Notebook

It’s the first week in December and the fallout from the Campus Project is cascading down all around me. Who was the little guy who used to worry that the sky might fall?

There is so much media from campus and off-campus that I have to admit I am unable to stay on top of it all.

When these things blow they always blow in their own fashion and there is no way to be ready for what is going to happen.

The $50,000 Offer is what kicked it off this time (you saw the ad reproduced in SR48). The primary irony here is that when the idea was first broached to me I didn’t like it. I thought it would appear to the public to be a mere public relations ploy, that it had too little text, that I could conceivably suffer legal challenges over it—where is the $50,000? My most experienced volunteer advisors all warned me against running it, feeling about the ad much like I felt about it.

The idea was first broached to me almost a year ago by a lady I refer to as Mrs. P. (“P” for “Patron”). She has been the most steadfast and generous of all the donors to the Campus Project, and has been overwhelmingly responsible for its success in the past.

I think one reason it was difficult for me to accept was that it came from another, rather from me. It was different than the other big ads in that it had very little text. The others, the ones that had been so successful, had been text-heavy.

It was difficult to tell Mrs. P. I had reservations about accepting her advice and her financial support for this particular ad. She never faltered. She would refer to it as “this potent ad” and urge me to get on with it. I had so many reservations about the ad, and so many of those I showed it to had reservations about it that by the time the ad was in a condition where I was willing reluctantly, to go with it, the 1996-1997 academic year was dose to being over.

That was when I decided to print the ad in SR and ask you, our readers, what you thought about running it.

The response was more encouraging than I had expected it would be, and I received a number of good suggestions about how to handle the campaign that we hoped would ensue from its publication.

Mrs. P. was impatient to get rolling but we had to wait out the summer and then there was one thing after another (including my getting set up after my move to Mexico) and I didn’t get the ad off to student editors nationally until the second week in October. I accompanied the photoready ad with a cover letter asking how much the ad would cost, the mechanical width of a two-column ad, and the earliest date it could be published.

The response was so quick and so enthusiastic that I was unable to keep up with it. At first Mrs. P. had thought to run the ad in maybe half a dozen papers to test the waters. I thought this approach would increase the possibility for failure. But once she was informed about the reaction we were getting she must have thought what the hell and committedherself fully. To date she has paid to insert the ad into upwards of forty papers. And we still have the rest of the academic year before us.

Once again it has been the students who have been willing to run the ad while their professors and administrators have been against running it. At the University of Toronto Varsity the advertising department, manned by sophisticated young men with Arab-sounding names, scanned the ad into their computer, reformatted it so it would fit into a full page column, and got it run before the professors could pull it.

At Princeton the ad was to be published but was blocked at the last minute. When my check to the Princetonian was returned my ad was returned with it. It had been trimmed and the back of it still contained the rubber cement it had pasted it up with. The ad would have been printed, perhaps within hours, when an agent for the Princeton thought police caught wind of it and literally ripped it off the page.

Student editors and advertising managers have been castigated and shamed for following their best instincts as journalists and men and women, while their elders have decried the appearance of the ad without mentioning its text—ever! In every instance the tactic has been to verbally assault the messenger, me or the editor or the ad manager or all of us, and avoid the message with an abhorrence that reveals only too clearly the taboo nature of the subject.

I think I underestimated the power of this ad because, compared with my other essay-advertisements, this ad has very little text. But what text it does have is so simple, so clear, and so clearly unmentionable that every student who sees it knows immediately that what it says is true— and that it should not be.

Every historical controversy can be discussed and debated on national television — except one — the Jewish holocaust story!

Over the past decades there have been thousands of hours of unanswered Holocaust allegations broadcast to the American people. Is it not fair that those of us who do not believe the “gas chamber ” stories should be allowed 90 minutes — only 90 minutes — to report the other side of the issue?

It’s due to these two little paragraphs, the fact that the Cole video has gained “international recognition,” and the existence of the video itself—a picture being worth a thousand words as they say—that the makes the $50,000 Offer such a powerful impression on students. And then the video has been puffed by a U.S. Congresswoman, the President of Lithuania, an advisor to the President of Hungary, and a professor of Holocaust studies at Hebrew University in Tel Aviv. Not much text, but very pregnant text.

Re the University of Toronto Varsity: Meg Murphy, its editor, ran an editorial and a few other articles and letters that attacked me in the normal way—with a rousing viciousness. I rang her up and asked her if I couldn’t reply in a Letter to the Editor. Usually I don’t bother, but this time I wanted to. She said yes, that she would accept 600 words so long as it dealt with the intellectual freedom issue and not with gas chambers or anything else having to do with revisionist theory.

I said fine, I’d take a run at it. After she had my response for a week I rang her up only this morning to see if she had run it and she said the letter was in the hands of lawyers representing the Varsity. I was a little surprised. She said there were some “comparisons” in the letter that could make a problem for the Varsity. The Varsity has a circulation of 25,000. I suppose that is one reason I went to the trouble of writing the letter. I’d really like 25,000 Canadian students to read it or have a chance to read it. I think a lot of them would come to CODOHWeb—and then we would have them!

In any event, I have to say I do not understand how Mrs. P. could be so certain the $50,000 Offer would work when I wasn’t even sure that anyone would print it and my volunteer advisors were even more skeptical of it than I was. That must be what is meant when they say that two heads are better than one.

One evening I was surprised to receive a short e-mail letter from David Duke congratulating me on a story I had posted on CODOHWeb. A chapter of my work-in-progress A Simple Writer, it’s called “God Bless the Hillel Rabbis.” I’m printing Duke’s letter in this issue of SR along with those by Butz and Martin. I’m going to get nailed for this one. I’m giving those people who see themselves as my enemies a chance to nail me with how I’m in bed with the White racialists. But I like the letter very much, it’s well written, graceful, and it makes a point I like to have made about my writing. Besides, I like to give the worst acting people the best straight lines. It’s not nice, but I think I like to watch than perform for me.

Another e-mail letter came from a New Yorker named Richard Resnick. He wrote:

I had a wonderful dream last night. I dreampt that i woke up, walked outside my apartment building and saw Bradley Smith and David Thomas [our co-Webmaster] hanging from a lampost. Too bad it was only a dream. I still can't believe that you have not been assassinated yet. What the hell are some people waiting for? Its not as if you'd be missed. Why is it that every person who denies the Holocaust has German blood?

Richard T. Resnick

Resnick is associated with the Jewish Defense League and has rung me up a few times. His manner and tone of voice reminds me of Irving Rubin, West Coast head, I suppose, of the JDL. Rubin and I used to chat once in a while when I lived in Hollywood. I was wary of him but I kind of liked him. He was outspoken, he had a sense of humor, and there were times when he was willing to laugh at himself. Resnick’s a little crazy, I suppose, but he too has some of those qualities. I see an image before me of a little dinner party with Duke, Resnick, Thomas, Irving and me. Thomas and I are drinking hot coffee with milk and sugar and a good shot of Azteca brandy, like we did last weekend. I don’t know what the others are having. The colors of the room are out of Caravaggio.

Re the small ads that I have been running but have had to let go because of all the commotion surrounding the $50,000 Offer: I haven’t forgotten them. They’re there waiting. And I have also submitted a new opinion piece to 100 student newspapers by a new writer associating himself with CODOH, Martin Henry, whom I expect you will be hearing more of in the near future.

In short, our cup floweth over with good strong things….