Mills was caught in the Tidal Basin with a stripper (Fanny Fox), not stripperS, as Alterman writes. Accuracy is accuracy, regardless of philosophical persuasion. -- Brian Harwood SALON | Jan. 15, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| DECONSTRUCTING THE KENNEDYS BY CAMILLE PAGLIA

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