An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  As if this dichotomous thinking were not enough, in the June 12 issue, just last week, Frank Swertlow of the Hollywood bureau ran a “news item” that Meg Foster was to be dropped from the renewed CBS series Cagney and Lacey because “two women who worked in a male-dominated profession [cops] could be perceived as being gay.” Swertlow reported the astonishingly idiotic remarks of series producer Richard Rosenbloom—“There were some scenes in which they seemed to be more man than the men”—and the remarks of an unnamed CBS programmer—“They were too harshly women’s lib…The American public doesn’t respond to the bra burners, the fighters, the women who insist on calling manhole covers people hole covers…We perceived them as dykes”—without a scintilla of editorial concern.

  Paralogia. On one hand let us not stereotype dumb blondes presented as dumb blondes…on the other hand let us flee in cowardice from strong women presented on an even footing with men. The key here is that nobody really gets upset in the name of those who use Miss Clairol, so it’s okay to offer this as a real issue. But TV Guide says nary a word about such a flagrant and reactionary view of strong women in the work-force.

  But if TV Guide is a reflection of Annenberg’s view of Life in These United States—given that his view is that shared by Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan—and as Annenberg is a deeply entrenched member of Reagan’s “shadow cabinet” along with such other pillars of Big Business as Joseph Coors, Holmes Tuttle, Leonard Firestone, Charles Z. Wick, Justin Dart, Henry Salvatori, Asa Call and Norman Chandler of the L.A. Times we can, I think, handily assume the world-view matches up—then such paralogical thinking parses.

  Further examples from recent issues:

  June 12: Why American TV is So Vulnerable to Foreign Disinformation.

  May 29: Anatomy of a Smear: How CBS News Broke the Rules and “Got” Gen. Westmoreland.

  February 27: How Accurate is the Network News?

  April 3: Tales of a New York Reporter: Stealing Stories, Hoodwinking Sources, Sensation-Mongering.

  March 20: President Reagan (in an exclusive interview) Talks about Leaks, Boycotts, News Bias.

  And, of course, last year’s big dust-up over TV Guide’s “expose” of cocaine use in Hollywood. I don’t recall the dates, sorry.

  But the ones that prompted your columnist to write last week’s part one, and this follow up, were the heavy handed attacks on Ed Asner in the June 5 issue about which I commented at length last time, and an article in the same issue by (of all people) John Leonard of the New York Times, ridiculing intellectuals who say they don’t watch television. This latter screed, rife with paralogical thinking and as self-hating as a Jewish anti-Semite talking about kikes, is only the latest in an almost cornucopial flow of anti-intellectual pieces TV Guide has offered as a staple of its “think-pieces” since its inception.

  I have admired Leonard in the past, and I must conclude that his writing of this vicious little polemic is yet another example of TV Guide cajoling—for reasons I dare not consider—good people into doing bad things.

  I hope you saved that June 5 issue. I choose not to go into exhaustive quotes from its length. Reading it twice was enough to make my gorge become buoyant.

  But it falls right into line with the paralogia dished up every week by TV Guide in aid of belittling rational thought in favor of “gut-feelings.”

  We have emerged from what was called the Me Decade. A time when everyone was urged not to think too deeply, not to reason things out too carefully. Better to feel it, to get in touch with your emotions, to let it all hang out no matter what you felt. The country of the mind was portrayed as a cold, empty, hidden place from which no true emotions could flow; an uptight, anal-retentive way of living that cut one off from “real relationships.”

  This totemization of naked emotion, this stigmatization of ratiocination, led to hundreds of thousands of people being bullied into a condition of shame at their ability to examine problems or life questions or political conundrums or complex societal trends. It led to lemminglike rushes into mysticism, illogical beliefs, obscurantism, Scientology, est, Lifespring, an almost total takeover of Skinnerian behavior modification as the way to teach college-level psychology, deification of the raging boob as an exemplar of The Common Man.

  “I’d like to share my feelings with you,” became the mating cry of the American Pop-Eyed Galoot.

  It put Sherlock Holmes in the toilet and made a god of Prince Myshkin.

