Other Stuff

I promoted two items in our Catalog that have not shipped. A Nation on Trial by Birn and Finkelstein, and the Wiesenthal portfolio. I have no excuse this time. I wasn’t moving. The orders were not mislaid. Just carelessness. Those of you who asked that we send you one or both of these items should receive them 7-10 days after you receive this issue of SR. Apologies. Again.

THIS JUST IN: Denial, a play by Peter Sagal, features a character based on professor Arthur A. Butz of Northwestern U, author of The Hoax of the 20th Century. The play had a short run in Los Angeles (I think I have this right) and a motion picture based on It starring the accomplished film actress Susan Sarandon will be released later this year.

As of this writing, Denial is playing in a small theater in a Chicago suburb and our man Bill Jefferson was able to view it. He found that leaflets written by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith were being distributed to the playgoers. The two-page screed is titled “Focus On Holocaust Denial” and as a matter of fact it focuses on CODOH and some guy named Bradley Smith. Its lead paragraph reads:

One of the most significant anti-Semitic developments today is the effort by propagandists to use the Internet and to place advertisements in campus newspapers questioning the established history of the Nazi Holocaust.

The ADL asserts what I do is “denial” not revisionism, and repeats the slogan developed by Deborah Lipstadt that “revisionism does not question the actuality of major historical events [but] looks at the causes and consequences of historical events.” It ends with a paragraph titled “Ways Holocaust Denial Appears On College Campuses,” but mentions only one: “Bradley Smith routinely submits a series of advertisements to student newspapers questioning the established history…” and so on.

In short, playgoers must be “educated” before they enter a theater to watch a play written by a Jewish playwright about revisionism, against revisionism. Let’s not leave anything to chance, eh?

The Home Front. I was on the upstairs terraza watching the sun set. Across the pasture which has turned brown and the row of houses the sea was dark blue and there were horizontal funnels of orange and pink clouds stretching from north to south over a surface of bright blue sky. Behind me the shadow of dusk was already coming in from the east. About 600 yards to the northwest the great stack of the hydroelectric plant was discharging its usual column of black smoke. A good breeze was carrying the smoke south across the beautiful sunset. Thought recalled the demonstrations the locals have made against the plant and its ugly smoke that is so dirty you can’t hang your wash outside to dry. At the same time I could see, as the smoke thinned and curled across the beautiful colors of the sunset, that the smoke patterns too, in their flowing swirling designs, had a beauty of their own, a thinning filigree of scrolls and turns that could have been created by an accomplished Baroque designer. Ultimately, maybe it was.

Thanks for all your help,

Bradley