esrosedotblog

LEFTY

In the sixties, when I was a budding radical/progressive/whatever, the Village Voice was the first alternative newspaper that I ever saw. It was fresh and it was wild. All sorts of new ideas bloomed and so did my consciousness. It was one of the single most formative instrument in my awakening.

In the Voice at that time you could read about the new cinema (Andrew Sarris), left wing politics of all kinds, scurrilous writing about society's sacred cows and bulls, and so on. Jules Feiffer was one of the regulars.

Among all the columnists, Jack Newfield was the most disturbing to read. He ranted and raved and tore at the underpinnings of all the propositions that I had grown to believe; the canon of America. Nothing was safe from his scorn and ridicule; all well documented. I almost had to shield my eyes to read his column.

Jack Newfield died this past week. Here is a wonderful tribute to him by a latter day disciple, Joe Conason. It appears in Salon; an on line 'rag' that aspires to be the new 'Voice'. It does pretty well, but nothing rings so true as those old pages of pulp in the sixties.