  And it flowed to, and from, that Reagan-mouthpiece of subtle, innocent-seeming, toe scuffing the dirt anti-intellectualism, TV Guide. The weekly vampire that hides behind serious examinations of The Love Boat in order to slip into your home and your head the “old time values” that women should be back in the mold of Beaver’s mother, that Ed Asner is a yahoo because he doesn’t like the White House manipulating the cancellation of Lou Grant, that intellectuals are all fuzzy-minded eggheads who don’t know which end of the nail to drive into the wall, that writers are all drunken dope fiends more concerned about their swimming pools than maintaining American Values, that when one of the networks manages to say something accurate about Reagan’s love of Big Business at the expense of poor people that they are duplicitous and unAmerican.

  Sigmund Freud once observed that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Contrariwise, sometimes an innocent-seeming journal that tells you how wonderful it is for Joanie to love Chachi is seen, in the light of day, to be a bloodsucking vampire whose unstated purpose in life is to turn you into one of the Undead who lives entirely at the edge of the skin with no recourse to cool reason.

  Because if you merely feel, and never think, then you’ll never suspect that life might be better, out from under the merciless thumb of Reagan and his “shadow cabinet.”

  And have a nice one, Mr. Annenberg.

  INSTALLMENT 32: 24 JUNE 82

  Today the Equal Rights Amendment’s lease on life ran out. Some weeks ago I wrote that the movement for equality-before-the-law, regardless of sexual considerations, would not die; that it has struggled for breath since 1921 in this nation; and even if the Amendment were stalled by the legions of divisiveness till today’s terrible day dawned…we would draw a weary sigh and start all over again.

  But I think it cannot hurt you to know the ignominious nature of the people who lied, colluded, extorted and cheated to make this day as dark as it is. I speak this week of perfidy, and through the good offices of one of my secret informants in a high place I relate a bit of history you’ll never get from the Los Angeles Times.

  At the final heartbeat, there were fifteen states that had not ratified the ERA. You should know which ones. Perhaps, like me, you harbor grudges. (In fifteen years, since marching with Cesar Chavez in the Coachella Valley, I have not once shopped in a Safeway market. Viva Huelga, mothuhfukkahs!)

  Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North and South Carolinas, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia.

  With one exception, they’re all either Deep South states where the oxygen runs thin to the brain, or Mormon-controlled Southwestern duchies. The sole exception is Illinois, where dirty politics in defiance of the will of the people has been de rigueur since long before Al Capone rotted away from tertiary syphilis.

  In Illinois, where the ERA was a runaway hit with the people, by the proof of endless opinion polls, there was an easy majority win in the state legislature. So they proceeded to gerrymander a rules change, for the first time in the history of the state, whereby a three-fifths vote had to be achieved. And before those votes could be accrued, enough money was poured into Illinois by Big Business to provide Phyllis Schlafly with the bucks to buy off the necessary Quislings.

  Yet even with the game’s rules switched in mid-play, as recently as three weeks ago it seemed Illinois was still a possible target focus for passage. On June 6th thousands of ERA supporters marched in Springfield, the state capital. House Speaker George Ryan, a rabid ERA opponent, was quoted in the Washington Post, when ask
ed about this action by his constituents, “Why should I want to watch those idiots?”

  It was Ryan who singlehandedly blocked every attempt to get the Amendment before the House. Each time it seemed the strong and clever pro-ERA elements would get it on the agenda, Ryan would close down the session. And on the 9th of June, when circumventing action would have changed the House Rules back to simple majority rather than a three-fifths plurality, when it seemed like the day might be carried because Governor James Thompson (who had spoken out in favor of the ERA) was lobbying for the Rules change, Ryan called in all his favors and the change was defeated by a 4–97 vote. More on Thompson in a moment.

  In a last-ditch effort to get ratification before the June 30th deadline, hundreds of thousands marched on Springfield, mounted a $30,000 tv advertising campaign, chained themselves outside the State Senate, unfurled a giant American flag in the Senate chambers, and picketed Thompson’s mansion.

  But the height of human courage and the depth of human depravity was manifested most clearly by seven women who, from May 18th, fasted for thirty-seven days under the great dome in the crowded Capitol rotunda, and those who came to stand before them, to jeer, to curse, to set up banquet tables and eat; as the fasters, dressed in white with purple sashes, fainted from low blood pressure and exhaustion.

  From time to time in the course of writing this column, I have tried to answer the two most-frequently asked questions: Why do you hate the human race so much? and How can you continue to have such Pollyanna faith in the human race? In that one image of seven dedicated women putting their lives on the line—not merely making a gesture of protest but actually and literally endangering their lives—I see the very apotheosis of Homo sapiens as God. And in the horrifying, vicious insensitivity of other women standing before the fasters, slowly tearing the wrappers off Milky Way bars, carefully biting off chunks and methodically chewing the goodies as they hold up placards reading DEATH TO THE ERA SLUTS and IF YOU WANT TO KILL YOURSELF, IT’S A FREE COUNTRY, I find more than enough reason to despise my species as unworthy of continued existence.

  In just the 21st day of the fast, the seven women had collectively lost 200 pounds. One of them was a nun. One was a grandmother. One was gay. One was blind in one eye. One of them, Sonia Johnson, the 46-year-old woman who was excommunicated from the Mormon Church and whose husband divorced her because of her pro-ERA stand, dwindled from 123 pounds to 99 pounds, collapsed repeatedly, and had to be taken to the hospital a number of times. Yet until June 23rd, the day after Florida voted down the ERA for the final time, when Speaker Ryan and Schlafly and the Mormon Church triumphed and Illinois said no to over half the population of the United States, denying us what we needed and wanted, Sonia Johnson sat hollow-eyed and whisper-voiced in her wheelchair in the Illinois Capitol rotunda, telling us by her sacrifice that the spark of nobility does continue to glow in the human spirit. Telling us that we must not let what happened in this country after the Vietnam war happen again. Telling us that years of militant activity can sap our strength and weary us, but that just because a Watergate removes one thug from our view, that we must not be lulled into inactivity by the lure of too long a rest. When Nixon went, a soft GeraldFordlike hum, of the machine put into idle, settled over the land. And we rested too long, and kids today have no idea what all the angst of the Sixties and Seventies was about. And Nixon and Agnew finally had their way with us, even though they are off somewhere still getting fat and making a buck: they had their way with us because their clone-child Ronald Reagan rules the roost. Because we said, “I’m tired. I’ve been fighting for ten years. I need a break.” And we went to our beds. And in the night they took the country from us.

  Reagan and Schlafly and Falwell and Haig and Watt and Walter Annenberg (more about whom next week) took it away from us, and everything we fought for, and some died for, during those years of upheaval…seems about to slip away unnoticed.

  And so that you won’t think they ever sleep, so you won’t live in the security-blanket warmth of the delusion that there is ever a lack of troops available for the legions of divisiveness, remember that Rules Change in Illinois, and consider this bit of secret history, imparted through one of my secret sources in high places:

  In addition to Illinois, a prime target state for ERA passage was North Carolina. On June 4th in Raleigh, the Senate voted 27–23 on a procedural motion to table the Amendment till after the June 30th deadline, thereby effectively killing any chances for ratification.

  But North Carolina seemed a likely state. How did it miss by such a tiny margin?

  Secret history. On Wednesday, June 2nd, late in the afternoon in the chapel of the State Legislative Building in Raleigh, a secret meeting of twenty-seven N.C. senators was held. They gathered to raise their right hands and reaffirm their “gentleman’s agreement” that they would not allow the ERA to pass, nor would they allow it to be considered on its merits. They swore there would be no vote at all. This despite a Louis Harris poll showing that North Carolinians favored the ERA statewide by an astonishing 61–31% margin. This despite the heavy lobbying in favor of the ERA by Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., ostensibly a strong supporter of the Amendment. But…

  On the previous weekend Governor Hunt, in company with Governors Bob Graham of Florida, Thompson of Illinois (remember him? I promised he’d reappear) and George Nigh of Oklahoma—all four being target states of The National Organization of Women as possible ratification sites—met in Durham, North Carolina at a Southern Governors Conference, to find out what others were planning to do, so they wouldn’t step on each other’s toes, to get their stories straight, and in general to cover their asses. As they say in political circles, an accommodation was reached.

  So the N.C. senators, those 27 gathered a few days later in the chapel, knew they had nothing to fear from Hunt. He might publicly decry the tabling of the consideration of ERA—which he did in a statement issued after the death vote—but he was already on-line with Florida and Illinois, where the power brokers had long-since decided that the United States would not have an ERA in their lifetime.

  And here’s the little fillip that adds a human note to an historical event.

  Hunt had assigned a state lobbyist named Betty McKane, who is a former member of the N.C. Women’s Commission, to lobby for the ERA on his behalf. Somehow she got wind of the klan meeting and, in company with other women, she showed up at the chapel. She watched them go in, counting twenty-seven. She watched them emerge, hiding their faces behind hats and papers. Only twenty-six.

  She went inside and saw no one. She began searching the chapel. Hiding under a pew she found number twenty-seven, Democratic Senator Jim Speed. He tried to scuttle away. She followed him as he did his crab imitation on all fours. When she reached him he looked up with consternation. She said, very quietly, “You can get up now, Senator, I know who you are.”

  Then she slapped him very lightly in the face and added, “You’ve done all the damage you can do.”

  That noble legislator has been dubbed Jim “Under the Pew” Speed. Fastest sellout in the South.

  For now, the ERA is defeated. Defeated but not dead. Since 1921, like Lazarus, it has come back from the grave. The ERA first passed in a state legislature in 1972. Work on it began in 1966 when NOW was organized. Sonia Johnson will recover, and she has announced she will run for the Presidency of the National Organization for Women. Her 37-day ordeal on our behalf will not be forgotten.

  But the important lesson that has been learned in the ten year struggle culminating on this dark day is that Rules will be changed when the rats are cornered, that “gentlemen’s agreements” will continue to flourish in darkened chapels, and that good manners will not carry the day.

  Women have learned that spending ten years fighting under the Marquis of Queensbury rules is fruitless when the opponent rabbit-punches.

  The ERA is not dead and those who treasure what it means for this country have sadly, reluctantly, but determinedly come to underst
and that no matter how courageous are the individual Sonia Johnsons of the world, that odious as it may seem, we must learn to fight as dirty as those who come to the talent by nature.

  No one dies alone and unnoticed under the stars. We draw a sad, weary breath…and we start again.

  Interim memo

  This column was published in the Weekly the week of 9–15 July. The column speaks for itself, nothing very unusual. But. In the letter column we get our first glimpse of someone who signed himself “Jon Douglas West” of Burbank. You’ll read the letter immediately following this column. Something about it piqued my curiosity. It wasn’t the ordinary bugfuck pseudo-punk posturing of the plastic pinheads who responded to my manner but seldom to what I was talking about. “Jon Douglas West” interested me peculiarly. I did a little checking, mostly because he said he was in the phone book and suggested I come to Burbank to kick his ass. Well…No such person was in the phone book. Not in Burbank, not in Pasadena, not in any of the Valley directories, in Hollywood or L.A. proper. Um-hm, I thought. A li’l duplicity here. So I did some checking. DMV, tax records, utility records, real estate title deeds…I went the route. No Jon Douglas West. Then, when later I mentioned Mr. West, a number of letters began appearing in the Weekly, all written on the same typewriter, but with different names, some of them female. Curiouser and curiouser. So I took it as one of my little projects to locate the entity who was hiding behind the nom-de-plume Jon Douglas West. More on this later.

  Letters reprinted with permission from the L.A. Weekly

  INSTALLMENT 33: 2 JULY 82

  How shitty is it, this day on which I sit down to write my column? Let me tell you how shitty it is. You know the Gobi Desert? You know all the millions and billions of grains of sand in the Gobi Desert? If each of those millions of billions of grains of sand in the Gobi Desert were divided into a million billion fragments, and each of those million billion fragments were broken into a million billion fragments, and if on each of those million billion fragments of the million billion larger fragments of each of those millions of billions of grains of sand in the Gobi Desert the word SHITTY were carved a million billion times, it would not equal by one-billionth the utter shittyness of this day as I sit down to write my column.